Advice.

So, once again, Julian missed his Sunday posting duties. But my excuse is that I was once again away for the weekend. Yesterday I woke up in a tent on a farm in eastern Pennsylvania after an all-day Sacred Harp singing on Saturday, then drove back to Boston for another singing there yesterday afternoon, had dinner with my sister, and then drove back to Amherst at 1 am. So there. Oops.

I actually have something that I could use some advice about, for anybody who feels like reading about my job issues. I've been getting rejected from teaching jobs left and right, mostly because it's a shitty job market, as everybody knows, and I've now been offered a job to stay at Amherst and do research with a geo professor. I sent an email to my parents about it that I'll copy below so I don't have to retype it all, but if anybody wants to tell me what they think, feel free. If you're bored with this, feel free not to read it. Also, for all you non-graduates, it means that I might be around for another year...

First, a picture from Argentina:


Thank you in advance to anybody who actually makes it through this:

So, it looks like I have a job offer, but not of the teaching variety, and I would love to hear any thoughts from any of you about it. Also, I didn't get the teaching fellowship position at Nobles (near Boston), so I'm now only waiting to hear back from Fryeburg (Maine). Some of you might have heard some of this already, so I apologize for repetition.

Background: I'm currently working for Anna Martini, a geo professor here at Amherst, and a postdoc of hers. She has a grant that extends until next summer (probably until July 2010 or so) to do some microbial geochemistry research, and this is why she hired both Matt and I - we have biology backgrounds, and are interested in biogeochemistry projects. The majority of people in this field come from geology, so it's nice to have some biologists to run the biology side of things, and give a different perspective. At this point, I believe that this is the field that I am most interested in eventually pursuing - I love the interdisciplinary nature, it involves heavy amounts of both field and lab work, and it has real and important applications, mostly environmental (although in this case, also for energy supplies), depending on the project. In the project I'm currently working on, field work means collecting water samples from already drilled wells, and lab work consists of a microbiological analysis to figure out the species of bacteria (PCR, cloning, sequencing, phylogenies...ie, everything I learned how to do last year with my thesis. hence the hiring me!), and running water through a mass spec machine to get concentrations of various elements, which I am currently learning how to do.

The news: Matt just accepted a job at an environmental consulting firm in Albequerque starting in the fall. Since he won't be around, Anna now has this grant money, and the desire to keep a biologist around to keep this project going. We have briefly talked about it, and she would essentially love to employ me, full time, on this project until next summer. I would be a full time employee here, although actually employed through UMass, for some complicated reasons involving the details of the grant: she guesses that the salary would be about $24,000 for the year, and would include some sorts of health and dental benefits, the details of which I am unsure of at the moment but could find out. It would pretty much involve throwing myself into the field and lab work described above, for a year instead of just the summer. Also, instead of just going to the Illinois basin (which is where we're already going in July), I would go to Newfoundland and western Ireland at some point to do more collecting, and would spend the rest of the time in her lab here running through everything. Depending on how the project goes and the results, there's the possibility that she might try to get more money for it when this grant expires, although that's only a slight possibility right now.

The good: It's great work, I get to travel, I get a whole, whole lot of experience in the field and in the lab. Since this is very related to what I believe I will want to do in grad school, I think that working here for at least a year would give me a huge leg up into getting into a good grad school program, which I think I'm well prepared for already. I will probably be a co-author on a few papers, which is also a huge boost for grad school. The work is interesting and definitely something I would enjoy doing. I would be living in the area, which I already know is a great place to live and where I already know a bunch of people. I would also probably be able to audit a couple classes here, and would try to sit in on some geology classes that I never got to (Mineralogy, Seds), to bone up my geology chops for graduate school applications, since my biology and chemistry background is already strong enough. I would even talk to the geo department people about trying to TA a class or two - even if I haven't taken it before, that would force me to really pay attention, and hopefully would pay something extra. There's no such position right now, but if I'm going to be around anyway, it can't hurt to ask. I could also easily TA for Anna's Hydrogeology class, which I did take.

The questionable: This isn't exactly what I wanted to do for the next few years, since I was hoping to get a teaching job. However, getting a teaching job is proving pretty hard to do right now, probably due to the insane crappiness of the job market overall this year. So while it's not exactly what I was hoping for, it's a good option anyway, and something that (for the reasons above) might be a great move for the future. And, if this is just for one year, then I can always try to do something else for a little while afterward before going into grad school, whether it be teaching or thinking about the Peace Corps again, or something completely new and different. Also, while I do love this area, it might be a little weird being around here...but I think that's mostly because I'll no longer be in school, so that weirdness/culture shock will happen no matter where I end up living. Part of me was hoping to get out of this area a little bit, so it doesn't feel like I'm just spinning my wheels by staying in this now-very-comfortable-and-safe social environment. This area is moderately expensive (although if you get out of "downtown" Amherst or Northampton, less so), and none of my housing or food or anything would be paid for, but I think that the money would easily be enough to live cheaply on, which I'm already pretty good at.

Thoughts? Advice? Questions? If you made it through all of that, I'll be impressed. Any ideas you have would be nice to bounce around, since this is a pretty (relatively) big decision.

love!
Julian