Continuing from the previous post on the Story Of My Postdoc Applications… here is part 2!

Story: MIT Postdoc Application

MIT was, of course, super interesting, as always. So, to remind you, this is where I got promptly rejected for the Pappalardo Fellowship after getting angry emails saying that the committee should not be sent letters of recommendation directly.

This story is about the professor who had asked me to apply for her postdoc at a conference and also ended up on the committee for the Pappalardo Fellowship. One would think that was a good thing…? But, it turns out, that was a bad thing, maybe? For the fellowship. Who knows. Anyway, I visited her group at MIT on a very cold winter day in February.

MIT felt a bit unwelcoming. There was something cold about the place, even besides the weather. Maybe I just imagined it, but it felt lonely there. I met lots of people in the physics department, in their offices, in their labs. They all felt rather disconnected from each other. As if they were all chugging along in life in a lonesome kind of way. I didn’t feel there was much or any unity amongst the different researchers in this department.

As for the particular lab that I was visiting, I was shown where I would be working and what I would be in charge of. The tasking she expected me to handle felt heavy for one person. The lab itself where I would spend all my days and probably, nights, was minuscule. It was so small there was hardly space to stand.

I was used to the expansive physics research building of Ohio State University and its huge lab facilities. This was THE MIT, but I was RATHER UNIMPRESSED. I mean, I am sorry, I just didn’t feel it there. I could not see myself working there. It was depressing. Maybe these people were brilliant, I am sure they were. But they seemed depressing to me even for a day.

I do have one funny story from this visit, though. It has to do with one of the graduate students in the group shaming me for eating meat. I probably deserved it, but she was most displeased with me for ordering the meat lover’s pizza for lunch while she got all vegetarian. She told me I had no excuse for eating meat, whatsoever. Vegetarian options in pizza taste great, and ordering meat is just unacceptable.

This would be the graduate student that I would have most closely worked with during that postdoc, so… I don’t know if my affinity for meat lover’s pizza has anything to do with the outcome at MIT, but it is probably best that it did not work out there. It would have been most awkward to turn down THE MIT if I did get an offer.

The professor reached out to me about a week later saying that I would not be filling that position and I mostly felt relief at that point. She went with a guy who had direct experience doing the type of hardware work that she was going to have me do.

I am fine with this because the MIT position would have entailed working on getting hardware ready for a balloon flight mission that had never flown yet. So, potentially this was very high risk and low reward kind of a role as it was unlikely that the postdoc would have led to many results-based publications after doing all that hardware work in a tiny lab.

Story: Michigan State University Postdoc Application

The postdoc position at Michigan State University was the most suitable one for my career. If I had done a postdoc, this should have been it. It was THE ONE. For my graduate research, I worked on a particle astrophysics experiment called ANITA involving the detection of ultra-high-energy neutrinos in Antarctica. The postdoc would have been with the IceCube collaboration which is the premier group for doing particle astrophysics with neutrinos and also based in Antarctica. I had been on the ice for my graduate work and would have been perfect for the IceCube role.

The IceCube postdoc would have both been in the same field but also different enough to make it all very worthwhile. It made SENSE. Plus, the professor I was interviewing with was SO NICE. He was so nice and kind about everything, gave me the information I needed, and told me encouraging things about the role. I think he would have truly empowered me to do my best in that position. He had a great track record for placing his postdocs into academic positions as well. He was perfect!

Finally, he gave me unlimited time to think about the offer and put zero pressure on me while I was trying to make a decision. I cannot express enough how grateful I STILL FEEL about getting this offer and from this guy. He was nice to me. Not everyone has been, in life, or academia.

I was so sad to turn the IceCube position down. If I stayed in academia, this would have been the best opportunity for me. I admit that wholeheartedly. But, academia had taken a toll on me on the one hand and my personal life was a disaster on the other hand. I didn’t feel supported enough to do another big academic thing. Academia puts a lot of strain on a person and if they don’t have the support that is needed or even a lack of negativity and shenanigans, it feels impossible.

I was in that position. I KNOW I would have stayed in academia for this role if I were single at the time. As a successful academic woman, you either need an extremely supportive partner or NO partner. Since I had a partner who was not always supportive but still existent, I couldn’t juggle both academia and personal life.

