Interviews are intimidating. So far I’ve done 3 Skype interviews for various positions - post-doc, visiting faculty, and faculty. I’ve also received two rejections from post-doc applications and have many more still in review. So, I’ll take you briefly through my day at Baylor so others can gain from my experience!
I was given a schedule with lots of appointments the night before. My first big meeting was with administration (vice provosts for various colleges and a dean), so that was a little intimidating but it went well. They asked about my research, why my research was important, how I would get funding, and other similar questions. I was allowed to ask several questions at the end and the whole meeting was about a hour. The next hour was spent touring the campus and the department, seeing the teaching facilities and lab spaces. Also, meeting lots of grad students along the way!
Until lunch, I spent time meeting with faculty members in 30 minute blocks. This was a good opportunity to share my interests and ask questions to people who had been at Baylor of a long amount of time. I went out to lunch with 5 graduate students in the department. I’m much closer in age to the students than to most of the faculty so this was a good opportunity to see how they felt about Waco, the department, and their studies. There was a recent collaboration with the anthropology department on a paper that suggested hominids were at a specific site, this pushes the timing of migration and has big implications. They submitted a collaborative rebuttal to this recent paper and it sounded like a really great collaboration and opportunity for them.
I had a few more faculty meetings in the afternoon, including one with their retiring paleontologist. It was really great to sit with her, discuss coursework, the changing department, and fossils (of course!). After my next meeting, she grabbed me again so we could look through some fossils. There was a really influential blastoid worker that worked at Baylor for many years. As most invertebrate paleontologists, I assumed he hoarded much of the specimens he collected. Everyone was very impressed I knew about the collection as many of them did not! There were more specimens than I could have imagined and so many cut specimens to look inside the creatures. Over 3 lane specimens cabinets filled with blastoids!!! And then more sprinkled around the room. It was spectacular.
After examining some of the fossils, it was time for my departmental seminar. I spoke about my efforts to look inside fossil specimens with old and new technology. I received some good questions after the talk and people were interested in the 3D printed models I brought along with me. After my talk I spoke with some students about forming an AWG chapter at Baylor and how they enjoyed the department dynamics. They dropped me off with the specialist in environmental fluid dynamics. I was eager to talk with him about working toward simulating functional morphology. He has fantastic suggestions and we then talked about machine learning a lot and the potential to increase speed and efficiency on some of my projects.
I was then taken back to my hotel and had about a hour and a half to rest before dinner. I went out with two of the faculty members where we talked complex methods to cats. We went out for pie after and the girl gave me two pieces so I took one back and will eat it after my long day today! I fell asleep before 10 PM, I was sooo exhausted from talking all day! Hopefully I can make it through day 2 without any mishaps!
