What I do at Work

As per request (of my fabulous Uncle), here is a glimpse into the glamorous life of a postdoc. I am a postdoctoral fellow. No I am not a student. No I do not take classes. It is a job. I already have my PhD. The secret mission of a postdoc is getting as many publications, grants, book chapters, and presentations as possible to make a superhuman resume that will land you a research position in some ginormous or prestigious university in 2 to 3 years (yes, I know, that is everyone's goal in life).

My postdoc is at Curtin University, in the Department of Physiotherapy and Exercise Science, working for Leon Straker, child ergonomic extraordinaire (apparently he has ergonomic groupies). Basically, I do a lot of writing. Most of my day is spent sitting at a computer, drafting journal articles, research and reading journal articles, drafting grants, or playing with the "fun" statistical packages of SAS and now Stata.

The main project I'm working on now is Curtin University's Activity, Food, and Attitudes Program (CAFAP), a healthy lifestyle intervention for overweight and obese adolescents. I'm at a university, so there are obligatory seminars and presentations to get through (I mean to network and collaborate).

 Being an academic, of course most of the day is spent generating Nobel prize worthy theories, critical research methodologies, and groundbreaking statistical approaches.

 These guys are experts in back pain, but here they are also discussing the deathly pale skin complexion of a 'colleague'.

We love sitting around talking about bootstrapping. Or pirates. Or cowboys. Or both.

But it's not all writing and pontificating in the ivory tower. I've been lucky to meet a few of the teens and their parents during data collection for CAFAP. As I've mentioned, I'm responsible for starting up an activity monitoring component of a research study the involves putting Actigraph, ActivPal, GeneActiv accelerometers and a SenseCam (which took some of these lovely pictures) on 23 year-olds. This study is at the University of Western Australia on the other side of the city, which means at nights and in the mornings (it's part of the Raine sleep study), I get to pedal over to Curtin's rival campus. 

 I think I luck out with the scenery along the way...

 At the sleep lab, I'm helping to get the stunning research staff trained to initialize and download all the monitors, and I'm helping to explain the process to voluntary participants as we work out the kinks. These participants are FANTASTIC. They have been in the study for their entire lives, with data collection every 2-3 years, and they HAVE NOT BEEN PAID A DIME. Try that in the United States. How many participants would be in the year long Energy Balance study?

 

Kinks, like devices not working this morning. Grrrrrr.

We also drink a lot of tea at work. And other beverages. Because we're in Australia. We have morning teas, afternoon teas (we have one tomorrow), and after presentation celebrations. The office has a complete set of wine glasses.

And yesterday, we learned some African Drumming. Because who wouldn't do that at a work Christmas party? (or play Never have I Ever with your superiors?)

Surprisinlgy, it was actually a good time and made for some quality coworker bonding. 

After 3 months, I can say that I'm interested and passionate in the research I'm doing, am excited for the opportunities I will have, and work with not only smart but some of the most genuine, thoughtful and kind people I've met. So far I have no complaints (give me another 3 months). Except maybe our office is too cold and has no windows. But overall, the life of this postdoc is not too shabby.