What I am up to (at work) lately..
I tried to make myself learn and grow as much as possible during grad school (and honestly throughout my life). I have had to juggle between different meetings, classes, teaching duties, workshops and conferences, proposal deadlines, hosting and moderating weekly seminars, etc on top of conducting my research.
Adapting to a new work routine
The distribution of tasks has shifted after I moved to the current institute. I no longer write telescope proposals since I am focusing on running simulations and programs on supercomputers. I no longer have to teach. On the other hand, there are many more meetings here. I’d say the only day without any meetings is Monday. Otherwise, there’s the Foundation-wide staff meeting, CCA staff meeting, various group meetings and journal clubs, scientific computing seminars, collaboration meetings, meetings with mentors, Simons Lecture series, etc. The most difficult part was to find a happy medium with my research while participating these meetings as part of the team.
Yet another pattern
However, for the past two weeks, a new pattern has emerged! I’ve been spending most of my time working fellowship applications – including writing two separate sets of research statements with completely different science goals (one high risk high reward affordable by the fellowship at a prestigious university, cf. a low risk high reward one for federal money), interviewing for jobs on a daily basis, networking with people outside of my comfort zone and academic circle twice a week, getting in touch with old colleagues who have transitioned to data scientist roles twice as week, scheduling my PhD defense and figuring out the logistics, preparing for a talk at Harvard next week, improving my resume to better suit industry hires, catching up with old friends visiting NYC (working in different sectors of the industry), spending time to carve out my career plans. With all these roles, I have to protect and prioritize my time wisely.
I am looking forward to 2020, where I know at least I would have defended by then!