Accepting a Job Offer

Commensurate with the post on academic interviewing, I am pleased to report that I have secured my first faculty position!  This is a tenure track job at a major research university in North America.

Why is this exciting?  I survived both the interviewing procedure and the negotiations for the terms on my contract.

I have previously described the interviewing process, which I survived to the best of my ability.  I had some 13 interviews that left my head spinning and my internal clock totally confused due to the multiple trips across time zones in North America.  You might be thinking to yourself that 3 time zones is not much, and indeed for one trip it is not much.  But if you factor in the 11 trips back and forth across 3 time zones in three months, this gets to be a bit excessive.  At any rate, my head was spinning. At the time I thought I had 3 more interviews which were subsequently cancelled.

Arriving home after the 13th interview, I found myself in a situation where I had one verbal job offer (in academia job offers are usually verbal first and written in paper second), and I was anxiously waiting news from 4 other places.  Over the space of the next 3 weeks, I received 3 additional job offers and 1 rejection.  Why does this matter?  Well the waiting is hard, and the timing even harder.  Unfortunately each paper offer comes with a deadline by which one must either reply or ask for an extension.  In my case the original deadline was not long enough to hear from the 4 other places, so I wasted some political capital on asking for an extension.  In addition to this, I was negotiation slightly better contract terms for myself with the employer of my choosing.  All the while I was waiting for the 4 other places to get back to me.  The hope was that someone else would give me a better offer than the original offer.  (All this is very stressful.)  In the end, I accepted the offer from the original place while having 3 back-up offers that I ended up rejecting.

I must say that these negotiations are not easy on someone who has low grade psychotic symptoms that include paranoia.  How exactly is it hard?  Well if you are prone to paranoid thinking, you may not believe that people are playing it straight during sensitive job negotiations.  This is precisely what happened to me.  I noticed the paranoia early and upped the dose of a medication in an attempt to handle these symptoms.  I am happy to report the success of these actions, as I quickly restored my normal thought patterns and successfully negotiated a contract with the university of my choosing.

Three cheers for getting a job!  Three cheers for negotiating the terms of the job! And, three cheers for surviving the interviews!

I will very soon be a professor in a science field!

Personal Electronic Medical Record

Due to my many relocations, frequent travelling  and the risks of accidents and episodes, I have decide to compile a personal electronic medical record.  Imagine the situation where a medical professional needs to treat me without my being able to provide adequate information verbally.  This could happen if I am unconscious due to an accident, or if I am in a deep state of confusion due to psychosis.  Furthermore, even when totally conscious with my full mental faculties, I usually find it difficult to communicate my situation to a new doctor.  In all these situations, it would be useful to have a personal electronic medical record to give to the medical professional.

Many people suggest to have their insurance information and a credit-card-sized list of emergency contact information in their wallet.  I find this to be insufficient for the amount of information, and I feel more would need to be told to medical professionals who know nothing about my situation.  A potential solution is presented here.

I now carry a USB drive that contains the information that is necessary.  I currently wear the USB drive on a chain around my neck, but I have seen drives that are credit-card-sized and fit in wallet.  There are even companies marketing these credit-card-sized USBs for personal electronic medical records.  At any rate there are sufficient USB options, that they need not look too tacky or be too bulky.  (An option besides USB is a SD card, which would nicely fit in a wallet.  However not all computers have SD card Readers.)

What sort of information do I find necessary for this personal electronic medical record?  Cancer.net suggests information to put in a personal electronic medical record.  Most of this information is straight forward to compile, and needs updating only once in a while.  My list of suggestions are

1. Photo of myself
2. Description of myself and my chronic illness
3. Basic info: contact info, insurance plans, etc.
4. Current doctors: general practitioner and psychiatrist
5. Family contact info
6. Current medications, dosages, reasons for taking them, and side-effects
7. Past medications, dosages, reasons for taking and not taking them, and side-effects
8. Medical history, in brief, with dates of surgeries, and other major events
9. Emergency plan for episodes

Items not included in my list that might be important:

• Family medical history
• Results from lab tests such as lithium levels, thyroid functioning, etc.

