Dr. Shellie

I am still strangely annoyed about my photo-taking session. Here’s how it went. I woke up as usual, and instead of going to work, spent an hour digging through my clothes to find something appropriate for photographs. Then I spent half an hour emailing the grad students in my lab to see who could help me out as assistant photographer. After that, I went to borrow a digital camera (nice. Nikon N70– an SLR) from a lab on campus. One grad student who works with me helped me out by taking photos in different spots around the office and lab for half an hour before his class, at which point I had to track down another grad student. After shooting, I downloaded some image processing software on my computer and uploaded the photos. Editing them took another hour or so, including picking out the best out of the hundred we took (even for professional photographers, the percentage of usable photos is always low– and one of the grad students hadn’t done much photography before). Finally I went through the best picks and did some cropping and minor edits. Sum total? 7 hours.

I enjoyed playing with the N70, and was happy to be taking photos again. But I suppose I am still annoyed that I am expected to be doing this at all. The life of a postdoc is somewhat precarious, in terms of status. Sure, you are not a grad student anymore– you have your PhD. On the other hand, you are not a professor either– and your time is not perceived to be nearly as valuable as someone with a "real job." Or so I fear. Maybe I need to start valuing my own time more (like not going to the dentist in the middle of the work day!) and asking other people to, too.