Across the Atlanta(ic)

I am in Atlanta, GA right now. I have a MARTA metro card and take the metro to the conference every morning. I am really enjoying the perks of temporarily living in a big city where the metro runs well past midnight. I can hear the metro from where I am staying, and sometimes when I am up and working past midnight, I feel like I have company. In some ways, the little metro card that I purchased for some $20 and carry in my wallet everyday is my temporary connection to this city. 

When I am not busy at the conference, I have taken it upon myself to visit every Bangladeshi restaurant in town. It has something to do with food, but it has a lot more to do with the language. It feels comforting to be chatting with the restaurant people in Bangla while eating rui maach and telapia maach. It is comforting to read the menu card, with the names of the dishes printed in English font in Bangla. I did not even know that there is a dessert called Laal Mohon. And there is something about Poneer Tondoori that Paneer Tandoori does not have.

At Panahar today, there was Robindro Shongeet playing in the background. And at Purnima the other day, the television was playing Bangladeshi news channels showing Sheikh Haseena, looking graceful in a shaari. I am so used to seeing either Trump or Modi on television that this feels like novelty. The hegemonic influence of Bollywood is not lost on me. I have met so many people who think that Bollywood is Indian cinema. Bollywood is only a small subset of Indian cinema.

When I declined bottled water at Purnima and asked for a glass of tap water instead, the owner told me, “নীতিগত ভাবে আপনার সাথে আছি।” (I support you in principle). People here do not say “Goodbye,” “See ya,” or “Take it easy”- they say, “Bhalo thakben.” And it thrills me. People from Bangladesh are way more aware and proud of their linguistic heritage than the yuppie, cosmopolitan crowd of Indian Bengalis (including those living in the US) whom I meet. And I am/was among one of them. I know what Feb 14 is, but I did not know for a long time what Feb 21 is, and the contribution of Bengal to Feb 21. I only came to know of it when I met a few Bengalis in Virginia, originally from Bangladesh, who were celebrating Bhasha Dibosh or International Mother Language Day. One would think that Feb 21 is more significant in my life than Christmas, Thanksgiving or Halloween.

I continue to think of these things on my three-stop metro ride every day. I know that I am tipping way more generously than I do, justifying, “বাঙালি করে খাচ্ছে, খেটে খাচ্ছে, গর্বের ব্যাপার।” I keep meeting people from Dhaka and Sylhet in a different, far corner of the world. And I think of my need to belong to a city, albeit temporarily. Yes, I gave a few research talks in fluent English. But nothing makes me happier than a stranger making small, inconsequential talk, telling me a few lines in my mother tongue, Bangla.

On an unrelated note, I absolutely loved the Parsi food at Botiwaala too. I love food, and since there are only so many breakfasts, lunches and dinners one can eat in a lifetime, I want to eat all that I can eat from my land. This includes the filter coffee and the coconut rava dosai I had yesterday at Madras Mantra.

Life should be all about eating well, giving research talks, and building new experiences in new cities and countries.

sunshine

Things I learned as faculty: Unconscious bias

As faculty, I have learned to be more cognizant of unconscious bias, how people view me and what’s going on around me. Sometimes, in a room full of people who do not know me, some assume that I am a student. This has happened at conferences and board meetings. In the same room, some people will talk to other faculty as faculty but ask me what year of my PhD program I am in.

It is tempting to get flattered and think that I look young, and hence the misunderstanding. However, this has nothing got to do with age. Many people are subconsciously primed to think of women and minorities as holding lower positions. White faculty, brown student. Male faculty, female student. Male doctor, female nurse. People are not evil but they just do not know any better.

If it was about age, they would assume I am young faculty, not an older student. I always use this as a teachable moment for my minority students. I sense those few seconds of discomfort when I calmly tell them that I am not a student. However, I do not take my position for granted.

For example, I never wear jeans and informal clothes to work. I am always in semi-formals or formals. I don’t care whether people think I am a student because those are their biases to deal with. However, I am immensely aware of the responsibility my position brings, not just for me, but for others who are training to be faculty. My colleague next door will wear denims, sports jacket and running shoes and no one will flip an eyelid. However, I cannot assume that I will be treated like a faculty if I wore the same kind of clothes. We do not live in an ideal world. We don’t get what we deserve. We get what we negotiate.

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No kidding

I overheard two women in a conversation, telling each other how many training sessions they have done over the summer. “Two,” said each. Then, one of them added, “Person so-and-so has done nine.” She paused briefly before adding, “She has no children, she has all the time to travel for these trainings.”

I flinched at the multiple assumptions being made here, not to mention the snarky, sarcastic tone. How many times have people assumed that I will do something because I do not have children? How many times have people seen me neck-deep in work and flippantly attributed it to childlessness? I work seven days a week, I go to work on the weekends too, and I have no hesitation or guilt about that. When people are traveling or entertaining friends, I spend my weekend conducting research. I do it because I treat my work as a passion, as my identity, and not as a 9-to-5 engagement. I take ownership of my work, treat my work as a means to a better, independent and intellectual lifestyle. I watched exactly one movie at a theater last year, I have not made any friends in the new city, and I am okay with that (I have other things to do with my time now). I don’t put in the extra hours merely because I do not have children. I could be pursuing a dozen different things, including sleeping, if I did not feel so strongly about my work.

