New postdoc and I am asked to draft a whole plan [closed]

Question

I am a new postdoc at a very good university, a fresh PhD graduate. Since I passed my 2 round interviews and I was the best among the other applicants, I was appointed, and in fact, I don't know why they chose me. long story short, I am asked to draft 3 pages of research and project acquisition as well as what skills I need to improve in the following 6 months. I am serious that I feel I don't know anything or how to write. I was reading here and there, asked a lot around here, and now I can simply describe my status to be a "Confusion". I kindly ask experts here to give me some pieces of advice or some solid resources that can be helpful. what skills would you like to improve in 2 years of a postdoc position? if you are new to project acquisition, from where will you start?

Thank You.

Answer 1

I'm writing a partial answer initially; if you provide some more information I might be able to expand.

Some hopefully-useful suggestions / points to ponder, ordered from harsher to mellower:

• It's your post-doc - you (mostly) decide. (In principle, anyway). You are a capable independent researcher - which is what your Ph.D. attests to. Perhaps that's not entirely true and you were hand-held more, or you don't feel mature enough as a person to lead research? That happens, no shame in it; but you will need to step up, for your own good and regardless of what you're asked/required to write. You yourself need to formulate plans of what you intend to investigate, what you want to self-study, which skills you are missing and want to acquire, which/what kind of people/groups you want to strike up collaborations with and so on - even if no-one were to ask you to put any of that in writing.

• Work on being able to write anything and everything. Writing is a skill of critical importance for an academic. Of course there's academic-paper-writing, but expressing yourself in written form is something your're going to be doing a whole lot of, in many ways. If you feel you're not proficient enough or not experienced enough, definitely put that as one of your skills to improve - and talk to the senior group member with whom you're closest, explaining that you've had limited writing experience and you want to work on that first of all. Alternatively, you could go ask personnel, or some secretarial entity, whether there's a writing workshop/course for graduate students which you could take without credit.

  Also, writing your research plan is an opportunity to improve your writing in general. Have a friend from inside or outside the group read a pre-draft of yours and give you comments on your language and writing style rather than the academic content.

• Nobody said you had to come up with the plans alone. Schedule a meeting with one or more tenured researchers in the group, to discuss research ideas and directions. No need to hide the fact that you're doing it also for writing that plan - you can say that outright. Especially the "acquisition" part is a hook for getting their input, since, after all, nobody expects you to know how acquisitions work in a new workplace, or what budget is available etc. For these meetings you need to prepare, of course, but not by writing drafts; rather, think of ideas you want to pursue and the reasons you applied for a post-doc in this group.

  It might also be useful to talk to other post-docs or PhD candidates to see if what they're doing is something that you want to augment or complement with your own work (before or between or after meetings with the more senior researchers).

• Stand on the shoulders of midgets (or giants, whatever). Other people have been in your exact position and were asked something similar, right? Well, ask for other people's plans as an example of what these look like.