the mooching continues

Much to my dismay, I learned last Friday that it would be another two weeks before I received my first paycheck. Schmower readers, I implore you: Is this fair?

Overall, I have been amazed at the speed at which things have moved since I arrived here at Big U. My office was furnished within a day. I had an email address, a phone number, and a voicemail account before I could say "bureaucracy." But five whole weeks of work before I get a penny? This seems unjust. The mooching off the boyfriend will apparently have to continue unabated for a couple more weeks.

There was a point toward the end of graduate school when I realized that my salary would double if I became a postdoc, but my work wouldn't change all that much. Suddenly a postdoc seemed like a fantastic idea! Even if I found my work dull and isolating, at least I'd be getting paid more for it, right? In the end, my relatively lavish salary as a postdoc didn't make a lick of a difference in my level of job satisfaction, but the promise of a higher salary did help me barrel through those final months of thesis writing.

The payroll situation now at Big U. isn't really an issue. After all, it's just a delay in receiving payment. But I have to admit that I had a moment of decreased job satisfaction when I realized that I wouldn't be getting a paycheck for a while. I started to feel (irrationally, I know) that my job was just the latest in the string of volunteer positions I'd had since leaving my postdoc.

In talking with a few people who have made the switch from research science to science education or science administration, I learned that it's not uncommon to have several volunteer or contract jobs before finding a permanent position. One woman I talked to said that she had spent about five years earning minimum wage after leaving her postdoc. Zoinks! My own period of unemployment was similar. I did spend a fair bit of time reading novels and taking afternoon naps, but I also had two fairly demanding volunteer positions that kept me busy for a few months.

The first position was as a grant writer for a small, informal education* non-profit. The company was just getting started and needed help raising money for their programs. Although there were some academics involved who had experience writing grants to large government agencies like NSF, no one -- including me -- had any experience raising money from small family foundations. Helping them out was a good experience in the sense that I learned about a side of the philanthropy world that I hadn't been aware of. I also learned how to write proposals about things that I didn't know much about. Good resume builder.

At the same time, I started going around to middle and high schools giving presentations about my brand of science. This was actually a really rewarding experience in a lot of ways. The teachers were so thrilled to have me visit their classes, mostly because I could talk to the kids about what it was like to be a "real" scientist. (I suspect that they were also thrilled because they were off the hook for a class period, since a couple of teachers actually fell asleep during my presentations.) But it was also fascinating to visit a bunch of schools within a three hour radius of where I was living and see the differences between them. Good resume builder.

Going into both of these situations I knew that I would never get paid for any of it, and that was okay. Both were good learning experiences, both look great on my resume. But I also needed to keep myself from going crazy, and they gave me a sense of purpose.

But given that my degree was a big factor in obtaining these volunteer positions, and given that I was spending about 20 hours a week volunteering, I got a bit sensitive about how much of my time I was willing to give for free. So I have to keep reminding myself that I am actually being compensated for the work I'm doing now, even if it's taking a while to turn the cranks of the bureaucratic machine.

*Informal education refers to education programs that are outside of the traditional classroom. Museums, camps, that kind of thing.