The other day, I was talking with my boss about his upcoming Habilitation, which, if successful, would qualify him for a full professorship. He made a comment about how I will be doing something similar one day. "When you grow up," he said.
He reminded me that I should enjoy this post-doc stage of my career. Once I get a more permanent position, I will be constrained by the regulations and interests of the university and not as free to study what I want to study. This, right now, is the fun stage.
It's good to know what lies ahead. And I am totally having fun. I love getting the first participants through an experiment that you've put heaps of work into designing and setting up, and seeing them do in real life what you've been visualising and hoping would work as planned. I love opening up a new script in R and having the page all clean and white, ready for me to program my analyses - just like when you're little and your art teacher hands you a sheet of white paper, blank and full of potential. I love the writing, and I love knowing things.
So yes, I am soaking it up. Coming home at night too tired to function, but enjoying it nonetheless.
He reminded me that I should enjoy this post-doc stage of my career. Once I get a more permanent position, I will be constrained by the regulations and interests of the university and not as free to study what I want to study. This, right now, is the fun stage.
It's good to know what lies ahead. And I am totally having fun. I love getting the first participants through an experiment that you've put heaps of work into designing and setting up, and seeing them do in real life what you've been visualising and hoping would work as planned. I love opening up a new script in R and having the page all clean and white, ready for me to program my analyses - just like when you're little and your art teacher hands you a sheet of white paper, blank and full of potential. I love the writing, and I love knowing things.
So yes, I am soaking it up. Coming home at night too tired to function, but enjoying it nonetheless.
Things ended on a particularly enjoyable note last Friday, as I was able to conclude a day of research with more research. It was the Lange Nacht der Forschung, the Long Night of Research, when various institutes around the city come together to present demonstrations and information about some of their current projects. Like the Long Night of Museums held in October, it runs from 5pm till midnight. A well-organised and ambitious person can take in a wide variety of presentations during that time. We began with particle accelerators and ended with late-night ice cream sundaes. In between came yeast-infected corn, which didn't taste too bad, bionic hands, which I got to test out with the help of a guy who'd had one himself for the past few years, and live open heart surgery, which we watched on a big screen, in a lecture theater at the hospital. Open heart surgery. Live. There was someone in the operating room taking questions from the audience, though of course I didn't get much out of it beyond the word 'Herz' (heart).
On Saturday, I focused my investigative powers on the Lainzer Tiergarten, a wildlife preserve in southwest Vienna that actually stretches into Lower Austria. There are lots of walking paths through the woods, some leading up to lookouts over the city. It is not at all a typical zoo, as the name Tiergarten would have you believe. Instead, herds of deer, mouflons, and wild boars roam more or less free.
The boars were a bit camera shy and stayed in the distance, but the deer and mouflon were quite friendly. They'll walk right up to the fence that separates their fields and forest from the main road into the park, and eat clumps of grass right out of your hand. There are no bikes allowed in the park, which I didn't know, so I had to lug my telephoto lens around all by myself. I will go again in the summer and see the areas I didn't get to this time. Probably with just one camera lens.
And so goes another week in the life of an academic adolescent...
And so goes another week in the life of an academic adolescent...