Interesting Development

In the interest of actually having a job if/when I finish this thesis, I've been emailing around to a few labs to see what kind of post docs positions are available. A couple of profs in California sounded interested in talking about the possiblity of my working in their labs and asked for reference letters, but now appear to have fallen off the face of the earth (I'm really, really hoping that they are just super busy right now and that it isn't because there was something terrible in one of my reference... "Beth is a hard worker, but she's not very bright" or "Beth is fine to work with as long as you don't cross her... trust me.") Discouraged by the lack of replies, I emailed some other profs, one of whom is at McGill... and to my surprize, this guy offered to phone me to chat about the possibility of working in his lab. So we arranged a phone meeting and he sounded surprisingly enthusiastic about the idea -- was talking about how he could be willing to pay me for a year while I applied for CIHR funding and when was I thinking I would want to go there and if I'm headed out east for Christmas I could go and visit his lab! And I'm thinking "whoa! you haven't even seen a transcript or my (apparently terrible) reference letters! I could be totally lying! I could have made up my entire CV for all you know!" So anyway, he's looking into his finances to see if/when he could afford a postdoc salary and I'm supposed to look into the CIHR postdoc application and get my two "in progress" papers to at least the "submitted" stage to strengthen my funding app and he's going to call me again next week. So, needless to say I'm totally freaked! It's nice to know that there is a very real possibility that someone would want to hire me, but I'm quite hesitant to move away from my ocean and my beloved mild winters! And my Vancouver Canucks!

Anyway, just thought I'd share my news (and angst) with y'all! (I imagine Sarah will have something to say about the possibility of my moving to her neck of the woods).