Issue #38: I got a job, so now what?

🚨 NEW VIDEO DROP

The code video from last week was on power and sample size calculations. Go watch it, will ya?

📺 What’s coming up?

A video on the winner of the 2025 “Nobel Prize” in statistics

📰 TL;DR

I got a job, and what that means for the future of the channel

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The stressful part is done

I’m happy to announce that I was able to secure a job offer a few weeks ago. After giving it a lot of thought, I accepted the offer, so I’ll be a working statistician for a large pharma company. For my own privacy, I’d rather not disclose where.

The job search has probably been the most stressful part of my last quarter as a Ph.D student — much more so than writing the dissertation or preparing my defense slides.

I think I’m very lucky to get this position. Going to a conference to meet people face-to-face paid off. Before that, applying to jobs purely online felt like a Sisyphean task. There is just way more power in putting yourself in front of who is hiring, especially when you are a new grad. If your advisor or department offers funding for conferences, you should spend every penny of it.

I’ll be starting in August, so I feel there will be shifts in how Very Normal and this newsletter are run.

What’s next?

Being a late Ph.D student meant having all the free time in the world to do things. Now, I’ll have a job to take care of. I want to continue posting content for Very Normal, but it is very likely that my upload pace will slow down significantly.

Honestly, that sounds great because this weekly upload rhythm is a huge drain on me.

I think that the channel might have to move to having me talk to a camera since live footage is easier to edit and put together. Unfortunately, you’ll have to see my face probably going forward.

In terms of content, I still have so many things I want to teach on the channel. It’s all still mostly aimed at people with exposure to statistics, so I'm sorry to the total beginners out there. After reaching my subscriber goal, I think I’d like to go back to a less “YouTubey” approach to thumbnails and titles, but we’ll see. Even though I don’t personally like it, it is a fun challenge to try to figure out what it takes to get people to pay attention to statistics.

I had a great idea for a new series for the newsletter, so I’m working out the details here. In my experiences interviewing for statistician positions, I realized that my coursework and research did not prepare me much for what I encountered. I hope I can create some resources for others to alleviate this.

Further down the line, I think I’d like to get started on a heavier project like a course. It’s one of my goals for 2025, so I plan to follow through on it.

That’s it for this one, see you in the next one.

📦 Other stuff of mine

• Support me on Ko-fi! YouTube and Substack are the best and easiest ways to support me, but this would be the place if you feel like going the extra mile. Greatly appreciated!