1. HELPING CHEMISTS FIND JOBS IN A TOUGH MARKET. 2. TOWARDS A QUANTITATIVE UNDERSTANDING OF THE QUALITY OF THE CHEMISTRY JOB MARKET.
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| I'll miss you, chariot. |
What's the job market like for chemists? Dude -- it's always bad.*
How bad is it? How the heck should I know? Quantifying the chemistry job market is what this blog is about. That, and helping chemists find jobs.
E-mail chemjobber with helpful tips, career questions or angry comments at chemjobber -at- gmail dotcom. All correspondence is kept confidential. (Didn't get an e-mail back? It's okay to try again.) Please address correspondence to "Chemjobber" or "CJ."
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(*For the literal-minded, this is a joke. Mostly.)
A Toyota Camry I purchased used back in grad school, back when I (falsely) believed that my stipend would "definitely" cover a car payment, rent, food, and gas. Then gas shot to $4.50! (oops)
ReplyDeleteStill have the car, though. It runs OK at 163K.
I had a tiny Mitsubishi Mirage that didn't perform too well in the snow (which you need in Madison). The car served me well until I bought my first new car, a sexy Oldsmobile Alero, that didn't turn out to be as reliable as my Mirage.
ReplyDeleteAlero = sexy! :-)
ReplyDeleteIt was sexy! It had a sunroof and leather seats, a V6 engine. Very sporty. Plus it was a maroon red. It was fun, but it had all sorts of problems - I guess that's why the Olds brand got canned.
ReplyDeleteI had a very utilitarian '88 Nissan Sentra. Like a big metal file cabinet only in red, not beige. Very dependable and with the same sounds and acceleration you'd expect from a file cabinet.
ReplyDeleteI should gain some street cred here by saying that I rolled into grad school on a '81 Toyota. ;-)
ReplyDeleteI had a '96 Saturn with roughly 200K miles on it. I did a ton of the maintenance and upkeep on that car. got rid of it when I had to move from Chicago to SoCal. gave it to my dad to get rid of. it died from lack of attention before he sold it. *sniff
ReplyDeleteToo poor and too busy to afford a car. I got a campus apartment and walked. Used public/campus transportation services often. If I ever had to mooch a ride, I compensated my "chauffeurs" for the gas with money or food/drink.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was a kid, I remember frequently seeing cars so rusted out that they looked like a cannonball was shot through them. It's pretty amazing how junk yards are now full of fairly nice looking vehicles.
ReplyDeleteI rolled into grad school with an '81 Plymouth Reliant but got rid of it in my 2nd year. Reliant is definitely a misnomer.
ReplyDelete'94 Crown Victoria, but I had it in 2005-2007. Man it was a sweet ride.
ReplyDeletePlease tell us you didn't get a minivan.
ReplyDelete:-) No. We already purchased our family vehicle (a sedate silver sedan.)
ReplyDeleteI'm wrapping up my Ph.D., and I'm still driving the '95 Ford Taurus I got while in highschool. It's about to cross the 140k mile-mark, and hopefully it'll get me to my landing spot after grad school.
ReplyDelete91 Nissan Sentra.
ReplyDeleteReplaced it in 2002, 8 years into my professional career. Drove it until the wheels fell off (and the trunk stopped opening...)
A '95 Gary Fisher...awesome to ride through the winters in Pittsburgh.
ReplyDeleteMy first car, a '96 Dodge Intrepid bought the farm the weekend before I moved to graduate school. She had a lot of little problems that were beginning to add up and then BOOM! the wheel just about fell off. It was more cost effective to move onto something newer.
ReplyDeleteNow cruising around in an '06 Passat. He's been handling and doing well so far. Really though my grad school mode of choice is my bike. In the past year I've probably driven <20 times into work. Only heavy snow, ice, and blinding rain have stopped me from biking.
BTW, my Mitsubishi Mirage was a '91.
ReplyDeletebike and on foot.
ReplyDeleteWent to UC Davis, a bike was way more useful than a car and is what I used year round.
ReplyDelete'82 Mazda B2000 Pickup. Like you, I went to Grad School, met my wife, , moved into my first house, and brought home 2 kids in that car. The bed was mostly Bondo and fiberglass when I sold it. To deal with driving in the snow, I would shovel snow into the bed so the weight would make the back end sliding out predictable.
ReplyDeleteOn arriving at grad school in September 1966, it was a 1962 Pontiac 4-door Catalina. Buoyed with confidence after passing my qualifying exams and getting my first year under my belt, I bought a brand new Volvo 144 for just under $3000 in the summer of 1967 and kept that until the late 1970s. Currently, I'm switching between a 1989 Volvo (325,000+) and a newer (1990) Volvo with only 250,000+ miles on it...
ReplyDeleteTrek Allez (back when they were made with Tange cro-moly tubing). I then bought a '79 Rabbit to haul it to bike races.
ReplyDeleteI didn't learn to drive until about four years after grad school. Bikes and public transit work wonders if pop density and car costs are high enough.
ReplyDelete'90 Chrysler LeBaron convertible. I asked it to get me through to graduation and it died just two months shy of my defense.
ReplyDelete'91 Dodge Dynasty with a rubber fuel line and trailer hitch. RIP.
ReplyDeleteFor the first 2 years, it was a bike that my dad and I picked out together, which is still in my garage.
ReplyDeleteAfter that, it was a Toyota Tercel, which the salesman taught me how to drive it since it was a stickshift. I bought it right before I started dating my now-husband, took it on our honeymoon, and brought both my children home from the hospital home in it. I'm still sad that we sold it, and have the license plate hanging in the garage.
I'm a first year grad student and just bought a 2008 bright orange mustang :)
ReplyDeleteI know that other people will think I'm crazy but I've been saving for a while and am living in a crappy, cheap apartment so this was my big splurge. It helps that our grad student bar on campus has 95 cent beers. Now just waiting to build my bank account back up...
I drove a new-to-me 1980 Honda Accord hatchback cross-country to grad school in 1988. It rusted out and died during my last winter in Ithaca, but I had a job offer in hand so I bought a brand new 1993 Saturn. It had almost 200K miles on it before my husband totaled it.
ReplyDeleteSame goes about the first wife. (Just kidding)
ReplyDelete'84 Ford LTD when I was at NU from '91-'97. Had some electrical problems, but was otherwise just fine.
ReplyDelete