Check

General application - DONE
Carnegie application - DONE
Princeton application - finish end
Zurch and Toronto - finish end
Copenhagen & UCSC - needs more work

I was soooo tired after the last deadline and soooo ridiculously burned out I couldn't function properly for a while. Then I spent a week working 12 hour days on my thesis which was productive but ended up in another major burn-out. This week was Thanksgiving. I ate, played football for the first time in my life and went for a hike - November in Arizona is one of the most beautiful times of the year! I am working on another batch of applications due on Nov. 30 and Dec. 1. Half of them are regular postdocs so I am just doing a generic one-size-fits-all application. The other half are several fellowships - some of the really nice (Carnegie and Princeton), some more obscure and not as mainstream (Toronto, Zurich). Work, me, work, please! My brain is threatening a strike, I sleep 12 hours, and I get easily distracted. I do realize this is all very important but it is so hard to stay motivated when at times the "nobody loves me, am I gonna get a job" voices in my head get a little too vocal. Work, me, work! Please!

past two weeks

All right, from the end to the beginning: today I spent the day in bed and reading and I went running and I am watching a second movie. It feels good! But I am starting to feel guilty for taking the day off. Gosh that is so terrible - I am having a guilt trip for taking Saturday off!
So the last few week. I went to Boston for a conference. I gave a talk at the conference. I shmoozed with a few people, but not nearly all I should have shmoozed with. Oh well, next time. I submitted 3 job applications on Halloween and spent the rest of the evening on the patio with the friends I was staying with drinking some amazing hot chocolate and waiting for trick or treaters. Then I gave a 45min talk and got to get a free lunch and see a friend who had just moved to CfA a month ago. Gosh, I really loved Boston! And the CfA wasn't that bad of a place. In fact I somehow mirraculosly managed to arrange for them to sponsor an application of mine this week - for the Hubble Fellowship, which means if I get it the CfA would be my first choice place to go to. Second went to UC, Santa Cruz and third to Columbia. Oh, well. I am so burned out from doing job applications, it's unbelievable! Never felt so burned out in my life! I hardly got anything done this week! Oh, I still have a pile of job adds over the next two months and I really have to sift through them and figure out which ones I really want to apply for, which ones I can get out of the way now and never think of them again and which 2-3 jobs I really want to will spend some more time on the applications for.
Spitzer proposals due this Friday too. Oh, well, it never ends.

Today is a memorable day...

...my advisor gave me comments on my drafts! I can hardly tell the original text - there's so much stuff written on top of it, but it's great! I feel (masochistically) happy. I also got pedicure and manicure with a beautiful bride to be today... maybe that's why I'm happy... hmmmm

LIST!

I was at a preparation for friends' wedding tonight and the bride is so organized she had a pile of lists. So I feel inspired to start my own list here, of important things I am learning about job applications, that I wish I knew before.

4. Be proactive about things - ask people to read your drafts, talk to people about your ideas, sign yourself up for talks and conferences. That's what a good postdoc will do, and, because you are hoping to be one too soon, you should too.

3. This is from a few days ago, but bears repeating: don't rely on your adviser to help you with your research proposal. It must be your own ideas! It has to be your own writing. Get your act together and move it along!

2. Collaborate! Or be known. Work with or interact with senior people in your field OUTSIDE of your own institution! SENIOR people. Those connections will come handy when you are wondering who will write your letters of reference.

1. Start research independent from your adviser well ahead of job applications. May be a year ahead is a good time. Think of interesting things to do, write your own proposals, get your own observing time, collaborate with your peers - other grads and postdocs. These projects will lay your road to writing job applications.

enough for now, more later.

yet another day (in paradise)

Life is coming along. My research proposal is shaping up. My advisor finally read it and contrary to my expectations, didn't quite throw it back in my face. I forget if I've mentioned it previously, but some of the jobs I am applying for are fellowships and they require a research proposal that you are planning on carrying out with the money they give you. So that's really hard to do because it has to be somewhat disconnected from your thesis, and I haven't even written my thesis yet. It's difficult for way too many reasons to enumerate here. Anyways, FOUR of these fellowship applications are due next week, actually three of them are different. The problem is that the schedule is getting tight. I am photographing a wedding on Saturday, I am leaving town on Monday to go to Boston and give a talk at a conference and then, holly sh*t, give a colloquium at Harvard, submit the applications in the mean time, and come back on Friday all refreshed and ready to work on the "Holly Ghost" of job applications - The Hubble Fellowship, due on Nov. 8th! I'm getting out of breath just thinking about it! Wish I could go get some exercise!

missed oportunities

I was talking yesterday to one of my house-mates that I wanted to be a writer when I was in high-school. In fact I wanted to be a journalist. I loved writing essays, short form stuff and had some stuff even get awards. I used to get a kick out of looking at ideas from lots of different angles and going all poetic or all philosophic about them. May be writing this blog would help me get my bug back, the joy of stringing words into ideas that actually have impact and make people thing. So far I certainly haven't done that. It's been more of an outlet for stress and frustration. And that serves a purpose too, I guess. I just hope I go back to being a better person when this is all over! I hate myself being stressed, because all the worries make me self-absorbed and self-centered and I forget there is a world out there where other human beings struggle with their own lives just as much as I do. I am grateful to my house-mates for bearing with me!
So I hope that tonight my inspirational bug would come visit me again. I talked to my advisor today and though she still didn't read my research proposal, she at least herd what my proposal is all about and let herself be convinced that it was interesting and doable, which is a major stem forward! So I am going home to write! Wish me luck!

about expectations

A realization of the day. Your advisor is not going to help you with your job application. No. Read it? Maybe. But not help. Good luck!