Where it all began, Part 3

Picking up and leaving for grad school in another city was actually quite easy for me at the time.  I was headed, just like my undergraduate degree experience, to a higher-education institution to pursue scientific research.  It seemed I had no real reasons to stay where I was - my program was over and I wasn't really tied down.  I was somewhat familiar with the city and university where my grad program was.  In retrospect, I gave up a lot.  I was renting a house (albeit rather small) for a good rate from a friend in a decent neighborhood, I was close to family and friends, and I knew the city well.  But these luxuries did not concern me in my ill-founded pursuit.  So, I took out some more student loans (which would be easy to pay back with the secure, well-paid job I would get later) and headed out.  I even cut short a decent summer research job by three months to get a jump on my new position.

This type of thinking - the constant rush to get things done and move onto the next stage - would become a familiar motif (i.e. plague) throughout the next stages of my life.

I didn't stop to enjoy where I was, or to think about where I should be and how I could get there.  I just wanted to start the next step, and so I did as quickly as possible.  My first year in grad school was quite an adjustment, but I didn't find it too difficult.  I had a few courses I needed to take, both in my new 'applied' field and some others oriented to pure science 'relevant' to the discipline.  I also had to teach six hours a week.  At first, I enjoyed the teaching.  I was optimistic and I knew I could develop new materials and presentations that the students would really enjoy.  I would be nominated for the best student instructor - it was just a matter of time.  Of course, after a semester or two, these feelings waned.  The incessant marking and class planning and student excuses of why they couldn't hand in a particular assignment on time became a constant irritant.  Attendance in the classroom was mandatory, and we were supposed to dock ~10% from the overall grade of a student for each lecture they missed.  This resulted in many resourceful reasons why a student wasn't present on a particular day.  I can still remember one student in particular that couldn't make it to class because they forgot to change their watch to daylight savings time.  It didn't help the student's cause that the conversion to daylight savings happened a week prior to the class - they were compelled it was a reasonable excuse.  And so it went, on and on.  I was also introduced to the inherent inflation of grades in order to make my classes seem reasonably 'smart' or that they achieved a certain level. As an instructor, I was forced to maintain a class average of 75%, and it didn't matter how terrible the students actually were, that was the average or else my teaching was not effective enough.  For the types of courses I taught, this was completely unreasonable, and it also instilled in me a mentality of 'who cares?'  The course design intended that no one should fail the course, and it was a huge procedure if someone was actually borderline failing.  So what difference did all my marking and intensive instruction make?  I didn't put it together at the time, but now I find it odd that it may have been acceptable to fail a student for missing too many classes, but not for academic mediocrity.  Needless to say, teaching turned into something I had to do to get paid, and that was all.  I taught the same courses over and over again for a period of five years, and after the first year, I never made any changes to the instruction like I had planned.  I had run into one of the cornerstones of the late academic institution:  the students were paying the university to go there, so we need to provide them a service (in the end, a piece of paper), and the bureaucrats were intent on making this as streamlined and profitable as possible by filling all available seats irrespective of standards of performance.

I had a 'good' advisor.  Obviously, this statement comes with certain qualifiers.  My supervisor fit me well in that he didn't push me too hard but was around if I ever happened to stop by his office (which was very intermittent).  At the time, the guidance he gave me was sound.  I needed X number of journal articles published, and then I could graduate.  Then, I would go on to do a postdoctoral fellowship, and I would need to double my output in order to secure a tenure-track position.  Almost every time we met, these were the discussions we had, with little focus on what I was actually doing.  It worked at the time to keep me going with some goals to achieve.  I didn't mind my research, although it was no where near as 'applied' as I thought it would be originally.  Unfortunately, I also picked a really outdated research focus which was eons away from current hot topics.  The rationale was that my proposed topic was poorly researched because it was difficult theoretically and didn't have direct implications in industry.  Several senior faculty members in the department had once (circa ten years prior) worked on this project, and had since moved on to other things.  I thought, 'Who better to take the reigns and conquer this obstacle?'  Some flags should have been raised in my mind at this point, but I figured that it wouldn't matter in the end as long as I got my degree.  I quickly went through the procedure to skip my Master's degree (everyone knows you need a Ph.D.) and get into a formal Ph.D. program.  I floundered through a couple of years, not sure of what to do next or why I should do it or what I was doing it for.  After three years, I submitted my first paper, which was promptly rejected.  After all that my supervisor had said (and not to mention the countless revisions he had, which means that he basically ended up writing it) and all the work I put into it, I felt like the previous three years had been a colossal waste of time.  But wait, I could just make a few changes and send it to another journal, right?  So that is what I did, which was promptly followed by another rejection letter.  Hmm, maybe I should have switched fields, or looked into the academic process a little more at this point, but I didn't.  I fixed up the paper again, and after the 27th revision, re-submitted it and finally got it accepted (after major revision).  I had my first paper!  I justified my long path from original submission to acceptance by: 1) I was new and didn't know the ropes yet (which has some truth to it), and 2) my topic was not popular and it was difficult to understand.  Still, I kept going with no light at the end of the tunnel.

In conjunction with my recent insight into academic publishing, I overheard (it was impossible not to with the office layout) my supervisor discussing grant funding with other faculty members on several occasions.  They were very scared that they would not be able to fund grad students or operating costs and that their salary top-ups would not continue due to a major restructuring of one of the major funding agencies.  I also learned that roughly 80 contingent faculty would be terminated sometime soon.  Apparently, they were not contingent in the strict sense, but their contracts depended on funding from this particular source, and without that funding...  Anyway, it didn't concern me, because soon I would have my Ph.D./postdoc, and I would get the job anyway, and as far as my supervisor, he was already making lots of money as a professor, right?  Losing a top-up couldn't equate to that much.

During my final year, my 'let's get onto the next step' thinking truly kicked in, and I plotted a whirlwind course for finishing my program and getting a postdoc.  There were very few postdoc positions around, and I narrowed it down (or circumstances narrowed it down) to four possibilities, and I sent my applications out.  I was mildly aware prior to this point of a horrible business practice that is prevalent to academics that was grounded in me with the postdoc application process.  That is, academics are terrible, and I do not say this lightly, at communicating promptly.  Whether it be returning emails or phone calls, it is common practice to respond incredibly slowly.  In my current position, this has not changed, and I find it abhorrent.  Even if you don't consider job/postdoc application processes, it is not uncommon for an email to an academic to go three months without a response, if you get a response at all.  Digression aside, only two of the places I applied to replied, and I went to an interview at one (paid by me, of course) and ended up being accepted.

Somewhere during the last stages of my grad school program, it blurred into a combined Ph.D./'look for postdoc'/'get ready for postdoc' program.  I had four months left including my defense and I moved out of my apartment to live with family to save money for the trip to my new postdoc position.  I commuted three hours twice a week and worked 16-18 hour days while I stayed at a friends house (or slept on the floor/desk of my office).  It was terrible.  I wanted to be done.  Once again, I was rushing things.  My postdoc position was planned to start two weeks after I finished my Ph.D.  My postdoc was halfway across the world in a country I had never visited (other than the interview) and in a different culture with a different language of which I hadn't the slightest grasp.  I had to pay my way there (moving, flights, connection charges, whatever).  I didn't sit back and take a few months after my defense to think of jobs, or to think what I wanted to do.  How could I pass up a postdoc in a world-renowned research institution, with some of the brightest leaders today?