Letter to the Postdoc

Originally posted on August 29, 2008 by PHD Comics

Postdoc status is a viable option for many newly-minted PhDs; however, you should be more aware of the job description, the employer's expectations, your responsibilities and what you plan to accomplish as a postdoc. 

The Job Description
It can be summed up in one word: TEMPORARY.

The Postdoctoral Associate/Researcher is wedged between the full-time graduate student classification and the full-time permanent employee classification. You are no longer a graduate student. Your conference travel scholarship eligibility is now nil. When you say you are a postdoc, the question wheel triad always includes: "when does your postdoc end?", "what do you want to do next?" and "where are you focusing your permanent employment search?" Ugh, in most cases, you don't know, but the questions still come. Also, you are not in a permanent employee in the faculty, industry or government ranks. You notice that your influence and impact factor within your postdoc position's organization is low at best. Plus, your direct supervisor is a permanent employee, who tends to be referred to as your postdoc mentor and serves as a pseudo-research advisor. On the bright side, a postdoc provides you 1-2 years time to close the graduate student life book and start the next book -- whatever your career ambition.

Job details

1. Perform specific contributions on aspects of your postdoc advisor’s research agenda
2. Submit and publish technical research papers
3. Learn grantsmanship
4. Attend professional development workshops and activities
5. [optional] Assist in managing the research projects of your postdoc mentor’s graduate students
6. [optional] Serving as the instructor or co-instructor

Goals and outcomes
In understanding this job description, you probably realize that it’s advantageous to be strategic in your postdoc appointment. You need to figure out your next professional step and obtain full-time permanent employment. I followed the academic life so I can only speak to it. The suggestions I provide  is geared toward successful tenure-track position attainment. Regardless, the postdoc life can serve as a preview of what may be in your future.

Build your technical and support network by connecting with postdoctoral-centric organizations, such as the National Postdoctoral Association or discipline-specific postdoctoral events. For example, there is the Academic Career Workshop for URMs in computing. I was mostly unaware of organizations and resources as a postdoc. I wish I paid more attention. Don’t be like me.

Research
Be productive. Shoot for quantity AND quality.

If you are fortunate to gain grant writing experience as a senior  graduate student, soak it all up. If not, a postdoc is a great opportunity to get started. Step 1 - request an NSF/NIH/DoD/etc ID and create your NSF/NIH/DoD/etc Biography.

Teaching 
If you are seeking an academic teaching position, do, Otherwise don't do.

Service
Don’t do it! DON’T DO IT!

Job Hunting
Computing Research Association - Job Announcements.
Chronicles of Higher Education - Job Search.

Your faculty position application includes cover letter, CV, research agenda, teaching statements, professional references and scholarly publication samples. When submitting your faculty position applications, you may want to provide your professional references draft letters of recommendation. As you write, you should strongly consider how the role of gender influences your word choices, phrases and statements. You can read J. Madera, M. Hebl and R. Martin's research entitled “Gender and Letters of Recommendation for Academia: Agentic and Communal Differences”.  Communal terms center on helping others (kindness, nurturance) while agentic terms center on influencing others (assertiveness, initiating tasks). Their studies resulted in two major conclusions “women were described as more communal and less agentic than men (Study 1) and (b) that communal characteristics have a negative relationship with hiring decisions in academia that are based on letters of recommendation (Study 2)” using a psychology department’s tenure-track faculty search.

Let's assume your application is well-received by at least one faculty search committee. You make it to the on-campus interview. Please consider interviewing your potential bosses (Department Heach/Chair, Dean, Provost, etc) and colleagues (fellow departmental junior and senior faculty) as they are interviewing you. Here are some starter questions and comments:

• How do assistant professors in the departments acquire graduate students? Is there a partnership between the department and some schools? What are the recruiting efforts?
• How long has the Department Head/Chair been is his/her current position? What is the Department Head/Chair's vision for the department? Most likely, he/she will not be in that position when you are seeking promotion and tenure in 5-6 years.
• How are teaching assistantships distributed? Does the Department Head/Chair or Division/College/School Dean allocate them? How does this process operate? For instance, the Dean of the College allocates number of TA position to each department based on faculty contact hours and the Department Head assigns these TAs to the faculty who are instructing those courses. Note: contact hours are some combination of class size and number of times the faculty is in front of the students. If you teach smaller classes, you will not be awarded a TA position.
• Is there a maximum number of trips you can take in one semester? Are there location restrictions e.g. domestic only?
• Comment: Google the Department Head/Chair to find out if he/she was an internal or external hire? This may indicate the department culture of mostly internal/external department-level administration.
• Comment: Investigate the research collaborations within the department. Who are publishing papers together? What are their respective faculty ranks? It helps to know who are collegial and who are not to junior faculty. Ditto for external funding activities.
• Comment: Identify which undergraduate classes at that institution are required for any student (grad or undergrad) to assist you in your research objectives? Ask specific questions about course topics (if you can speak directly with the faculty member who teaches the course, that would be optimal).
• Comment: Make no assumptions about what students know. Students may remember the term but have not used/implemented that concept.

