Are you sure you want to be a professor?

Saw this article by Kerry Ann Rockquemore in my Monday Motivator feed this morning.

I learned of Kerry Ann Rockquemore at one of those so-called "diversity workshops" where she was one of the few speakers who even MENTIONED sexism as a factor. The actual purpose of the workshop was unclear, since it seemed to be chock-full of general career advice that I'd already heard, none of which had helped me at all.

She was probably the best speaker there, because she really gave concrete advice. So I have to laugh a little at getting her stuff in my feed. It's intended for people who are already tenured or tenure-track faculty.

I probably should unsubscribe.

She's the kind of person I desperately want to ask for help, except that by the time I found out about her I realized it was a) too late and that she was b) too busy to help someone like me c) unless I could pay her workshop fee. And even then, like for most things designated for faculty, as a postdoc I wouldn't have been considered eligible. Probably.

Anyway the part that struck me in this column was where she wrote

The trick is to determine the difference between escape fantasies that result from feeling overwhelmed and the genuine, gut-level resistance that occurs when you REALLY know you're on the wrong path. Below I'm going to suggest a few things you might try as ways to differentiate between momentary frustration and the need to create an exit strategy.

Yes, that really is the trick, isn't it? My therapist seemed to think I was on the wrong path, that I was exhibiting signs of gut-level resistance to the career in general.

In truth, I thought then and I still think now that I was experiencing gut-level resistance to my advisor, maybe, but not necessarily to the career itself.

Some days, I still have trouble extrapolating the concept that my evil advisor represents the evil inherent in the entire profession. And yet, clearly I think that all of our horror story examples are representative. Blogging has certainly taught me that. You can run, but you can't hide forever.

Still, I went with the exit strategy only moments before I might have made it, finally, or been kicked out anyway. Was it self-sabotage? Was I delusional? I still don't know. Maybe I couldn't have survived another year of that, but why did I stick around that long in the first place? Could I have just taken a left turn instead of jumping off?

Had an interesting chat with a religious friend the other day about knowing whether you're on the right path. I told him I'm not sure I believe in the concept of having a path. He said something vague like you'll know you're on the right path when you're on it.

Uh, ok. Thanks.

There's that and then I saw this article in the Chronicle written by a guy who left academia for 20 years, and then came back, only to find it had gotten even worse.

He tells a particularly familiar story about advising a grad student on just how impossibly dismal her career chances are.

And how she ignores him.

****

Elsewhere on the internets, people are talking about this article in the NY Times about med schools who allow some students to major in the humanities and still become MDs.

Oh, the horror! MDs are not scientists? They don't have to be?

And this is news?

And yet, the fact that it is news has some interesting implications. Maybe not yet, but for the future. For whole generations of patients and students.

One friend remarked to me that it's too bad they weren't doing this when we were in college, how I probably should have majored in English and gone to med school, instead of majoring in science and going to grad school.

It occurred to me that this may be one of the unique facets of our transitional generation. We may be among the few whose doctors who lack creativity for the simple reason that they had it beaten or selected out of them earlier on in their education.

****
I was also reading about how our generation is composed of control-freaks who are ruining our children, while the generation after us is full of the new flower-kids, who will certainly use creativity to change the world.

What does it matter if I change the world at all?

Sometimes I feel like i was born just a few years too early. Maybe this is why I like Futurama so much.

And just think, if I were a professor right now, I wouldn't have time to sleep or eat, much less watch several episodes of animated sarcasm.

Oh where is that cryogenic accident when I need one? Perhaps my path lies in delivering pizza. Pretty sure somebody is actually hiring people to do that.

What I talk about when I talk about science

One of the comments on the last post raised the question of whether scientists mostly sit around talking about:

1) technical problems
2) asshole colleagues/advisors
3) publishing & competing
4) big ideas.

Technical problems: the good and bad of talking about it constantly

the good

Talking about it usually means you'll get advice & commiseration. This might make you feel like less of a loser, and you might learn something that fixes your problem.

It might give you the break you need to head back into the lab and try again.

I love giving advice to others when I know enough to be helpful. I find it satisfying to pass one what I've learned and save other people the trouble of learning the hard way.

I try to be supportive when I can't be useful.

I think if you don't like talking and hearing about technical issues, you shouldn't be in science. Period. This is the bread and butter, day-to-day, one foot in the front of the other. It's how research gets done.

The devil really is in the details.

the bad

Sometimes you get conflicting advice, and that can be confusing.

Sometimes people will be judgmental and it will make you insecure about asking for help again.

Sometimes people are no help, and then you wonder whether you're working in the wrong place, surrounded by people who don't care or don't know anything useful and won't teach you much, or if you're attempting something impossible and wasting your time on a dead-end.

Sometimes I give advice and people don't listen. I've blogged about this before because it's one of my pet peeves. The people who whine and want shortcuts and think it's easier to do it the "easy way" but that doesn't work and then they have to go back and do it all over again. My way might seem "harder" at first but it works, and in the long run that's actually faster. But sometimes I get tired of people asking me and not respecting what I have to say enough to talk to me about why they think it might not work or to just admit they're too lazy.

Assholes in science

I was talking to a grad student the other day about whether there are more assholes in academic science than in other careers. I think there are. She says there are assholes everywhere. I told her I used to believe that, actually had someone tell me that, back when I was in college and debating about whether to pursue a science career.