I have often witnessed people looking down on others who haven’t prioritized procreation as their vocation. I pick on these implicit biases a little better than the next person, having been at the receiving end of it many times. Notice how an ambitious woman will be shamed because she has no children (often by other women), but not an ambitious man. A man who undertook nine trainings in a summer, children or no children, will be revered, treated as a role model, and depicted as an exemplary professional. Only a woman is a childless freak if she has enough energy to pursue the same amount of work.

There is more to observe and learn from the world around us than there is from fictitious, unrealistic movies. See if your married friends who once hung out with you are treating you differently, do not invite you home anymore, but are still hanging out with other married friends. You need to get better friends in that case. See how advertisements around you are sharing implicit messages about only one kind of life as an ideal, happy life, the one where you have a spouse, a pet and multiple children. Insurance ads. Home ads. Toothpaste ads will often show large, happy families smiling together, and so will cooking oil ads (with often the woman cooking). It looks like single people do not brush their teeth and do not cook for themselves. My two cents- don’t put your money where you are being marginalized.

See if your workplace is giving you job duties they are not giving your peers who have families. See if you are repeatedly being made a victim of micro aggression. When your boss asks you to stay in office till 9 pm, but not your peer who has children, there is a problem. When you are asked to travel at odd hours but your peers are not, you need to step back and voice your concerns. It is easy to assume that women who do not have children have all the time in the world and are hence available to take on extra responsibility at work (often without adequate compensation). Keep your eyes and ears open for such discrimination. You do not owe anyone an explanation about how you spend your time at home, why you spend your weekends working (or not working), or how lucky you are to have all the extra time in the world (an ill-conceived assumption at the least). You could be caring for the elderly, you could be grappling with a personal setback, and even if you are not, you do not owe anyone an explanation.

If people are talking about you in a different, derogatory way because you do not have children (or telling you that you will not understand because you do not have a child), if people at work are taking liberties and giving you extra work at odd hours because you do not have children, if your friends are making less of you or your interests because you do not have children, we have a problem.

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A summer- in transit

I am in India this summer, as a visiting faculty. Campus life here comes with the comforts that are not a part of my everyday life. My home to my office is a good 3-minute walk. I do not have to take buses that run once in half an hour. I do not have to wade in the snow. I do not have to find parking. And then, just like all good things in life boil down to food, I make my pilgrimage from my office to the canteen four times a day- for breakfast, lunch, a meal in between lunch and dinner, and dinner. Meals are heavily subsidized, in price, not quantity. Suddenly, I do not need to go grocery shopping, cook, or clean up. And yes, breaks in between 3-hour long classes also come with tea, coffee, and sandwiches. Made. Served. All I do is show up, sit with my meals, and observe people. Some known faces. Mostly unknown faces. Some now-known faces that were unknown until yesterday. I continue to have trouble remembering names and putting them on the right faces. I just forgot that the canteen guy and I used to speak in Oriya many years ago when I first visited until he recognized me right away and started speaking in Oriya. But all that is irrelevant. My three main priorities these days boil down to teaching, remembering to hold Skype meetings with my colleagues in the US, and making that pilgrimage to the canteen multiple times every day.

If this honeymoon could last even a few weeks every summer, I'll be a happy academic.

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Conferences and Weddings

Conferences are like giant weddings. Everyone you met there is somewhere in the spectrum of guests, people from your life you typically bump into.

The PhD adviser is more of the parent you are meeting after a long time. You go have dinner, talk about work and life. He tells you how to win people at the new job (in-laws), because what I do reflects on his training. Beaming with pride, he goes around introducing me to everyone. The pride on his face, and my occasional embarrassment felt similar to when a smart kid from town cracks the IIT-JEE exams, and their parents go about beaming in pride and showcasing their kid to every (highly disinterested) neighbor, distant relative, and visitor. I am more like the academic child.

Grad school friends/classmates: They are more like the siblings, the friends you made in the neighborhood where you grew up. Most left the neighborhood at some point while some stayed back. We talked about childhood, about the good old times, the scary courses and the fun professors, our anxieties about not being able to finish the degree, and so on.

The new department: Perhaps the future in-laws, the husband being the new position. The head of my future family (the dean) introduced me to everyone, bought me drinks, and told me how excited they are to have me. I am more like the new bride.

People from the current workplace are more like members from the current family. Yes, I will change families soon, but it is more of an amicable separation.

People who do similar work in the field. They are the potential future collaborators. People I might be developing intimate (academic) relationships with in the future. Academia is interesting that way. Once wedded, you are encouraged to go develop partnerships with others in the field.

