[QUOTE=brendon_small]
Also, not to double post like I always do, but yeah, my google ads are for the removal of pubic hair…what does that have to do with Mouse_Maven’s lab?
Just curious
Brendon
[/QUOTE]
I’ve got some sort of ecocard add.
What sort of interview does google think I’m going to? :dubious:
You should do it.
The rule about job interviewing in general is that you can use it for any purpose you want because you don’t work for them (yet). Some people go because they really want the job. Others go because they want to practice interviewing, see what a competing place is like, meet some new friends etc.
This would seem dishonest except employers do the same thing all the time. Sometimes they will have someone take off work, drive all the way across town, pay for parking and then make them go through an interview they never had any hope of passing. It might be to make the number of candidates a round number, fulfill affirmative action requirements, or to get some info about the competition.
I have been on both sides in the past few years and it is often not a fair game. Just do what you want and don’t worry about anything else.
Mousie, you’ve been around mousies for too long!
Don’t let the hairdresser corner you into something you hate just because “it’s professional”. And remember: your current job is nice but it’s not your marriage, you don’t owe them loyalty. Prepare beforehand a list of questions to ask: about their company, goals, how will you be evaluated, etc. (I’m up to here of people whose idea of “flexible hours” is “Nava has to stay at work for 12 hours even if she has nothing to do”) If it looks better than what you have, ask for some time to think about it (24/48 hours is perfectly reasonable), chew on it with the MouseHubby… and may whatever you decide be for the best.
When talking about your degree (or lack thereof), remember that it’s their job to screen you out, not yours. They know from your resume what your education is, and they still really want to talk to you.
You are 12 credits away from finishing your degree? That is fantastic! It’s not a bad thing that you don’t have it yet - it’s an incredible thing that you’ve amost finished it!
[QUOTE=Nava]
Mousie, you’ve been around mousies for too long!
[/QUOTE]
I like mice. They’re quite. They have a good excuse for their behavior - they’re brain is the size of a peanut. If a mouse becomes difficult to work with, I can dispose of it; I can’t do the same thing with PITA people.
[QUOTE=Nava]
Don’t let the hairdresser corner you into something you hate just because “it’s professional”. And remember: your current job is nice but it’s not your marriage, you don’t owe them loyalty. Prepare beforehand a list of questions to ask: about their company, goals, how will you be evaluated, etc. (I’m up to here of people whose idea of “flexible hours” is “Nava has to stay at work for 12 hours even if she has nothing to do”) If it looks better than what you have, ask for some time to think about it (24/48 hours is perfectly reasonable), chew on it with the MouseHubby… and may whatever you decide be for the best.
[/QUOTE]
I keep my hair short, and it has been thinning due to hypothyroidism. 
Maybe I’ll were a nice hat.
Mouse_Spouse and I have been talking. He would like to see me happy in my job and finish my degree. Sadly, we can’t afford for me to quit work and go to school full time right now. (My car is dying. One of my cats is dying. We want to buy a house one day. The list goes on.)
I’ll ask this researcher if she’s ok with me going to school part time. Also, I’ll ask about how she using her animals. I left a lab last year and what finally made me go is the the phd and I had a falling out over how to use the animals. It boiled down to,“There is no fucking way I’m going to help you coagulate a mouse’s blood in its body without anesthesia! By the way, I think this sick experiment will prove nothing and the only reason you’re doing it is because you think its a fast, easy way to get published.”
[QUOTE=Mouse_Maven]
What do I tell my boss and co-workers about being dressed up and gone for a few hours?
[/QUOTE]
Wear black, lie about a funeral?
Alternatively, change clothes on the way over and back. I’ve done the latter.
Good luck!
[QUOTE=Mouse_Maven]
What do I tell my boss and co-workers about being dressed up and gone for a few hours?
Yep, I’m a great big weenie.
[/QUOTE]
Well, from what you’ve said about the instability of your job situation, I don’t think you necessarily have to hide the fact that you’re going on a job interview. If I were your PI, I would expect–maybe even encourage–my lab people to look for a job. I’d be encouraging my grad students to look for funding to replace the big, fat grants that the DH used to pull in.
