Observant readers may have noticed that I have added a few new pages to this blog recently – a “Research” page and a “CV” page. Those of you who have hung around the sciencish blogs enough will realize that the appearance of these sort of pages is normally a pretty clear symptom of someone looking for a new job.
I’ve now been living and working in Bristol for almost 20 months. I don’t know if my colleagues realize this but I have really enjoyed working here. The Quantum Information group and the Theoretical Computer Science group have really been a wonderful collection of folk to work with. I would strongly recommend Bristol as a place for anyone to pursue these lines of research.
Quite a few people have asked why I am leaving if I enjoy my job in Bristol so much? Well, I could say the answer is money, but I probably could have hunted down money to stay if I really wanted to. I guess part of the answer is that I don’t want to commit to staying here in the long term, staying here probably won’t get me to where I want to be in two or three years time. On top of that I’d very much like to live somewhere that makes it easier to see my girlfriend (who lives in Germany) more often.
So, right now I’m writing this blog post when I should be polishing up my research statement to send off to prospective employers… Why am I procrastinating? Well I guess it is because this is the part of being a scientist that I hate the most. Applying for jobs has the tendency to make me focus on all my own failings, it makes me think about all those things in my career that I should have done better.
One thing that I take some comfort from has been the direction that my own research has taken in the last year or so. Being around people who encourage my whacky ways has helped a lot and now I’m pursuing questions that I think are genuinely interesting and, thankfully, it seems that other people also believe this.
Now, back to the job applications… cross your fingers for me if you are so inclined!
Brissie to Brizzle and everywhere in between 
Hi Mick, I think I perfectly understand the way you feel about applying for jobs (included the drawback of thinking about what could have been done better… ), and about the issue of separation. I am glad to hear you enjoy what you have been doing: such kind of satisfation is essential in providing the right spirit to “fight” (against “the system”?) to keep going along the academic path. I wish you (both) all the best. And see you in few weeks š
Hi Marco, thanks very much for your encouraging words.
It’ll be great to catch up in a few weeks time, hopefully our nice Spring weather will still be hanging around by the time you get here!