Even though I applied to postdocs with success, I decided to leave academia at the end of graduate school. The same me who was excitedly waiting to hear back from Chamberlain in January could not say “yes” to academia in June for the perfect position. That’s the danger of applying to and GETTING an offer in academia. We apply but do we know what we will do if we get an offer? It was heartbreaking to turn down IceCube. It was the right thing to do, though, at the time. As with personal relationships, too, THE ONE can walk into your life but if you are not ready, you are going to fuck it up. I couldn’t do it.

The truth is by the time Michigan State University’s offer came, it was too late. I had started to look for ways out of academia. Soon after, I got an industry job offer and decided that that was the right choice for me at that time. I was factoring in personal and financial life both of which were intertwined. I felt pressure to make real money. I transitioned to aerospace consulting for the government. To be fair, the low pay for academic jobs did not help.

I hope that you learn from the experiences of my postdoc applications and related mistakes if you deem them as such. I am sharing my story and I leave it up to you to take whatever you can get out of it.

I will only tell you this: don’t apologize for being passionate about your work. If you feel the way I felt about the IceCube job, maybe just take that opportunity and leave whomever that is stopping you behind. People come and go, my ability to do good work stays with me always.

As researchers, and especially as women, we tend to live with a lot of guilt. Guilt about not working hard enough, guilt about working too hard, guilt about spending time with family, guilt about not spending enough time with family.

Enough! Choose work, always. Choose work and watch that work for you. You will meet someone who will appreciate you for who you are and what you do. If that is not the current partner, leave THEM. Because if you are unhappy and the relationship is unhappy, they are going to leave anyway.

I learned that I should NEVER EVER feel bad for being one of the most hard-working people I know. I work very, very hard to be where I am today, and that is how I choose to continue to be. If that makes me alone, so be it. Having NO partner is far better than having a bad partner for women like me. I am at peace now to do what I want and when I want. I can follow my ambitions unapologetically.

Why should I apologize? Show me a man who has to apologize for being ambitious and I will consider slowing down then. For now, I believe that life is long enough to fuck up many times. If you feel strongly about an opportunity, take it, and see where that goes.

You can always change your mind and do something else later. In that sense, I am OK with taking the path that I took which was to leave academia and come to industry for now. I have learned a tremendous amount of valuable lessons from taking this journey and appreciate that successfully transitioning from academia to industry itself is a story worth telling, so my next book will be on that!

Story: University of Hawaii Postdoc Application

To wrap up the story of my postdoc applications, the University of Hawaii also gave me an offer. This application was the least formal one I did as I knew the professor I would be working for in that role. He is the principal investigator of ANITA, the experiment I worked on for my graduate research work. I had directly worked with him in Palestine, Texas, for our hang test, in Hawaii in his lab, and also in Antarctica for the launch and support of our balloon mission. He had written a letter for me at most of my postdoc applications.

When he heard I got an offer from IceCube, he told me about an opportunity in his lab. The position would have entailed doing research and also teaching, so it would have been quite a heavy load. I love Hawaii, though, so this, too, was hard to turn down. It would have been ANITA which I did for graduate school and it is usually good to do something new, but even then, I love ANITA, and working on that project is always a pleasure.

That salary (USD 53,000) would have been hard to live on in Honolulu, but again, if I were single, I would have made that work for the love of science and Hawaii. I mean, heck, Hawaii is my dream location. I can’t even begin to tell you how much I loved it there when I was visiting during graduate school.

I would have been living the dream but instead, I was dealing with harsh realities. It was like the right thing but at the wrong time. Today, I feel much more ready to jump into something like that. Move to Hawaii to live the life of my dreams. But back then, I was not ready. I am more ready to choose happiness now.

Concluding remarks

I wrote this book about landing your dream postdoc when I myself did not do a postdoc. That is a fact of life. I may not have actually accepted a postdoc offer, but I did successfully apply and get offers. Now, I want YOU to reap all the benefits from these experiences in your academic journey, should you choose to go down that path. You have my full support no matter what path feels right at the moment.

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