A perspective from a non-American experience. I spent last year
postdoccing in South Africa, and found that where I worked I was treated
as a valued member of the department, up to and including sitting in
boring staff meetings and marking reams of first year exams :^) (no, I
wasn't exploited - I was helping-out)
It was enormously refreshing for me to be treated this way and did a lot
to increase my self-confidence in both my abilities as a "grown-up"
scientist and as a member interacting in a team.
I believe that, as in everything, there is no standard postdoc. There is
a lot of variety and some places are better than others. I guess I was
extremely lucky (I wasn't exactly in a position to pick and choose!). I
would like to encourage postgrads and recent graduates to look around -
not everywhere is terrible!
Tish S.
(davidb at uow.edu.au)
>> You're right, for a very long time it was expected (particularly of the
> better scientists) that after their PhD they would spend time working in
> another lab prior to finding a full time position. But the key
> differences with what happened in the past and now are that way way back
> then in the dim dark distant past (30 years ago :)), it was the better
> scientists that took that route because only the better scientists could
> get the fellowships required for that"extra experience/training". Jim
> Watson had a personal fellowship that paid all his salary and expenses,
> I'm sure Linus Pauling had similar independant funding. Moreover, those
> fellowships were very generous for the time. Furthermore, instead of
> being considered cheap labour (as many post-docs are now) visiting
> fellows/post-docs used to be given all the respect and consideration of
> fellow scientists. They were considered the equal of established
> faculty. They were treated as genuinely valuable members of the
> institute.
>> It is extremely rare for present day post-docs to be treated with any
> such respect. Remember also that for Linus Pauling and Jim Watson there
> was no question that they would have jobs when they returned "home".
>> All that means is that the post-doc is a completely different job from
> what it was 10, 20 or 30 years ago. Has the change been for the
> good?????
>> cheers
> Bart
