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[monarda]

 They're out of money, and now husband has to leave the lab, on very short notice. ...

What makes me upset is that my husband is really happy scientifically in this lab.  My new school has a large program in his field, but no one that overlaps significantly with his interests.

Oh navelgazer, I know just how your husband feels. I had to leave a lab on short notice due to lack of $, and was forced to drop a project that was consuming me scientifically. It was really challenging, exciting and fun.  But due to lack of $, I had to leave. It felt like my baby was taken away.  Ripped away. The world was unplugged. I had a great publication from this work and a lot of great ideas for future progress. And I couldn't continue. 

It totally sucks.

So I joined another lab for two years. Then I became a VAP.  But all the while I kept my old project simmering while I was doing unrelated work.  During this time I found a fantastic collaborator. We wrote grants together, one is being reviewed right now.

Point is, can your husband (while in new postdoc in less exciting project) keep things going on his old project? Even just in the background? Either with members of the old lab or with outside collaborators? Then he can keep his baby alive! He can hopefully develop something independently related to the old project that he can take to the job market at New U.  It might all work out. But in my case, it most certainly tested my patience.

There's so many good new things in your family! That should help him, and
time definitely will help. Wait it out as cajun says.  Meanwhile good luck with the new job and the new baby!!

[navelgazer]

UPDATE

SO just accepted a research (non-professor) job at my new alma mater.

Everything's coming up NavelGazer!

[cajun]

Everything's coming up NavelGazer!

BEE-BOO!

(a belly-button reference to a book by Sandra Boynton, who is in your future if you haven't come across her already)

(which is my too-much-time-with-toddlers way of saying ...)

CONGRATS!  That's awesome.

[navelgazer]

I can't believe I said "new alma mater."

Good thing I'm not teaching comp, English, or Latin (for that matter).

[monarda]

Awesome navelgazer!

By research job (non-professor) you mean not-a-postdoc hard money job
with some security?? Cool!  I wouldn't mind one of those myself!

[velcrot]

I ended up as the trailing spouse.  I was 23 when we got married, and a semester away from completing my MA.  My goal was to teach at a CC...I really liked the idea of working with first generation college students. My wife, who is not an academic, ended up with her dream job.  However,  I was left landlocked with an MA in philosophy.  I taught at a private high school for a year while taking English courses as quickly as possible, and the next year was hired as a philosophy adjunct. By the end of the fall semester, I had completed 18 hours in English, and was offered a temp full time position for the spring.  I should stress that my research while working on my philosophy MA was on patriarchy in literature, and many of my professors suggested that my work would fit in an English department just as well as it would a philosophy department, so this was the motivation for my English work.

Near the end of that term, my dean suggested that it would be great to have someone TT who could teach English and Philosophy and that she would look into creating such a position.  I was given a temporary full time contract for the next year, but at the end of the year, my dean suggested that the position might be four or five years off.  I applied elswhere, and took a regular full time position at another CC teaching English comp.   In leaving my former school, I stressed to my dean that if the desired position was ever funded, I would be interested.  The CC I went to was the pits of hell - they had generic syllabi by which all people - tenured or not - had to go by.  They even had generic assignments.  I was basically a facilitator.  However, the strategy worked.  I was contacted in March by someone from my old school to give me a heads up that my desired position had been funded.  I was hired over the summer.  I teach one English class (which they cap at 15 students), and the rest is philosophy.  It is only 13 miles from our house.  Also, this CC believes in academic freedom.     They counted my year at the other school toward longevity and tenure.  So, against all odds, I now have my dream job too, without a move.  It can be done.

[djcremer]

Sixteen years ago, my spouse with a new MA got a job 90 miles from my PhD school. I commuted for half a year and then took a visiting position for a semester across country while finishing writing the dissertation. We saw each other three times over those five months, but we got through it fine. Fifteen years ago, a newly minted PhD, I found a full-time position at a small college with no name recognition, no tenure, below average pay in a high cost area, and where I was the only one in my fields. On the plus side, it was only 35 miles from our home near my spouse's college (so no job search there) and, despite the drawbacks (see below), a perfect fit for our now growing family (our first child was born that next summer).

It was not the research university job I had trained for and wanted, and accepting the heavy teaching load and lack of research support meant I'd never have the time to convert my dissertation into the required book, further limiting my options. It was a serious compromise in my career goals, but it was (and is) a college serving first-generation, mostly minority, working-class students, an environment that helped make up for the deficits. It was far from the "dream job" but it fit the bigger picture of my life, which one has to acknowledge is always filed with compromises of some kind. These were mine.

I am now in my sixteenth year at the same college, serving my third year as Dean of Liberal Arts. I interviewed at several other colleges in my first years, all of which offered little better (and sometimes much worse) that my current college. The dream job of the research university never materialized, but my spouse was hired by the same college eleven years ago in a leadership position. Although we are in different departments, we work together often (and save lots of time never having to explain context to each other about our work lives).

What felt at first like an inferior (and hopefully temporary) choice willingly made to accommodate my spouse and family has turned into a wonderful career. The job that finds you, rather than the other way around, may be the one that fits best after all. You have to remain open to the possibility that what you think now is your ideal position may not in the long run really be 'the one,' and that the position that represents the compromise may turn out to be the ideal.

[navelgazer]

I love these stories of success! Keep them coming.

Right now what's really hard for my husband is that he isn't faculty yet. He keeps on correcting people about his status (a post-doc), even when those people don't care!

[aneumey]

I should add here that I am VelcroT (I hadn't logged in for a while and had forgotten my username.  Then, after a few posts, I remembered.

[brycem]

Thanks for sharing your stories! They give hope to a graduate student daunted by the prospects of navigating the job market.