Busy as a bee
Okay, so I've had another crazy two months, and methinks I'll have another crazy two months after this. Since last I blogged, I've had 2 more job interviews, I've walked for graduation + my family has visited, I've had a job offer and an offer of an offer, three sets of friends have visited, and I've accepted a job offer.
My industrial job interviews went pretty well. My second one was pretty easy - no stupid technical questions, just a lot of questions on my research, which I find totally okay. The first interview was a long day - basically 11am-7pm of technical questions that ended with me in tears (from exhaustion) in front of one of their VPs. It's a start-up, so it's not quite as bad as it sounds, but, yeah... Luckily for the VP, he handled my waterworks quite well. I say luckily for the VP because if he hadn't, I probably would have just left. My tears resulted from the hard-hitting question: Where do you see yourself in 5 years? My exhaustion from the day (I'd arrived late the night before) and my not really having thought of the answer led to the tears. And my honesty - that I'd never considered that I would be in this position. I came to grad school to be a professor, and it wasn't until 1-2 months before that I'd even thought I'd end up in industry, not academia or a research lab. By that point I was okay with not going into academia, and was kind of relieved - I'll never have to write a research paper after I finish my PhD, and I'll never have to worry about grants (wahoo!). But I hadn't really thought about moving on from there.
I returned home from my interviews and had a little while to recover, then had a friend spend the night and my grandma arrive. The rest of my family arrived a few days later, then I walked in commencement. (My school lets you walk basically at any point. My department prefers you walk when there's a very high probability that you'll actually finish. There's no August commencement, and there's no way I'm coming back to the upper Midwest in December). Seeing my family was great but stressful, as families tend to be. The hardest to deal with are my younger brother and my father - they drive each other nuts and will complain about each other to me. Plus, my father is difficult to take to restaurants, since there's a very narrow price/ quality ratio where he's happy/ comfortable.
The next weekend two friends who have graduated and moved on to the real world came to town. It was great to see them. Then an old friend came last weekend, and it was great to see her. But after 4 straight weekends of at least seeing old friends/ family (and the previous two weekends dealing with interview stuff), it's nice to have a little bit of a break!
My first job offer came a week after the interview, but it took another 1.5 (or 2.5?) weeks to get it officially approved. The start-up was willing to make me an offer, but they only wanted to make it if I was going to accept it, which I decided not to. Part of what turned me off was their interview process. They're trying to be careful in who they make offers to, but they required an all day interview, a 2 hour homework-type assignment, and phone interviews with references, and it spanned over a month. One friend joked that they'd want to talk to my parents next.
Further, the VP of the start-up, while he seemed nice, I found a little disingenuous. He had worked in the group where I will be working, and claimed I'd be working similar hours at the two companies, and made it seem like the guy who will be my boss is kind of harsh. This was not the impression I had gotten, so I went back and asked for contact information for people who would be peers at Big Company. The boss complied, and I talked or emailed with all 3 people, all of whom said their boss was very reasonable, not pushy, and that they worked ~40 hours a week*. Maybe they're all lying, but, since I'll find out soon enough, I don't see why they would. So this has left me a little confused, but I guess that's the business world.
I'm looking forward to starting my job, which is what is really important. I have a number of friends who live in that area of the country, which is nice since as the years go by, I have fewer and fewer friends in this college town. Plus, there are a lot of direct flights between there and where the rest of my family (plus more friends) live. And my salary is going to roughly quintuple, I think. So: woot!
In the meantime, I'm trying not to freak out about all the work that needs to get done to finish the dissertation, and how I'm going to arrange moving to the new place + a nice multi-week vacation at home. Baby steps. I'm almost done finishing up my experiments (I think), then will have to write things up. There's a paper deadline in the middle of this month, so I'm hoping that'll work as a good forcing function. I'm trying to gather my energy this week (while advisor is out of town) so that I'll hopefully be able to make the deadline. Advisor wants me to defend by the end of July, so cross your fingers!
I'm also channeling some of my nervous energy into nesting. I've bought 2 new dressers, a side table and TV stand/ credenza, and have refinished another side table and my coffee table. And I'm going to look at a new kitchen table and chairs tomorrow.**
So now I think you're all caught up. I hope that next time I come up for air, I'll have made even more progress.
* I'm not particularly lazy, but I sincerely value a work-life balance, and I know I can't achieve this if I'm working super-long weeks. Especially since companies don't give a lot of vacation time. My body wants what it wants, and if I don't give it to her, she revolts.
