Gooood news

Hey, I won the interview! That is, I was ranked high enough that I have got myself a permanent job! I came in second out of 80-some people in the national competition, and there were three jobs, so I got one. (I did also compete in a higher-level competition, against some 10 people or so, but I came in third there, and there were only two jobs. I think they were internal candidates anyway.) So now I can stay in my lab, and not teach, and suck at the beautiful teat that is the French government for, basically, ever.

I had worked my cul off on my presentation slides, plus a script I read in French and timed to be exactly fifteen minutes long. I had done about 6 practice runs with people and got lots of good advice (including to cite Aristotle!). The night before I finally ran through the complete script with JD, who kept on with me even though I had one of my patented practice-talk meltdowns. I'm sorry, French is just hard to pronounce. I did switch to English for the ten-minute question period (after asking them first), but I understood everything they asked me in French without having to ask them to repeat anything. W00t!

Oh, and it didn't hurt that my mentor C was on the committee (though he wasn't in the room for my presentation).

I don't officially have the job yet, but the only thing between me and it is a meeting of the über-committee on July 5th, and there's no reason they should disregard the other committee's recommendations.

After recovering from all that, I was cast into pre-applying (you may already have been approved!) for an 800 000€ grant from the European Research Council. I spent the whole day on that yesterday and today. But now it's in, and it's time to party. Or at least, time to actually do research instead of just talking about doing it.