Thursday, January 04, 2007
C is for Career Path
I nearly did this as C is for Colleagues but I get to bitch about them plenty in real life and I'm trying to make this blog not too ranty and bitchy so career paths (and lack of) it is.
I'm 9 months into my first post doc (although it seems a lot less as I spent the first 7 months still finishing up writing my PhD thesis - oops). I have a fantastic boss at the moment but I know I'm being a bit of an idiot for not working harder while I have the support as I still only have one not very impressive paper to my name and I know I'm not going to get very far until I improve this situation.
At the moment my vague career plan goes something like work hard in current post for the remaining 2 years to develop my research skills (this is a big one as my PhD saw me change from a happy carefree biochemist to a stressed out and confused physical chemist and I'm still worried that I'll never fill in all the gaps in my physical chem knowledge and become a decent well rounded scientist). At the moment I'm doing my post doc at a really good department in a pretty good university but I have no idea where I want to go or what I want to do after this. I don't think I really want an academic career as there seem to be virtually no positive role models I know of in real life or through the internet so I guess I'll try my luck and see how I can fit into some sort of industrial setting. I do want to continue with labwork though as I love the freedom of just slobbing about my lab and office and the whole experimental process.
I'm 9 months into my first post doc (although it seems a lot less as I spent the first 7 months still finishing up writing my PhD thesis - oops). I have a fantastic boss at the moment but I know I'm being a bit of an idiot for not working harder while I have the support as I still only have one not very impressive paper to my name and I know I'm not going to get very far until I improve this situation.
At the moment my vague career plan goes something like work hard in current post for the remaining 2 years to develop my research skills (this is a big one as my PhD saw me change from a happy carefree biochemist to a stressed out and confused physical chemist and I'm still worried that I'll never fill in all the gaps in my physical chem knowledge and become a decent well rounded scientist). At the moment I'm doing my post doc at a really good department in a pretty good university but I have no idea where I want to go or what I want to do after this. I don't think I really want an academic career as there seem to be virtually no positive role models I know of in real life or through the internet so I guess I'll try my luck and see how I can fit into some sort of industrial setting. I do want to continue with labwork though as I love the freedom of just slobbing about my lab and office and the whole experimental process.
Subscribe to Posts [Atom]