Decisions, decisions. There’s a lot to think about when transitioning from a postdoctoral position, and Shira Joudan takes us through the considerations that led her to ultimately take a position in a new city.
I hadn’t really made a decision about what exactly I wanted to do or where I wanted to be, and I was weighing the relative importance of location and type of career. When I first moved to Toronto, I thought it would be a stepping stone to any other city, to whatever (probably Canadian) city life took me to, but now the thought of staying in Toronto is becoming more appealing. I did my PhD at the University of Toronto and my postdoc position is at York University (also in Toronto); I had created my own life and could foresee a future there. Similarly, I also wavered on what kind of role I wanted. Throughout my PhD, my career goal was to lead a research group, and I envisioned doing that best in academia, but chemistry jobs (more specifically, for me, analytical and environmental chemistry jobs) exist in the Greater Toronto Area and found myself applying for a job with a local mass spectrometry company. At the same time, I also applied for a position in environmental analytical chemistry on the other side of the country at the University of Alberta (UofA) and heard about a soon-to-be-posted government scientist and exciting position that was right up my alley. I was at a weird, indecisive point in my life, but I remembered that applying for something is just the first step in a long process, and no decisions should be made at that point. I had convinced myself that I would get the job at the mass spectrometry company, but I didn’t get the offer. It obviously wasn’t the first time I didn’t get a position I applied for, but I kind of interpreted it as a sign that the job might not have been a good fit.
