Sunday afternoon I left Tennessee to fly to California for a job interview. I arrived at the airport about midnight 10aC time, so I was pretty tired while trying to make a good impression on the head of the search committee who picked me up at the airport. I didn't get into my hotel room until 1 am 10aC time (11 pm CA time) and then had a 7 am breakfast appointment with two faculty members. Of course my circadian rhythm woke me up at 4 am CA time, and I was so nervous I couldn't go back to sleep, so I was secretly trying to suppress yawns the entire day.
After my breakfast meeting, I met with the Dean of the school and then went on a tour of the city with a real estate agent. My how expensive things are in the golden state. But you couldn't ask for a more walkable or bikeable or family friendly city! After the real estate tour, I had interviews and then a lunch meeting and then some more interviews and then it was time for my seminar. The department is pretty small, so it was pretty intimate. I felt like it went okay, but was not nearly as polished as when I gave my seminar to my own department. I had changed things around because I was saving my new grant and future directions for the chalk talk the next day, rather than having it at the end of the talk as in my own department. I got hit with lots of questions, which was good because it meant people were paying attention, but I felt like sometimes my answers were pretty lame.
After the grilling, I had a few minutes to go back to my hotel room to freshen up and then go to dinner with the search chair and the department chair. We had a great Thai dinner and it was extremely enjoyable.
Then back to the hotel fairly late and then had to work thru e-mails for le tour de town. And then I decided to rework some sections of my chalk talk for the next day. So it ended up being another late night.
The next day was another early breakfast, more interviews and then lunch with three people, one of which was perhaps the most antagonistic in my seminar the day before. It was kind of odd, this person was extremely aggressive in her questioning about science, but very friendly when it came to talking about the university and living in CA. So I don't know if she would vote for me or not.
After lunch, I had a few moments to prepare for my chalk talk, where I was suppose to talk about my teaching philosophy and my future research plans. The way it works is you start talking and then everybody jumps in with questions, and when you have covered everything to everyone's satisfaction, you move on to the next part. The chalk talk was scheduled for one hour, but it went for two and half. I don't know if that is a good sign about their interest or a bad sign that they don't think I have what it takes to cut it there.
After the chalk talk, I had a tour of potential lab space and I long talk with the department chair, (he is a great guy) and then off to an extremely interesting seafood dinner talking about obesity and diabetes.
After that it was home to the hotel room to crash and worked thru e-mail some more on le tour de town. The next morning I got up, worked more on le tour and then caught the van to the airport to make the long flight home to Tennessee.
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