The more things change, the more they stay the same.

I wanted to write a post, because somehow the mood struck me that it was about time.

I was going to write something about how my current boss is one of those closet sexists who probably doesn't even think of himself as sexist and would be offended to have to face that fact about himself. I'm not sure how to gently guide him to understand where his biases are hiding.

And how his boss seems to be terrified of me. Apparently because I'm female. He is friendly, but he never speaks to me directly. I don't think this is because he disrespects me. I think it is because he is shy, and women are especially scary. Also, I couldn't help noticing that he didn't wear his wedding ring when he first started working with us, but now he does. Regardless, this barrier means my colleagues have an easier time bonding with him than I do. I sense his discomfort and it makes me uncomfortable. So I stay away.

And I miss my former boss, who wasn't perfect but at least didn't refer to female peers and colleagues as "that woman" or "the wife of..."

And I miss doing research, and how what I'm doing is not really science at all, but it's a complicated thing to explain what science actually is. But I think some of my non-scientist friends have a better grasp of what science should be than a lot of scientists do.

And that makes me think more than ever, that I should get out of science as a career. I don't see how I'm ever going to get to any kind of leadership position from the traditional routes. I think I'm going to have to write if I want to say anything about how science needs to change, and whether anyone listens or not, at least I can say I tried.

Because in science, critical thinking skills can mean all the difference between success and paranoia. It's the difference between wasting time trying to reproduce results found in a shoddy publication, and doubting why science ever works or understanding how it ever could.

And that's not much different from believing the traditional career paths still exist (in minute quantities) or will lead to any kind of satisfying life (of a debatable kind).

I was thinking about this because I saw a friend recently who seems to have the perfect faculty position (tenured, good school) and life (married, 1 child). But her job is not completely stress-free, and I know that while things look good on the outside, she still has to work hard to stay where she is. And I don't know if I would really have been happy doing that. Maybe I would have gotten claustrophobic, staying at the same university for so long. I probably would have run into the same kinds of problems, just later on.

And I was thinking about how I have maybe two other friends who encounter sexist shit on an almost daily basis like I do, both at work and on the street, getting hit on, etc. (Just today I was walking out of the grocery store and got yelled at "Hey pretty lady, you care about baby tigers, don't you?")

And how it's somewhat mysterious to me that some of us have to constantly be confronted with being judged on our appearance, and other women somehow sail through life never having to really face up to it as a clear disadvantage. And how it baffles me as to whether it's because we're somehow more sexy (seems doubtful?) or just "too sensitive" or just unlucky or what.

Like how did my friend, who is pretty and athletic, manage to choose a field where somehow being in a minority of women was actually good for her career? But in my case it only seems to negate anything intelligent I have to say about anything?

And I'm supposed to accept positions where I'm routinely ignored, and at best I'm supposed to be satisfied when people take my ideas or suggestions but don't give me credit for them?

And I heard something recently about how most people can't tolerate constant failure, but video gamers and research scientists are the exception to that generalization.

I mean, I don't take it personally when my experiments fail. I know that either I will figure it out, or I won't, and either way, it doesn't make me any less of a person.

But I am so tired of the failure of my male colleagues to treat me as an equal. And it makes me so sad when I see the younger women following their lead. Why would they respect me when no one else does?

I know it's not me, because the last place I worked, when some people treated me with respect, everyone else tended to follow their lead. Too bad that job didn't pay enough...

And lately I would love a video game or any activity that was so easy and fun that it involved getting a lot of positive feedback and encouragement. Because I don't get enough of that in my job, and I would like to have more "flow state", which they say is what happy people cultivate. Where you are just absorbed in something so much that you don't notice time passing. Because all I do is notice time passing, and it only seems to pass too quickly evenings/weekends, and too slowly when I am at work.

And how some days I feel old, and some days I get carded when I buy a bottle of wine at the grocery store.

