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Tuesday, January 22, 2013

A post-doc by any other name...



Sometimes I see people on LinkedIn change their profession from Post-doc to Research Associate. That always makes me laugh a little and until recently led me to think that those people had been a post-doc for too long, and therefore just gave it a different name. But that is not true, as I have recently discovered that Research Associate is actually a thing. Because yours truly is becoming one, which not only allows me to change my profession on LinkedIn, but also allows me to receive a substantial increase in pay (which then causes me to lose the daycare fellowship that we have, so not much of a net increase, but still).

The reason I am becoming a Research Associate is because only then can I be a co-investigator (is that the correct term?) on my PIs next R01 renewal, for which I have a lot of ideas and preliminary data. I have also been involved in setting up a successful collaboration that has led to these preliminary data. The deal will be that if we get the grant and I leave, I will be able to take my chunk of this money (which is nice, because since I’m not a citizen I am not allowed to apply for a lot of US funding). 

So this is all really nice, but of course in the end I’m still a post-doc; doing experiments, panicking about writing papers and trying to find free cookies (that’s a pretty accurate job description, right?).

7 comments:

  1. I'm still trying to find free cookies.

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  2. Congratulations! I'm finding myself both very grateful I never went through the post-doc process (I highly recommend being shunted directly to PI), and also to be leaving the granted world behind as I move on to a hard-money position where I get to solve real-world problems and publish about them, rather than competing for grant money to do what I do.

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  3. Congrats on the 'promotion' and best of luck with getting the grant!
    w00t!

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  4. Congrats, that's good news.

    BTW, your postdoc job description sounds exactly like mine, especially the cookies.

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  5. Congratulations! that sounds like a sweet deal!

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  6. Congrats. Yeah postdoc is not quite a specific job so much as a state. Technically my title has changed as my funding source has. But I've always been a postdoc.

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