A brief history of mine (III)

[Bee wrote these drafts before she left, and asked me to publish them while she is away for your and my entertainment. It seems she is presently stuck because her flight to Toronto was cancelled due to an upcoming storm, but I hope she will be back, soon and safely. - Stefan]

Over the years, this blog and its visitors have come to be a source of continuity in my life - the blogger software changes less often than my apartments, and my 'next-door' bloggers less often than my officemates [1]. So I want to take the opportunity to send a Thank You out to all of you. I appreciate your feedback, your encouraging comments to my post 'Timeout', and to our 2nd anniversary post. Special thanks also to those of you who sent emails or messages on Facebook.

After part I and part II, I have successfully bored myself into complete indifference towards my own CV, but here is the last part. If you make it to the bottom of the page, you are pretty much up to date. For those with less patience, the recently updated standard CV is here. As mentioned previously, I did on purpose not include any names of friends, or people I did/do work with.

---

Canada

Between receiving and accepting the offer from Perimeter Institute, Stefan asked me to marry him. I virtuously scheduled the wedding arrangements and the event itself around several conferences, workshops and research visits. The move to Canada later that year was quite painful. My furniture didn't arrive for several months, and the bureaucratic hassle sucked big time. Moves take up so much time and energy [2]. How about postdocs just get moving homes, and universities offer parking space in front of the departments?

Here at PI, I was hired as an interdisciplinary candidate, and I like to joke this means nobody knows what exactly it is I am doing. Including me. But as a quote goes that is attributed to Wernher von Braun:

"Basic research is what I am doing when I don't know what I am doing."

After some months in Waterloo, I figured out the institute's website lists me in the Quantum Gravity group. Being a phenomenologist, I spent some time trying to increase the interest in phenomenological consequences of Quantum Gravity, e.g. with the workshop I mentioned earlier, though my use of the word 'observable' for 'something that can be observed' seems to be somewhat confusing occasionally. I can't say I understand all the details of what people in that group are working on, but as in the previous places where I've been, I certainly learn a lot.

The LXD group we founded back in Frankfurt (see part I) refused to die silently. There were two students remaining who we were not able to discourage (we tried, believe me), and they had to follow their studies under quite difficult circumstances. With joined efforts of their supervisors and me, they both eventually successfully finished their thesis only some months ago. The one topic was focused on black hole production at the LHC, the other one on properties and predictions of the previously mentioned minimal length model. I found it quite touching to read in the acknowledgements thanks go to "Dr. Sabine Hossenfelder for the help and above all for the idea that is the basis for this work." Sadly enough, one of the students decided to leave the academic world after his defense, a decision I can relate to very well [3].

Perimeter is exceptional in various regards. One of the most astonishing features are outside doors on the 4th floor that open into empty space. A friend speculated they lead to invisible bridges, Indiana Jones style. I call them 'the graceful exit scenario'. Either way, one wonders what the architect was smoking while on the drawing board.

Besides my continuing amazement about the building and the (oohm) artwork distributed in it, I've developed some sympathy for the quantum foundations people, and follow my long standing (though so far rather unproductive) interest in cosmology, especially the dark matters. Recently, I developed a liking of complex systems and networks (so you'll probably hear more about that). And related, well, if you read this blog frequently you know that my interest in the intersection of natural and social sciences is more than a hobby. And of course there is the fatal attraction of black hole physics that I can't quite escape, not to mention that the idea of extra dimension still seems appealing to me. And and and.

Perimeter is a great place in that the topics of conferences, workshops and lectures are very diverse, and the interactions between the researchers are overall very supportive. If the temptation hadn't been exactly before my nose, I probably wouldn't have went to a conference on the Many World's interpretation, and chances are I'd never have heard about quantum error correction. It creates a hugely inspiring atmosphere, and as a consequence the numbers of drafts that go in and out of my drawer roughly balance each other. I add a piece of the puzzle here or there if I come across something interesting, and if enough pieces fit together the outcome is a paper.

