life, apparently

I've always been pretty good at the whole academic thing. I've never been The Best but I've always been good. I wasn't the valedictorian. I didn't get departmental honors. But I did get (smallish) scholarships, people (faculty in my undergrad dept) knew who I was and that I was someone to watch. In grad school I really hit my stride. By pure luck I ended up working with an extremely famous person who was TheBestAdvisorEver and it worked for me. Can't actually compare me to the others in my grad school class because they all dropped out. I suppose it is fair to compare me to the other grad students in the lab that I overlapped with. If we are just counting pubs then I'm by far the best. On more subjective measures, half of those dudes are just smarter, more dedicated, more savvy, more technically skilled, more politically skilled, etc than me and half aren't. I graduated with several high quality, first author papers, several awards and was on my way.

I had several postdocs to chose from. I tend to be extremely indecisive for some reason and I simply could not pick one. Then I found out I was pregnant, which was a bit of a shocker, so I went with the postdoc closest to my family. Shhh, don't tell anyone. As it turns out that also happens to be a postdoc in the most famous lab by far, so no one really had any reason to question my decision - on paper it was clearly the best choice. Little did I know* it was a terrible choice. This postdoc has been pretty shitty. I actually shouldn't complain, I'm sure many people would love to have this gig, but it was definitely not what I was looking for and I've been nothing but miserable. My postdoc advisor and I never really clicked. He has a very different style than BAE and I'm just not suited for this environment. We are not collaborators. I very much report what I have done on a strictly scheduled basis and he arranges for me to be paid. I've been extremely lonely here personally and professionally. (With the exception of the fact that I have the best husband and kid ever, so in that arena this has been by far the happiest few years of my life.) I could elaborate and maybe I will later but not now. Despite my misery (or maybe because of my misery), I had an insanely productive year this year including 2 papers in special issue in my field (too lazy to find links to previously blogged posts). I was told repeatedly by both BAE, postdoc mentor, and everyone else that I had an outstanding CV and I'd have no problem getting a job. And for the first several months, they seemed to be right. I had a billion phone interviews. I have double digit on campus interviews. Double digits. This is un.heard of. I was on top of the world. On. top. of. the. world. I couldn't believe it (again too lazy to find links). I actually thought (and still do) that I was probably an EEO candidate at some places - not too many women in my field and close to none in my specialty. But still, double digits. So I've been gone a lot. I've literally traveled across the entire country. And I've cried all night. Why? Well, I'm 85% sure I will not have a job next year.

update: I forgot to follow-up on the *, so here it is: *It was a snow day so as all good parents do, we dropped TheKid off at daycare and went to a movie. We saw Stranger than Fiction which I really liked, TheHusband wished it was funnier. After he hears "Little did he know this would lead to his eminent death," the main character spends some time trying to figure out if he is part of a tragedy or comedy. I too am trying to figure out if this part of my life is a comedy or a tragedy. I'll let you know.