Will science for money

Last week we were in the homecountry to visit family, eat yummy food and talk to the professor I’m writing a bunch of grants with to return there. Due to the sad funding situation, he (or the department) won’t be able to hire me, unless one of the grants gets funded. We are planning to move back in a year (also because the lab that I’m in will be closing by then), so there’s still some time to get grants funded. But I’m starting to get a little panicky about it every now and then. Sure I’m applying to other places, but we also have this two-body-problem and this city and university would just be the top one choice for various reasons.

So the professor I talked to also set me up to talk to another professor who just got this big European grant. This professor had heard of me and was impressed by my skill set (literal quote:”you would be a great person to have in our department because of that”. Yay! So what could he offer me? A post-doc position for five years for which I would have to officially interview. On the one hand I don’t really want to be a post-doc for 10 years (!) but I also don’t want to work at the local grocery store when none of the grants I’m writing is funded (or when I’m applying for other jobs). So we came to the conclusion that until anything else materializes this would be a good back-up plan.

So I’m sort of happy about the prospect of at least being someone’s post-doc for a while, who would have thought that would happen? Or is this the moment when you decide to leave academia…?

Source. Hire me! I actually have more papers than him.