The Beauty of a Small Research Center

By Patrick J. Bohlen

My postdoc adviser always told me that searching for a job in academe was a degrading experience. You spend years slaving away in graduate and postgraduate study only to end up ingratiating yourself to a group of people who don't really care about you, all for a job you don't really want.

I remember my first job interview. It came early in my postdoc career and was for a research position at a well-known state biological survey in the Midwest. It was not your typical academic job, but I was thrilled to have landed an interview so soon in my search.

I entered the interview buoyant with optimism. The one true academic appointee on the staff assured me that I was, by far, the best candidate, and that he would strongly support my hiring. His words boosted my confidence but, as the day wore on, I started to get a terrifying feeling that my reward for all those years of sacrifice -- doing the arduous research, getting published, finishing my degree on time -- would be to get stuck in a boring job in a dull place where I did not want to be and would never fit in.

On the last evening of my interview, I made the mistake of ordering seafood for dinner, a big no-no while traveling, especially in the Midwest. I woke up several hours before dawn with sharp stomach pains and spent the next three hours emptying my guts in the hotel bathroom. Given my feelings about the job, the symbolism of that gastric convulsion was obvious.

Later that morning, as I lay across the seats in the airport gate, forlornly staring out over the flat, stark landscape, I pondered my fate. When the plane took off to return to New York, I did not look back. I did not want the job, but like all ambitious job seekers, I wanted to get the offer. I didn't.

Fast forward three and a half years. I had become a seasoned interviewee. I was well supported in my postdoc position and not terribly eager to leave the Shangri-la of my host institute (which we postdocs lovingly referred to as the Club Med of ecology). So I had been selective in my job search. I had applied for around 25 jobs and interviewed for seven. Over the course of those interviews, I began to see that degrading experience as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see the world.

My best interview experience was at a university in Zurich, where all seven candidates for the position were interviewed at the same time. I was flabbergasted to find that the pool included some of the leading people in my field from all over the world. Certainly, the university must have made some kind of mistake in including me. Those were the giants I looked up to, and now I was standing among them as a colleague, competing for a job.

The best thing about that interview was that I had the chance to stroll the streets of Zurich with those colleagues. I will always remember that trip as one of the most enjoyable of my life. In the end, due to unresolved departmental squabbles, no one got the job.

I had other less-desirable interviews including one at a Podunk university outside Manhattan. The salary there would have been sufficient for me to stuff my family into a cramped apartment above somebody's garage. I would have had to trade my research career for the opportunity to teach evening biology classes to nursing students. No, thanks.

Finally, coming up on the fourth year of my postdoc, I started to get serious bites. Many of my colleagues were incredulous that I had not yet landed a job, and I was beginning to wonder whether they were just being nice and whether I really had what it took. My CV was looking more and more impressive. Perhaps this would be the year I landed the Big One.

During those final months of my postdoc, I interviewed at three institutions -- a large research university out West, a middling but decent university in the Midwest, and a small, independent biological station in South Florida. The big research university and the biological station were my top choices.

I interviewed at the biological station first and had a job offer in hand a month before my interview at Big U. The biological-station job was nontraditional -- it involved taking over a nascent ecological-research program on a working cattle ranch, in a remote rural location. That was not exactly the kind of position I had in mind when I embarked on my academic career but it was strangely intriguing. Big U. was a safer bet, something I wouldn't have to explain or justify to my colleagues, who would want to know if I had gotten a "real job."

The director of the biological station was willing to wait a month for me to go on my interview at Big U. out West. I had a good interview there but, in the end, I came in second. The head of the search committee sent a kind letter stating that he wished he could have hired both of us.

With my vision of a job at a major university fading, I took the plunge into a much riskier position with a less certain future.

It's been nine years since then. Now I direct a vibrant, well-respected research program that has helped elevate the stature of an already renowned biological station. As I watch my fellow Ph.D.'s wrestle with the layers of bureaucracy and lunacy at their big institutions, I wonder why I ever doubted I could be happy working at a small research organization.

My postdoc adviser, the one who had imparted his wisdom about the degrading aspects of searching for academic jobs, was equally emphatic about the drawbacks of working for a major university. A prominent public university in the Midwest tried to lure him from his position at a prestigious research institute. When I asked him how the interview went, he responded with a brief e-mail message: "There were lots of deans."

In my current position, I report to one person, who reports to our Board of Trustees. I have nearly complete freedom, maintain strong ties to universities through my research grants, and maintain close relationships with graduate and undergraduate students. On top of that, I am giving my children the rare opportunity to grow up on a Florida cattle ranch, surrounded by 10,000 acres of subtropical splendor.

My job is not for everyone, but it's the perfect job for me. And to think I used to worry about whether I would ever get a "real job." Sitting here now, with the benefit of hindsight, I'm not sure I ever really wanted a real job.