And this is perhaps the most interesting one. I was standing with a group of people in the elevator when I saw a familiar face. I looked at the name tag, and I knew who it was. The person never recognized me, but I did, and involuntarily took a few steps backward in the elevator. A person who had interviewed me on Skype, but neither gave me a job, nor informed me about their decision. It was the ex. Someone you had wanted to be with in the past, someone who had rejected you, broken your heart. It might have disturbed me to bump into an ex just like that under ordinary circumstances, but now that I have recently made a new family, I felt like doing a happy dance inside my head in front of them. 

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Summarizing January

The last working day in January is over. It seems like just yesterday when people were posting new year resolutions on Facebook that they are not likely to honor. And now, just like that, January is over.

I spent half of January in Seattle, a city I consider my home (although I no longer live there). One day, I was taking a walk when I had this crazy idea of grabbing a fistful of Seattle soil and bringing it back with me to Germany. I did not. Seattle is the only place that has this kind of effect on me.

This year, I resolved to write more. So far, I have honored it. I have buried myself in work these days. I once watched a movie called The Human Stain. It has a powerful line that stayed with me. “Action is the enemy of thought.” I go crazy when I think about life, living mine by yearlong contracts, trying to desperately find a faculty position and not knowing when this postdoc spell would end. My friends who started graduate school with me, both in 2006 an 2010, mostly have faculty positions by now. And I am floundering, from one Skype interview to the next, unable to understand why I am not making it.

So I decided to drown myself in work. I unfollowed a bunch of people on FB to steer clear of their uninspiring lives, generally cut down on the time that I waste on FB, and started working more. This month, I submitted two papers as first author. I just finished working on another paper as secondary author. Wrote a little grant. Got another paper published this morning. Started a new project in Asia. Won a scholarship, a little pot of money that will partially fund my trip to Baltimore this spring. I even moved offices.

Eager to welcome February now, more as a workaholic and a recluse. We often assume this divide between work and play. I think that when you enjoy what you do for a living, work becomes play. It doesn’t seem like a chore anymore. Whenever I work on interesting papers, I stop needing the alarm clock to wake up, and I am usually at work by 8 am. It is only when I do something that does not interest me that life starts to drag on. Like I said, work becomes play when you enjoy work. And play becomes work as well. I will start my country hopping in Europe starting February. Traveling is relaxing and all, but it is hardly play for me. I do a thorough research about where to go, what to see, where and what to eat, and so on. Like I said, the divide between work and play is not so pronounced for me. My work is my play, and my play involves a lot of work.

sunshine 

Nothing to lose

There are times in life when you take in a lot of garbage. And then comes a day when nothing really happens, but a small something tips you over. You realize that you have had it, and you are done taking in all the garbage. I think I reached that point recently.

It happened the same day I wrote my earlier post. I was walking back to my office, and the wind was strong. It was raining as well, and thankfully, I had my umbrella with me. I have very fond memories of this umbrella because I bought it on a rainy day during my trip to Europe. So it is a souvenir. Anyway. The wind was strong (Nebraska is infamous for that), and my umbrella kept turning the wrong way. There was no point in carrying it if I was getting wet anyway. So I tried to close it.

At that point, my finger got stuck in the umbrella, tearing a little bit of flesh and drawing a few drops of blood. I find the sight of blood very repulsive, and as I looked at my finger in horror, something in me flipped. Tears started rolling down my cheeks, mingling with the rain, as a bunch of school kids on an educational excursion walked by me. These were not tears of sadness or fear, these were tears of anger pent up for a while. The umbrella incident was totally random, but it invoked a strong sense of anger in me, because it was symbolic of the helpless situation I was in. And I realized, I don’t want to be helpless anymore. I don’t want to feel like a victim, because I have not done anything that should make me feel like a victim. I am done being in this toxic situation that I am in.

And suddenly, in my head, I heard my own voice. Screw you job! Screw you visa! Screw you insecurity. I don’t have to take this. I don’t have to live in a country where I am perennially afraid of the insecurities. I don’t want a colleague suggesting me ever again, even jokingly, that I should have tried hooking up with a citizen, like many people wanting to stay here do. I am done. I am so done with this life. It is no better than being made to feel like an outcast, being asked to sit separately, like the British did to the Indians pre-independence, or higher caste people did to lower caste people.

The epiphany of “screw you” perhaps came from self-worth, and gave me more strength than anything had given me in the last few months. I have a PhD (I am told that less than 1% people have a PhD, but in America or around the world, I do not know). I am in good health. I can speak in English. I can learn. I can relocate anywhere in the world. I can do math. I can think. I have the energy. I have the courage and determination to do what it takes. I can take risks. Most importantly, I am alive. Why am I forgetting all my blessings? Why am I constantly trying to fit in? When I moved to the US eight years ago, I had nothing. And I had nothing to lose. But now, what do I lose if I don’t find a job? Absolutely nothing. I just go somewhere else, and take my skills and ideas with me. I haven’t spent a single day for the last few years when I have not worried about a visa. No self-respecting academic should ever fear that. Because wherever I go next, I take my brains, and my ideas with me. I realized that a high school dropout is perhaps more fearless than I am, armed with fancy degrees and all.

