What Is It Like to Be a Post-Doc?
“A postdoctoral fellowship is the most critical and intense period of a scientist’s career. It’s the professional equivalent of the SAT’s: it doesn’t last long, but the results have unnerving resonance. ‘A postdoc can afford to blow the first year or eighteen months of his or her fellowship,’ said [Robert Weinberg]. ‘It’s expected that one will spend a certain amount of time experimenting with different ideas, and even floundering. But after that, a hiring committee at a university may begin to winder, Does this person have sound scientific judgment? Does this person know when a problem is intractable, and can this person tell when it’s time to move on? Good judgment is as important to a scientist’s success as is tenacity or intuition.
“From week to week, month to month, postdocs must assess their progress and weigh the riskiness of a project against its potential payoff. This is the post’s conundrum. Young researchers must publish. In science, publish or perish is not a cliche; it’s book and word. A small paper on a small result is better than no paper on a cosmic undertaking.” [emphasis added] (p. 220)