Now I'm not so sure. I think academic science selects for assholes and cultivates assholishness in otherwise decent people. I've watched it happen. Otherwise decent people, put under enough pressure, become angry starving dogs backed into a corner. They will bite you.

I'm not sure it was always this bad, but it's how it is now.

So yeah, we complain about it. All. The. Time. On blogs especially.

And I've reached a point where I'm just sick of it. I'm sick of working with jerks and I'm sick of hearing about other people being trapped working with jerks. I'm sick of lacking for constructive solutions.

At first, you treat it like just another type of problem-solving. You read all the books on communication and negotiating and you try to out-manipulate the manipulators. For some people, this works, usually in combination with other approaches like mentoring and string-pulling from family & friends.

But I get the feeling that if you need to read books about it (like I do), you're not going to make it through.

After a while, it's boring. It's frustrating being completely powerless and not knowing how to marshall enough support to stand up to these people or maneuver around them (notice the root of these words, man-ipulate and man-euver.).

And then it's like, well I can advise you up to a point but after that, don't ask me. I couldn't figure it out. Just for the love of god, please quit whining to me about it. I tried every iteration I could think of, but it just wasn't working out for me.

Publishing and competition

Truthfully, when I was just a new student who had never done anything myself worth publishing, I never cared about which journal, which author, which institution, or who did what first.

In school, I met people who cared a lot about which journal. My thesis advisor had ideas about which journals were "appropriate" for my work when we went to publish. I had ideas about which journals handled figures well and which ones tended to make them small and unreadable. That was my biggest criterion. Did they present the material well? No? Then I don't care how famous they are. It's not a journal I'd want to be reading.

Then there was the whole authorship thing. Like the collaborators who let us do all the work and then demanded at the end that their student be made co-first author after I had already written the entire manuscript. How was that fair? I realized I wanted people to be citing ME and not her. I did not want someone else to put their name on my writing.

Not having worked at too many different places, I still don't know what I think about the "which institution" question, but it does affect things. I remember sitting in one journal club, listening to the spoiled brats from the richest labs complaining that the authors of a paper from a third-world country hadn't done enough expensive controls. I tried to explain to them what it's like to work in a poor lab. That you have to choose carefully the most important controls that will tell you the most, because you simply can't afford to do them all.

And I remember slowly realizing how much money matters for how much you can do. That it costs about a million dollars to do a Cell paper's worth of work, by the time you pay for everything and everybody's salary who worked on it. And realizing that most labs simply can't afford to do that. And sometimes even the richest labs go through periods when they can't afford to do it for more than one paper at a time. And that paper might not be yours. And it might have nothing to do with which project is the better project. It might have everything to do with who the first authors are and whether the PI likes them more than anyone else.

And realizing how the competition aspect of everything just poisons the atmosphere. Turns people into dogs trying to eat other people they view as competing dogs.

Yeah, I talk about all of that a lot with my science friends. How it's too bad so much good science never sees the light of day because someone else did it first and that supposedly means it's better, when in fact the better stuff often just takes longer. How timing has superceded quality on the list of priorities and how I think that's a terrible thing for science. How timing often comes down to who gossips the most, who fakes or manipulates data, and which famous authors are on their paper. How perhaps it's the famous authors who fake and manipulate and gossip the most. How we all thought science would be less about fame and more about ideas. How we wonder if it was always this way and whether it always will be. Or whether science might implode if things continue on this way.

big ideas

So do we talk about big ideas? Sure.

As much as I'd like? No, not at all.

For quite a while now, I've been very isolated from other people who had similar interests. I talked more about big ideas at meetings than I ever did at my home institution. That was part of why, in the last few years, meetings were the most fun for me. My department was full of people who worked on different big ideas, or who debated endlessly about useless minutiae instead of coming up with ways to test their pet hypotheses. Or who did exclusively "me-too" science. One trick ponies.

At first, I tried to interject. And then I gave up. I would just sit back and let them debate amongst themselves. Sometimes I would try to redirect the conversation to the larger point, to ask, like a broken record, "Yes but how would you TEST that?" But often they would turn to look at me and then go right back to obsessing about which famous guy was right about their ugly cartoon model of their favorite mechanism.

It was hard for me to articulate why I thought even the best cartoon model of their favorite question wouldn't really clarify anything, much as they wanted to know, it wasn't going to move the field forward in any significant way if they weren't doing the right experiments.

But I couldn't figure out how to tell them that productively and have them really hear me. I knew it would just hurt their tiny, insecure feelings.

Also, if I viewed them as my competition, it was easy to see how it was better to let them obsess about something insignificant. Like the Princess and the Pea. If they wanted to think the pea was important, that was fine by me. I would rather that they were exhausted and unable to focus.

Meanwhile, I was sleeping soundly and thinking clearly.

But in general, I always liked the idea that we need both kinds. We need people who care about ideas and people who care about details. I want someone else to do some kinds of nitty gritty and I'll take care of the parts they can't see. That's fine. Ideally, there would be room for everybody.

Yes, when I talk to my friends who are scientists, we talk about the future of science and what the next big discoveries might mean for what we can do sooner or later, and how much later. And why do we have to wait. And can we get our hands on some of that new stuff, can we collaborate.

