{"id":98,"date":"2013-07-15T13:15:47","date_gmt":"2013-07-15T10:15:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/phdcareerguide.org\/?p=98"},"modified":"2019-08-08T08:08:06","modified_gmt":"2019-08-08T05:08:06","slug":"post-doctoral-fellowships-even-more-grad-school-y-than-grad-school","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/phdcareerguide.org\/post-doctoral-fellowships-even-more-grad-school-y-than-grad-school\/","title":{"rendered":"Post-Doctoral Fellowships: Even More Grad School-y than Grad School"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>I never wanted to do a post-doctoral fellowship.\u00a0 Despite the title of my book,\u00a0<em>Surviving Your Stupid, Stupid Decision to Go to Grad School<\/em>, there was a lot I liked about grad school.\u00a0 And a post-doc just sounded like everything I hated about grad school (long hours, low pay, no respect, no defined end date) and none of the parts I liked (classes, teaching opportunities, camaraderie with classmates, beer).<br><br>But in my field, Molecular Biology, it\u2019s practically a given that you\u2019ll either (a) do a post-doc or (b) abandon the field entirely and live on an art commune in Montana.\u00a0 Granted, there are different kinds of post-docs\u2014academic post-docs, industrial post-docs\u2014but every research job seemed to require an additional 2-6 years beyond the Ph.D., toiling at the bench 12 hours a day, the only reward being an annual salary of $30,000 instead of $26,000.<br><br>I started asking everyone I knew:\u00a0 \u201cIs there a way to&#8230;<em>skip<\/em>\u00a0the post-doc?\u201d\u00a0 It was like asking whether I could skip brushing my teeth.\u00a0 Yes, um, technically, I could do it\u2014but I\u2019d only be hurting myself.<br><br>As graduation neared, I found a job at a small biotech company, where I\u2019ve now worked for more than five years.\u00a0 The company was small enough, they told me, that they couldn\u2019t really hire me as a post-doc because I\u2019d be the only post-doc at the company.\u00a0 So they\u2019d hire me under the ambiguous but not-a-post-doc title \u201cScientist,\u201d and hey presto, I skipped the post-doc.<br><br>Don\u2019t get me wrong; I can certainly see the value of a post-doctoral fellowship.\u00a0 It\u2019s a transitional time to develop the necessary skills you\u2019ll need as a scientist\u2014overseeing your own project, learning important research techniques, writing grants, and, most importantly, familiarizing yourself enough with an entire field to identify the next problems that need to be solved.<br><br>But I\u2019m still secretly glad I didn\u2019t do one.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<table class=\"wp-block-table\"><tbody><tr><td><em>About the author:\u00a0Adam Ruben\u00a0is a writer, comedian, storyteller, and molecular biologist. For over a decade, he has performed at clubs, colleges, and private venues across the country, including at some of the best-known storytelling shows and comedy clubs. He is the author of\u00a0Surviving Your Stupid, Stupid Decision to Go to Grad School\u00a0(Random House, 2010), a satirical guide to the low points and, well, lower points of post-baccalaureate education.<\/em><\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I never wanted to do a post-doctoral fellowship.\u00a0 Despite the title of my book,\u00a0Surviving Your Stupid, Stupid Decision to Go to Grad School, there was a lot I liked about grad school.\u00a0 And a post-doc just sounded like everything I hated about grad school (long hours, low pay, no respect, no defined end date) and&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/phdcareerguide.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/phdcareerguide.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/phdcareerguide.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phdcareerguide.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phdcareerguide.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/phdcareerguide.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/phdcareerguide.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phdcareerguide.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phdcareerguide.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}