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Sili has been leaving some great comments about his struggle to find a job in crystallography. Sili’s struggle reminds of me of my own introduction to crystallography. Lets just say I can relate.

I used to swim on the USA national team but, unfortunately, it did not pay the bills. I worked a whole string of minimum wage jobs from giving swim lessons to cleaning toilets. I worked 3 jobs at once and trained 35 hours each week. I was pretty busy.

I ended up deciding to apply for a position at Los Alamos National Lab in genomics since I had a background in biology. After a number of interviews, I was offered the position and was excited for the change of scenery. My lease was up in about 6 weeks so I didn’t move right away. I notified my employer that I would be moving on.

I took a week off between the transition to visit my family and, while there, received a phone call from the person who had hired me. They no longer had the position. Yes, I had the offer in writing (twice, actually), but they simply were over budget and apologized for the inconvenience. So there I was with no job and no place to live. I decided to do the rational thing and drove nearly 1500 miles from Seattle to Los Alamos with everything I owned in my car.

I interviewed with anyone that would see me. It didn’t matter what kind of research they did. I was interested and willing to learn. After two weeks and 15 interviews, I finally had two job offers. One was in a crystallography lab. I was hooked after seeing those macromolecules spin around in Coot.

The message I’m trying to relay through this story is this: if you have the motivation and the perseverance, something WILL work out in your favor. So Sili, hang in there and if your passion is in crystallography – go for it.

For others, how did you first come across crystallography and decide that it was an area you were interested in?