We talk about what we would do differently if we were in charge of everything. We talk about whether we're helping patients and how can we get our colleagues to think differently, to see what we're saying. How to deal with our own doubts by testing, testing, testing. And how to anticipate our colleagues' skepticisms and be most persuasive.

But mostly, we talk about how tired we are of all the nonsense that gets in the way. How much more we could be getting done if only we had the resources. How un-scientific the academic science hierarchy is. And why nobody seems to want to make the radical changes that would be needed to fix everything that needs fixing.

On the latest NIH soft-money kerfuffle

The commenter who writes as "lou dobbs" sent this link to a post Drugmonkey wrote about some things said by Francis Collins in an interview.

Basically, the relevance to postdocs is this quote:

But Dr. Collins said he was looking more at universities themselves, saying that the age bias actually originates with institutions that don't allow their younger researchers to apply for grants.

At first, I thought I couldn't get riled up about this, I'm tired, whatever.

....And then I started writing.

In short, I call bullshit. Nothing is going to change until the funding agencies admit that they have to take the reins.

1. Universities won't let younger researchers apply for grants.

TRUE. But they blame the NIH guidelines, the cost to cover salaries and benefits, and lack of lab space.

2. Faculty won't help younger researchers apply for transition grants, much less allow them to apply for their own funding.

TRUE. They claim the low rates of funding make it barely worth the time it takes for a younger researcher to write the grant, since that is time they can't spend doing the faculty member's already-funded projects. They also refuse to share their lab space to support a younger researcher setting up her/his own project on a bench in their lab.

3. NIH encourages younger researchers to independently apply for independent funding.

BULLSHIT. NIH guidelines match university guidelines. They require certain types of appointments, and they require that the university guarantees "support".

What this means in practice is that universities effectively ban postdocs from applying for funding, because they can't guarantee support to everyone whether or not you get the grant. It's just not practical.

NIH continues to reinforce the catch-22: you can't get the job title without the funding, and you can't get the funding without the job title.

It all seems backwards to me. Seems to me that the university should be allowed to guarantee resources IF AND ONLY IF the grant is awarded. Then the university isn't risking anything.

But NIH WON'T LET THEM DO THAT.

4. NSF is different, they allow younger research to independently apply for independent funding.

BULLSHIT. NSF has the same rules. They use the same university guidelines requiring appointments and resources.

5. This is true for everyone, so it's fair.

BULLSHIT. What really sticks in my knickers is that MDs can be "independent" a lot sooner, despite having MUCH less research experience.

They're allowed to apply for their own funding, because their salaries will be covered by clinical work whether or not they get the grant.

Does that make sense from a business perspective, if universities are companies?

Yes.

Does it make sense in terms of research qualifications or potential for progress?

NO.

I'm not sure where Francis Collins thinks universities are supposed to get the money to pay PhD researchers' salaries, if not from research grants.

We don't see patients whose health insurance pays a fee. We don't sell a product that is available right now - that's the nature of basic research. Which everyonesays they know is important, except they certainly don't treat us that way.

Meanwhile, we're supposed to believe that it's some amazing privilege to work as overeducated postdoc slaves with no guarantee of future employment past a handful of years.

And families don't want to pay more for college tuition. There's more and more rumbling about online education and the end of the university as we know it.

Personally, I think science has been going to hell in a handbasket for a while. I wonder if Francis Collins isn't just helping to speed the process. Maybe these genome project type d00ds just want all research to be done in private Institutes? This article certainly seemed to imply that NIH wishes universities would be more like the Whitehead.

Lately I do wonder if we shouldn't separate undergraduate education from research centers. It seems nearly impossible to be equally good at teaching and research. In fact, I sometimes wonder if the two aren't mutually exclusive.

But I somehow doubt that would solve our funding issues. Unless it's actually the case that the bigger the university, the more money they waste?

....Yeah, I think that's probably true. In myriad ways.

Perception hole

From a comment:

Anonymous said...
"My point in #3 and 5 is not that men don't care about these things, absolutely they do. But women drop out in disproportionate numbers, and these are some of the reasons they cite."

Wait a second. Why would women drop out at disproportionate rates due to lack of money and job security?

In fact, if patriarchy is the norm (as you suggest), don't you think women have LESS pressure to earn well and have good jobs? Shouldn't this make it easier for them to adjust to the lesser pay and lower job security? In the patriarchal system, women don't have to be breadwinners and hence they can afford to pursue science almost along the lines as a hobby.

Contradiction.
.............................................

Woooooooooooooooo boy. We got some work to do here.

I'm going to take a stab at this, and hopefully some others will write in the comments here as well.

Assumption 1a: That "patriarchy" means men take care of women

TRUE and FALSE.

TRUE. The definition of the word patriarchy includes "a family headed by a man".

FALSE. Because not all women want to be or are taken care of by men; similarly not all men take care of or want to take care of women.

Assumption 1b: so women don't want to or need to work.

FALSE. Patriarchy has two other definitions, which are the ones more relevant to the point I raised (although I did not use the word patriarchy, you did).

As you can read here in the Merriam-Webster dictionary, patriarchy also means control by men of a disproportionately large share of power and a society or institution organized according to the principles or practices of patriarchy.

Although you could argue that nobody wants to work, I think you'll have to agree that if nobody is taking care of you, you need to work.

