response to response

I promised not to blog from work… and now I am fleeing annoying bacteria, an elusive protein production and realised that YFS had responded to comments on her post about “American postdocs”.

See, I noticed that I was mentioned in the beginning of the post and read my statements and the answers to them. (I noticed that my spelling mistakes were [sic]ed and got annoyed that I still can’t spell taught.) Anyhow, I think YFS’s response answered a lot of thoughts I had about “where she is coming from” and “why she would think that way”. I also realised that maybe it was hard to understand what I had tried to point at in the comment?!

Therefore, I will try and explain one key thing that clearly did not go through (the language barriers or rather, my shortening my comment and trying to keep it simple).

“But then Chall said: I don't think this makes it "another factor working against you" - if nothing else because the key ingredient of getting that faculty job is networking/knowing the field/being known in the US and as a US born,bred and science thaught[sic] with an american [sic] mentor you have a huge advantage against at least the average foreign post docs.

Which raises a point I want to address.
1. Just because I have an American advisor does NOT give me, as an American female postdoc, a default advantage.
All of my peers are foreign postdocs who have the same advisor.
It's more important that our advisor LIKES us, which means that we have to meet certain expectations. So far as I can tell, the expectations for Americans are different than those for foreign postdocs.”

Lets start with the last thing first, since I think this is key. “It is more important that our advisor LIKES us” – yep, it is. Although I guess you could go for respect you or something in the similar idea. And the likelihood that your Advisor will like you usually increases if you are like your Advisor, i.e. coming from the same background, sharing cultural markers, social ladders etc. (Interestingly enough this is written in another comment, where it is used as Russian/Chinese PIs stock their lab with Russian/Chinese post docs.) It is also one of those things that is repeated throughout every seminar I have been to “people usually pick someone that resembles them” as an explanation that men tend to favor men, since they can ‘identify with them’ or like the "Southern men who likes football and beer identify with other Southern men" etc.

Anyhow, that was part of what I wanted to say but more importantly – what I meant with my whole first comment was that if you are born and raised (i.e. doing your undergrad/grad work) in the US and you speak English, you have had a much better opportunity to get to know more PIs and Professors in the States*. Not to mention you will come from a lab/uni that is known within the States … and therefore you will have an advantage against the foreign post docs.

[Like I would pride myself with having better connections when/if I apply for a position back in my home country since I have spoken to most of the peers/professors in my field, they know (of) my professor and his work etc.]

I guess I also need to clarify that I did not write this out of a “poor me, this is why it will be so hard for me to get a faculty job here in the States**” but rather to try and explain why some PIs don’t really see the point of “wasting” their contacts on foreign post docs and why it might be considered as an advantage for the “American academic” who has had at least 5 years (mostly more than that) extra to “connect” with people in US Academia.

All this is of course based on one large assumption that you “understand” that networking is important and that you most likely will get a job due to the people you know (or know you or know of your work or knows your old Advisor).

I would nothing else that to be able to send in my application to a job advert that I have seen somewhere, get selected out of my wonderful merits and then go for an interview. Oh no, I would LOVE that. (Did I mention that I think my merits are decent and quite good?) But I really don’t think that is going to work. And I am sure I wouldn’t place all the eggs in that basket.

Why? Because of all the people I have met and talked to, about how they got their job, most of them (if not all) stated either “I know this guy who told me about an opening they didn’t advert” or “funny enough, it turned out that A’s aunt worked as a HR and she gave me the name of the person looking for a job” or “I got in touch with the professor of the committee and s/he said they were looking for a person most interested in K”.

None of them responded to an advert and got selected. It might be that I have forgotten about my friends who have gotten the job in that way? Or it is the fact that, especially the last couple of years, there are much more people applying for a shrinking number of positions and therefore you need not only be a good scientist, but also with a grant, connections, collaborations AND stellar recommendations from important people in the field.

Instead of saying something snarky I think I will leave it at this.

And I understand that we can have different opinoins and I might be misunderstanding things and assuming things that aren’t “true”. But I do know one thing for sure, trying to explain why things aren’t going your way with kicking all the foreign post docs out of the equations isn’t really going to get you anywhere. (well, it will get you bitter maybe.) Trying to find a way to get around the problem (if there is something like that) might be a more productive way of solving the situation. After all, does it really get you a new job by stating "It is because I am a woman and they don't like to hire women"?

(I have ended up with that thought a bunch of times, and my key way out of that for me destructive thinking is to focus on "HOW and WHAT do I have to do in order to 'fix' this then?" And more often that not it has ended up with me realiseing that there often were something else there, like a connection I could make, and get through the obstacle. It is not going to be easy. It is not "fair" but it is life and the one thing you have to decide is how to handle things like that. Crying "it's not fair" sure as hell isn't going to help. And I know, since I have really done that and nothing good really came out of that. Bad things however, planty. Actually doing something and being proactive, effective and working hard did something. It still sucks at time though. Sure. It would have been awesome to have had that silver spoon and Advisor who gave me The job and getting the money/grant and everything I ever wanted but seriously, who gets that? And isn't that just daydreaming from the few few people who seemingly glides through life with no problem. The rest of us are working hard and trying to make it worth while.)

The other thing that struck me was “So far as I can tell, the expectations for Americans are different than those for foreign postdocs”. See, this might be more interesting to discuss (or maybe not) since this points to the everlasting “do I think she can pull it off whereas I don’t question that the guy can” as well as “foreign post docs are more desperate/worse/better since they moved from their home country”.

I feel that I don’t have the time to get into that right now (I am still at work) but maybe I will try and write about that soon enough. However, don’t hold your breath since I think it is a bit complex to group all “foreign” post docs into one group and compare them to the “American” post doc group since we had a hard time distinguishing between “American**” and “American****”.

I am more likely to go on yet another “women and men are treated differently and by jolly gosh, yesterday I heard about one of my post docs friends being known for always crying in lab meetings when people gave her criticism and I really do hate the tear factor and being a women ….”

That said, off to the lab and trying to work through the problems so I can get my next publication and more chance of landing the next job!




*the people who are on the study sections and decide who gets money…. And on the hiring committee.
** I will have more problems than that. IF I would like to try out for a faculty position here, which I think I do not since Academia and I might not be as much as I previously thought.
***being ‘true’ American, born and raised here
****having done your undergrad/grad/post doc and now being American citizen but still born in another country American