soapbox

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could just say “I want X job doing Y at Z location”?

This week has had ups and downs in the job search.

First, the most geographically disadvantaged job that I applied for told me that I’ve made the final three in their search. It’s a tenure-track job at a small liberal arts college even. Unfortunately, taking the job would require living away from the family for at least 18 months and I’m just not sure I could do that.

Second, the geographically blessed job I applied for turns out to be contingent on someone becoming an astronaut. It said “contingent on funding”, but what it’s actually contingent on is the current post-doc in the position getting through the last couple of hoops to become an astronaut. Then there’s an open space that will have funding. Frankly, I’m a little bit pissed. “Contingent on funding” in my mind is we think there’s a good chance of getting a grant so we’re starting to look now… not “there’s a chance that maybe one of our people might be leaving and we want to keep our bases covered.”

An astronaut. That’s hard to believe.

Two more applications to hear about. If they fall through I’m going to be spending time at the playground.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 4th, 2009 at 5:24 pm and is filed under politics, work. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.