Most of us fall into that last category. We need the income. Also, there are various benefits to working besides just paying the bills. Being denied a career means being denied all of the fulfillment and stimulation of

a) an intellectual environment
b) making tangible progress and
c) getting feedback when you make significant contributions.

Assumption 2: That women should want to pursue science as a hobby.

I guess you're also assuming within this that most men who pursue science as a career would also want it as a hobby if they could afford to do that?

But in your version, women can do science as a hobby, but men don't have to??

So let's break it down.

FALSE: Science as a hobby

My type of science can't be done outside a university or a company. It is too expensive. It is unsafe. I can't do it at home in my basement. This is not just true for me because I am a woman; it is true for everyone in my field. We have to have careers in science if we want to do science at all. That's just the way it is.

And as I think I have written extensively here before, I want to direct my own project(s). I don't want someone else telling me what to do. So this means science is a full-time job for me. Not a hobby.

I want job security just as much as the next guy. Being a woman does not make it easier for me or any of my friends to "adjust" to being paid badly and not knowing where I'll be from year to year.

And in the current economy, in the current world, most everyone I know needs two incomes. So yes, women worry a lot about finances and job security because they want to have kids and own a house and take care of their parents and siblings when they get ill. Not less than men; maybe even more than men, if the statistics of why women leave disproportionately are any indication.

My personal impression is that women worry more and feel more pressure from our own parents to "settle down" in a secure, stable situation.

Men are allowed, in our society, to take more risks and take longer doing it.

If I want to have kids, I have only a few more years to decide that I want to do it. Men have more time to play around. That's biology working against us.

So by that logic, if anything, we should let everyone go through grad school and postdoc and get a job as fast as they can, but especially women if they can and want to.

But we don't even take that into account.

We're stuck with an incredibly inefficient, patriarchal system that wastes everybody's time and drives most women to run screaming from science as a career. I could have done ten times more science by now if not for the inefficiencies in the system.

This is why almost all of my friends left academic science for industry science. They felt it was possible working in industry to make more progress more quickly; get paid what they are worth; work more reasonable hours (because they can get more done in less time!); and potentially move up more easily (although this last part is actually not the case).

Women leave disproportionately because academic science is still based on a patriarchal system that doesn't work for us. Which isn't to say that science is working all that well for most men, either- I think the pipeline numbers show very clearly that it only works for a tiny minority of people, and the vast majority of those who major in science end up leaving for other career paths.

I'm not your fucking support staff!!!

Okay, this is one of those rants that will be short and angry. FSP has written on this topic before.

....

Memo to the fucking administrative staff:

Contrary to your entitled attitude, I am not YOUR support staff. Highly trained monkeys CANNOT do what I do. And yet, in support of your arrogance, I make half as much as you do, have zero job security, and everyone treats me like dirt.

The least you could do is STAY THE FUCK OUT OF MY WAY AND LET ME DO MY JOB!!!!

....

Okay I could go on but I have to go watch Sherri on Lifetime and stop grinding my teeth.

Being burned is not the same as burned out.

Okay, so I gave you the punchline up front. Consider yourselves punched.

I had this revelation today while recalling a conversation I had recently with a relatively snot-nosed first year postdoc (why are first year postdocs the most obnoxious beings on the planet? Yes, you got your PhD. No, you are not any smarter than any of the rest of us.)

She made some comment about burnout and it kind of pissed me off. She was doing that thing that most first year postdocs do: assuming it would be different for her. As in, much easier because she is sooooo much smarter than any other postdoc that ever walked the planet.

Okay, so I probably sound that way about becoming faculty, but you have to admit that getting burned as a postdoc will probably be most useful if I stay in academia.

I have seen a heckuva lot of shit that many young faculty I've met (and some senior faculty) didn't know existed (deniers). And they wouldn't know how to handle it if it happened to them or one of their students/postdocs.... or in their department... or when they were sitting in a meeting for a thesis committee... etc.

But I do. Because I've actually been there, done that, and figured a few things out.

All this time I've been thinking I was burned out. But the truth is, I still really do like doing science. Unbelievably, I have to admit that I still really like doing even the tedious parts. Even though sometimes I think I wouldn't mind if I never had to run another gel as long as I live, if I'm really honest with myself, I think I would miss it. I would miss never doing minipreps, never holding a pipette. I really would.

It's too easy to be overwhelmed by all the other shit. I definitely have gotten burned. That's what you get for walking through the fire (yes, I was thinking of the Buffy musical).

I'll admit, I'm pretty cynical about the possibility that there are places that won't burn you at every turn. I'm straight up when I warn the grad students (ahem, and newly-minted postdocs) to be VERY careful about choosing a postdoc lab, and I'm usually skeptical no matter where they choose. I worry for these little chickadees. I hate to think they're going to be fried chickens.

But I really don't like the idea that just because I've gotten screwed over repeatedly means I'm somehow used up completely. And I don't think it's true. I think I still have a lot of good ideas in me, science or blog post or what have you. Whatever I end up doing.

So there, Dr. Snot. Maybe you're just burned out and projecting it onto me. Whatevs. I'm just a little tougher on the outside than I was before. Doesn't mean I'm extra crispy.

Alternative career biographies.

Saw a link to Uncertain Principles over at FSP in the comments recently (posted by Dr. Pion).

Check out several posts tagged PNAS: since many of them are about science-related careers that do not require a PhD, and they are in all different areas (geophysics, astronomy, enzymes, high-throughput drug screening, etc.).