This realization gave me a lot of strength. Often under duress, we tend to think that we are helpless. We are not. This will be my chance to reinvent myself, create my future, and start a new chapter in life. I am looking for a job, but I already have enough work to sustain me for a while. Then what am I so scared of?

When I get a job, this post will be shelved as one of those inspiring notes written during crisis. If I do not, these will become words that will dissipate into nothingness. In either case, I will have nothing to lose. And that thought that I have nothing to lose is empowering in itself.

sunshine

The Ides of March

A few months back, they selected my doctoral dissertation to be among the top three in the field. And last month, they told me that they do not have additional money to renew my contract.

The bipolar nature of academia baffles me. How could these two extreme things happen within a span of a few weeks, I cannot explain.

So I am back to looking for a job, a postdoctoral position to be more specific, not knowing what awaits me. It has been six weeks since that day, and I still haven’t found anything. But in these six weeks, numerous meltdowns and heartbreaking days of staring into the unknown later, I have had some profound realizations.

I have realized that I cannot control everything. That instead of resisting the waves, I can only learn to ride with them.

I have realized that the transition time between the end of something and the beginning of something else is the region of greatest possibility. I make the analogy using Lego blocks. Whenever something ends, anything, a relationship, a career, a job, a life, we lie like a pile of Lego blocks, broken, without direction, and feeling useless. But that is also the exact moment when we can recreate and redefine ourselves, mold ourselves into something new, create new possibilities, and become someone different. I think that if we were never broken, we would never get a chance to build ourselves again.

I have realized that the US is extremely unfriendly and unforgiving for people who require a job as well as a visa. Even when they have a PhD from the US.

I have started looking into my options in other countries, which I had not done before. The complacency of having a job in the US had stopped me from looking into my options elsewhere.

I have learned to reach out to other people. I don’t just wait for a job posting to show up. I proactively contact people, asking if they are looking to hire. Sure, nothing has come out of the effort so far, but failure is not the opposite of success. In fact, success and failure lie side by side, the opposite being not trying at all.

I have realized that people can ask to interview you, and you give a job talk with full gusto, only to be told that they do not have a position, but they will keep you in mind. What baffles me is, if they never had a position, why did they make me prepare a job talk and make a presentation in the first place? Human behavior is sometimes difficult to make sense of.

I have realized that there is more to me than what I do, my professional identity. When asked about who I am, I say that I am an educational researcher. However, there is much more to me than just being an educational researcher.

I have learned to be able to stare at the ending of something, and let go. If I do not find another job (with the visa in place) in the next few months, my stay in this country is history. I have been here for more than 7.5 years now, and to think that I might just have to leave everything I have and leave one fine day is heartbreaking. It is worse when you know that it was not your doing, and you cannot do anything to make the situation better. The feeling of paralysis that comes from helplessness is very difficult to come to terms. In fact these days, I notice in me a tendency to push doing certain things that bring gratification. The other day, my mom remarked that I need a haircut, and I told her that I want to save the occasion for the day when I find a job (equaling a hair cut with finding a job). I am seeing that the rice at home is beginning to get over, and a part of me is debating whether I should delay buying the big bag of rice until I find a job, because I don’t want to leave it unused if I have to go. The rice connection doesn’t even make sense to me, one needs to eat everyday, job or no job. Yet the prospect of spending for something makes me feel guilty, not knowing how much I might need to save for the rainy day.

I have realized that there will never be a dearth of work for me, even though there is a dearth of jobs. The number of papers I am involved in right now, it will take me at least a year to finish writing all those papers, job or no job.

I have started to notice myself as an observer, like I would observe someone else. Some days, I feel so lousy, it is hard for me to get up and get ready for work. Other days, I am naturally strong, telling myself that this is just a phase, and things will look better soon. I have better days when I feel stronger. But when I do not, the day drags on aimlessly, and inefficiency spirals, to make me feel even more lousy.

And of the many other realizations, I have also realized that I can look at the situation whatever way I want to. I can blame myself, my luck, or whatever. Or I can be kind to myself, and tell myself that it was not my fault. That come what may, I am in control of my life, and a certain external situation that was not created by me should not have the power to disorient me. Sure, I can choose to dance to the whims of fate, breaking a little bit every time the weather is rough. Or, I can choose to stay calm while the storm passes, because things will be better again. Is my pain greater than the collective pain of the world? I am looking for guarantees and securities in a world where airplanes disappear into thin air, and sturdy ships sink into the bottom of the ocean. Is my pain any greater than their pains? Or tomorrow if I was diagnosed with a terminal disease, will the job situation still bother me so much? It is all about perspective.

But most importantly, I just feel annoyed that anything should come in between me and my work. I dream of a day when I will be able to wake up and start working with enthusiasm, not having to worry about things like employment and visa.

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The Job

How often do you say, "I'm looking for a job", instead of, "I'm looking for the job"? 

