The Panic Sets In

On Friday I found out that I will indeed be interviewed for the academic posting for which I applied, here in the small city where we live. I know what the department wants in a candidate, and I know that I'm not the only person on the planet that can do the job. I also know that there are certain aspects to hiring me that would make things easy for them: I've been doing this academic thing for a while, I know the ropes, I know how to do the specialty stuff that they need me to do. Do I know how to find $250K to buy a new diffractometer? I've been looking into the CFI website, and it looks as though they've changed some programs so I will be eligible to apply. This is good news, because I thought for sure that there wouldn't be anything that would work out for me in that area. There is a lot for me to do in the next week...and the interview is on March 1. Not a lot of time. I'm the first of four candidates to be interviewed, so does this mean they love me already and want to compare everyone else to me? or does this mean that by the end of March they'll have forgotten about me and all the things I promised them? And if I don't find out about the job until April, what will happen to the NSERC grant that I applied for this fall? All these questions, no answers. The problem with the NSERC grant is that it would be awarded to me via my previous institution, but I had to resign from that job in January, and I did that. I didn't have to resign, but I had to tell them whether I was returning, and since I can't lie, I told them I wasn't. So if my grant sits with them for more than a microsecond, they're going to have to tell NSERC that I resigned, and if that's the case then the money will disappear before I have a chance to say, "But I have another job!!".....if indeed, I do have another job.

It's a bit of a pickle, but it might only mean that I have to reapply in the fall, which I would do of course and which would be fine, it would just mean that I'd be without grant money for eight months. I assume that I'd get some startup funds from the U, so the grant wouldn't be a huge deal, but applying for money is always a pain in the ass. Of course, being at a larger school I'd be applying for money a whole lot more often than I ever did at the previous place.

There are moments, fleeting, when I don't want the job. I don't want the work, the expectations, the feeling that the research is just a waste of time and isn't going to change the world, the comraderie, any of it. Sometimes it would be just as nice to stay home and knit.

Like, I could finish this sucker:
which is my brother's Christmas sweater....well, it's the back of it. I could finish it anyway, because it's the perfect procrastination project. The pattern is easy (it's out of the Vogue Winter 06/07 issue, and I hate the neckline by the way but I'll alter that when I get to it) so I can watch tv (and crap tv it is, except for Battlestar Galactica, which I actually cannot knit to, because I have to read the subtitles and yes I'm pretty deaf but I'll talk about that a different day) while I work on it. I do have to look down at the thing once in a while, which is why the subtitles are a problem...but mostly it's mindless knitting. I'm using the Elann Peruvian Pure Alpaca for those who care about that kind of thing, and I'm using it double and this sweater? Is going to be the hottest thing going once it's done. When it's -40C with the wind, or even without it, Bro will only need a nylon shell over this garment. And for those who have astutely noticed that it is now February 21, well past the Christmas season, you need to know that this project is currently on its third and final iteration, that it took forever for me to settle on a pattern...I considered designing but that would take an extra year...so it wasn't actually started until January. And I knit really, really slowly, sort of. I'd knit faster if I didn't have so much other crap to do.

Like make a talk for a research seminar I have to give at this interview next week. Never mind the worry over grant money, I have no control over that anyway except to put in a couple of well-timed emails and keep my fingers crossed, let's instead worry about this whole research presentation thing. Let's worry that since we've been doing nothing except teaching first year chemistry for the last six months, that we sort of don't really have a good grip on what it is we do. Sure, I have a vague idea, but you know how you only have so much room in your head for information? Well, given that and given the fact that I really am full up with the information right now, and since research isn't exactly a priority seeing as how I can't actually do any of it while I'm teaching part time (not having a lab or anything) and looking after kids and having my day totally interrupted by my own inability to concentrate on anything.....the research has gone down to the back of the filing cabinet in a drawer marked "Beware of the Badger". (for those of you who don't know that reference, shame on you and go look it up). You can see how this is a problem. I have looked through previous power point presentations of my research talks, and apparently I'm pretty good at what I do; while reading I found that I was interested in what I'd had to say, after all. Somehow, a week from today, I have to renew my motivation for this work and make my potential colleagues believe that my particular brand of snake oil is better than anyone else's.

And the panic sets in, and it will probably stay with me until sometime late Thursday night and I am so, so sad that I can't come home after dinner on Thursday and have a great big drink, but I have to teach on Friday morning....but it's cocktails at 4:00p.m. Friday kids! Martinis all around! (Thursday night they are taking me out for dinner, and guaranteed there will be drinking, these are chemists after all, and we drink, but it won't be the kind of drinking where we all start slobbering and saying, "OH man, I loooooove you guys," and then the crying starts. That's what I'd like to do, and then not get up on Friday until about noon, when the hangover subsides and they call me and say, "We told the other candidates to go home, we're hiring you," because that kind of thing happens in academics all the time......if you believe that by the way, then you are too cynical for words. It never happens.)