** If I were a better grad student, I might be able to be doing something else while I'm running experiments. But I'm not, so I've got to do something else, and I haven't really been able to work out much recently either.
My industrial job interviews went pretty well. My second one was pretty easy - no stupid technical questions, just a lot of questions on my research, which I find totally okay. The first interview was a long day - basically 11am-7pm of technical questions that ended with me in tears (from exhaustion) in front of one of their VPs. It's a start-up, so it's not quite as bad as it sounds, but, yeah... Luckily for the VP, he handled my waterworks quite well. I say luckily for the VP because if he hadn't, I probably would have just left. My tears resulted from the hard-hitting question: Where do you see yourself in 5 years? My exhaustion from the day (I'd arrived late the night before) and my not really having thought of the answer led to the tears. And my honesty - that I'd never considered that I would be in this position. I came to grad school to be a professor, and it wasn't until 1-2 months before that I'd even thought I'd end up in industry, not academia or a research lab. By that point I was okay with not going into academia, and was kind of relieved - I'll never have to write a research paper after I finish my PhD, and I'll never have to worry about grants (wahoo!). But I hadn't really thought about moving on from there.
I returned home from my interviews and had a little while to recover, then had a friend spend the night and my grandma arrive. The rest of my family arrived a few days later, then I walked in commencement. (My school lets you walk basically at any point. My department prefers you walk when there's a very high probability that you'll actually finish. There's no August commencement, and there's no way I'm coming back to the upper Midwest in December). Seeing my family was great but stressful, as families tend to be. The hardest to deal with are my younger brother and my father - they drive each other nuts and will complain about each other to me. Plus, my father is difficult to take to restaurants, since there's a very narrow price/ quality ratio where he's happy/ comfortable.
The next weekend two friends who have graduated and moved on to the real world came to town. It was great to see them. Then an old friend came last weekend, and it was great to see her. But after 4 straight weekends of at least seeing old friends/ family (and the previous two weekends dealing with interview stuff), it's nice to have a little bit of a break!
My first job offer came a week after the interview, but it took another 1.5 (or 2.5?) weeks to get it officially approved. The start-up was willing to make me an offer, but they only wanted to make it if I was going to accept it, which I decided not to. Part of what turned me off was their interview process. They're trying to be careful in who they make offers to, but they required an all day interview, a 2 hour homework-type assignment, and phone interviews with references, and it spanned over a month. One friend joked that they'd want to talk to my parents next.
Further, the VP of the start-up, while he seemed nice, I found a little disingenuous. He had worked in the group where I will be working, and claimed I'd be working similar hours at the two companies, and made it seem like the guy who will be my boss is kind of harsh. This was not the impression I had gotten, so I went back and asked for contact information for people who would be peers at Big Company. The boss complied, and I talked or emailed with all 3 people, all of whom said their boss was very reasonable, not pushy, and that they worked ~40 hours a week*. Maybe they're all lying, but, since I'll find out soon enough, I don't see why they would. So this has left me a little confused, but I guess that's the business world.
I'm looking forward to starting my job, which is what is really important. I have a number of friends who live in that area of the country, which is nice since as the years go by, I have fewer and fewer friends in this college town. Plus, there are a lot of direct flights between there and where the rest of my family (plus more friends) live. And my salary is going to roughly quintuple, I think. So: woot!
In the meantime, I'm trying not to freak out about all the work that needs to get done to finish the dissertation, and how I'm going to arrange moving to the new place + a nice multi-week vacation at home. Baby steps. I'm almost done finishing up my experiments (I think), then will have to write things up. There's a paper deadline in the middle of this month, so I'm hoping that'll work as a good forcing function. I'm trying to gather my energy this week (while advisor is out of town) so that I'll hopefully be able to make the deadline. Advisor wants me to defend by the end of July, so cross your fingers!
I'm also channeling some of my nervous energy into nesting. I've bought 2 new dressers, a side table and TV stand/ credenza, and have refinished another side table and my coffee table. And I'm going to look at a new kitchen table and chairs tomorrow.**
So now I think you're all caught up. I hope that next time I come up for air, I'll have made even more progress.
* I'm not particularly lazy, but I sincerely value a work-life balance, and I know I can't achieve this if I'm working super-long weeks. Especially since companies don't give a lot of vacation time. My body wants what it wants, and if I don't give it to her, she revolts.
** If I were a better grad student, I might be able to be doing something else while I'm running experiments. But I'm not, so I've got to do something else, and I haven't really been able to work out much recently either.
posted by Random Questioner at
8:41 PM
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