Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Stressed Sophs
My enthusiasm for teaching was a bit premature as I found out last week that unlike postgraduate students, I don't get paid any extra for demonstrating in labs. This whole getting post docs to demonstrate/teach in the department has kicked off big style. I had a long chat with the secretary who dished out all the teaching amongst the postgrads and post docs and she was explaining how the allocation system had totally gone wrong and everything was a last minute nightmare. I pointed out that it's totally inappropriate for a post doc to be taking time out of research to babysit undergraduates in their practical classes, especially as neither I nor my boss get reimbursed for my time. So either I spend less time in the lab = less results = less papers = less proposals and new funding = bad news! or I do the research with the demonstrating and marking on top and take time out of my other interests, relaxation and family time which is rubbish as well.
The head of research for the school is out on the rampage about this as it all seems to have been approved without his knowledge and his research group has suffered the most and has the postdocs with the most intensive demonstrating loads. I finally decided that it was out of order how much extra work I have been asked to do, especially compared to the other students and post docs and got a bit of a rude response off the secretary. Basically as I was stupid enough to volunteer for teaching in the department I stuck with it for the rest of the year unless I can find other people in the department stupid enough to take some of it off me which will take ages and as I do very little work in my actual department it's not even like I can call in any favours so I am more than likely stuck with it.
I am so totally annoyed at the way this whole thing has been (dis)organised. There was no consultation or anything with the post docs. As far as I can tell basically the research councils have decided post docs should get more teaching experience (kind of understandable) but the department have taken this as just shove them in anywhere in a lab and do the same sort of thing as the post grads but without gettting paid! Gah, this department really drives me up the wall at times.
The head of research for the school is out on the rampage about this as it all seems to have been approved without his knowledge and his research group has suffered the most and has the postdocs with the most intensive demonstrating loads. I finally decided that it was out of order how much extra work I have been asked to do, especially compared to the other students and post docs and got a bit of a rude response off the secretary. Basically as I was stupid enough to volunteer for teaching in the department I stuck with it for the rest of the year unless I can find other people in the department stupid enough to take some of it off me which will take ages and as I do very little work in my actual department it's not even like I can call in any favours so I am more than likely stuck with it.
I am so totally annoyed at the way this whole thing has been (dis)organised. There was no consultation or anything with the post docs. As far as I can tell basically the research councils have decided post docs should get more teaching experience (kind of understandable) but the department have taken this as just shove them in anywhere in a lab and do the same sort of thing as the post grads but without gettting paid! Gah, this department really drives me up the wall at times.
Papers
I finally got around to addressing the referee comments and resubmitted my paper this afternoon. Fingers crossed they will accept our revisions and reasoning (one of the original comments wanted a whole heap of additional experiments which are not practical with my model and will take ages for no actual improvement of the paper or interpretation of the current more interesting results). Apparently there are a mad load of complicated corrections to do on my other paper but fortunately they all relate to the theory and are for the boss to deal with. Hopefully he will sort them out and get it submitted. I am really hoping that by the time I finish my contract I will have 3 first author papers and a second author paper which will be pretty good going considering everything.
Of course this all relies on me pulling my finger out. The finger was out briefly today but everything else seemed to conspire against me. It took forever (well over an hour) even to get all the apparatus put together and made me waste one of my samples, then when I was actually doing the experiment I realised that one of my stock solutions was missing and I added a much stronger stock solution than I meant to which knobbled the experiment. Then I managed to further knobble it by taking stuff apart before getting everything switched off properly. Still I aim to get in dead early tomorrow so that I can get two experiments done in the day and have some results for my meeting with my boss. There is nothing more motivating than a meeting with my boss when I still haven't got any new data!
Of course this all relies on me pulling my finger out. The finger was out briefly today but everything else seemed to conspire against me. It took forever (well over an hour) even to get all the apparatus put together and made me waste one of my samples, then when I was actually doing the experiment I realised that one of my stock solutions was missing and I added a much stronger stock solution than I meant to which knobbled the experiment. Then I managed to further knobble it by taking stuff apart before getting everything switched off properly. Still I aim to get in dead early tomorrow so that I can get two experiments done in the day and have some results for my meeting with my boss. There is nothing more motivating than a meeting with my boss when I still haven't got any new data!
Job hunting
Well it looks like my job hunting has been narrowed down a lot for me as himself has just got an academic research job in a neighbouring town. He'll be commuting for a while but it makes sense for me to look for new jobs closer to where he will be working. Had a look at the local university and there are some interesting looking research groups and some relevant labs that are probably worth contacting about positions.
Himself went across for a meeting with his new research group this morning and everything seems really positive and it's good that he's back on a career track as his current job wasn't going anywhere due to rubbish upper management bollocks and that sort of thing. Also the other good news about this job is that it will put him in good stead for other jobs around the country should we relocate again depending on whose career is going in some sort of direction somewhere.
Himself went across for a meeting with his new research group this morning and everything seems really positive and it's good that he's back on a career track as his current job wasn't going anywhere due to rubbish upper management bollocks and that sort of thing. Also the other good news about this job is that it will put him in good stead for other jobs around the country should we relocate again depending on whose career is going in some sort of direction somewhere.
Monday, September 15, 2008
Teaching - Kerching!
I got an email asking me if I would do some teaching in the new term, running workshops and tutorials, that kind of thing and that my boss had already agreed it would be a suitable thing for me to do. Anyway I said OK and filled in a crappy online form not really agreeing to do anything. I assumed from the first email I would be wanted to share my specialist knowledge and expertise for just a very limited time, I didn't think I would be suitable to do more general teaching in the department as I have absolutely no background, prior training or qualifications for the department I am currently officially part of!!!