This difference of one word (a versus the) makes a world of a difference in our attitude toward seeking gainful employment. To me, "looking for a job" shows my complacency, inadequacy, and my inability to bargain for more in life. Whereas "looking for the job" shows a definite aim and structured plan of action. I didn't realize this difference until very recently, when I started looking for a job, and went like, wait a minute. I'm already in the seventh page of my curriculum vitae. I have three degrees beyond a bachelor degree, including a Ph.D. I have done very well in school. And all these years of training later, I don't need "a job". I need "the job". 

It might be a good idea to pay close attention to how I frame my words. For often, what you ask for is what you get in life.

sunshine

What I do for a living?

I have always been interested in learning more about what you do for a living. It doesn’t matter what field you belong to, whether you work for money, work from home, or work in the weekends. I’d love to know what one random day in your work life looks like. By you, I mean anyone in this world, from any location, who might be reading this. When I browse through LinkedIn profile of friends and contacts, I sometimes understand what they do, but most of the times, I do not. I get stuck in jargon. I don’t understand the matlab (meaning) of MATLAB. P2P networking to me means peer-to-peer networking for professionals. Data architecture makes me think of the architecture of European cities.

            If we had to explain to an eight year old about what we do, what would we say? If we had to leave behind all the heavy duty jargon, how would we explain what we do? If we had to get creative and draw on a postcard what we do, what would we draw? It seems like a fun, but challenging project. I think that writing about one’s work in simplified words actually requires a lot of thinking, processing, and strong communication skills. As a writer, who writes for the academic crowd, I know how tempting it could be to get lost in the complexity of ideas when you write. Yet the simple and most eloquent writings are the ones that have been well-thought, structured, and have come from writers with years of practice.

So what do I do for a living?

I teach teachers how to teacher better.

What are my work tools I play with?

A computer. Lots of books. Lots of data analysis software, both statistical and qualitative. A notepad. A pen. My brain. And a lot of creative ideas.

And what does a random workday look like for me?

            Well, I do a lot of discrete things. Let me choose one in particular that might interest you. J I’ll try to leave out any academic jargon.

            I watch 10-12 hours of videos every week. Imagine having a big computer screen and Bose headphones at work, and the fun of watching movies every day, and being paid for it. I watch and score 8-10 videos every week. These are graduate level or undergraduate level science courses that professors across the US teach. Someone records these lectures and sends them to me. Sometimes, I go to these classes, camera and tripod in hand, and record them myself.

            Every morning, the first thing I get to work, I plug on my earphones, and watch these videos. Sitting in one place makes me restless, so I munch on puffed rice while I watch. Buttered popcorn would be great, but I figured out that puffed rice is healthier. I am not kidding when I say that I have multiple containers of puffed rice stocked up at my desk.

            These videos are anywhere between an hour to two hours long. I note everything they say, everything they do (or do not do), even how many times they say, “Do you have any questions?” After I am done, I score their teaching. There is a set protocol for this that contains 25-30 questions, with five different scales for each question. I score them, and so do others in my team. Then we sit together and discuss our ratings, and their justification. Sometimes, our ratings match, and sometimes, they do not. That is why I take detailed notes about what is being done in class. We discuss our ratings all the more when they do not. This recalibrates the way we see things when we score the next video.

            We do statistical analyses on our scores to see how effective teachers teach, and what good teachers do to make their classes more effective (and enjoyable). I moved to the US for my PhD, and always wondered how undergraduate courses were taught. Now, I know it all. I have watched videos for every science subject from all over the US- chemistry, biology, physics, astronomy, biochemistry, you name it. Isn’t that wonderful? It is like sitting in classes and not having to pay tuition. And then at the end of the class, you get to say what was good and what was not so good about the class.

            Of course I explained things in a simplified way, and it involves more that sitting with food and enjoying a video. Every minute of what you watch is important. You cannot doze off in the middle of a boring class. I have grown so addicted to watching class lectures that I feel that something is amiss in my weekends.

            Care to share a snippet from what your work looks like, in a simplified way, so that even a child can understand what you do? If you write about it, do share the link with me.

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On work hours

This is my third week of working as a postdoc, and I see some clear differences in the work culture and work hours. The difference might somewhat be attributed to working with an associate professor versus an assistant professor, but I am not so clear on that. However, the work hours here resemble more of a 9 to 5 job. Make it 8 to 6 actually. Today, the hours got slightly reversed. When I left at 7 in the morning, I saw the sun rise on my drive to the lab. By the time I was done, it was past 7:30 pm, and the sun had set. However, today was an outlier, I hope.