The hardest item might be (9). This is a plan, potentially worked out with family member and/or supportive friends, to deal with episodes that can hit when least expected.  My plan involves me being the front-line person for recognizing when things are starting to go south.  Some people prefer to have a friend recognize the beginning of an episode.  In either case, once an the beginning of an (potential) episode is noted, it is necessary to put the plan into motion.  Steps in the plan can include increasing the dose of some medication(s), consolidating your support system by asking family and friends to spend time together with you, having an emergency clause for when you will seek help at a psychiatric hospital, etc.  The most important aspect of a plan is to actually follow it when things begin to go wrong.  An important reason for having your plan written down is that this makes it easier to communicate your plan to new medical professionals.

So, I have said what information should be compiled and have suggested that the information be stored on a USB drive.  I have not suggested how the data should be stored.  If you go with a company such as ER Card you have to use their proprietary way of storing your data.  On the other hand, if you choose a do-it-yourself approach, you can store your information in the file format of your choosing.  I choose to use an HTML file, the format of files on the world wide web.  Since every computer sold in the last decade has a web browser for reading the file, this format is a logical choice.  Another equally good choice is a flat text file.  Yet another choice is a PDF file.

In the electronic age, it makes sense to have an electronic medical record that is kept up to date.  It also makes tremendous sense for patients to keep their own records, because this is currently the only way for multiple doctors to have access to the same record.  While keeping such a record might seem tedious, it is a way to communicate vital medical information when it is needed most.

If anyone else tries this out, please post about your experiences.  I will try to post updates on how this scheme is working for me.

Academic Interviews

Interviewing is difficult for everyone.  Imagine interviewing while managing a mental illness and dealing with low grade psychotic symptoms.  Indeed, some people would hypothesize that the stress of interviewing would make the symptoms worse.

For those of you who are not familiar with academic interviews, the process requires some explaining.  (This description is specific to North America.)  Early in the fall each school wishing to hire someone will convene a search committee.  The search committees job is to

• locate candidates for hiring by advertizing the open position, 
• invite the best ones for interviewing, 
• interview the selected candidates in one- or two-day interview, and 
• recommend the best candidate to the hiring authority (usually the dean or the department chair/head).

From the applicant's perspective, they put in their applications to as many schools as they feel will consider them and wait to hear if they have an interview.  The application usually consists of a cover letter, a research statement that describes the applicants research aspirations, a teaching statement that describes the applicants teaching aspirations, some samples of the applicants academic writing such as journal articles, a CV, and letters of recommendation.  Getting all of this material collected together can take time, and submitting an application is considered the easiest part of the whole process.  Once an applicant is selected for interviewing, they need to prepare a 45-minute job talk (sometimes a short teaching lecture or chalk-talk is also required).  Again, preparing these talks is considered to be part of the due diligence of accepting an interview invitation.

The difficult part for the candidate and for the search committee is actually having the interview.  The search committee spends a significant amount of time preparing a one- or two-day schedule for the candidate.  This usually involves arranging numerous 30- to 45-minute meetings with various busy faculty members who each have their own tight schedule.  Typically all these faculty members are from the department that is considering hiring the candidate, but in interdisciplinary situations, meetings might be scheduled with faculty from diverse departments.  To fully understand the level of planning involved in this scheduling, it is necessary to explain that that everything is choreographed from the time the candidate arrives at the local airport to the time that they leave.  It is not uncommon for the candidates every meal to be scheduled and for faculty members to shuttle the candidate from appointment to appointment.  It is considered polite and hospitable for the interviewers to manage the candidate's schedule like this.

After interviewing several candidates like this, the search committee makes a recommendation of the best fitting candidate to the hiring authority.  The candidate, knowing little of the machinations of the search committee, is simply left to wait and wonder unless they are the lucky candidate that receives the telephone call letting them know that the school will make them an offer.  For the interviewed candidates that do not receive the telephone call, there typically is no indication that they have not been selected except silence.

For the candidate receiving the lucky telephone call, the process is not over.  They have received what is called the verbal offer.  Next they are required to negotiate with the hiring authority over salary, start-up, and other terms of the contract.  It is not uncommon for the negotiations to be completed before the paper offer is printed and sent to the candidate.  Until receiving the paper offer, the candidate must be careful, because the verbal offer could be rescinded at any time.  For example, offers can be rescinded,  because funding for the position is not granted.  Therefore, the candidate must be careful not to count their chickens before they hatch and continue to make a good impression.  Once the paper offer has been given, the candidate typically has a deadline for accepting the offer and for negotiating any remaining items that have not been agreed upon prior to the paper offer being extended.

