Friday, February 17, 2012

preparing for the faculty appointment visit

I think the adrenaline from yesterday has wearied off today. Now, that I can think clearly I have realized that I have to give a seminar.

Got a call from the secretary that the visit had to pushed back a week because of the conflict in schedule. Looks like I will be working my ass off on preparing the slides and yes, practicing them !

I have chosen two projects that I would like to talk about. Both are great projects, from two broad fields that I have worked on in the past.

The reason for choosing these two is: It would show the faculty my diversity, since both the projects are from related fields but generally people don't work on both of them. Also both the projects are in depth, which will show them my depth. Last but not least I have prepared two cool potential applications of my project that I will like to show them off at the end. Hope it all goes well.

Thursday, February 16, 2012

The agony may be over :D

Today, I am happy. Got an email from one of the departments that I applied to for a faculty position.
They wanted to invite me for an on-site interview. I am excited...yayy !

I have a prepare a talk though. I do have bit and pieces of talks that I have given recently, but all of the talks have been geared towards experts in the field. As I have been suggested (by blogosphere: http://scientopia.org/blogs/drbecca/tt-job-search-advice-aggregator/) that I have to give one that is geared towards no-experts. Let see how it goes.
If any one else has pearls of wisdom for job talk, let me know.

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

The agony of waiting

Recently, I have been waiting for many things i.e. waiting for my papers to come back after peer review; and results of the faculty applications that I have submitted to various places.

As it turns out, that I got the reviews of the paper back. There were three reviewers. Two of them said accept and one said reject. Lo and behold, the editor said that they are going to reject the paper. The issue that the third reviewer had raised is a controversial one in the field, and we (as a lab) tilt towards the other camp. In either case, the reviewer seems to be a big wig, the editor has said reject to the paper. I know, it does not make sense.

On the other hand, I did get a call from a faculty the other day. They wanted to phone interview me. Needless, to say I was awesome and the interview went very fine (I think !). Lets see if they are going to call me for an onsite interview. Its looks good though, since one of my recommenders told me that the department called and wanted to ask more about me. So, the wait is on !