New Directions

I quietly reached a milestone this week--I submitted a job application.

I have spent the last twelve years in universities, nine as a student of various stripes and three as a post-doctoral researcher.  A post-doc is what happens to someone with a PhD in science after they graduate.  They have a PhD, but don't have the experience or seniority to be a professor.  So they hunt for a research grant that lets them work on another research project for two or three years.  Post-docs oversee the day-to-day running of the research and training of students, and in large collaborative efforts like mine, start getting involved in the organization of the collaboration and publication of papers.  Most new science professors have held two or three post-doc positions prior to getting their professorship; with their PhD work, they have experience in three or four different types of work and a developed network of contacts to use in getting an assistant professorship and moving towards tenure.

This means that I have worked closely with four professors in the last twelve years and taken classes from and talked with many more.  I have the utmost respect for a research professor--it is a challenging position to do well.  From my perspective, a good professor needs to be able to wear four or five different hats.  A good research professor must be a good researcher, with a deep understanding of the history and current knowledge of their field.  They need to be critical thinkers and able to create and implement experiments and research projects.  Professors must also be good lecturers, since a large part of their time will be devoted to lecturing to hundreds of students at a time and organizing the homework and testing of those students.  They need to be good bureaucrats, since professors serve in several but not all of the positions in running departments and colleges.  They will be working in committees with each other and interacting with lots of offices and departments around a university, and need to be able to be productive in those settings.