a dress my mom worked on

Oh, just wow.

Ooh, what a gorgeous dress.

Jesse is right about it taking several weeks to find a job, I realize, so I better get my ass in gear.

I think you should start looking now, definitely. I keep forgetting that I have a lot of work experience now and that I'm not fresh out of college. Companies are much more willing to negotiate when they're hiring someone skilled, and if you want to remain for the symposium, you really can sell that to a new company in terms of your reliability and commitment.

I'd have bought it in a New York minute to wear except that color of green turns me a lovely shade of jaundiced. And I have other Rose Taft dresses in my closet that are actually much nicer. (One of which is my prom dress, which was lovely, even if it was bubblegum pink.)

a dress my mom worked on

How beautiful!

Is it wrong of me to think that, maybe, the actual process of looking for a new place may change your boss' attitude a bit, making him realize how valuable you are to the place in general and the symposium specifically?

Unfortunately, no. He believes that I'm incompetent. Before he left on Friday sort of washed his hands of me, said he was going to save yelling at me until the symposium was over, and that I was working below my pay grade.

I went in on Saturday to do all the things he suggested, and spent the better part of my friday on telecons with a member of the steering committee who agreed to give me direction and answer my questions, and with the women in charge of our registration, who reworked the budget with me, and assured me that the problems that I'm having are normal, and she'll help me with some things that have been worrying me.

I'm really trying, and i can see that some of the points he's making are valid, and I went to work on Saturday to fix the things he said needed fixing.

But, you know, he thinks it's too little, too late.

a dress my mom worked on

Oh, that's gorgeous! Such precise attuned-to-details work, and such a lovely result, too.

Isn't it incredible you can find some piece of your history like that?

Finally, after reading the article, I'm struck by a couple of things from my family history, both long in the past and now in the present. When my father got his PhD, there were about 3 or 4 months before he got a postdoc. The first month, they went to live with his parents. His father was constantly haranguing him about "getting a job!" My grandfather had come to this country twice, both times landing work as a machinist within days of arriving. No amount of explaining to him how the academic route worked sufficed. He was proud of his son, but ashamed he was unemployed. My parents finally moved to stay with mom's parents. Now, neither one of them hadn't not worked a day in their life either, as farmers and a teacher. But the teacher thing was key. My grandmother had been to college, got a math degree. She listened to my mom describing my dad's discomfort over his dad's disapproval. The next day, my grandfather put his son in law to work doing chores. Mom thinks it gave dad something tangible to show his father as work, and acceptance from some family that this lull was ok.

My SIL is chafing at the whole uncertainty of the postdoc process. Why is it not like just getting any job? Why can't *they* determine where they'll move? Can't he just go get a job? Just like my paternal grandfather, she's had no exposure to this world before her husband, and it is just foreign territory and the uncertainty is unsettling. Which I get. My brother and I grew up in academics and have remained in it. We know what to expect. Throw me into something outside academia, I'm pretty unsure of myself.

from my part of the world, boarding school=NMMI

NMMI?

Duh. I forget to translate: New Mexico Military Institute. Pronounced Nimmee. At least in my neck of the woods. High school military boarding school.