Applying for a tenured position

Ok, here I am back again. These last few days have been hectic. First and foremost, I have been preparing the application to a position as a tenured Researcher for Padova University, but I have also had to deal with the little army of my undergrad and grad students, who take a lot of my time these days.

Applying to a tenured position as a researcher (or as a professor, for that matter) in italian Universities is a full time job for several days. I want to spare you the details, but it boils down to preparing a very detailed documentation of everything that you have been doing during your scientific activities since the Neolithic.

Therefore, you need to print a perfect replica of each and every scientific paper which you had the misfortune to sign; construct a database of all the papers, with date of issue, correct reference, publishing information. Same goes with the internal documents of your scientific collaboration. Same for all your proceeding papers and reports, whether you published them in print, online, or only as preprints.

Everything, then, needs to be cross-referenced in your curriculum, where you discuss what you did, what you published, when you published it, what presentation you gave, where, what proceeding paper ensued. You have to specify each and every seminar you gave, all the students who graduated with you as a referee, all the papers you were a referee of. All the courses you gave at the University, with details of number of hours of teaching and the like.

Nothing has to be spared, because you do not want to give your examiners a handle on which to base their choice of evaluating your titles less than those of your competitors (and most of the times they will look for anything!).

But most importantly, everything must be perfect, because even the tiniest blemish on your application - a missed signature here or there, a wrong reference to this or that paper, the lack of self-certification that all of the titles you claim you have are really possessed, really anything, may signify winning the position and then being stripped from it by a formal accusation to the committee by a competitor, followed by lawyers and judges scrutinizing everything under the magnifying lens! This is no science fiction, it really happened in quite a few cases in the past. I'm not being paranoid!

Of course, given the extreme scarcity of openings such as this one in Universities these days in Italy (our government keeps cutting funds to Universities, as I discussed here some time ago), you cannot waste a good chance. This only makes the whole job of putting together your application a bit more scary.

Then, in the process of printing the tons of papers that have to accompany your application form, you cannot help wondering why on earth you could not have just to produce a simple curriculum, with web links to the preprint servers, such that lots of trees could be saved and lots of ink spared. But bureaucracy is the contrary of efficiency, and a synonim for waste.

When I finally got over with printing, sorting, stapling, cataloging papers, I decided to take a picture or two of the result. You can see one on the right. There are four piles of printouts, amounting to roughly 2500 page of scientific blablah.

Tomorrow I will take the hefty load to the office where they accept the applications. They will give me that weird look (since most of other applicants for university positions have only a few papers, they are not too accustomed to handling parcels that heavy) which I now know well - this being my fourth attempt. In the past three attempts, the winner was already decided from the start. I mean from the start, in the sense that the opening was decided in order to give him or her the position. This time, things are much less clear, and I think I have a real chance, since there are two openings (I already applied to the other three months ago), and there are only two outstanding candidates from within Padova University -one of them being me. We'll see.

Comments

[little miss demosthenes]

yo, good luck. i mean it. if you get tenured you have to call me on my cell. i'll email you the numbah.

and when i mean good luck, i *mean* good luck.

if for some reason you're denied tenure, i will personally fly over to italy and kick the living shit out of whichever unlucky person making the decision. tell them that too. but don't make it too threatening. ;)

cheers!
-demie

[zerocold]

Spero che ti vado tutto bene, e che la mitica università di Padova che mi ha avuto come studente possa averti come professore. Spero che le nuove responsabilità professionali, non impediscano che questo blog vada avanti.

In bocca al lupo
zerocold

[Tommaso Dorigo]

Grazie zerocold! Ma ci vorranno mesi prima che la commissione sia formata, le date decise, il concorso effettuato, le valutazioni emesse.
In ogni caso sarai forse sorpreso di sapere che si tratta di un posto di ricercatore! Infatti non sono che un misero assegnista di ricerca, il che - a 39 anni suonati - comincia un po' a pesarmi...

T.

English version follows:

Thanks Zerocold! But it will take months before the evaluating committee is formed, the dates decided, the exams completed, the evaluation issued.
Anyway, you will perhaps be surprised to know that it is a research scientist position what we're dealing with here! In fact, I am no more than a humble research associate (non-tenured), which - at the early age of 39 - starts to be a bit of a burden to me...

Cheers!
T.

[zerocold]

Sorry, for the italian post reply, next time i'll pay much attention on this.

Good Luck

[claire]

Hey T

Good luck for it! And i'll back up Demie, too. When do you think you'll know?

And did they give you that weird look?

~claire

[Tommaso Dorigo]

Hi Claire,

:) well, no weird look this time, but the secretary was a bit concerned when she received me, and hurriedly made space for my box on her desk. The deadline for
applications was only one day away, and she already had piles of envelopes, some even thicker than mine, lying on the floor. There are several tens of positions to be filled in all areas of research in Padova University, from Botanics to Psychology to Greek Literature...
The examinations will be in the fall.

Cheers,
T.