Some weeks ago I left some notes on how to address the exhausting process to get a tenured position in the National Research Council of Spain as I was getting ready for it. In particular I looked at how to tackle the metrics issue that is often quite depressing to look at.

I just came here today to let you know that, despite I did not get the position, I enjoyed the whole thing and overall I am pretty happy with the outcome.

On the one hand some very good friends where there too, as my beloved Encarni Montoya (that looked after me as a sister!) and Mario Morellón who’s a great palaeo-mate and a long-lasting collaborator I love to work with. Besides I met there very nice colleagues I know from long but see very rarely as Francisco Jiménez Espejo  or people that I have met in previous calls and that I really like as Paula Diz,  Miriam Gómez Paccard or Laura Domingo.  Then these are also good occasions to meet new friends as, in my experience, atmosphere is really good. So it happened with Marga García or Marta Rodrigo-Gámiz. I was also happy to see that from the 16 people that went into the process a precise 50% were women… a good reflection of how Earth Sciences might be slowly changing.

The two-fold process implies presenting the CV that it’s 60% of the final mark one gets and then presenting how your research fits on the call title and your view on how the discipline moves forward. The first CV part is a shortlisting into the second section and I was lucky enough to make it into the 2nd. See here the marks we got based in our CV. The committees assessing this normally have a tough job as, in my opinion, all candidates were stunning. Then the second part was really good for me as I truly enjoyed presenting my research and I did not think for a minute on whether the committee was evaluating me or not. I just communicated. Pure and directly how fascinating connecting spatio-temporal processes of vegetation change can be. And I think I convinced them because the committee made very good questions, that I answered very honestly explaining how all facets of this discipline make assumptions and how I intend to address them. I reckon they liked that.

Eventually Francis got the position, a very deserved one!, and I came back home with the idyllic thought of some rest after PAGES conference and this process but I can’t recall having like a proper rest 🙂

Hope to see all these colleagues in next calls, or may be not because they got a good job!