The initial offer is very good. If I can somehow convince the federal government to keep me on as a contractor at 25% effort, that would be compounded awesome.

I need to negotiate for more start up money to buy fMRI equipment (~50k USD), or MRI scan sequence products to look at brain metabolites, blood flow, and other cool shit (~25-50k each).

My plan is to stay at the NIA until Spring 2015. I despise working for Not A Boss, really would rather just leave in 4 months like Iowa State wants me to--but there's too much stuff to wrap up and plan out.

Stuff new faculty does include:

*Making up new experiments, writing a formal procedural document called a protocol, then getting that approved by a committee.

*Establishing at which hospital I'm going to throw away hundreds of thousands of dollars. This sort of private company collaboration takes time.

*Designing courses. I officially get one semester before I need to start teaching.

*Hiring people. Lots of undergrads, a few grad students, etc.

Plus we just moved, and I'm a lazy fucker when I get the vaguest opportunity, so yeah.

The thing I enjoy the most is the taste of freedom. That and the facial reactions like "...Oh. Fuck. He's going to be gone soon? Wow. Um. Fuck. What am I going to do?"

Satisfying.

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