Moving forward?

This post is my contribution to June 2009 Scientiae Carnival hosted at Sciencewomen blog this month.


I do not think I am moving forward. I think I am stuck. I am stuck in an unhappy postdoc*.

Last year I wanted to go abroad. I wanted to change the environment and to continue on the research topic from my first postdoc, which is different from the topic of my PhD. I wanted to continue to make a shift from one field to another.

I chose to come to Japan for one year postdoc. I could have stayed in UK for a three year postdoc, but this would take me back to my PhD discipline. And I really wanted to continue in the new discipline! I chose to go to Japan even though the UK group was well funded, well organized, with a great leader professor and did excellent research. I decided to risk it for the group about which I knew almost nothing. I did not know anything of the things I knew about the UK group and I could only judge it on the professor’s publications output.

And those things, like funding, atmosphere, how well organized it is, leadership skills of the professor turned out to be pretty damn important! The Japanese group is quite well funded, but ordering things is difficult and takes a very long time. The group works in a slightly disorganized way, trying to follow the changing moods and ideas about experiments of its leader, Big Old Professor, who has got quite an absent* approach to management.

The workplace is self-regulated by Japanese workplace rules. It is regulated by previous experiences of my direct coworkers, who were brought up to believe that Japanese approach to workplace organization is superior. I think that this is because of the expectations of me to conform I had a problematic relationship with a senior postdoc in our group. He was abrupt and unpleasant to me a number of times.

I am not happy with the environment, with the slow pace of research progress, with the research topic and with lack of communication with my supervisor. I did not want to turn into a new Ms.PhD, there is already one in the blogosphere, and her blog is a warning sign for me what happens if you decide to hang on and stay in toxic research group environment for too long. I decided to leave.

The progress I am making now it to make it happen.

I have been looking for jobs since January. I found a perfect offer and I am in ongoing negotiations about the start of the new postdoc. This offer also came from Japan, from Young Professor who works in the discipline in which I want to specialize.

Now, quitting a job is not easy in Japan. My contract states that I need to get permission from my employer. While the employer specified on my contract is the school I work at, it is really up to my boss to give me such permission and why would he do that?

He wants me to work on his research topic that he has the grant for, and to stay here till the end of the year. He does not care that I would like to leave. He will do everything to make me stay. Or to force me to breach the contract, so that it is me who takes the blame.

Big Old Professor has already taken action to stop me from leaving. The best way to do that was to interfere with my new job offer. BOB had phoned Young Professor, my potential future employer, and threatened him that if he employed me he would be breaking the law, because my contract here is not yet finished. And in this way BOB managed to destroy this option, my opportunity to move to another job. It is now impossible for me to start there this summer the way it was planned.

The only way I can now possibly move to this new job is to leave Japan for a few months, break my contract by leaving without permission and hope that the school terminates my contract (fires me) when I do this. I can then keep my fingers crossed that under such circumstances the employment with Young Professor’s school will be at all possible in the future.

Why could it become impossible? Young Professor told me that I need to make sure that I quit my job “properly officially”. I am trying. I first gave the resignation to my supervisor, Big Old Professor, in a face to face meeting, trying to explain my reasons. He ignored my resignation. Later I gave a Letter of Resignation to the school office and they gave it to BOB.

He called a meeting where he was telling me that I am selfish and egocentric and that I must tell him what the real reasons for my decision are, as he does not believe that this could be my unhappiness. “This is irrational, tell me the real reasons!” I cannot tell him the real reasons, I am culturally bound to stay mum. And regardless of whether I do or not tell him the “real reasons” he will retaliate and hate me anyway.

At the end of the meeting he told me that he will destroy the letter, so that we can continue to pretend that this has never happened.

I am stuck. I am unable to leave. If I leave without permission my employment prospect in the new place may disappear, because I did not follow “proper official procedures”. But I do not know what the “proper official procedures” are, no one knows. It is a game where my proper official resignation may disappear as if it never existed in the first place.

I do not want to waste my life and stay here for another half a year. I want to break out of this prison, yet I do not know exactly how to make it happen...

So here are my answers to this month Scientiae Carnival the questions:

What keeps me moving forward?

Hope.

How am I moving forward in life?

Slowly.

scientiae-carnival

* by "postdoc" here I mean a position/job as a postdoctoral researcher
** he is either absent because of travelling, or because he is busy with other things