I am a postdoctoral fellow at Duke University. I'm in my 4th year here. I applied for an NIH-funded grant in 2009. While I received my score within a few months, due to the significant delays in the federal government passing a budget, I actually did not find out my grant was (thankfully) funded until over a year after I submitted it. The grant is for 3 years, and the first year is mandatory. The 2nd year is referred to as the "payback" year, meaning that if I left science entirely, I would have to pay back all of the previous year's funding. While I'm beyond grateful that I received the grant, the delay in vote actually pushed my life and career back 1 year due to the rules that come with the grant. If you can't start your grant right away, you can't make it through years 1 and 2 as soon as possible.

I'm now entering the job search phase. I want to do cancer drug discovery/target validation research. However, due to the poor economy, companies tend to cut drug discovery programs in favor of increased marketing on the "sure thing" drugs they already have for sale. In addition, all of the jobs I have received call backs on are postdoctoral positions, meaning my salary would not change. After 10 years of training, I'm still not considered trained? Basically, the companies know they can get away with paying someone a smaller salary for the same amount of work. This is why very few scientist/sr. scientist positions are available in industry. Academia, as you are well aware, is struggling immensely. The sequester (and overall state of the economy) has prevented me from progressing. I'm stagnating. I'm 32 years old with no retirement funds. I just want a job doing bench science, which I've spent a decade training for. I know nothing else. I sincerely wish I had not chosen this path, but the future was so bright in 2003. It's quite humiliating to see the incoming graduate students watch me struggle to find a job.

Additionally, our lab is running out of funding. My boss is starting to give workers deadlines for departure if they are not currently independently funded by a grant. This puts enormous pressure on people looking for jobs (which aren't there). Wishing for a change, but knowing it will be awhile coming. I hope that I can get a second dose of good luck and find a job soon!