Les Bonnes Choses

Warning: the following entry may be boring for those who have no interest in what I'm doing with my life, or who think that academics are weird (they are). I will also be mentioning some names that will likely mean nothing to you as though it's a big deal.


So I've been back from Italy for almost a week. 6 days ago I was walking aimlessly all over Venice. Neat place. Now that both Rebecca and I have been there individually, I suppose we should try to go back together sometime. The conference went well. I was rubbing elbows with some neuroscience bigwigs (no, literally -- at dinner, I was sitting between Sharon Thompson-Schill and Alex Martin, both of whom were egging me on to steal Ken's pizza because somehow I was skipped when they took orders, leaving me without a meal.) Unfortunately, neither Sharon nor Alex (first name basis?) had any immediate plans for postdocs. I also made friends with Sukhvinder Singh Obhi, a former UWO neuroscience postdoc, now Laurier University faculty member. He's a fine chap. I say that because he's from Britain. The best thing about talking with British people is that you can dust off and use words like "hooligan". Unfortunately, in talking with Suhk over the course of the conference, I came to realize that, no matter how much crap I already know how to do, nobody at a research-oriented school is going to look twice at my resume if it doesn't include a stint as a postdoc. For my non-academic readers, what this all means is that it is no longer sufficient to have a PhD. They had to invent something that you have to do after that!