Have you spoken with the PI or DH about needing a new job? If you make it clear that you liked working for them, and you wanted to stay at the university, maybe they could give you some contacts. If I were in your PI’s shoes, and I had good lab staff who were about to get laid off due to administrative changes, I’d be more than happy to help them find good jobs.
[QUOTE=Scribble]
Well, from what you’ve said about the instability of your job situation, I don’t think you necessarily have to hide the fact that you’re going on a job interview. If I were your PI, I would expect–maybe even encourage–my lab people to look for a job. I’d be encouraging my grad students to look for funding to replace the big, fat grants that the DH used to pull in.
Have you spoken with the PI or DH about needing a new job? If you make it clear that you liked working for them, and you wanted to stay at the university, maybe they could give you some contacts. If I were in your PI’s shoes, and I had good lab staff who were about to get laid off due to administrative changes, I’d be more than happy to help them find good jobs.
[/QUOTE]
Wow, sounds like you are a great PI. 
I have only been with this lab a year. My PI is a MD with hospital responsiblities, so I have only seen him a handful of times and I don’t know him that well. The person I replaced left because of their funding problems (they didn’t tell me this until after I started working for them :smack: ), so my job search may rub salt into an old wound. The DH is very, very busy. This guy has graduate students and post docs to worry about, moving his family to Canada, and his journal editing responsiblities. I don’t offically work for him, so I am very low on his list of people to give contacts to. (DH isn’t fond of lab managers. He sees them as dead weight because they don’t do as much research as grad students or post docs. I’m tempted to shake him and scream, “Do you think these supplies got here by themselves?”)
I’ve never been in your position, so maybe everything I say in this post is unrealistic. I don’t head a lab. Hell, I don’t even have a PhD (I’m getting a master’s in December, though, if everything works out OK. And, while I’m in the biological sciences, I’m doing work in forest ecology. I’ve never done anything involving mice.)
So, like I said, maybe I’m out to lunch on this, but it seems to me that you’re not in as lousy a situation as you may think. Yeah, you’re scared of looking for a new job, your finances don’t look so hot, you really want to finish your bachelor’s, and you’ve gotten flack from people because you don’t have your degree. The PI seems busy and maybe a little brusque (faculty in the sciences who don’t seem brusque are pretty rare, I find), and you don’t know him too well, so you feel not so great about approaching him. It seems to you like you’ve got a lot to lose, very little to gain, and not much chance of regaining what you will have lost when the grant money stops flowing in.
But think of this from the PI’s perspective:
He’s at a time when his major grant is walking out the door. That means he’s probably already looking like crazy for a new grant. Once he gets that grant, he’ll be looking for staff. Having to train staff–or even having to get used to staff–takes time and effort that I’m sure your PI would rather invest elsewhere. The PI might be willing to do a little work now to make sure he keeps you, rather than having to do a lot of work later (and take on some risk) to find a new manager. Really, it wouldn’t cost him more than a small exchange of e-mails to see if he can get some departmental funding to pay you until the next grant comes through.
The PI’s got to know that you’re doing at least a pretty good job. If you weren’t, he would have heard something from the grad students. Grad students aren’t going to keep quiet about anything that would threaten to impede their research. They’d go squawking to the PI if anything were really amiss. In fact, I’d bet you see your PI so infrequently in part because you do a good job.
Even if the PI looks more closely at your work and finds that he doesn’t like what you’ve been doing (which seems very unlikely to me), it’s in the PI’s best interests to at least give you a good reference. After all, you’ve been in the lab for about a year. If you’ve been working for the PI for a year, and you’ve been doing a lousy job all that time–what does that say about the PI’s lack of attentiveness and/or commitment to his work and to his grad students’ research? Besides, all it would cost him to be a good reference to you is a 10-minute phone call or a brief e-mail exchange. Giving someone bad reviews takes longer, because he’d have to do more explaining.