            During PhD, there was no compulsion to show up at work during fixed hours. Don’t get me wrong, this did not mean that I was not working. It only meant that I had the liberty to work from anywhere, and not necessarily the lab. It makes sense, since two of the three years in graduate school was spent taking classes, and the third year was my final year when students are busy writing a dissertation and do not want to be interrupted. There were 1-2 weekly meetings at specific hours when everyone in the lab would meet. If you happened to be out of town, collecting data or on vacation, you could call in. With 3-4 graduate students, people were always in and out. I am not saying that I didn’t show up at work, what I am saying is there were no fixed timings. Some days I would be there by 9, and other days, I would show up after noon. Then again, some days I left by noon, and other days I worked until midnight. All I had to do was tell my adviser that I am going home to work on something, and he can call me or email me if he needed anything. As long as he knew where and how he could find us, he did not care. For me, it was a false sense of freedom while I was still on a leash.

            During my third year especially, I remember working from home three out of five days, or showing up at work for a few hours, and then coming home and working more. As a result, I would have the flexibility to work until late night, and wake up late in the morning. Then I would sit in my sunny, east facing kitchen cum dining space with huge French windows, sipping coffee. I would cook a hearty breakfast and wash it down with more coffee, amid working and staring out of the window and watching students take the bus. After lunch, I would even take a nap. When the roommate came home in the evening, we would chat up, drink tea, eat onion fritters, and watch a movie on Netflix, still working. So I was working all day, but the way I wanted to. It’s not that I was hiking up the mountains. I was still communicating with the adviser whenever I was needed.

            Graduate students are low stake employees. They hardly get paid anything (I like the way I now call them “they” and not “we”), they take a few years to train, and the level of accountability is lower. I cannot generalize and speak for all research groups, but I have known enough research groups to be able to make a broad statement. A postdoc on the other hand is an employee. We get paid (marginally) more, and it is a full time job. The level of accountability is way higher. A postdoc is only a step away from being faculty most of the time. So you can easily forget the morning brunches and the afternoon naps.

            How does a typical day of mine looks like now? Well, I am at work by 9 am, which is when there are no 8:30 am meetings, or 8 am class evaluations. So a 9 am day is a good day for me. I am not the only postdoc, there are more. Hence there is always an implicit comparison on how much work we do. It looks very odd if a postdoc leaves for home at 5 pm, and the other one is still working, and so is the professor. My entire day is filled with meetings. I meet with the professor every day, sometimes twice or thrice a day. There are group meetings, and then there are one-on-one meetings. Then I attend a lot of workshops and seminars, typically 3-4 every week. This is because it is not enough to sit cocooned in your lab working, you need to be out there familiarizing yourself with other research groups and networking with them.

            Earlier, my Fridays did not start until 12 noon, when there would be a group meeting. Now, my meetings with the adviser Friday morning is at 8:30 am. Every week at the group meetings, I give an update on what I have been up to, and critique a research paper from the field. If I was taking classes, I would also have to give a talk on how what I have learned in class is applicable to my research, so that other members of the group who are not taking those classes can learn too. And these talks are around the table formal discussions, with powerpoint slides, and not informal chats. Very soon, I will also be supervising undergrads who work to gain some research experience.

            By the time I come home, it is usually past 6 in the evening. I barely have the energy to cook myself something, take a shower, head to the gym (sometimes), and collapse on the bed reading a book. I cant stay up late nights anymore because I have to be up the next morning, and the similar cycle would resume. I am genuinely enjoying it, learning a lot, and keeping busy in life. It gives me a sense of worth. However, I no longer have the flexibility to show up late, or not show up at all. I now get twelve vacation days annually, and everything is on pen and paper, formally documented. And on that note, it’s midnight here, and I must go to sleep. I am evaluating an 8 am lecture tomorrow morning.

sunshine

T.G.I.F. Part 2 (Finding the job I got).

The biggest issue that plagues most of us academicians training to establish ourselves in our respective fields is- “What after I graduate?” This is a pivotal and determining existential question, central to building our identity as researchers, academicians, and professionals. I have seen people in certain fields find a job they are happy doing right after their masters, for example, people who have some association with the software industry. Then there are people who graduate from renowned business schools and law schools and land up with multiple lucrative job offers. If you have been through this journey before, you will know how lonely and isolating the life of a final year doctoral student is. You are done with your classes, you are trying hard to figure out a research niche that will define your identity in the following years, writing a dissertation, struggling to get published, interviewing for jobs, dealing with job rejections, and so on. The bad news is, it is a tiresome, overwhelming, and alien feeling that requires all your energy, time management and resource management skills as well as prayers. The good news is, you just need one job at the end of the day. Yes, multiple offers will help you make a more informed decision about what you are worth in the field, not to mention a huge boost to the ego. However, all you need at the end of the day is just one job.  

The way I found that one job is an interesting story. I was applying to as many places as I could, but few of them were interviewing. Funding agencies were going through sequestrations, and it seemed that none of the people I contacted proactively everyday had anything hopeful. I was applying for both postdoctoral as well as faculty positions. There was one posting I saw in the mid-west (read: middle of nowhere) in a field that was certainly not my niche. The work looked interesting, and sure it would require me to reboot the Chemistry I learned years ago, but it definitely seemed like something I would apply to. I started applying for the job when my roommate walked in and said, “Nebraska? Who lives in Nebraska?” I had said the same thing to someone a few years ago, and that person seemed to have born in Alabama. Her lack of enthusiasm dampened my spirits, but hey, maybe this would be my backup option?

