Cheers, dear readers!

We at Career Services are doing a little something different this year and offering a summer edition of Future 411 for the first time. Because school -- and career development -- is a year-round venture at the graduate level, we figured it made sense to stay in touch beyond the academic year. Since your research and job hunting doesn't stop, neither do we!  

Summer is a bit of an awkward proposition for graduate students. Most of the world assumes that, like high school students and undergraduates, we enjoy three warm, carefree months for fun and frolic each year that rest and recharge us at the end of two intense semesters of classes, teaching, and research. Ah, if only! Wouldn't that just be the life? Those on the inside know the reality, however: summer "break" is often the busiest time of the year for many of us, a time when we try to catch up on the work and career development plans the demands of school delayed and make pie-in-the-sky personal goals to tackle new projects and even get ahead (ha!) in advance of the fall. And we all know how that turns out.

While summer can certainly present a potential work space in our lives, it is also important and beneficial to schedule some downtime into your life to not only conserve and rebuild your energy for the long haul of your degree and job search but inspire new ideas and form new connections with people. This time away cultivates our mind, bodies, spirits, and connections with the families and friends who keep us going when the work piles up. Downtime makes us more productive (and happier) than we realize. So, in order to avoid the trap of over-committing to projects or the inevitable burnout and stall that happens when we don't push away from our work for a while, we devote this special issue of Future 411 to the importance of establishing a healthy work/life balance both in the summer and throughout the year. 

   

Of course, we know well enough how hard it is take your own advice, but we are doing our best to find a balance here at

Future 411 this summer. Your fair editor, Annie Sugar, is, of course, working on everything a typical Ph.D. candidate has on her docket: data collection for her dissertation, revising and sending out articles for publication, writing a syllabus for her fall course, updating her CV to prepare for the fall hiring season, and preparing for a conference presentation in Montreal this August. She is also enjoying scads of post-comps non-academic reading, doing her best to finish some long-stalled remodeling projects at home, spending time with family, hiking with her dog, hitting the pool every day (and has the tan to show for it!), and, admittedly, spent the better part of a week in June on the couch eating take-out and ripping through the last three seasons of Breaking Bad. And it was so, so satisfying.

Similar to graduate students, the Career Services staff continues to work throughout the summer, but it is often a time when they can shift their focus a bit from students to professional development and recharge their batteries even while working. To that end, Graduate Student Program Manager/Career Counselor Annie Piatt spent the better part of June out of the office while she traveled to Long Beach, CA to attend and present at the National Career Development Association's (NCDA) annual conference and joined her sister's birthday celebration in Palm Springs. Because she never quite got over her dream of running off to join the circus, she is also gearing up for a performance in the 16th Annual International Aerial Dance Festival as a company member with Frequent Flyers Productions Aerial Dance Theatre. She strives all year to find a balance between her creative and intellectual pursuits, and encourages graduate students on campus to do so as well (like most doc students, Annie Sugar has no clue what that looks like yet, but she's trying).

Again, we remind you that Career Services is open all summer long, and we are available for counseling, testing, and research help to support you in your job search and career development. Take advantage of the slow period in the off-season to come visit us for some career development direction and inspiration. We hope the last month of your summer will be both restful and productive. See you soon for the fall semester!  

Best,

I enjoyed chemistry and physics in high school; I had good teachers and enjoyed mathematical problems. I chose to study chemistry at UC Berkeley where I had positive relationships with the professor and teaching assistants who taught my introductory chemistry course. The course focused on how to study and solve problems created by the interaction between people and the environment and launched my commitment to chemistry as a career.

My post-doctoral research uses lasers to study physics and chemistry problems relevant to renewable energy, specifically photovoltaics (PV). Currently, the maximum efficiency of PV devices is limited by heat loss; I design experiments to turn that heat into electricity through a process called singlet fission that could be used in a PV device such as a silicon solar cell. My hope is to control singlet fission by designing the structures involved in the process and attach those structures to something like a silicon solar cell to improve its efficiency.

I chose CU-Boulder for my post-doctoral work because of its large focus on energy, sustainability, and the environment. I studied renewable energy technology in graduate school and wanted to continue in that field. In addition, CU-Boulder offers close collaborations with national labs like the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).

What work and career development goals do you have for yourself this summer?

This summer, I plan to finish some experiments involving control of the singlet fission process and to try out a new set of experiments attaching molecules able to do singlet fission to silica nanoparticles. The latter involves going into a synthesis wet lab, which I haven't done in about ten years, so it should be pretty interesting.

Career development-wise, my goal is to network with the optics and photonics community in and around Boulder. That includes national labs, companies, and universities. LinkedIn is an accessible resource for connecting with others in my field that doesn't require a huge amount of effort. I'm doing some informational interviews with people at various companies and at NREL to see what the research and company cultures are like. For my field, the Colorado Photonics Industry Association (CPIA) is a good resource to network with participating companies, find job listings, and learn about companies' quarterly meetings that are opportunities for networking.

How do you spend your time outside of work and research?

My wife is the biggest part of my life outside of work. We try to do at least a couple outdoors activities together each week. We also enjoy cooking, watching episodes of The Simpsons and Futurama, and going to the farmers' market. In general I'm a pretty active person and play soccer a few times and enjoy hiking and camping. I do enjoy more restful activities as well. I recently started fishing as a way to get away and sit quietly for an hour or two, and I love reading and playing video games. This summer, I'm growing some peppers and tomatoes for salsas as well, including some ghost chiles I'm very excited about. While it may not sound exciting, I find it very relaxing to check on my plants and watch their progress.

What tactics do you use to maintain a balance between work and leisure throughout the year?  

I try to make sure I don't feel too stressed. If I do, then it's time to relax and do something completely non-work related during the evening or weekend. This ensures I come back refreshed and more productive. Playing soccer is very helpful in this regard as it takes my mind off of everything except the game. In general, I'll have a better week as a whole as long as I keep playing.

I try to plan equal parts productivity at work with leisure outside of work. If I'm especially productive at work for a day or a week or whatever, that deserves something special like a hike. This gives me some positive reinforcement and incentive to be productive in the future. In addition, even though it's not always possible, I always put effort into accomplishing as much as possible during my work days so that I don't feel pressure to continue working or thinking about work at home and am not constantly worrying about productivity levels.

If I do need to do a little work after hours, I try to think of it as extra time I'm choosing to invest towards productivity, and that it really is my time to use as I please. Therefore, I intersperse those working hours with breaks to do something else like working with my peppers if I'm at home. I just enjoy checking them out, adding a little water, seeing their size change. It doesn't take a lot of effort and isn't amazingly interesting, but it's something a little different that makes me feel like it's really time I'm choosing to spend on a project rather than being forced to spend time on work.

On occasion, the ProfHacker contributors collaborate on posts ranging from professional advice and software tips to...some that are a little more fun than that. Take, for instance, last year's Holiday Gift Guide. In that post, each of us listed three or four items we thought would make nifty gifts for others (or for ourselves, even).

Now that summer is winding down and most of us are heading back to school very soon, it's time for another fun collaborative post, one that discusses the five things that helped us survive summer. While it's perhaps a little late for you to make use of these things during the summer, we think that there's a good chance they could prove useful in the fall as well. And if not? Well, summer is only 10 months away!

We hope that you enjoy this post as much as we enjoyed putting it together; this post more than any other gives you a clear sense of our individual personalities. Also, where else are you going to read about HeadBlade HeadLube SPF 30, World Cup soccer, Old Navy, and smartphones all in the same post? We also hope you'll let us know your indispensible summer items in the comments. Read more