And how I sat at dinner the other night with a bunch of married people talking about their experiences with having kids, and my boyfriend and I looked at each other and held hands and everyone said how cute we are and how it's so obvious we're not married. And how the irony is nobody knows I was upset because I am just about too old to have kids even if I wanted to, and how hard it is to be dealing with that. Or how that happened because I put off deciding about having kids in hopes of having a scientific career. But nobody knows that. I didn't even really know that. But I'll probably have the rest of my life to think about it.

Ego-depletion, dishonesty and bad career decisions?

Check out this article, which talks about stress in terms of "ego-depletion", and what that does to both decision-making and the tendency to take short-cuts in general.

So first, let's talk about stress. I feel like stress became a popular term sometime in the '80s. I was just a kid then, but it was the days of spandex and step aerobics, shoulder pads and big hair. Everyone was working harder to be thinner, more powerful, more competitive.

Stress morphed into the grunge era and emerged looking like cigarette-smoking, burned-out depression in the early '90s.

By the time I was in "training", the culture of science valued stress above all else. Stress was a hallmark of potential success. If you were more stressed than the next guy, that meant you were working harder. Everyone respected the hardest worker. It didn't matter if you were working smart, or if your science was working at all. It mattered what kind of hours you put in; how much you complained; how tired you looked. Who saw you leaving in the early dawn after spending the night in the lab. It was almost as important to be seen exhibiting signs of stress as it was to complain about it afterwards, when you had gone home, slept a while, and showered.

But I think this article and the idea that we might make poor decisions under stress is worth considering seriously.

For example, are we being dishonest with ourselves when we rationalize why anyone should deserve to suffer in science careers? Are we rationalizing pain as "part of the training process"? As a "learning experience"? Are we telling ourselves we need to toughen ourselves and our students up, because we're too tired to realize that's a stupid way to think about a career that actually demands creativity and a fresh perspective?

Well, yes. I think so.

I also think the idea that stress and poor decision-making might lead to cheating is relevant to science. I think examples like Retraction Watch help document the extent to which not all scientists view it as a noble profession. Or maybe they just are too tired to resist the temptation to fudge the data and hope everyone else is too tired to notice it's a big fat lie.

Meanwhile, the honest people are headed for certain burnout. At the end of the day, is there any amount of hard work that can win out over the cheaters who never get caught? Or who are rationalizing why they should protect each other? How much ego-depletion does it take to fuel protectionist groupthink?

I haven't logged in here much lately, but I got inspired to revisit some old posts and try to organize some thoughts about this blog, and noticed that I received this letter on a previous post :

Howdy,

I'm a third year lady. After classes and quals, this is my first year in lab. This has been such a rude awakening. I joined a lab and naively believed that having a female PI would result in improved mentoring. My PI is just too busy to guide me and wants me to function at what feels like a postdoc level.I get it that this is the crash and burn method, but I'm feeling like a tippy-toeing cat. I don't have a masters and am constantly stalking older students. Yet I feel like I'm barely hanging in there. The lack of confidence is something I wish I could beat out of myself. I have no idea how it got so deeply embedded in my daily thoughts. I almost think it's equivalent to self-destructive behavior, constantly telling myself that if an experiment fails or was poorly designed that somehow this reflects my intelligence. The problem is that I already know what the alternatives are. I worked in industry and took a considerable paycut to come to school. Where I worked prior, the skill level was equivalent to monkey work. So, I know I need this degree to get the freedom to find that job that I care about because I still love science.

___


Dear Anonymous,

Sorry I didn't reply sooner - I don't log into Blogger much these days. I am working on a MsPhD book, though, so eventually I hope to finish that.

1. Having a female PI doesn't automatically mean good mentoring. Most PIs are sucky mentors, no matter which gender or how busy they are.

It's really hard to find (and be) a good mentor, both in the sense of the skills required to provide advice and guidance in a positive way, and also in terms of fit for you personally with where you are and where you want to be. That's true both in and out of science. Good mentors are very hard to find.

