Archive for the ‘My Career and Personal Life’ Category.
16th November 2007, 09:11 am
I would like to become a professor of mathematics. How can I get to academia? I was told that applicants are measured by the number of papers they write. They expect about 3 papers per year starting after the Ph.D. I got my Ph.D. 20 years ago. I published 6 papers after my Ph.D. papers. That means I urgently need to come up with 54 papers.
There are several problems with working in industry and trying to publish at the same time:
- Some results derived at work you can’t publish because they are proprietary.
- Some results derived at work are classified.
- Journals want simulations; that means you may have to depend on colleagues.
- If your project is closed before your group finishes your simulations, you have to put your paper on hold.
- Also, if your paper is not directly a part of your project, you can’t use your official work time to write your paper.
Because of these obstacles, the papers I have started at my job are on hold. It’s unlikely that I’d be allowed to finish them during work hours.
So I started writing non-job-related papers on my weekends. I started doing this seriously a year ago. It goes very slowly and I hope to publish three papers soon, but my speed needs to be much higher than that to catch up with the 54 papers I didn’t have time to write while being a single mom and providing for my family.
So, I came up with this idea: to quit my job and write papers. I do not have enough money to support this idea for very long. Certainly, not enough time for 54 papers. We probably can survive on my savings for half a year. My goal is to write as many papers as I can in half a year and see what my real speed is. This way I can at least prove to myself that I am a mathematician for real.
The only problem is that my savings were meant for a down payment on my first house. I’ve been asking myself for awhile: What is more important− a dream job or a dream house? I just realized today that I will never be happy if I am not happy at my job and I am quite happy with the apartment I am renting now. I guess this is it − I just have to take the plunge.
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27th October 2007, 09:09 am
For 25 years my children were my priority. I made several decisions in my life that benefited my family, but “harmed” my mathematical career. I do not regret any of my choices. After all, being a single mom made me a more confident, stronger person. Maybe this will help my career in a long run.
Now that my youngest son is 16 years old, my life can’t revolve around him anymore. Now I must think about the meaning of my life, beyond bringing up children. The only thing I want to do is mathematics. I am actually doing some math on weekends, but I really want to do it full-time. My tasks at my job are getting further and further from mathematics and research. In short, I feel that my job doesn’t fit me at this stage of my life.
I really should find another job. I am somewhat scared of change though. I think that the first thing to do is to try to turn around the situation at my current job. There is a lot of interesting mathematics in battle management. The problem is to match a math problem to a charge number. That is, I would need to convince my management that the algorithms we design need a sound mathematical basis.
Here is my decision: I will try to find some tasks at my work that include mathematics and see how I can change my situation there by the end of the year. If I don’t succeed, I will have to think of something else. Let the Web be my witness. I will report the results to you soon.
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19th October 2007, 06:02 pm
Why didn’t I think of this before?
I want to share some ideas about mathematics and about my life as a mathematician. In this blog, you’ll read about such things as the properties of numbers and sequences and how mathematicians approach practical things.
I started my life as a genius girl mathematician, winning silver and gold medals at the International Math Olympiad (IMO) as a teenager. My PhD is from Moscow State University. When I got married, I wanted to have a family and mathematics at the same time, but being a woman, this affected my mathematics career. Now my kids are growing up and mathematics is becoming more and more important in my life. This is why I decided to start this blog.
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