The next day, I went to the adviser for a recommendation, and faced some serious opposition. He mirrored my thoughts that my specialization was not in Chemistry, and writing me a recommendation for something I might not be skilled at will only put him in a bad spot. I asked him to focus on what I was rather than what I was not, and write what he thought I was good at, instead of making something up. He was still not convinced, and gave me a hard time about applying. I went ahead nevertheless.

A few Fridays after, I got a call for a Skype interview in the morning. Interestingly, I had another interview lined up in the evening, with a different school (which I never got, and it took them 2 months to tell me a no). During this interview of mine, we talked. She told me what she does, and asked me what I did. She asked me technical questions. It was a formal interview of course, but things were not uncomfortable. She did not bombard me with a hundred questions trying to see if I knew ANOVA from MANOVA or grounded theory from interpretivism. The interview went well.

She offered me the job by the end of the interview. Which means she had pretty much made up her mind when she scheduled the interview.

That is the only job offer I got. Which made my choices easy. After all, you need one job at the end of the day.

Lesson learned: Trust your gut feeling, and apply to as many jobs as you can. If I had listened to my adviser and not applied for this job, I’d be jobless today.

Chances are more that my story may not be your story. Usually people get many more job offers and often take time to choose where they wish to go. When I started as a teacher in Calcutta, that was the only job I applied for and got it. Then in Seattle, that was the first job I applied to, and since I wanted to live in the area, I did not look further when I got that job. This time, I applied to 7-8 places, got interview calls from 3 places, and this is the only job I got. I seem to have a record of finding that one job I would take up.

sunshine

T.G.I.F. (Part 1)

Phrases like TGIF or Monday morning blues always make me frown. There is quite a bit of disrespect associated with such statements, because the opportunity to be gainfully employed is a privilege. Ask this to someone who has been unemployed, even if for a few months, and has always feared being on a dependent visa and not being allowed to work. Sometimes, people do it because other people do it, aping doesn’t take much thinking after all. However, that is not the purpose of this post.

A certain Friday months ago, sometime in February or March, the adviser told me that if nothing works out and I am unable to find a job, he might be willing to postpone my graduation, but would cut down my salary by a significant percentage. This was obviously a temporary arrangement, more so that I could legally remain in status and keep working. Money was a shortage in the lab, so this was not one of those cases of advisers exploiting students and getting work done while paying them less. This was the opposite actually. I had nothing but gratitude for him, who understood it is not possible for me to stay here unemployed. But a reduced salary? Students do not make much as it is.

For the first time in many years, I started to notice the prices of things around me. I used to do that, almost a decade ago. Since MS Office and Excel was not in vogue then, I had a hard bound notebook where I used t write down my expenses- bus fares, food, buying stationery, etc. At the end of every month, I used to calculate my expenses and draw fancy charts and graphs to compare them. This had more to do with my love for numbers and graphs than anything else. Although I earned some money through math, science and English tuitions, I knew my dad was always there to take care of any major expenses. But that was a decade ago.

Now, I was looking at a possibility, even a temporary one, of having a slash in my salary. I started noticing the price of milk and fruits at the grocery store. Don’t get me wrong, I was not planning to cut down on food and start living a life of misery. All I am saying is that the future possibility of a salary cut made me notice things in more detail. For example, if you asked me how much milk cost me, I could tell you a range, but not the exact amount. I have never compared organic versus non-organic vegetables, I just bought whatever looked good. I knew saving $20 weekly in grocery bills wasn’t going to make me richer.

That day, I first noticed the sign at the gas station with the price of gas. Again, I could tell you a range if you asked me, but I was surprised that I had actually not noticed the exact price of gas before. I know many people who use iphone apps to compare gas prices and always go to the cheaper gas stations. I always thought that it is not worth my time and effort, saving a few cents in a few gallons of oil. I know friends who never refill a full tank, and have a weekly budget. I have never thought that would be something I am doing.

For the first time, I came home and made a spreadsheet of how much I spend on phone bills, car insurance, internet, utilities, etc. I started thinking of what I should do if I run out of money. Sell my car? It was a depressing thought, since I am very closely attached to my car. But selling my car would also mean no fuel costs, no insurance costs, and even no speeding tickets. Two months ago, I got a speeding ticket. It did hurt, shelling out $125 as a penalty. Maybe I should have been more careful.

Just the possibility of a salary cut made me notice all those things I did not care about before. I have never thought how much a tank of fuel would cost if I made an impulsive weekend trip to DC. I have never thought how much this brand would cost me versus that brand. I paid more rent to live in an apartment with a big kitchen, French windows, and hardwood floors compared to carpet.