If he can help find you a job with a colleague of his, that means he’s done favors for two people: the first is you, of course, but the second is the colleague. Things like this can help forge good relationships among scientists, which can be pretty crucial in all aspects of getting a project done. I don’t know of any recent significant work in the biological sciences that’s been done by one person working in isolation.
Speaking of forging good relationships–your PI doesn’t know when or if he’ll work with you or hear from you again. You’re close to getting your bachelor’s done, and, for all he knows, maybe you’ll fast-track your way to a PhD relatively soon. It makes sense not to be unneccesarily mean to someone who you might have as a colleague in the not-too-distant future.
Do you know for a fact that you’re going to be out of a job once the DH leaves? I’ve known more than one lab head who’s managed to keep on staff even when the lab is changing projects. It might make sense for you to write an e-mail to your PI and ask. (I’m sorry if I missed some info that would answer that question. I’m feeling too lazy right now to look up earlier threads about whether or not there’s a chance of continuing funding.)
As far as the DH goes–I really don’t think you need to concern yourself so much about what he thinks of lab managers. If you send him an e-mail and ask him about job leads, the worst thing he can do is send back a message that says, “Get lost!” or simply not reply. And, just as in the PI’s case, being at least gracious enough to you is probably in the DH’s best interest.
It might make sense to talk with the grad students and postdocs about the lab’s funding situation (and your job search), too. The grad students might know something that helps you out. Besides, the DH’s imminent departure affects them, too, and I doubt they’re happy about it. You and the grad students might be able to help each other out.
[QUOTE=Mouse_Maven]
Right now my head is spinning. * I need to get a hair cut. What should I wear? Can I lose 20 pounds by Thursday? What do I tell my boss and co-workers about being dressed up and gone for a few hours?*
Yep, I’m a great big weenie.
[/QUOTE]
You sound like a very talented weenie. 
I am an overweight, bearded bespectacled sloppily dressed bloke. :eek:
However I am very good at what I do.
I have been offered every job I wanted. I currently have a job where I eventually wrote my own job description.*
I think you can do well too. Just do the usual stuff:
Good luck!
*(I asked my boss what would happen if I wrote that I wanted to work in Hawaii just one day a week. He smiled and said “You enjoy this job too much to mess about.”)
[QUOTE=Scribble]
Do you know for a fact that you’re going to be out of a job once the DH leaves? I’ve known more than one lab head who’s managed to keep on staff even when the lab is changing projects. It might make sense for you to write an e-mail to your PI and ask. (I’m sorry if I missed some info that would answer that question. I’m feeling too lazy right now to look up earlier threads about whether or not there’s a chance of continuing funding.)
As far as the DH goes–I really don’t think you need to concern yourself so much about what he thinks of lab managers. If you send him an e-mail and ask him about job leads, the worst thing he can do is send back a message that says, “Get lost!” or simply not reply. And, just as in the PI’s case, being at least gracious enough to you is probably in the DH’s best interest.
It might make sense to talk with the grad students and postdocs about the lab’s funding situation (and your job search), too. The grad students might know something that helps you out. Besides, the DH’s imminent departure affects them, too, and I doubt they’re happy about it. You and the grad students might be able to help each other out.
[/QUOTE]
My PI got some funding help last year. I’m not sure if he can get assistance again. You couldn’t get your act together in a year?
I’m not certain I’ll lose my job once the DH leaves, but I know there will be a dramatic change in the department’s dynamics. I work for a Transplant Immunology department. The DH and my PI are the only researcher doing transplant surgery on animals; the other labs focus on molecule biology and tissue cultures. Chances are, the new DH will be an invitro (test tube) researcher rather than an in viva (using animals) researcher. When push comes to shove, I fear that the PI would rather keep my co-worker, Rob the Aussie (a very experienced mouse heart transplant surgeon). Rob is very valuable and his skill set is hard to find. I’m a little easier to replace.
The post doc’s and grad students are scurrying. I’ve been listening to what they have to say. (That’s how I found out about the DH leaving before he made an offical annoucement. Eavesdropping isn’t always a bad thing.)
Right now, I think bio-medical research is like being stranded in the artic ocean: You have to jump from one melting iceburg to another in order to survive.