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How did you choose your career? Was this an easy or hard process for you? If you struggled, how did you overcome these struggles?
There were a
few points of decision-making. I hated chemistry in high school — I
thought it was very boring and not connected to anything. But, when I
got to college, I had to take some science distribution classes to
fulfill my psychology major (later dropped), and some upperclassmen
recommended a particular professor as being fantastic. It turns out that
he was so fantastic that I not only decided to study chemistry, but
also that I wanted to be a professor like him and hope to inspire more
people the way he had inspired me. Towards the end of graduate school, I
was working with several younger PhD students and undergraduates, and
found it more taxing and frustrating than enjoyable. You can imagine
that this somewhat concerned me, as this is a primary function of
professors. But, I thought it could be unique to the students in my lab
or my institution, and so I went for a postdoc. It turns out, it is true
in general. Also, during my postdoc, I spent more time talking to young
faculty, and they were all fairly traumatized by the funding situation.
So, I really sat down with myself and thought about what kinds of tasks
and challenges I like, and the way in which I like to do them. I
realized, for example, that I prefer to work with real deadlines,
because they are motivating for me. Similarly, I realized that I enjoy
working with other people to develop and refine their scientific ideas
more than I enjoyed following up on my own ideas. These are important
things to know. Once I felt like I had a good idea of how I wanted to
spend my time, I took about 6 months checking ~5 job sites every day to
look for opportunities that matched with the things I wanted to do. It
seemed like the things I found interesting required more qualifications
than I had, and vice versa, until I saw the ad for my current job. Lucky
me, they agreed. Did I "struggle", or was the process "hard"? Yes, it's
hard getting a Ph.D., and it's stressful not having a good idea of what
the future holds. I imagine you mean more whether there were barriers I
had to overcome, or whether I had to try for twenty years to attain
this position, to which the answer is no — the actual mechanics of
obtaining the job were fairly easy, perhaps because I was convinced I
was the right person for the job and I was a good match with what my
future coworkers were looking for.
What kind of training, both formal and informal, did you receive to prepare you for your career?
Informally, I somehow gained a bit of a reputation at my Ph.D. institution that I would do a good job of editing papers prior to submission (both for grammar/general organization + readability and looking for scientific holes); this may have begun because I was willing to do it, but my coworkers and I were both pleasantly surprised to find that I was good at it and that I enjoyed it as well. In my postdoc, this continued somewhat — in particular, I worked closely with two friends who were preparing their proposals for their applications to faculty positions. I really loved talking to them about their ideas, and helping them to shape the resultant application to make it clear, compelling, and realistic. We also had a pretty intense journal club in one of my Ph.D. labs that was excellent exposure to the way that editors need to be able to process and integrate information quickly. Formally, the first six months of the job was at an "assistant editor" level, in which I was expected to absorb quite a bit of information about how publishing works in general, and the specific workings of our journal in particular.
If applicable, how did you select where to attend graduate school?
I was led to the northeast in general by a boy; I chose UMass in particular because I hadn't decided what I wanted to study and there were numerous professors there whose research seemed extremely interesting to me; my visit was also extremely wonderful, which helped me to feel comfortable about the final decision.
How did you choose your postdoc?
I had always found the field of protein design
fascinating, and so applied to work with the scientist I saw as leading
the field.
How long did it take you to train?
All together: Ph.D. (5 years); postdoc (2.5 years); assistant editor (6 months).
Was it shorter or longer than anticipated?
About as expected.
If you had any setbacks, how did you deal with them?
I
don't think I had any setbacks outside the normal experience of people
going along this path, or at least I can't think of any major hurdles I
had to overcome.
What was the process like to apply for your first job after your training was over? Was it easy or difficult? How did you cope with any difficulties? Did that differ from subsequent jobs you've had?
This is the first job I've had. The process was not
short (there are many things that my future coworkers wanted to test me
on), but it was not arduous.
What advice would you give to someone interested in following a similar career path?
Read a lot, and think about
it carefully. Keep track of who is doing what.
What would you have done differently in preparing for your career?
Followed
the advice above more closely.
How much do you like what you do? Why? Is it what you imagined it would be? If not, how have you adapted?
I
love it. I get to interact with the most interesting people in the
world, and talk about the most exciting topics in the world. I get to
help shape what the future of my field looks like, and highlight
research and people that I think are especially fantastic. I get to
travel to interesting places and learn a lot about the educational and
institutional systems in other countries. I would say the advantages far
exceed what I expected. The disadvantages are mostly as I imagined them
— it's hard rejecting people all the time, and the deadlines can get
overwhelming. Ninety-nine days out of a hundred, the advantages win. On
that hundredth day, you take a day off. Two somewhat unexpected
disadvantages are that I feel less able to take part in friendships with
scientists, as there are many ways for this to become complicated in
practice or in appearance, and that some scientists can take the point
of view that you're not worth talking to because you're not actively
doing research in the field. So, it can be a bit lonely sometimes on the
conference circuit.
How do you achieve career-life balance? Is this easy or hard to do? How many hours do you typically work per week?
Like
other compelling and interesting careers, it is easy to take on too many
projects and assignments and spend a lot of time doing work (or get
overwhelmed if you do want to be more committed to limiting your hours).
However, the job is also extremely flexible, so you can go to an
appointment during the day and work a few hours at night, or read papers
on the train, etc. The job also varies a lot throughout the production
calendar (the things that need to get done to publish a new issue each
month), so some weeks I am very busy and others are more relaxed. One
thing to consider is that conferences are often over the weekends (or
travel to the conference is over a weekend), so it's definitely not a
Monday–Friday kind of job. I would say that I work 40–80 hours each
week, which obviously tells you there's a lot of variability. One thing
that people think about a lot in regards to this type of question is
having/maintaining families, and there are many women and men in my
office who have children (some brand new parents), and our company
provides excellent support for these folks.
What strategies have you figured out over time to help you succeed?
I have better organization skills now than when I started in this job. I am better at finding information that I need than I used to be. Of course I'm also 4 years into the job, so I am just a lot better/faster at doing the normal things I need to do.
How do you see your field changing in the next 5–10 years?
I
would like to think that more journals will adopt professional editors,
as the number of journals and thus number of referees required to look
at a single paper is getting (or is already?) unmanageable. One fairly
conservative prediction is that we won't have print journals in 5–10
years; this has already led and will lead to more opportunities to be
creative about publishing.
Anything else you would like to share?
That's it! Good luck.
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