I keep shifting between being completely overwhelmed by the job search and feeling completely in control of it. Last week I emailed a Scripps alum through the Life Connections section of the student portal, and was amazed at the response I got. The woman I emailed was a neuroscience major who now works in Seattle, and she had an amazing list of places I should check out for possible jobs, things I should look for that will make a lab experience good, and things I should watch out for.

One of the things that she mentioned that I’ve noticed being important to me so far is that I should be wary of places with an unspoken code that the newer people will be working nights and weekends in addition to full daytime hours. I’ve already noticed several job postings that say things like, “Applicant must be available to work some nights and weekends.” Those are labs I will not be applying to. It’s not that I necessarily would mind working some nights and weekends; there are projects that require that kind of time commitment, and I hope to be genuinely excited about my work to the point that staying overtime is rewarding. On the other hand, though, I don’t want to feel like I have to be in lab all the time or I’ll lose my job.

I actually haven’t done as much work-searching this week as I would like. With the Society for Neuroscience meeting coming up the weekend after this I’ve been busy with lab, both working on the poster I will be presenting and finishing up some data collection. Total I wound up spending somewhere around 22 hours in lab this week, 9 of which were today. However, despite yesterday’s lab work being frustrating and making me question why I do this, today’s lab completely made up for it. I got some really exciting new data which I’m really looking forward to analyzing and presenting. Plus I mentioned an experiment I thought would be interesting to do that is relevant to my thesis, and suggested that my professor hang onto it for a future project (thinking it would take too long to do this year), but she thinks we have time to do it! I really am lucky to go to a college where professors are so willing to listen to students and let them really be part of the research.

For the conference, I need to start to come up with some concrete plans and strategies for meeting people who could help me find a good lab to work in. The program is posted online, so this week I will be going through it to look for relevant talks, events (there is a job fair there that I am planning on attending), and labs I might be interested in that are presenting. Last year I wandered around the posters for a few hours each day and just asked questions of the people whose research happened to catch my eye. This year I think I will try to be more directed about it; asking not only about the research itself but about the experiences of people in the labs. I will also be trying to target labs which are located in and around the Seattle area, more than just in topics I think are cool.