Note that in almost every case, the inteviewees mention that sometime during graduate school, they realized they did not want to stay in academia.

...

As an aside, for those of us who did not make that decision deliberately or early on, I wonder if Chad will find anyone willing to say on the record that they ended up doing something different as a backup plan after wanting to stay in academia? Seems unlikely, but it must happen to postdocs quite frequently nowadays?

Maybe everyone just rationalizes it so they don't look at it that way?

I'm thinking of examples like my friend who wanted to be a professor, but ultimately took a job in industry to support his family, so his kids could continue going to the same schools and wouldn't have to move. He was forced to make a choice, because he knew he wouldn't have many options about location, and the salary of a PI wasn't going to be enough to support his two kids.

I'm thinking of search committees who complain that they "can't find anyone good".

I wonder if search committees have caught on to realizing how bad it is that we're losing really good people who can't rationalize becoming faculty for these kinds of life-quality reasons?

In which my subconscious betrays me

Had a pretty vivid dream where I was setting up my own lab.

It was a mostly-empty room. It wasn't that big. It was basically a blank slate. White walls, gray blinds on the windows. It had a door. I was starting to decide where things would go.

And I was overjoyed. I did not care that the room wasn't that big, or what the weather was like outside. I was just so happy to have the chance to see what it would be like to do it my own way, starting from scratch.

I was really happy when I woke up, like it had actually happened. Took me a few minutes to realize it was a dream, but then I was just grateful to my imagination for having let me experience that so vividly.

Things I'll miss about working at a university.

1. The coffee cart

Hear me out on this one, because it's not about the coffee. It's about the student energy, all the crazy posters and activities going on. It's about overhearing researchers and teachers from other departments talking about things they're working on. Reading the campus magazine.

2. Seminars

Sure, there are always meetings and visiting people giving talks, etc. But the sheer variety of options is much broader at a university. Even if I rarely made it over to hear about art and literature (or whatever), I could sometimes do that if I wanted to. Just knowing it was there, just seeing it listed on the campus calendar, was somehow soothing to me. Not being trapped in too narrow of a bubble.

3. The women's center

Something about this, and the LGBT office, just warms my heart. Sure, there are all kinds of organizations devoted to women in various careers, blah blah blah. There are always the book clubs. But this was amazing, going to hear successful women PIs talking about how they got where they are, despite all the crap that goes on. Trying to strategize. Okay, so it never helped me much in any tangible way, but it was comforting to know that even if I was alone in my lab, since I was on a campus, I was not alone.

4. Fresh blood

By that I mean, the constant influx of students and postdocs and young faculty from all over the world doing all kinds of things. Yeah, sometimes the internationality of it gets old, like having to remove all English idioms from your speech because none of the non-native speakers know what you mean, etc. But there's something to be said for having students around, always asking new questions that no one else has the perspective or guts to ask. And because having students around means you'll never again truly be the bottom of the totem pole.

5. Cutting edge toys just for the sake of playing with them

Where else can you get so much new stuff just for the sake of seeing what it can do? With no pressure to produce something profitable anytime soon?

6. History and future

This one is hard to measure, but there's something about an established school. It doesn't have to be about the age of the place, just that people put a lot of hopes and dreams into the location, and they plan to be around for a while longer even if you don't stay. Even better, some of the jerks might leave, and it will probably still be there, only better.

I think this is different from working at a company, where you never know if or when the whole place might completely go under. Sure, I hated grad school and used to wish mine would burn to the ground, but with the soft focus blur of time gone by, I don't feel that way about it anymore. In a Stockholm Syndrome kind of way, I actually enjoy going back there once in a while. Almost exactly how I feel about my other, real home.

7. Flexibility

One of the things that drew me to science in the first place was, oddly enough, my perception that working whatever hours were required would make it easier to have kids. Lo and behold, I ended up feeling like I didn't really want kids, even as it became obvious that the flexible hours thing doesn't help much unless you have the ideal partner... and ideally, daycare too.

I still take advantage of the flexibility, working weekends when I'm not wanting to see too many people, or working from home when I need to. I only have a few meetings a week that occur at set times; the rest is up to me. I can't imagine there are too many jobs that work this way, where you can pretty much come and go as you please.

8. Independence

Perhaps the thing I'll miss most is the idea that I could be my own boss eventually if I just worked hard enough. I know this isn't really true, you still have to pander to a variety of jerks to keep your grants afloat and your papers in press, but the delusion that I could choose was very motivating for my creative tendencies.

The idea of going to work on someone else's vision just doesn't have the same appeal. Sure, maybe it's time to grow up and get a Real Job, or whatever they call it these days (rent?). But I don't think there are that many arenas where creative independence is such a hot commodity that hundreds of people are climbing over each other just to get the chance to try to have it.

Stupid vs. Devious

Lately I have a few (let's say 3) people in my work life who purport to be helping me, but whom I just don't trust.

Or maybe they're really just clueless, because some of the things they do seriously undermine me, fuck up my work, and get in my way.

Not knowing which is seriously hindering my ability to decide what (if anything) I can do about it.

1. The boss

Yes, I've blogged before about some of the PI-postdoc relationship problems.

The boss does things like making the titles of my papers so overstated that the reviewers can't help but say we haven't done what we claimed.

