1. HELPING CHEMISTS FIND JOBS IN A TOUGH MARKET. 2. TOWARDS A QUANTITATIVE UNDERSTANDING OF THE QUALITY OF THE CHEMISTRY JOB MARKET.
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.
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(*For the literal-minded, this is a joke. Mostly.)
LOL. Nice, enjoyed some good jokes today.
ReplyDeleteDuh! Everyone knows you cook your beans in the autoclave, not the oven.
ReplyDeleteAfter working for 20+ years in synthetic chemistry, the only job-related injury that I suffered was a sprained neck - from a chemist. He himself suffered a neck injury in a car crash (which he then exacerbated in a subsequent roller coaster ride), so he was visiting a chiropractor. The chiropractor happened to be a gorgeous booby blonde, and my colleague was rather thrilled about her. One day, just after returning from the therapy, all excited, as he was gushing about his awesome therapist he suddenly stated demonstrating on me the terrific neck massage his young chiropractor was doing on him - while I was running a column and trying to spot a TLC! But as it happens, I too had a year old car-crash-whiplash related neck injury, and my colleague just managed to hit the wrong spot while showing off his chiropractic skilz. So I ended up taking piles of pain meds and going to of physical therapy for months, while being quietly labeled as malingerer and as "engaging in a horseplay" (if not an outright insurance fraud) by every damn agent who reinvestigated my work comp claim. So, your insane lab mates are a chemistry hazard too.
ReplyDeleteThe real question is why didn't you go to his chiropractor to get repaired?
DeleteI wished so - but we had different insurance companies. My "case officers" were interrogating me already, with suspicion in their voice, to find out if I was milking the workers comp insurance based on a preposterous claim - had I told them that I specifically require that blond chesty babe they would be certain.
DeleteAt a particularly low point in grad school I sat in my car listening to a guy on NPR talk about how he left his life to go ride the rails because he always thought the hobo life sounded romantic. He told how he met his new comrades and they invited him into their camp. Then at dinner around the fire he forgot to poke a hole in his can of beans, the scalding beans exploded all over everyone, and he got kicked out of hobo camp. This story cheered me up as I realized maybe I *wasn't* the dumbest person on the face of the planet. I hadn't thought about that moment for a long time--thanks for the flashback!
ReplyDeleteSince the reference was printed in the Handbook of Reactive Hazards perhaps it is the contents of the can that is actually hazardous. Christopher S. Foote was working on reactive oxygen species (singlet oxygen) at that time at UCLA.
ReplyDeleteP.S. :)
P.P.S. Bats, Batteries, Can of Beans, and Environmentalism are alive and well in Bretherick's 7Ed. Environmentalism piece grew to 12 references and a full page of examples where efforts to protect environment resulted in reactive incidents.