Today, I signed and faxed the contract for my first real job. I guess I just need to talk about it, and collect feedback… hopefully, most of it encouraging and useful.
I went straight through school getting degree after degree; from my first day of freshman classes to my doctoral graduation was exactly eight years. In the year since then, I’ve been doing a postdoc. I’ve also done consulting work for a couple of companies, including one that went batshit crazy on me–I’m so incredibly grateful that I didn’t take a full time position with them. Eesh. Actually, in the last two years, the consulting work has been the bulk of my income.
I thought I was going to be a professor. I actually went through the Ph.D. program so that I could be a professor and have relaxed hours. I grew up with two working parents who had to be at the office from 7:30 - 5:30 every day, so I was always a logistic problem and they were always exhausted in the evenings and busy with chores on the weekends. It just didn’t seem like the optimal way to live. College professors on the other hand basically only have to show up for committee meetings and teaching. That sounded much better. Professors told me I was definitely grad school material. So I went to grad school. Everyone tells stories about how hellish grad school is–for me it was cake. It was easier than my undergraduate degrees, actually.
So I was pretty confident that I was hot stuff and that I was going to get a professorship noooooooo problem. Well, it didn’t happen. I have a wonderful, but mother-hen sort of major professor, and his niche which is now my niche is very small. There were a grand total of fourteen tenure-track positions this year that I dared pretend I could apply for, and I didn’t even get an interview at a single one (because they all want formal semantics. I don’t do formal semantics. I do useful semantics.)
Things were getting desperate. The postdoc was for one year only, things were getting a little weird at the company I do most of my consulting for (though they seem to have stabilized, now), and I didn’t have anything new lined up for next year. Then, a startup company contacted my advisor and he referred them to me. We had a meet & greet, sniffed each others’ bottoms, and today I received and signed an offer for full time employment with them.
It’s an office job! Eeeeeeek! I went to grad school so I wouldn’t have to have one of these! They’re more relaxed than the offices where my parents worked, though. There aren’t any fixed hours, but you’re generally expected to be around 9 - 6ish. It’s also in the next state over, so I’ll be moving. I’ll get to buy a house. Oh, gosh, I’m going to buy a house. I’ve always wanted to do this, and now that I’m going to do it, I’m scared to death. I’m unmarried and basically unattached, too, so I’ll be going completely on my own. No friends. No help. Just me in a strange state with a new job and my first mortgage.
I’ve never had to sit at a desk all day every day in my life. Public school lets out in the middle of the afternoon, and I’ve been in college, doing consulting work and research from my home office since then. Because it’s a college town, it’s pointless to try to go to bed early, so I’ve slipped into a 2-10 sleep schedule. That’s obviously going to have to change. My advisor is strongly encouraging me to convince them that it’s in their best interest to let me work from home a couple days a week. I know he’s right–I really would work better that way, because I will be sharing an office with two other people and I’m awfully darn distractable. I’m also not a terribly high energy person. Generally I get all my work done in one three or four hour burst of energy, then I’m in a coma the rest of the day. I don’t have any strategies for hiding the coma while sitting in an office.
There’s also the issue of them not understanding where I’m coming from and what I can do for them. The senior guy who hired me is really great, but unfortunately I have to do most of the work with a group of younger guys (my age? might they be my age?) who have no idea what my expertise is all about. I’m going to have to establish that with everybody pretty quick, I think, not just to keep myself sane but because they’re paying me a sweet salary and they deserve to get some quality work out of me. Me, the only girl in a room full of smug engineers though? Yeah. I will have to think of something creative to do to make them listen.
So there. I know I’m rambling and yes, I do have a blog, but nobody reads it… and I want some feedback. I’m pathetic, worrying about taking an office job, when everyone else in the world has one and deals with it. So… give me some advice for dealing with it? And about buying a house? And being alone in a new town? And handling office politics, and what you think about a researcher working partly from home, and whether everyone spends most of the day in a coma?
