Hello from Half of Us!

Hello! This is Beth Malmskog, one half of the next iteration of PhD + Epsilon. First, hooray for Adriana Salerno for earning tenure at Bates, officially moving more than epsilon past her PhD. Hopefully there is a PhD + 2(Epsilon) blog in the works for her next adventures. Thanks to Adriana for starting this blog and speaking up about the great and grisly parts of starting out as a math professor. I’m really excited to be tag-team writing on this new chapter of the blog with Sara Malec (who will be writing later today to say hello). We will be posting in alternate weeks after these quick introductions, and I’m pretty sure it’s going to be spectacular.

My epsilon is currently a bit over 4 years. That seems long, and when I graduated I think I would have been surprised to hear that at this point I would still feel that I am getting started. My epsilon looks larger when you change units from years to apartments: I have lived in 8 houses/apartments (about to be 9) since I got my PhD. A little background on me: I grew up in Laramie, Wyoming and majored in math at the University of Wyoming. After a few years out (spent teaching trigonometry, working in coffee shops, a hotdog stand, and a flower shop, delivering phone books, etc) I went back to school at Colorado State University. I studied number theory with Rachel Pries, and after graduation worked for 3 years in really great visiting positions–one year at Wesleyan University in Connecticut and two years at Colorado College. Last summer I moved to Philadelphia for a tenure-track position at Villanova University, where I’m about to start my second year.

This blog is about what it’s like to be an early career mathematician. I certainly don’t claim to be an expert on that, since I’m just figuring out my own math life, and there are so many different possible mathematical careers, even a wide range of academic math careers. I am here to share my experiences and thoughts on teaching, how my research is going and how I try to keep it alive and exciting, the endless process of applying for things (jobs, grants, reappointment, tenure… this does not appear to have an end), and my attempts to stay pretty healthy and happy at the same time. Hopefully it will also be fun (for more than just me), and open some discussion on all these topics in the comments. So thanks for reading, and thanks in advance for sharing your own experiences and ideas!