• Question: do you work for anyone?

    Asked by matthewhill to Nathan on 27 Jun 2012.
    • Photo: Nathan Langford

      Nathan Langford answered on 27 Jun 2012:

      Hi Matthew,

      Well, the answer to that is I guess yes and no.

      I won a postdoctoral fellowship from the EU to do my current work, so my salary comes from there (via the university) and I was the one who was responsible for getting me that money.

      However, as a postdoc, I work in a research group which is run by someone else, so I sort of work for him. But we don’t really work that way – it’s more like I work with him like I work with the other members of the group too, as colleagues. That’s one of the really nice things about science. You’re expected to have quite a lot of independence and in a lot of groups, you don’t really have someone looking over your shoulder telling you what to do. You get to decide that mostly for yourself.

      A bit confusing? Well, I hope it helps…

      Cheers,
      Nathan.

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