It's been two months since submitting my PhD. In some ways, life has continued as it always has - working part time at the Bureau, working for one of my PhD supervisors as a research assistant on a project closely related to my PhD, and doing bits and pieces of journal reviewing and collaborations in my (now unpaid) spare time. Hopefully I'll hear back from my examiners in the next month or so, so I can finally call myself a Doctor.
At the same time, I've also been looking for jobs, so I can know what I'll be doing in the second half of the year. I've only applied for a few positions so far - I've managed to get interviews for all of them but haven't received any job offers yet, so I'm still looking.
I don't think I realised before I started how difficult the academic job hunt is. It's a global market, and across the globe there are, say, 5 climate-ish jobs advertised per day, the vast majority of which are probably too different from what I do to have a chance at - glacier modelling, or atmospheric chemistry, or deep ocean stuff. The more niche you get, the fewer jobs there are (for instance, there have been precisely two jobs advertised that relate to midlatitude/extratropical cyclones in the past nine months). This is why most people end up changing research areas after finishing their PhD.
The other problem is the well-known "two body problem". There are a lot of couples where both are academics, and finding a place where both can get academic jobs within an hour of each other is incredibly difficult, leading to a lot of people leaving the field.
But a related struggle, in my opinion, is having a partner who has an important non-academic career. My husband does not work in academia, but in business/banking. This means that if we stay in a big city like Sydney (or Melbourne), he will have zero problems finding a job. Yay! However, it means he needs to work in big cities, so we can't move to any of the wonderful academic institutions around the world that are based in small towns or regional centres.
And while English is currently the language of science, this isn't true for most other fields. We've been learning German to open up our options, but we're far from fluent yet. And many excellent academic jobs are advertised in places like France or Norway, where he wouldn't be able to get a job for a long time because he would need to learn the language first. Or maybe not be able to get a job at all, lacking any local references or connections. So while we have an advantage over academic two-body couples in English-speaking countries, we have a disadvantage in the rest of the world. And let's face it, the UK and US seem to be particularly bad places for scientists to work at the moment.
Unfortunately, for some reason scientific careers still strongly encourage "mobility", so staying at my current institution in Sydney (which I adore) apparently looks bad on the CV. This is probably one of the small things contributing to the "leaky pipeline", because women are more likely to have a partner that also has a career and thus less likely to be mobile. Maybe one day the scientific establishment will realise that most people can't just up and move their family wherever the work is and expect their spouse to just deal with it.
But for now, we're still looking for the perfect job, that allows my career to develop without forcing him to sacrifice his. I guess we'll have to wait and see.
At the same time, I've also been looking for jobs, so I can know what I'll be doing in the second half of the year. I've only applied for a few positions so far - I've managed to get interviews for all of them but haven't received any job offers yet, so I'm still looking.
I don't think I realised before I started how difficult the academic job hunt is. It's a global market, and across the globe there are, say, 5 climate-ish jobs advertised per day, the vast majority of which are probably too different from what I do to have a chance at - glacier modelling, or atmospheric chemistry, or deep ocean stuff. The more niche you get, the fewer jobs there are (for instance, there have been precisely two jobs advertised that relate to midlatitude/extratropical cyclones in the past nine months). This is why most people end up changing research areas after finishing their PhD.
The other problem is the well-known "two body problem". There are a lot of couples where both are academics, and finding a place where both can get academic jobs within an hour of each other is incredibly difficult, leading to a lot of people leaving the field.
But a related struggle, in my opinion, is having a partner who has an important non-academic career. My husband does not work in academia, but in business/banking. This means that if we stay in a big city like Sydney (or Melbourne), he will have zero problems finding a job. Yay! However, it means he needs to work in big cities, so we can't move to any of the wonderful academic institutions around the world that are based in small towns or regional centres.
And while English is currently the language of science, this isn't true for most other fields. We've been learning German to open up our options, but we're far from fluent yet. And many excellent academic jobs are advertised in places like France or Norway, where he wouldn't be able to get a job for a long time because he would need to learn the language first. Or maybe not be able to get a job at all, lacking any local references or connections. So while we have an advantage over academic two-body couples in English-speaking countries, we have a disadvantage in the rest of the world. And let's face it, the UK and US seem to be particularly bad places for scientists to work at the moment.
Unfortunately, for some reason scientific careers still strongly encourage "mobility", so staying at my current institution in Sydney (which I adore) apparently looks bad on the CV. This is probably one of the small things contributing to the "leaky pipeline", because women are more likely to have a partner that also has a career and thus less likely to be mobile. Maybe one day the scientific establishment will realise that most people can't just up and move their family wherever the work is and expect their spouse to just deal with it.
But for now, we're still looking for the perfect job, that allows my career to develop without forcing him to sacrifice his. I guess we'll have to wait and see.