That was months ago. Between then and now, I found a job, graduated, and today is my last day here. Tomorrow, I am driving halfway across the country to my new city. What happened between now and then, and how things worked out is something I will save for future posts. So thank God it is Friday today, not because tomorrow is a weekend and I do not have to work, but because tomorrow will mark the beginning of a new chapter of my life, and will bring in lots of possibilities of a better life.

sunshine

The Titanic is sinking … and she stays onboard

She had walked from the department to the bus stop that afternoon, feeling the weight of the world weighing down on her shoulders. It was a cold, rainy afternoon in fall, and it seemed nature was crying at her predicament. She reached the bus stop just in time to see the bus leave right in front of her. The frustration of missing a bus becomes manifold when you actually watch it leave right in front of you, knowing that you do not have enough time to run and cross the road. This was perhaps very symbolic for her that afternoon, looking at the bus full of opportunities abandon her. Although she was suitably qualified for what she was aspiring to be, she did not have that powerful piece of document that declared her eligible for the job. It was the same document of citizenship or permanent legal residence that people in the past have killed, manipulated, and married for. Neither her parents had the foresight to visit the US and give her birth there, nor she had the foresight to get hitched to someone local. As a result, despite what she would have liked to think of as spectacular and scintillating academic potential, she was disqualified for the numerous teaching fellowships she tried applying to. Apparently, she did not fall under the category of people America deemed fit to allow to teach and educate their children.

She had always wanted to work as a science and math teacher. That was her forte, her calling. That was what she did in India, and that is what she eventually wanted to do in the US. Who said PhDs were overqualified to teach in schools? She was doing a PhD, training to be a professor, but she also wanted to take a few years off first and go teach in a public school setting. She thought she would immensely benefit from the classroom experience while developing her research agenda as a professor, and she loved teaching anyway. Hence, while most people’s careers took off on an upward trajectory, she was willing to step down and go teach in a school for a few years. Don’t get her wrong when she said “step down”, for she in no manner insulted teaching in a public school as an endeavor fit for the lesser achieving. What she meant is, she was overqualified for the job, and hence thought she would definitely get it. The minimum requirement for teaching in a school is a bachelor’s degree. Armed with two masters’ degrees, and a PhD on the way, she knew she would never struggle to find a good school to start teaching.

She forgot something very basic while happily making her future plans. She forgot that she did not belong to this country. She was an outsider, a foreigner. A very unwelcome foreigner in a country where she has been told, “The foreigners took our jobs!!”.

She started looking at teaching fellowships. That was when the truth hit her. Every teaching fellowship she tried applying for specifically mentioned that they require citizens and permanent residents only. They would not sponsor her visa. Desperate, she emailed them, each and every institution, asking if they ever made exceptions for doctorate degree holders. None of the answers came as affirmatives.

There was a clear disconnect between theory and practice. In theory, she was always told by different people, at different point of time that America was in dire need of good science and math teachers who were passionate about teaching. That was when she started to think that she would be a great fit in the setting. Even her professors assured her that visa sponsorship should not be an issue. Clearly, she now knew better.

Her thoughts were mostly sad as she waited for the next bus in the rain. She realized that she did not qualify even for an interview. To deny someone the right to employment by denying them the right to be interviewed, not because of lack of credentials or enthusiasm, but because of the lack of paperwork produced as a result of a random event of being born in the United States was perhaps the ultimate example of social injustice. While America embraced international students with open arms (statistics say so, not I), they were equally reluctant in creating job opportunities for them. No one had taken a look at her academic achievements that she had so painstakingly put in her resume. She was rejected - Just like that. It was an alienating experience. She was neither into chip making, nor into programming, occupations that highly commanded visa sponsorships. She was just an ordinary human being and all she wanted to do was teach. For the first time, thoughts of going back to India seriously occurred to her. Strangely, it was a freeing, emancipating thought. Not that there were any better jobs in India, but she would at least not feel like a foreigner, an intruder. True, millions of people immigrated and embraced this country as their own. Then how could she explain the chilliness, the hostility of the situation she was facing? Certainly there was no pride in living the life of a second class citizen from a third world country, trying to fit in a first world nation. Her ideals were conflicted. She had always wanted to excel at what she did, so that she would be in demand for the quality of her work, no matter where she lived. She wanted to be so good in what she did that the job would come looking for her, rather than the other way around. Clearly, she could have all the respect she wanted, as soon as she could produce proof of citizenship.

Various thoughts and incidents from the past flashed in front of her. She remembered the woman in her late thirties she had met at the Zumba class who had beamed in pride, “Why do I need to work? My husband is a professor. I have married well.” She thought of her friend, whose husband had applied for their green card the moment she married and stepped into the country. None of these women had trouble finding legal residency in the country, and were happily and proudly unemployed. However, when some people actually wanted to work and make a difference, they were denied the opportunity because they had probably not married well. Where was social justice in this God?

She remembered a scene out of a movie she had watched in her teens. The big ship was sinking, and the affluent people left in their lifeboats one by one. Clearly, she was staying onboard, sinking with the ship. After all, she was a second class citizen from a third world country, trying to fit in.

sunshine