2. Having or not having a masters doesn't matter. Forget about it.

3. You are supposed to stalk older students and postdocs for help. That's how the "system" works. In other words, THERE IS NO SYSTEM. It's a total free for all. The people who beg, barter and plead for help, get it. They make it. The rest will drown. Make up your mind now not to feel guilty about annoying the crap about of everyone around you if that's what it takes to get the help you need.

For example, I have a couple of students I'm helping right now. They are sweet kids. They follow my directions. They take notes. They ask for help. This is really all I could ask for from anyone who needs help. That they ask nicely. And that they listen to the answers.

I'm going to skip over the confidence part because I don't know how much I can help with the psychology of that (see, for example, all the other posts I've ever written on this blog).

you wrote:


constantly telling myself that if an experiment fails or was poorly designed that somehow this reflects my intelligence. The problem is that I already know what the alternatives are. I worked in industry and took a considerable paycut to come to school. Where I worked prior, the skill level was equivalent to monkey work. So, I know I need this degree to get the freedom to find that job that I care about because I still love science.


So here's what I think about this part. Are you ready? Don't scroll down until you're ready. 






























1. If an experiment fails? 

HAHAHAHA! 

Here's the honest truth: 

All experiments fail. That is why they are experiments, and not monkey work. 

So step one is: Get used to failure. Don't take it personally when experiments fail. That's what experiments do. That's what science is about. And if you don't love failure, you don't know what science is. You have to embrace the fog of uncertainty and fumble your way through. 

There is no better teacher than failure. Failure is your friend. 

If it doesn't fail the first time, it will fail when you go to repeat it. If it doesn't fail then, it will fail the third time when you go to reproduce it for publication. If it doesn't fail then, there are 30 other experiments you need to do and most of those will fail. 


Get used to it. 


If you don't like this part of it, GET OUT. 


Get the fuck out and don't look back. 


Get out ASAP and go find something else to do (see below). 






2. know I need this degree to get the freedom to find that job that I care about because I still love science

HAHAHAHA!

Ok honey, I'm not laughing at you, I'm laughing at how much you need to read the rest of this blog. 

To summarize: Getting a PhD does not buy you freedom. It buys you a ticket to the next round. 

Round 2 is postdoc #1. 

Then there's postdoc #2, 3, etc. until you:

a) get a faculty position (nearly impossible and geographically miserable)

b) get an industry position (extremely difficult in this economy, and geographically limited)

c) get stuck somewhere as staff doing monkey work (yay! Dr. Monkey Work!)

d) get out of science and go do something science-related like policy, writing, etc. (good luck finding those jobs) 

e) get out of science and go do something unrelated to science, and wonder whether it was worth spending so many years working so hard for so little money and even less respect. 

So ask yourself again, how badly do you really want it. Because it's not going to get any easier. 

Yes, the experiments will get easier. You might consider switching labs or adding a co-adivsor so you can get better mentoring. 

But the job prospects will not magically improve. Getting a PhD only makes you LESS EMPLOYABLE. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying. 

Message in a bottle

Wow, it has been such a long time that Blogger has completely changed the way everything looks since last time I logged in. Very disorienting!

Just wanted to check in and say hi, since I had a handful of genuine comments waiting for me (the rest were spam).

I'm in a very strange position, which I can't describe here on conditions of anonymity. So don't send me a flurry of comments asking about it, mmkay?

With that disclaimer, I will say that lately the best part of my job is mentoring grad students. It's so much fun watching them get excited about having their experiments work. Sometimes that's the only thing that gets me through the week. I've given up caring whether I get any credit for it. I'm overjoyed if they say thank you or, even better, acknowledge me in their presentations.

I admit I'm somewhat conflicted about encouraging them, but I figure they're in now, they might as well try to make the most of it. I do tell them to consider leaving without a PhD, since it will only make them less employable. And by all means, I tell them, DO NOT DO A POSTDOC.

Of course I can't help it that most of them don't listen.

The worst part of my job is working with postdocs. A close second is working with sexist PIs.

Yes, you heard me. In that order.

