debor042

According to legend, the story of the career of a biology PhD used to go like this: 1) student joins a lab, 2) student spends 4-8 years doing research and honing specific skills in their chosen field, 3) student gets a tenure-track job at a college/university and becomes a professor after 5 more years or so, 4) with essentially a guaranteed job for life, professor gets to do interesting scientific research and live happily ever after. Somewhere along the way another step was added between steps 2 and 3 (step 2.5: the post-doctoral research position). This story, whether actually the norm or not back in the day, is clearly not the story today. And it's freaking a lot of people out. It feels like almost every day I read another article or blog post about how screwed biology PhDs currently are in terms of the job market. Whether its the Washington Post  or the Atlantic Monthly  or many other news outlets, the prospects don't look too good in academia for biology PhDs. This "c...

As I sit here struggling to write my very last blog post, I wonder "What can I leave people that they'll find useful in any way?"  I could provide meaningful insight on what it was like being a graduate student in my lab, but my thesis sucked all the meaning out of my brain and suddenly I can't even manage to put two sentences together that make sense.  So instead, the most useful thing(s) I can leave you all, is (are) my bookmarks!  Those that know me know how incredibly organized (read: obsessive compulsive) I am, so over the last 2.5 years I've collected quite a bit of useful internet knowledge and organized it into various categories on my computer.   So, as my parting gift to you, I leave you these helpful links on everything from job sites, to SAS codes, to data portals, and most importantly, sites for procrastination.  I can't promise these links will stay active forever, but last I checked they worked.  So enjoy! GIS DATA From here . FIU GIS Center ...