Tuesday, August 3, 2010

In case you’re just joining me, I’m looking for a postdoc position. One of the key factors, for me, in looking for a postdoc position is if my husband, Dr. Man, can find a job there too. We did the living a part thing for a year, which was awful (but was why I started blogging), and I never want to do that again.

In a job where work-life balance is a real issue, it’s even more difficult if you add geographical distance into the equation. The year that Dr. Man and I lived a part was one of my least productive years of my Ph.D. My mind was never focused all the way on my lab work because I was unhappy at home. And, then, when I went to visit Dr. Man, I was always worried about what was going on the lab. It was clear to me that I needed my work life and my home life in the same place. I’m not willing to compromise on that.

But people talk. There are some people who think that I shouldn’t be that stringent (after all what’s six months or so?) or people that tell me that making a career decision based on my personal life is not the way to go. And when I’m trying to figure out what I’m going to do with the rest of my life, I start to factor in what other people think or what they will say. “If I go here,” I think to myself, “Will they think that I’m prioritizing my personal life? And will that impact my future career? But if I go there, will I be unhappy for years?” All these thoughts have been running through my head over the past six months or so. Until I realized that to decide to do something as serious as a job because I’m worried about what other people will think is an awful reason to do anything.