To clean up with a confusion I have repeatedly encountered, postdocs at PI do *not* have supervisors. Neither I nor any of the other postdocs was hired to work specifically with somebody, or on a certain topic. I am, as far as can be, free to think about what I want to think about. And it is a freedom I appreciate very much.

And now

The only cloud on my sky is stated in condition 5 on my work permit, where it reads as follows

1. Unless authorized, prohibited from attending an educational institution and taking any academic or vocational training course. (Interesting, eh? Does that cover conferences? Conferences I organized myself??)
2. Not authorized to work in any occupation other than stated. (That would be 'post-secondary teaching assistance', whatever that means. Seems my entire daily work is not authorized.)
3. Not authorized to work for any employer other than stated.
4. Not authorized to work in any location other than stated. (So it's illegal to work while on vacation in Hawaii, I never knew.)
5. Must leave Canada by 31 Aug 2009.

Meaning I have to write applications - again - this fall. Which, after all these words, eventually brings me to the reason of my current tiredness.

I've been in the field for more than ten years now. I've had contracts for a year, for 9 months, I've even had a contract for 6 months. I moved 5 times in 4 years. I have three different social security numbers, but I'm not sure if I'd qualify for either of their benefits (actually, I have four, but that's a longer story). Each summer I try to arrange my conference participation with meeting friends and family. My contact to them is an annual briefing with the essentials, who got married, divorced, died, lost his job, had children. I have no retirement plan, and my unemployment insurance is basically non-existing because I've never had a job in my home-country for more than a few months (the ones that I've had were tax-free scholarships which doesn't count). Since I've never had a regular income, no bank would sensibly lend me money. I vote in a country where I don't live and live in a country where I can't vote.

I'm not telling you that because I want to complain; I am telling you that because my situation is in no means exceptional. That's just what it means to be a postdoc. In fact, I believe I am better off than many others. I could live with that - if there was an end in sight.

A typical source for my frustration is attending conferences where the students of the organizers talk plenary whereas I get a 10 minute parallel session. I can't but find this ironic since I myself was one of these students on other occasions, and I wonder why I didn't stay in the community I come from, and let myself be handed over through the usual connections. Wouldn't one expect that after having passed all these exams, after having published more than twenty papers, and having given an increasing amount of talks, people would at least pay a minimum amount of respect to you? Would maybe at least consider that you aren't stupid by default, just because they've never before heard your name, the name of your supervisor, or because they don't know the place you've graduated? Doesn't that ever stop? How old do I have to get until I have proven I am qualified?

And it doesn't help either if friends recommend just not to attend these conferences - that certainly won't improve matters. If I'd get a penny each time somebody tells me 'sorry I forgot about you', if I'd get a penny each time somebody postpones an appointment, forgets about a deadline, or a favor I have asked for, if I'd get a penny each time somebody thinks he's too important to listen to me, or mistakes me for the secretary, I wouldn't even have to bother applying for a new job. But I don't get pennies, I just get grey hairs. I've long left that age in which I am eager to read Mr. Important's paper/article/book just to leave a good impression, always with the omnipresent 'letter of recommendation' in the back of my head.

Coz that's what it is like, being a postdoc. After all, what counts are the letters. And just thinking about sending out a pile of applications again makes me want to crawl back into bed, and pull the blanket over my face.

I am very critical about myself because I've never worked my way into the depths of whatever field. Instead I keep skipping from one topic to the other. In an attempt to make sense of that CV of mine so far, the only pattern I could possibly find in the decisions I made is that I apparently have always chosen the job that put the least constraints to the topics I had to work on. The price I pay for following my interests is that I can't keep up with people who have specialized in a given field. And occasionally I want to scream at them I am neither stupid nor lazy - I just have never heard of theorem so-and-so, don't know that abbreviation you keep using (a very widespread and annoying habit), sorry but didn't read your paper from '86, or maybe I just don't fucking care in how many different ways you can decompose E8 or swhatever. But of course I don't. It's just not nice to remind people how irrelevant their own existence is - we all cherish the illusion that our life is somehow meaningful.

