There's been a fair bit of moping around in my lab lately. These days, with tenured faculty downsizing their labs, junior faculty closing up shop or barely keeping their heads above water, and senior postdocs finding hiring freezes everywhere, the anxiety in the department is palpable.
But there are two pieces of good news that have, at least temporarily, dispelled the gloom-and-doom mentality.
- A postdoc in my lab just got a tenure-track job offer. A female postdoc who is married, has a young child and is pregnant with her second child. Nothing like a success story and a celebratory lab lunch to cheer people up.
- My hijacked manuscript has finally (and unexpectedly) been liberated. I can't say why or how, but now it's full steam ahead to get it submitted. I might even get to be on a patent resulting from this work.
By next week, I'm sure we'll be back to trading stories in lab about junior faculty we know who have no grants and are rapidly running out of start-up funds. But for right now, things are looking a hell of a lot sunnier in my little corner of academic research!
14 comments:
Wonderful news, Mad Hatter! With all the gloom in the biomedical sciences these days, we need these little success stories! And how wonderful to hear that pregnancy and motherhood (despite what some of us fear) did NOT hold back your colleague from getting a tenure-track job!
Wow, those are good news! Glad to hear your manuscript is on the way to submission!
Woohoo! success is always good. Great to hear about the post-docs. Times are changing, slowly but they are!
Excellent! And just before the weekend.
how nice of you to share happy on the late Friday! i needed some good news!
Have a great weekend!
I totally sympathize with the hijacked manuscript misery. Except in my case, it was my PI, and it's not over yet.
So I'm really happy for you about that. I hate it when anyone's work is stopped from the light of day.
Wish I could be happy for people getting jobs and having babies, but I just don't have it in me right now. I guess I'm glad you're cheered up by other people's good news?
How nice to hear some good news from the job market. Good luck with the manuscript!
Awesome! Thanks for sharing the good news.
YAY for good news!
:-). Excellent.
Well, given how much whining and complaining I do on this blog, I figured it was only fair to also post the good stuff! :-)
Bean-mom and ScientistMother--It is nice to see the signs of times changing, isn't it?
Chall--A happy weekend to you too!
Ms.PhD--Sorry to hear about your manuscript. I hope your PI decides to release it soon. And for what it's worth, I think it's easier for me to be happy for the postdoc's good news since I'm not in competition with her for a job.
I just went through this with a manuscript of my own (re: patent info). If you're serious about pursuing a patent, just remember ... you need to file BEFORE the paper is publicly released (i.e., accepted and put online or printed). If you don't do that, while you may have US patent rights, you won't in most other parts of the world.
I'm glad things are looking up a bit. There's just been too much gloominess everywhere lately.
Tom--Thanks for the patent tip. We are working on the filing right now, and from previous experience with the journal to which we plan to submit the manuscript, we will probably have several months to file!
Arbitrista--Thanks. I hope you and BH had a good trip and that you found peace and comfort.
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