Healthy "Freak-Out"

Another Independence Day holiday has come and gone ushering in the season of unfilled summer tasks. Instructors made grand plans back in mid-May including but not limited to:

• complete some series of tasks on at least 1 research project
• submit conference papers and/or journal articles
• conference paper reviews
• grant proposal writing for new or continuing research projects
• post-award management of existing funded research projects
• course modification e.g., review your previous course instance and update course materials as appropriate
• course development e.g., design new course offering or receive (new to you) course materials

Sometimes, you make strides toward your summer tasks list. Other times, you can easily and frequently caught up in some other tasks. You are in the middle of what I call a healthy freak-out. The freak-out happens first. Those other tasks consume and eat up your days while leaving your nights to agonize over the untouched no-progress to-do items. Those other tasks are not high impact to your career plan and growth, but you still elect to complete them. or a WOC STEM faculty member, the freak-out experience is exaggerated. Why? Because you, my fellow doctor-sister, are the bridge. Poet Donna Kate Rushin says it best.

The Bridge Poem
by Donna Kate Rushin

I've had enough
I'm sick of seeing and touching
Both sides of things
Sick of being the damn bridge for everybody

Nobody
Can talk to anybody
Without me Right?

I explain my mother to my father my father to my little sister
My little sister to my brother my brother to the white feminists
The white feminists to the Black church folks the Black church folks
To the Ex-hippies the ex-hippies to the Black separatists the
Black separatists to the artists the artists to my friends' parents...

Then
I've got the explain myself
To everybody

I do more translating
Than the Gawdamn U.N.

Forget it
I'm sick of it

I'm sick of filling in your gaps

Sick of being your insurance against
The isolation of your self-imposed limitations
Sick of being the crazy at your holiday dinners
Sick of being the odd one at your Sunday Brunches
Sick of being the sole Black friend to 34 individual white people

Find another connection to the rest of the world
Find something else to make you legitimate
Find some other way to be political and hip

I will not be the bridge to your womanhood
Your manhood
Your human-ness

I'm sick of reminding you not to
Close off too tight for too long

I'm sick of mediating with your worst self
On behalf you your better selves

I am sick
Of having to remind you
To breathe
Before you suffocate
Your own fool self

Forget it
Stretch or drown
Evolve or die

The bridge I must be
Is the bridge to my own power
I must translate
My own fears
Mediate
My own weaknesses

I must be the bridge to nowhere
But my true self
And then
I will be useful

    -from This Bridge Called My Back
             edited by: Cherrie Moraga and Gloria Anzaldua
            New York: Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, 1983.

You are frustrated by more than your unaccomplished professional milestones, but you know that you can not afford to be paralyzed by it.

You feel a burden to do and to be for others before yourself more times than not.

Stop that.

The healthy aspect of your freak-out happens second. You must sanitize that toxic frustration to green and clean fuel. Let your frustration make you better and stronger. You need to re-focus your energies by finding your balance. There is a time for work, a time for play and a time to do nothing. All parts should be roughly equal. Every day. You can revise your summer task list by answering the following questions:

• What are the high impact items to progress your career?  (e.g., journal article submissions)
• Which task items have impending deadlines? (e.g., grant proposal submissions and conference paper reviews)
• What can you reasonably accomplish in the remaining 6 weeks of the summer?

Originally fount at http://bschoolbabe.com/post/87204327699/how-to-live-your-purpose-i-love-this-graphic)

The image above is one pictorial illustrating what it means to fulfill a purposeful life. Your passion helps you solidify your mission, then your selected profession and vocation goals become more clear. At the center is your ability to find this intersection of your passion, mission, profession and vocation. 

You can do it.

Now, go play -- start executing your revised summer task list in the morning.