Since I haven’t updated this blog in a while, I’ll start by
saying that even with a K99, a good number of publications, and a pretty famous
postdoctoral co-mentor, I only got two interviews from the roughly 100
applications I sent out.
I wrote about my first interview in my last post, and even
though I did like the school and the people there, it was in a city that is economically depressed and far away from family, and overall made me feel anxiety about potentially having to move
there. What was even worse is that I
didn’t hear anything about their hiring process for months.
I felt defeated and scared to death the day that I had to
email the NIH and ask for an extension on my K99 because I hadn’t secured a
faculty position. Luckily, the people at the NIH were totally responsive and
reasonable and gave me up to a year extension for the due date of submitting my
R00 application. However, this did not
come with any more money. So my mentor
had to start paying my salary again, which meant a major pay cut and a major
blow to my self-esteem.
I was still clinging to the notion that the perfect job in
my dream east coast city was going to appear even though I knew the hiring
season was basically over. I was
checking job postings multiple times per day and a very late job posting did
appear at a major university in a Midwestern city that I had travelled to many
times during my childhood. Leaving the
east coast was something I was desperately trying to avoid, but I felt like I
at least had to apply since it was a really great school. I sent out this
one last application, six letters of recommendation (because they said “at
least three”), and mentioned in my cover letter that I had visited many times
and had family in the area.