But it's really only the title that's the problem, because that's generally the main thing insisted upon by my PI. I have to pick my battles, and that is one I always lose.

Let me also mention, it has actually come to pass before that my PI deliberately refused to let me publish. Eventually, having failed to come up with sufficient excuses, PI made a lot of idiotic changes to the manuscript and then "suggested" reviewers whom I never would have picked in a million years.

Stupid? Or devious?

In all logic, PI should want to publish my work as much as I do. And yet. There have been so many cases of apparent sabotage... it starts to look like either the PI is a complete idiot (nevermind 20 years of experience on me), or it's all deliberate. I have seen PI stab other people in the back before, so why would I assume it's not the same with me?


2. The student

The student claims to want to help in lab. Wants to learn. Wants lab experience.

And yet.

Student has, of late, been fucking things up. Not taking notes. Not looking at old notes. Mixing things up.

Student is on 2nd chance already; do I give a 3rd?

I'm torn because I know this student does not want a career in research, and I respect that. But let's be honest: this student couldn't have a career in research anyway.

There, I said it. I've had other students. This one would be a no-go as a technician, nevermind in a graduate program where independence would be required.

But I do need an extra set of hands for some simple tasks.

And not much chance of getting a replacement student anytime soon.

What has occurred to me, however, is that the student is the sort who might try to get kicked out, rather than quit.

So, stupid, I think probably yes (both of us).

But devious too? Or just more stupid than I realized?

And before you ask why I hired this student- this was the only one who applied.


3. The collaborator

I have lots of collaborators, and some are trustworthy individuals devoted to doing good work...and some are less so.

This one in particular is, I think, only stupid in an EQ way.

Some of the things this collaborator is doing appear quite devious.

For example, in timing, a devious thing to do is making suggestions in front of our other collaborators that should have been discussed first in private. The ambush tactic. It's awkward, and somewhat rude, and usually in my experience, deliberate. Especially when immediately afterward, instead of realizing their mistake, they make the "What, me?" face, like they didn't do anything wrong.

What I can't figure out is whether it is worth continuing this collaboration, given the added stress of working with this person.

Keeping in mind, I really don't have room in my life for added stress of any kind.

Even worse, some of our other collaborators have said they don't like this person and are considering backing out because of that.

I don't think it's worth sacrificing the whole project, but we'd have to find someone else, which is also a source of stress.

Upon confrontation in private, Collaborator claims to be working on communication skills, and has this great new insight, making progress, etc.

This has happened a couple of times now, although I haven't really brought out the Big Confrontation Guns and said Fix This, or Get Out Now.

Because Collaborator always apologizes.

I just can't tell if this is sincere.

My habit would normally be to cut off all ties with someone like this, because whether it's intentional or not, it's unacceptable and it's jeopardizing the project.

But this is the Grown Up World and we have to learn to work with all kinds of people... right? And maybe I'm just being paranoid?

---------------

So... to sum up:

I think the student often pretends to understand, but doesn't. I feel like this is a test for my patience, among other things.

The PI only admits to making a mistake when it's too late, which makes me wonder if it wasn't the intended outcome all along. Otherwise, you might expect a person to learn the next time around that the procedure should be 1. Listen to MsPhD, it's her project. 2. Have nothing to apologize for later.

And I just don't know what to do about the collaborator. It makes me angry just thinking about it.

I don't think I have the energy right now to deal with most of this, but the only non-optional one is the Boss.

So do I tell the others to fuck off? What do you think?

Things I thought I'd have by now (besides a job)

Lately it has been bothering me that I've been putting a lot of things off, for lack of what a friend mine calls a Real Job(^TM).

Most of the time I don't mind, but watching everyone else get on with their lives makes me wonder if I would be happier if some of these things could be improved with or without a new job?

1. A better place to live

Our current rental is affordable, has parking and laundry and some other amenities. We have a lot of space, and the location makes it a relatively painless commute to lab.

However, it is not perfect, and we never intended to stay here this long. The main reason we've stayed is that the rent has not gone up, and Mr. PhD and I both really hate moving.

(Oh yeah and that part where we never know if we'll have jobs and might have to move to some other part of the country where we can at least be employed)

2. A new car

My car is getting old. It's not running as well as it used to, which is my main complaint. I hate being the person who can't accelerate.

And it has scratches and small dents here and there, but overall it will probably be okay for a few more years.

The last couple of years, though, I've thought it would be nice to get a hybrid. In fact, I've had to watch several friends get hybrids and try to pretend like I'm happy for them. Hmph.

3. Actual furniture

This kind of goes with "better place to live".

I really hate shopping for this kind of thing. Somehow I never seem to have the dimensions right, or the color ends up being wrong, etc. It's a lot of back-and-forth and by then the thing I wanted is not on sale anymore, or the only thing I like is wayyyyy too expensive.

Or as has happened before, I finally get something, and THEN we have to move. And then we realize it looks totally wrong (or doesn't fit) in the new place.

4. A vacation

There never seems to be time.

When there is time to go, there is not enough time to get a flight anywhere.

When there are sales on flights, I can't go.

Things are always up in the air, or experiments are going and need to be babysat on a daily basis. See also #5.

Or I end up using my "vacation" to do things I don't want to do, like attending other people's weddings or baby showers or funerals, or just visiting my parents to make sure they haven't killed each other (yet).