The postdocs span all the extremes: the clueless one who did a 3-year PhD abroad and is way behind the 4th year grad students; the miserable one who nevertheless got a prestigious fellowship; the hopeless one who happens to be a minority and might manage to finagle a job that way; the one who works way too hard burning her candle at both ends all the time, who reminds me of myself and for whom I fear deeply.

And so on and so forth. There are SO MANY postdocs. And so many of them think they are special. They are going to be the exception. They are going to work harder and it's going to be okay. Or so they think.

While the grad students are generally really appreciative of advice, most of the postdocs don't listen to much of anything I say.

Perhaps more infuriatingly, they still ask for my protocols, etc. Which is, I guess, an improvement over my postdoc lab, where everyone wanted to complain about their stuff not working, but nobody wanted to try my protocols at all.

So these postdocs still don't really respect me much, but they do want to use me. Or at least waste my time.

The sexist PIs are just hilarious. They absolutely refuse to take my suggestions, and then when eventually it turns out that I was right, they either don't remember arguing with me, or pretend not to remember that I said so. They always think it was their idea all along.

In the meantime I have to pretend like I don't mind that they ignore me, invalidate me, and give me zero credit.

But at least I only see them occasionally in meetings. They're not usually pestering me on a daily basis.

So it's funny because it's the same as ever, except now I have the luxury of not caring so much, because I know there's no future for me in this business. So it's not like I'm trying to earn anyone's respect. (It's very funny to me to think I ever bothered trying?).

Why bother?

I have two rules:

1. Lower Expectations. No, lower. I said LOWER!

2.  Try not to burn too many bridges.

Let's just say some days are better than others.

Lies, damn lies, and statistics

Grad students are generally less likely to want to continue in research careers as they go along; less than half of grad students are happy with their stipend; and European grad students are happier than US grad students: nature survey of 5000 grad students

For fun, you can also download the data tables.

***

In other news, something I figured out the hard way:

although it is relatively easy for universities to hire people with interdisciplinary backgrounds for postdocs, it is much harder to get interdisciplinary faculty positions. That could lead scientists without a history of close affiliation with an established department to serial fellowships and postdoc limbo, or job-hunting challenges in the broader market

No kidding.

Cooking in other people's kitchens.

I've used the kitchen to talk about lab, and I still think it's the best analogy.

Since it's an issue now with some of the consulting I'm doing, I'm going to elaborate a little more.

When I was a grad student, I really liked my lab in a lot of ways. The people who set up our workspace did a great job of arranging the equipment and we had plenty of room to do what we needed to do.

Having said that, my labmates were not always the best roommates. Not everyone was equally conscientious about replacing shared consumables . Also, some of our equipment was old and unreliable, and there were things we needed that we couldn't afford.

So naturally, by the time I graduated, I had a wish list of what I wanted in my postdoc lab. Some people think it's stupid to worry about this kind of thing, but my feeling is that if you're going to be running around in there 60+ hours a week working with your hands, the day-to-day stuff really does make a huge difference in how productive you're going to be. Not to mention how quickly you're going to get tired and frustrated and want to go home. And some projects will be virtually impossible without the right tools.

Looking back on my postdoc interviews, I asked the right questions. But my PIs lied. They all overstated their resources. For example, if I asked about a specific piece of expensive equipment, they said "yes we have one of those" but the truth turned out to be something more like "there is one in the next building over" or "there used to be one on campus."

Worse than that, after I joined their labs, they regularly dismissed my requests. They implied that I was being "high maintenance" and told me that I needed to be more patient or learn how to make do with less. Which was especially insulting considering that I knew quite well how to make do with whatever was around, but my point was that it was a giant waste of my time and expertise to make me do it that way.

I particularly resented the PIs who didn't understand the distinctions between doing things the cheap way vs. the right way. I tried to explain that the cheap way works sometimes, but the right way works EVERY TIME. Do you want it to be reproducible? Do you want all the iterations to be done quickly? Doesn't it actually end up costing you more money in the long run when it doesn't work and ends up taking longer/more iterations?

