You might be asking yourself, "Why haven't there been any new posts from that skeptical chemist?" Well, the answer is professional development. Every year, the Department of Chemistry hosts a recruiting event, Sponsors' Day, where the senior graduate students are invited to present posters and résumés for the consideration of invited recruiters. This year, Sponsors' Day lined up with the University's annual career fair. Between the two, the blog had to go on the back burner. Sorry.
The career fair was, as always, a cattle call. All of the employers were looking for engineers or undergrads and I got the feeling that I had educated myself out of the job market. In any case, the winner for coolest employer must have been the Aberdeen Proving Ground. During the description of their work, the recruiter said "blow up" at least four times while standing in front of a video of stuff blowing up. How awesome is that?
Sponsors' Day consisted of me standing next to my poster for three hours while trying to avoid blinding sunlight. The only people that stopped to hear my spiel were two recruiters that had already signed up to interview me. I wondered if I could have saved myself the trouble of making a poster and slept in that day. In the end, it all went pretty well. Nobody noticed that I had written "Colymerization" in my poster title, and I got five screening interviews with some good employers.
The dark horse employer was VWR, which was recruiting PhDs for management and sales positions. I'll admit that the thought of giving up research has occurred to me (and pretty much every PhD candidate that I know), but I'm not sure that I want to give up all this fame and fortune just yet. Seriously though, I imagine that getting back into research or academics would be difficult after a couple of years if I decided that I didn't like management.
Showing posts with label poster. Show all posts
Showing posts with label poster. Show all posts
Saturday, October 11, 2008
Friday, August 15, 2008
No poster for you. Next!
Today I was trying to print a poster for the ACS meeting in Philadelphia and I learned a couple of things about how the HP DesignJet 600ps handles errors.
First of all, the department has a lousy print queue for this shared machine. It's connected (via the network) to a Windows machine and shared via Windows Printer Sharing. It requires a username/password so that users can be billed. However, it does not work with Apple machines even though a large fraction of the users have them. Also, there is no way to see if a job has been queued or check your status in the queue or cancel a pending job. It is truly fire-and-forget.
Anyway, I queued my print job at 11:30 AM and waited four hours for my turn. The printer ran out of paper about three inches from the end of my poster. Damn. The printer was fed a new roll of paper and began reprinting the job. However, after about four inches, it stopped mid-stroke and spit out the sliver of poster. I don't get it.
I waited another four hours in the queue for a second copy. Again, only inches from the end, the printer ran out of magenta ink. Instead of prompting me for ink and waiting for a fresh cartridge, the printer spat out my incomplete poster. How is that in any way appropriate?
By this time it was 8:30 PM and there was no way to get into the supplies cabinet so I went home. Fortunately, I have an old version of the poster than I can take with me. I'm guessing that when I get back from Philadelphia a pristine copy of my poster and bills for three posters will be waiting for me.
First of all, the department has a lousy print queue for this shared machine. It's connected (via the network) to a Windows machine and shared via Windows Printer Sharing. It requires a username/password so that users can be billed. However, it does not work with Apple machines even though a large fraction of the users have them. Also, there is no way to see if a job has been queued or check your status in the queue or cancel a pending job. It is truly fire-and-forget.
Anyway, I queued my print job at 11:30 AM and waited four hours for my turn. The printer ran out of paper about three inches from the end of my poster. Damn. The printer was fed a new roll of paper and began reprinting the job. However, after about four inches, it stopped mid-stroke and spit out the sliver of poster. I don't get it.
I waited another four hours in the queue for a second copy. Again, only inches from the end, the printer ran out of magenta ink. Instead of prompting me for ink and waiting for a fresh cartridge, the printer spat out my incomplete poster. How is that in any way appropriate?
By this time it was 8:30 PM and there was no way to get into the supplies cabinet so I went home. Fortunately, I have an old version of the poster than I can take with me. I'm guessing that when I get back from Philadelphia a pristine copy of my poster and bills for three posters will be waiting for me.
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Traveling chemistry show
On Friday, I woke up at 2:30 AM and drove to Cleveland for the PINO 2008 conference at Case Western Reserve University. Rong and Shikchya from my lab also made the trip. I presented a poster on my latest manuscript, "Copolymerization of ethene with functional styrenes, methyl vinyl ketone and vinylcyclohexane using a (phosphine-sulfonate)palladium(II) catalyst" Organometallics 2007, in press, DOI: 10.1021/om800237r
Despite my handsome poster and sharp suit, there really wasn't much interest in my research. Out of approximately ninety attendees, only three stopped to ask me about my project. Either my work is really boring or the people there weren't really interested in catalysis. Bradley Coltrain from Kodak was super nice and complimented my work, which made me feel a little better. Ultimately, the conference amounted to me driving for eight hours and standing around in a hot suit. I think that my poster needs some zazz before the ACS conference in Philadelphia.
I had never been to Ohio before and had heard nothing but rust-belt horror stories. I was pleasantly surprised by Cleveland. It looked like a pretty hip town. Even the run-down part around Lee Street didn't look too bad. Sadly, I didn't have the time or energy to take Matt's suggestion that I go to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and have my photo taken next to a sculpture of Bootsy Collins.
Despite my handsome poster and sharp suit, there really wasn't much interest in my research. Out of approximately ninety attendees, only three stopped to ask me about my project. Either my work is really boring or the people there weren't really interested in catalysis. Bradley Coltrain from Kodak was super nice and complimented my work, which made me feel a little better. Ultimately, the conference amounted to me driving for eight hours and standing around in a hot suit. I think that my poster needs some zazz before the ACS conference in Philadelphia.
I had never been to Ohio before and had heard nothing but rust-belt horror stories. I was pleasantly surprised by Cleveland. It looked like a pretty hip town. Even the run-down part around Lee Street didn't look too bad. Sadly, I didn't have the time or energy to take Matt's suggestion that I go to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and have my photo taken next to a sculpture of Bootsy Collins.
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