{"id":3227,"date":"2009-07-24T03:00:44","date_gmt":"2009-07-24T08:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/?p=3227"},"modified":"2009-07-24T03:00:44","modified_gmt":"2009-07-24T08:00:44","slug":"projecting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/archives\/3227","title":{"rendered":"Projecting"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chad over at Uncertain Principles has been doing a great series of interviews about career paths other than academia, in The Project for Non-Academic Science<\/a>.<\/p>\n

One of the difficulties with trying to broaden the usual definition of scientists is that there’s not a lot of press for non-academic science. Academic culture is so strongly focused on academic careers that people don’t hear a lot about careers outside the usual Ph.D-postdoc-tenure-track-job track. Which helps feed the stress and angst regarding the job market.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There is a listing of interviews<\/a> with more to come.<\/p>\n

I didn’t see a point in volunteering, since I have my own (albeit smaller) platform, and I’ve already given a career path summary<\/a> this hits most of the main points in those interviews. A few details that are missing are about how I got my current job and how someone else would go about getting a similar job. I got it through informal networking \u2014 I already had met my current boss because atomic physics is a small, and therefore incestuous, community, and I got an email that was forwarded a few times advertising the position. I had already responded to an earlier advertisement for a position, which was later withdrawn due to funding issues, but used that to finagle a visit to the Observatory after a conference in DC. So when a job opened up for real, I was essentially “pre-interviewed” for it, and since I had the requisite background in laser trapping, I jumped on to the short list immediately. Since there really aren’t academic programs that do timekeeping, the prep work is all in the atomic physics for atomic clock R&D.<\/p>\n

If I were going to do a full interview, I would interview myself like William Hurt did in The Big Chill<\/em><\/p>\n

So you went to Oregon State University to enter the doctoral program in physics. And you just had to finish that dissertation.<\/p>\n

I didn’t have<\/em> to. I’m not hung up on this completion thing.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Then you had several jobs, all of which you quit.<\/p>\n

What are you getting at? They’re called postdocs. I was evolving<\/em>. I’m still evolving.<\/strong><\/p>\n

But your real claim to fame came as a cartoonist in Physics Today<\/em><\/p>\n

I wouldn’t call it fame, exactly. I was a few cartoons, and I may have had a small, deeply disturbed following.<\/strong><\/p>\n

What are you doing now? Or I should say, what have you evolved<\/em> into now?<\/p>\n

Oh, I’m in research.<\/strong><\/p>\n

What are you researching?<\/p>\n

Umm, an atomic device.<\/strong><\/p>\n

What kind<\/em> of atomic device?<\/p>\n

I \u2026 don’t \u2026 have to answer that.<\/p>\n

Sorry, gotta go.<\/p>\n

Just answer that last question!<\/strong> (muffled struggle, fade out)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chad over at Uncertain Principles has been doing a great series of interviews about career paths other than academia, in The Project for Non-Academic Science. One of the difficulties with trying to broaden the usual definition of scientists is that … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3227","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-misc","category-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3227","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3227"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3227\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}