Now, having described the process of getting an academic job, I will discuss interviewing from the perspective of the candidate.  The academic interviewing process is almost ideally designed to foster extreme emotions.  The amount of ambiguity, the lack of clear communication (i.e. deafening silence), and tricky negotiations can easily inspire feelings of uncertainty, insignificance, and nervousness.  On the flip side, being invited for interviews, perhaps many of them, can inspire feelings of grandeur.  In short, academic interviewing is not for the faint of heart, because nobody feels normal during the interview process.

For myself, I felt anxious over double scheduling and missed flights.  I worried about whether my taxi drivers were driving me directly to my destinations.  I felt indicted by the people who fell asleep during my seminars.  I worried over every little mistake that I made.  I double scheduled interviews by mistake.  I hated all the travel and the many time-zone changes.  And, I felt the rush of exhilaration over being invited to interview at good places.

There are many challenges one might face during such an interview process.  I will list each along with potential strategies for overcoming the challenges.

1. The anticipation before an interview can cause insomnia.  I find it most useful just to take something that encourages sleep.  Benadryl can be perfect for this.
2. Worries about travelling, getting stuck in snowstorms, missing flights, double scheduling and other hiccups in the schedule.  I find it most useful to pad the travel schedule with a bit of extra time, so as to avoid anxiety over being late.  Beyond that a Zen approach to uncontrollable events works well.  In the worst case, medication can be adjusted slightly and anti-anxiety medication can help ease the obsessive worries.
3. The demanding schedules can cause stress due to the constant demand of trying to impress people.  I found it useful to insist on bathroom breaks frequently.  This gave me a chance to catch my breath.  Some interviews scheduled some free time to prepare for the talk.  I did my best to be alone during that time.  The most demanding schedule that I had was a 3 day interview at one university, and I got a break by asking for the dinner on the second day to not be scheduled.
4. Good news like interview invitations and offers can be stressful.  I made sure to stay immersed in work when I wasn't interviewing, so that I had something besides the job hunt to focus on.
5. Flying around a lot can be very stressful due to noisy plane, busy airports, late or cancelled flights and time-zone changes.  I dealt with this by making myself as comfortable as possible on flights.  I got a small blanket, eye cover, and ear plugs.  I made sure that my carry-on contained all the essentials, such as medications, emergency food, my computer, and power cables.  I travelled light, so that most of the time I had everything I needed in my two carry-on bags.
6. Decision making can be hard.  The offers are when you begin to see your hard work paying off, but there is still decisions to be made.  I tried to deal with this by making them as quickly as I could.  Certainly, one might be stuck waiting for more information before making a decision, but it is best to let the hiring authority know as soon as you can what your decision is.  No's are important because they might allow the search committees to pursue other candidates.

Despite difficulties of the academic job search it is likely worth the effort.  The stresses can be managed with a little care, foresight, and fortitude.

Pills on the Go

Taking pills on the go can be challenging.  If you are like me, you are more likely to miss a dose when you are away from home than when you are at home.  Of course the main challenge is that the medication is so important that doses should not be missed.  The other challenge is to prevent questions from other people about your medical condition.

How do I deal with these challenges?  Travel is required for my job, and some times a lot of travel is required.  Pills are required as well.  My strategy for dealing with this situation is:

1. I take the pills around the same time every day.  This is particularly important for people with bipolar (or perhaps bipolar-schizophrenia) which seems to be influenced by the circadian rhythm.  I use an electronic device that has an alarm set to ring every day at pill time which for me is 6pm.  
2. I do not take my pills in front of people that I do not want to have asking questions.  If I am with other people when the alarm goes off, I simply excuse myself and take my pills.  My alarm unfortunately sounds like a phone call, so I try to be polite.  Sometimes I have to pretend not to be taking a call, and later I will pretend to use the restroom as an opportunity to take my pills. 
3. I always carry my pills on me.  In order to take the pills, I must have them.  If I fly, they are always in my carry-on.  That way, if my luggage is lost or delayed, then I can still take my pills.
4. I always have extra pills.  This is in case a flight is delayed or cancelled.  The last thing you want to do when you are stuck in Chicago in a snowstorm is to worry about whether or not you have enough pills.
5. When travelling internationally, I always check the immigration and airport security rules to see if I must have with me my prescription or perhaps the original pill bottle.

These strategies will help anyone who has to consistently take pills.  In particular, people who have medical issues they do not want to discuss or have a particular timing regimen to their pill taking.

If anyone has any other strategies to share, please post them.