I’m tutoring OChem this semester, and I’ve decided that a good use of my down-time (when no students are present) will be working on the job search. (By the way, to any OChem students reading this, please come to tutoring, it’s lonely without you.) At any rate, I’ve spent the past two and a half hours emailing people on Life Connections, looking for job openings on websites, and uploading my resume. The places I’m looking at were suggested to me by one of the people who I contacted on Life Connections who managed to respond already, which is awesome.

One trend I’m noticing (and that the Life Connections contact did mention) is that almost everybody wants me to have either molecular biology or bio-chemistry lab techniques. It’s frustrating realizing that I need those skills, but it’s too late to take the classes in which I would learn them. I wish that I had realized earlier on in my time at Scripps how prevalent and necessary these techniques are; I might have signed up for different courses had I been more aware. Anyway, seeing that got me thinking about how I could possibly acquire at least a passing knowledge of these skills so I can demonstrate that I’m willing/eager to learn what is necessary for the job. I realized that one of my friends works in a molecular biology lab, and decided to ask her if she was willing to teach me some of the skills. She agreed, as long as I come in at the same time as other people she’s training; I’m very excited to learn new techniques, and am very grateful to my friend for being willing to help me. Although it won’t be the same as being “very familiar” on my CV, but I’ll at least be able to say I’ve observed and understood the techniques, which is a good start.

I also started to look at salaries for the types of jobs I’m looking for, and am excited to find out that they will definitely cover cost of living, including rent for the house I’m planning on living in. Very exciting. That said, I still managed to have my first, very, very minor panic about this whole process. I was looking at job postings on one website and there were so many and I just had no idea how to get started for a minute. Eventually I just started trying things and narrowing down and looking at requirements and it got better, but definitely had my moment of panic. Which, in a way, is good. Should get me moving anyway.

Now to go get a hot cocoa from the Motley and settle in to write about how I analyze my data for thesis. Once that’s done, I’ll have a finished first draft of my materials and methods section!