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92 Passion for statistics8.5 Job and postdoc huntingI was ready to move on, a bright-eyed 31 year old. I had enjoyed doing research,and having received positive feedback about it, I was ready to try the academicjob market. I submitted applications to many schools. While I would havepreferred to stay on the West Coast, the list of job opportunities seemedpretty limiting. With Norm’s encouragement, I also applied for an NSF–NATOpostdoctoral fellowship.To my somewhat shocked surprise, I had six job interviews. I can only inferthat I must have had some good letters from well known scholars. In the endI had interviews at UC Berkeley, UC Davis, Purdue, Florida State, Princeton,and Penn State. I was quite awestruck about being paid to fly around thecountry, as at that point in my life I had never flown anywhere. It was rathernice to be treated like a celebrity for a couple of months.Of course, the interviews could sometimes be intimidating. One colorfulcharacter was Herman Rubin of Purdue, who was notorious for crossexaminingjob candidates in his office. At the end of my seminar, he raisedhis hand and stated that my results could not possibly be correct. It was abit disconcerting. Another place that was frightening, mostly by the fame ofits scholars, was Berkeley. Peter Bickel, not much older than I, was alreadyDepartment Head there. Another place with some intellectual firepower wasPrinceton, where John Tukey sat in the audience.Wherever I did an interview, I told the school that I would like to takethe NATO postdoc if it became available, and that being able to do so wouldbe a factor in my decision. In the end, several did make me offers with anopen start date, and after considerable deliberation, and several coin tosses,I accepted Penn State’s offer over Princeton’s. Since the Princeton departmentclosed soon thereafter, I guess I was right.8.6 The postdoc yearsIn the end, I did garner the postdoc. With it, I went to Imperial College inLondon for 1978–79, where my supervisor was the famous Sir David Cox. Hispaper (Cox, 1972) was already on its way to being one of the most cited worksever (Ryan and Woodall, 2005). My thanks to Norm for opening this door. Allthose early career choices, like University of Washington and Breslow, werepaying off with new opportunities.In London I went back to work on my dissertation topic. When I hadvisited Berkeley, I learned that Peter Bickel had a student working on relatedproblems, and Peter pointed out some disadvantages about my approach toasymptotics. I had drawn heavily on a monograph by Bahadur (1971). Neither