5. Help in the lab

Okay, so I have a student working with me a few days a week, but it's not really the same as having, you know, an actual technician.

I really thought that by now, even as a postdoc, I would have at least a partial share of a professional tech (sort of like how the PIs often share parts of admins) to help take care of stuff if I do go out of town or get sick.

6. Savings

See under "You should really invest: Oh, nevermind."

Trying to remember how to be a person.

It's Sunday morning.

I'm caught up on sleep, and resolved to try not to be miserable for the next month or two, until some of my current uncertainty is sorted out.

I will know in the next month or two whether I will be applying for faculty positions.

Again.

The alternative is to let my current postdoctoral position run out, be unemployed for a while, and hopefully have some kind of new career in mind by this time next year.

And in the meantime, I need to figure out how to be more of a person.

I have had these times, they come and go. Times when I know that, regardless of how I fare in terms of 'success' or science or career, I am a person:

I have hobbies, and character, and family and friends. I live in the world.

Sort of.

One of the things that appeals to me about academia is that it serves as a built-in, more or less permanent excuse to avoid the real world.

I've been thinking about this because one of the things I do when I'm really stressed out is read novels. Yes, it's yet another form of escapism. But somehow "I'm reading a book" just doesn't fly as an excuse the way it did when I was a kid!

When I'm working my ass off, as I have been lately, I have every right to have no idea what's going on in current events, to pay my bills late, to avoid chores and irritating family obligations.

"I have to work" is almost always an acceptable excuse, for almost everything.

(I'm busy fixing the world! I'm being a superhero! Leave me alone!)

One of the weirdest things to me about deciding whether or not to (try to) stay in academia is having to give up this complete devotion to my career. I just can't see myself being anywhere near as invested in working ridiculous hours if I just take a "job" somewhere doing something that will probably bore me.

And I can't quite see how I would fill up my time without working ridiculous hours. At the beginning, sure. But in the long run? What am I going to do, join the Peace Corps?

Right now, everything is up in the air. And in the grand scheme of things, current global financial crises are not helping.

So, as is often the case, I am not just waiting on my advisor, but also on a variety of other things out of my control.

I know from experience that the best thing to do when waiting is to try to spend some time in the real world. Not just emergency chores, but maybe even some other activities that help remind me who I am when I'm not trying to be a Scientist.

Switching gears back and forth is sometimes harder, sometimes easier.

Right now it feels really hard. I don't want to lose sleep over things I can't control.

I don't want to waste my life in waiting mode, when I could be doing other, more enjoyable things (while I wait).

On the flip side, I'm always afraid to relax even just a little bit, because before I know it, I'll be thrown back into the maelstrom. My advisor will email me, or some other crisis will appear out of nowhere and ruin my calm.

This is one of the things I hate about life in academia. No one ever wants to make a schedule and stick to it, and if by some miracle they actually do, they forget to tell me.

All of this means, in practical terms, that I can never seem to plan a vacation.

Oh, for a little control over my life. I have a few hours here and there where I get to decide, but that's all. I rarely even have a full day off with no emails that need immediate attention.

Nothing is really up to me.

I have two things I can control: what I do each day (the minutia). But I can only plan a day or two at a time. Everything else is at the mercy of scheduling.

And then there's the big, looming question that I still can't answer with confidence:

should I stay, or should I go?

I'm looking ahead at nothing but more of this kind of uncertainty and stress, and I'm thinking, what the hell am I doing this for.

Sure, I remember what got me into science. But why I stay will have to be more than that.

And what I'm going to do if I don't stay is another question entirely. Watching the Second Great Depression is not making me feel optimistic about options.

It's Saturday, I'm in lab, and...

I'm starving,

tired,

not sure if my experiment worked.

Not sure how to tell, since it definitely didn't work like it was supposed to.

Not sure what to do about it.

Can't do anything about it for at least a couple weeks, then it takes another month or so to repeat.

Goody.

And I have a long list of things to do after this, starting with at least one thing that is absolutely critical and has to get done ASAP.

Ahhh, research is the life for me.

Weekend let-down.

All in all, I actually had a pretty good week. Made some progress both personally and professionally. Not as much as I would like, but progress.

And I have something to look forward to in about a month, but not much between now and then that I have any real control over.

And so, sitting quietly in my house on a Saturday, which I haven't done in a while, I'm feeling reflective and not particularly happy.

The event next month feels a bit too far off. I have things to do in the meantime, but none of them are particularly fun.

So I'm trying to get up the energy to stop reading blogs, do some laundry and/or go shopping. I have no food, and several clothing coupons I should use before they expire tomorrow.

Because I really do need to try to find more of that ever-elusive genre, the comfortable and only slightly stylish work clothes (not too stylish, see recent post) that are not too expensive to be worn at the bench (since the reason I'm shopping now is to replace my other perfectly functional clothes that got ruined by bleach spots and acid holes).

Ugh. It is a nearly impossible task, I know, but it has to be done.
(note: This is the researcher mentality!)

But a large part of me wants to sit on the couch and do nothing all day. I haven't done that in a while. But I think I'll regret being passive and lazy more than I would regret being productive yet annoyed.

Shopping with my own money is just a necessary evil. I like the products but the process annoys me. And I know I will probably just come home later tired, with several bags in tow. Consumerism is really a disease.

