Assprof, Part IX: Starting up new , or how to catch up with the old?

The position is a four-year non-tenure track assistant professor and the next step up the Swedish academic ladder after postdoc. They are either funded through universities like mine or granted through one of the research councils.

As I mentioned earlier the position came with a salary, an office and I was promised a computer (just ordered this one; Yay for new gadgets!). No startup funding. Recently, however, we've been told by the university administration that the department has a huge surplus that needs to be spent before the end of the year. We were asked to suggest equipment and field/lab assistance that could be purchased or hired respectively from now until Christmas. The deadline for suggestions was about a week after the start of my contract so I had to quickly decide what I needed.

There big deadlines for the Swedish research councils are in April/May 2009 which means I won't get any real funding till early 2010. Thus I plan to spend quite a few months to finish unfinished projects of which there must be at least 15 in various stage of analyses or writing. Five of them depend mainly on me whereas the rest are highly dependent on others.The last four years has implied a bit too much travelling and quite a few new things to learn to finish projects. It's been a great experience, but it's time to get stuff published.