Anyway I got an email the other day saying I was going to be spending an afternoon a week babysitting foundation course students. I suppose in one way this is a good thing as at least it's not specialist so it doesn't matter that I don't have any background in this department but at the same time it seems a bit of a waste that I will be stuck in an undergraduate lab babysitting, rather than getting on with my own research and stuff. Even though it's only three hours a week it's quite awkward to rearrange my experiments around as I don't really do any experiments in this department, so it's not like I can even pop out the lab for five minutes to check on something while I am teaching/demonstrating.
At the moment I have decided to see how it all goes but if it's eating into my research time too much I'll drop it but I'll miss the cash. I was ready to drop it before doing any teaching but then I saw the post doc pay is quite a lot more than the teaching pay for post graduates and I think the extra cash will come in useful in the spring/summer when I'm out of a job.
Anyway I got an email the other day saying I was going to be spending an afternoon a week babysitting foundation course students. I suppose in one way this is a good thing as at least it's not specialist so it doesn't matter that I don't have any background in this department but at the same time it seems a bit of a waste that I will be stuck in an undergraduate lab babysitting, rather than getting on with my own research and stuff. Even though it's only three hours a week it's quite awkward to rearrange my experiments around as I don't really do any experiments in this department, so it's not like I can even pop out the lab for five minutes to check on something while I am teaching/demonstrating.
At the moment I have decided to see how it all goes but if it's eating into my research time too much I'll drop it but I'll miss the cash. I was ready to drop it before doing any teaching but then I saw the post doc pay is quite a lot more than the teaching pay for post graduates and I think the extra cash will come in useful in the spring/summer when I'm out of a job.
Labels: lab practicals, teaching
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Interdepartmental Trekking
Today I went for quite a random wander around another department for help with a specific technique I wanted to try and was thrilled to find such useful helpful people. One of the advantages of my workplace is that it is HUGE so that there is about every technique and piece of equipment I could dream of using. Unfortunately as it is so big it's hard to keep track of what different people are doing and that people often have no idea what other people in the same department are up to. I'm really glad I went trekking off on my own to seek out other people for this method as I got some really helpful tips and information which I would never have got from reading books or journal articles and the chats with the helpful people have made me rethink some of my current ideas into some more practical experiments that are more likely to give me data. Although there is lots of stuff I could do, I'm more and more aware of how little time I have left until my contract is up so now I am definitely more interested in the less innovative and unusual stuff and more interested in stuff that is more certain to give me results to write up into a paper.
Monday, September 01, 2008
Overlooked
I think one of the things holding me back most these days is the fact I always seem to be overlooked. It's hard as I am physically all over the place doing experiments and stuff. Anyway chatting to head boss bloke over cakes the other day he suddenly twigged that I would have been the perfect person to go over and do some experiments at another facility but he obviously just forgot about me and my work and got someone else to go instead. I was checking out the new website (which is still very ugly) and noticed I wasn't listed as a post doc (or anything) which is a shame. Once I've finished sorting out my official university website I will be onto them and get my face added onto the group listings.
Bad Books
I have learnt a bit of a lesson about not being too helpful to people today. I offered to read the transfer report of the first year student in our lab while he was on holiday so he gave me a hefty introduction and methods and I went through it pretty carefully and made lots of appropriate and helpful comments. Anyhow what a waste of time that was as I didn't realise he was back from holiday and submitted the whole thing without getting any feedback from me.
He is also in my bad books at the moment as he never seems to make up any of the communal samples we use in the group. We don't have a strict rota and I generally do it fairly often as other people have asked me to clarify the procedure yet again (which I don't mind too much as if the samples aren't made correctly then I have completely useless results and will have to make up more sample myself and also explain to the boss why we are getting through such expensive material so quickly). Anyway I asked him if he had time to do it with me this afternoon but I ended up doing it myself and with one of the other students.
I in a bit of a grump today after a rubbish weekend where himself was ill and I didn't do anything productive or constructive and just got more and more irritated with my own company. Hopefully I'll get a good nights sleep tonight and be in a better mood tomorrow as I have important experiments to do. I have been attempting Important Experiment for most of the summer it seems like but not got very far due to all sorts of irritating obstacles.
Paper revisions are going quite well I think except for bloody endnote. It is a horrible programme. Once this paper is resubmitted I am definitely going to try my hand at LaTex.
He is also in my bad books at the moment as he never seems to make up any of the communal samples we use in the group. We don't have a strict rota and I generally do it fairly often as other people have asked me to clarify the procedure yet again (which I don't mind too much as if the samples aren't made correctly then I have completely useless results and will have to make up more sample myself and also explain to the boss why we are getting through such expensive material so quickly). Anyway I asked him if he had time to do it with me this afternoon but I ended up doing it myself and with one of the other students.
I in a bit of a grump today after a rubbish weekend where himself was ill and I didn't do anything productive or constructive and just got more and more irritated with my own company. Hopefully I'll get a good nights sleep tonight and be in a better mood tomorrow as I have important experiments to do. I have been attempting Important Experiment for most of the summer it seems like but not got very far due to all sorts of irritating obstacles.
Paper revisions are going quite well I think except for bloody endnote. It is a horrible programme. Once this paper is resubmitted I am definitely going to try my hand at LaTex.
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