Published on 2019/06/28 | Tags: ramblings,, academia.
What do I think about PhDs and years before tenure track (the real divide)? Follow me.
It seems a long time ago when I was a PhD student. I started my PhD in Autumn 2016 and took the title in Spring 2020. Then, I had a few years as a post-doc, and then as Junior Assistant Professor (RTD-A) since February 2022, before taking service as Senior Assistant Professor (RTD-B) in Autumn 2023. It was a rather quick but tough path and I was starting to be very anxious and impatient to get into tenure track, feeling the harshness of competition and the fatigue exterted by time in precarity.
It was tough in general, but it was also accompanied by a real blow that came by my personal life itself, as I lost my dad in a rather draining year. He got to see my PhD dissertation, but could not see any actual public celebration (thanks COVID!), and especially the main success of the RTD-B competition. I dedicate it all to him, whom was smarter than me, as deep as me, the one that probably taught me the most (as I listened him without speaking in his ramblings in front of the TV), stronger than me (cf. commuting for years from Cesena to Bologna), and despite his intelligence and determination had not the chance of attending the university (due to the way his life arranged things).
I may actually talk about this one day. But this is not the day.