But if you give me a basis to work on, I can go from there - after all, the only thing I always wanted to do is to contribute if only a little piece to our understanding of nature's ways. I am flexible with my interests, and willing to work on a lot of topics, should they manage to catch my interest that is. Hey, I'm 31, my brain time is finite and I'm not getting younger. Call me ignorant, a crackpot, a moron, go with my mum and call me stubborn (Holzkopf!), or call me stupid. If I would care, I wouldn't still be in the field.

But admittedly I sometimes think, maybe I am indeed just stupid, and maybe I am just not intelligent enough. It's not that I don't know I should establish myself some easily classifiable program, but the idea doesn't resonate with me. I call myself a phenomenologist because the name seems to be general enough to cover in the broadest sense what I have always been interested in: understanding the world we live in.

Recently, I read in Homer-Dixon's book 'The Ingenuity Gap' species that flourish best in systems which become more complex are those specializing in exploiting niches [4]. And indeed, this is exactly what you see happening in the scientific community: an increasing specialization and the development of species that occupy niches, while structural gaps develop in the network. Not only does this clash with my personal preferences, I also believe that for scientific progress to work optimally there needs to be a balance between specialization and generalization, and this balance is presently off towards favouring specialization [5]. PI does a good job acting against this, but it is an exception in the 'system'. And I am back on the market in November, still searching for a place where I might fit in.

Sometimes I wonder if this fight is worthwhile.

Why am I telling you that

Because I see an increasing number of friends leaving the academic world. It hardly happens because they are not qualified enough, or because they discovered they lost their interest in physics. Neither does it happen because they couldn't find a job. In fact, they often quit a position they had. They just simply weren't willing to play these games of vanity any more. Many of them just want to have a job where their skills are appreciated appropriately - appropriately to their age and expertise - where they have a sensible contract, and at least some kind of stability and future options. So they go and work for the research departments of large companies, become teachers, work in counseling, in a bank, scientific publishing, for the weather service, or in a patent office.

The good aspect is I don't know anybody with a PhD in theoretical physics who became unemployed. Theoretical physicists, so it seems, have the reputation of being good in solving problems, which makes them useful for a lot of different tasks.

The bad aspect is that all these people are lost for foundational research.

And that, folks, are the selection criteria currently applied to pick the 'brightest' and 'most promising' young researchers: Those who will do well should be completely convinced of their own ingenuity, flourish without much motivation, and perform well under high competitive pressure. They should be able and willing to think in one to three year plans - for work and for life -, have connections up the latter and use them, act polically and socially smart, and should be willing to work under other people's supervision until their mid thirties.

Now I'll go back to bed and pull the blanket over my face. Thanks for listening in.

---

[1] They keep coming and leaving without that anybody even finds it necessary to let me know of it! Chances are when I'm back a complete stranger sits on the next desk.
[2] The DMV of Ontario for example, wasn't able to access neither the files of my driver's licences from Arizona nor from Germany. Not enough that I had to hand in my beautiful California licence, in exchange I ended up with an Ontario beginner's licence (they have a graded system) and a resulting horrendous insurance fee (it's about ten times higher than what I paid in Germany, though the coverage is less). Sure, I could have requested my files from Arizona being sent to me, but this would have required a signature from an US notary to confirm my signature is my signature. At some point you get just too tired to take care of all that crap.
[3] Though I've repeatedly been asked to accept graduate students, and I in principle wouldn't mind, I am presently very hesitant to do so since I myself have been suffering as a student from postdocs who had to move, or where otherwise distracted by requirements on their own jobs. Since I keep receiving emails asking for graduate programs at PI, I don't know nothing about nothing, and I'd recommend you read the blurb on the PI website. I believe they have some kind of a program, since there seems to be a program for everything here. (And I am further sure there is probably a committee to that program since there seems to be a committee for everything here.)
[4] I don't have the book with me so can't give you an exact quotation, sorry.
[5] Related: Letter in the March issue of Physics Today "Encouraging young PhDs to jump boundaries"