I think a lot of my career frustration has come from this lack of control. You know, like when you take those surveys for biotech companies, and they ask you whether you

a) evaluate equipment and approve purchases

b) make recommendations for equipment

c) have no input

The hierarchy in most labs is that the PI does (a), postdocs do (b), undergrads do (c), and grad students/technicians usually fall somewhere in the b-c range depending on seniority and the size of the lab.

I got really tired of playing the b string, especially when my recommendations were always ignored. I had to watch helplessly when Blond Guy wanted to buy something that I knew was worse. But nobody else knew that, nobody would listen to me even though I had more expertise, and the boss liked him better than me. So we always got what Blond Guy wanted, and I got screwed.

This really wore me down. I spent basically my entire career working with:

a) not enough equipment

b) old/broken equipment

c) the wrong equipment

One of the things that really made me want a faculty position was this carrot: that I would someday be able to set up my own lab the way I wanted it.

Like my kitchen. Sure, I might not have everything right away, but I could make the decisions about what to get and where to put it, and gradually make improvements.

I wouldn't have to make do with whatever cheap knockoff junk they bought at a flea market because they didn't know any better.

I think the kitchen analogy helps explain what I mean. It's one thing to visit someone's house and make do when they don't have what you need. Say you visit for a holiday. No big deal. It's just one day.

Now imagine that you have an ailing relative and you have to stay in their house and cook for them every day for a year. And this relative is sickly but prone to tantrums so you can't make any big changes without risking their wrath (or maybe you're afraid of losing your inheritance, ha ha).

Let's say they only like bland food, and you have to cook for them, but they won't let you make something different to eat yourself. So now you're stuck not only cooking bland food in a crappy kitchen, but you have to eat the bland food, too.

Does that sound like fun?

Sure, you can sneak into the kitchen in the middle of the night and make yourself something spicy without anyone finding out, but you still have to put the kitchen back the way it was when you're done. Or you have to go over to someone else's house and beg to use their KitchenAid mixer every time you want to bake.

I guess my point is, it's all well and good to talk about being a "team player", and I can enjoy that if I am treated as a team member. What I don't like is being told to put up or shut up. I didn't sign up to do science so I could follow blindly along behind my fearless leader. I signed up so I could get in the kitchen and cook up something new and different.

Anyway, I'm writing about this now because I still have some residual anxiety about making suggestions and asking for things. I always ask, it just stresses me out. I was told NO too many times. NO was often accompanied by personal and professional insults about how demanding and unreasonable I was being just because I had asked for something.

Just being told NO is ok. Just being insulted can be ok if you still get what you asked for. But the repetitious combination was really degrading.

One of the weird things about consulting is that you're essentially telling somebody you barely know what they should cook and how to run their kitchen. Even when they are receptive, sometimes it's hard to get over that initial fear of having to break the bad news that no, you can't make creme brulee with a cigarette lighter.

Especially when you know the subtext of the contract is whether you'd consider working on this project long-term, and the only honest answer is, "Not unless you'll let me remodel your kitchen."

Three unlikely things

I'm still doing some mentoring and some scientific consulting. Some is unpaid, and the rest is underpaid, but it's better than nothing (at least for now).

I really had gotten used to being told nearly every day that I was wrong, or crazy, or that my suggestions wouldn't work, or that the things I worried about didn't matter.

So lately I'm amazed to find that people are seeking my advice (outside this blog, even!). They say my ideas and contributions are interesting and important.

Yesterday I had one of these nice experiences. I met with a group to discuss a project. Three things happened that I would have considered unlikely when I was a postdoc, and to have them all happen at once like this would have meant that hell was freezing over.

1. I pointed out a potentially important problem and the immediate reaction was, "Wow, you're right!"

2. I suggested trying something my way because it's much faster and easier and they said, "Your way sounds much better! Let's do that!"

3. They said they were really impressed with my CV.

Thinking back on it, I'm surprised enough that I felt this deserved a blog post. Why is it that these people reacted so differently to me than the people I was working with during my postdoc?

Is it just because everyone in the group was a woman?

Is this is how some men feel in academia?