Sigh. I'm also torn about trading off quiet time. If I go shopping, it will be alone, and when I come home I will want to be alone.

If I stay home, it will be alone, but I would not mind trying to make plans to have dinner with a friend I rarely get to see.

I am feeling noncommittal about calling her in advance to make plans, knowing full well I might not want to deal with anyone after spending most of the day shopping.

Well I guess I am decided on shopping, or at least trying anyway. I would also like to get an oil change for my long-suffering car... and a haircut... why oh why can't you order these things on the internet.

I hate running errands on the weekend, everything is always mobbed. As a grad student I never felt guilty about taking off during the week to run errands, but as a postdoc face time seems more critical than ever, so I can never bring myself to skip out on a weekday.

Which leaves me on a Saturday feeling guilty. The things I own, and wear, own me.

Rodney Dangerfield Disease: I don't get no respect.

It bugs me when I help someone with their project

and I say "You need to do X, Y and Z because it would tell us if it's A, B or C"

and then they go talk to Famous PI Guy who says

This is very interesting! It is probably A, B or C.

and then they come back and report to me that

"Famous Guy said it's probably A, B or C!"

like it's news and I'm going to be impressed with this Famous Guy's unique insight.

And I don't know whether it was mentioned to Famous Guy that I was helping them, and suggested not just the same idea, but how to actually test it, too.

I understand that the reality of the system is that you have to go talk to a big famous PI, maybe even make them an author, if you want your paper to get published in a big famous journal. I get that. And you have to make them feel included, even if it means pretending they gave you great advice that you had already heard before.

What annoys me is when the person I'm helping doesn't say,

"Hey, I know we talked about talking to Famous Guy, I'm going to go meet with Famous Guy this week and just see what he says about what we've done so far",

you know, just to keep the lines of communication open

And the report afterwards is never, ever,

"Hey, he said just what you said! It's good to know we're on the right track and thank you again for all your help and I made sure to tell him how much you've done for this project."

It makes me wonder why I bother helping anyone?

I guess I bother because I enjoy it, the journey anyway, even if the end product helps someone else a lot more than it helps me, they did more of the work so that's fair.

And I do get little benefits here and there, exchange of reagents and that sort of thing does go more easily when you have lots of good will.

But there's nothing to make me feel stepped on more than the total lack of acknowledgment for my ideas. Maybe because it's the only currency that really matters to me.

I guess people like to use money as a reward, for example, in industry, because this is one way of acknowledging input. But I wouldn't want to get paid off, for example, in exchange for not being an author.

But for now I'm going to hold onto my idealistic hope that this person I've been helping will at least make me a co-author in the end, and that seeing this paper and this person succeed will be reward enough? That I will eventually have this person as a colleague, who will be more secure and more gracious in the future?

That when it's all said and done, I'll be proud to have been associated with this project, even if nobody really knows how much.

What's a holiday?

Did you work today (July 4th)?
	No, are you crazy?
	Yes, like any other day
	I only went in to do essential stuff part of the day
	My advisor was there so I had to be there too
pollcode.com free polls

Response to anonymous from two posts ago

"You seem to willfully put yourself in situations where you will be exploited, and then wase [sic] a lot of energy complaining about it"

Based on the first part of this comment, the commenter is clearly trying to be helpful, but doesn't quite understand the use of hyperbole in (or the general point of) blogging, but this part seems (willfully?) clueless.

Nevertheless I must agree, insofar as:

Attending grad school = willfully submitting to exploitation

Postdoc (with anyone, anywhere) = willfully submitting to more exploitation

Since neither of these is at all optional for becoming a PI (my stated goal), then yes, strictly speaking, you are correct.

I think the number of PIs out there who hire postdocs with anything other than exploitation in mind is very, very low. It's not as if there were, as many people have suggested to me here and in the Real World, a centralized directory with complete reviews of PIs, scientific and psychological.

Don't we all wish that such a thing existed? I would love to know what your grad students would say about you.

"If you get to be a PI someday"
Oh, and thanks for the vote of confidence.

"the way you interact with people will be a huge determinant in how you do. Just wait until your graduate students, with mids [sic] of their own"

I hope I'm lucky enough to have graduate students with minds of their own, and that I never need to force my graduate students to rush around at the last minute because I might be trying to, as you say, "stick one more peice [sic] of preliminary data in your grant proposal."

I hope you're duly embarrassed to actually have written that, anonymous or otherwise, because that's pretty pathetic.

I currently have enough preliminary data for at least two grants, but I'm not eligible to apply for one until I get a faculty position. How's that for backwards?

Dear taxpayers, if you want your loved ones cured of disease, write to your congresspeople and tell them to restructure research in this country so we don't have to waste our lives agreeing to be exploited by idiot assholes, in the hopes of eventually getting some actual work done.

I actually had a cancer survivor say to me the other day that she wants me to be funded, because my work is actually relevant to her disease and I actually want to get things done, unlike most of the crusty old professors at the university where she works.

Oh yeah, and blogging. Because all this cathartic complaining is just a waste of energy? Tell that to my hit counter on this site. I wonder why they would want to read this, if it's all a waste?

Does it occur to you that I have so many readers because everyone is in the same position as I am? I'm not just complaining, I'm saying what lots of people think every day.

And if we're all being exploited, not willfully so much as that we have no other choice, doesn't that support my ongoing point that the system is broken? Why else would we choose to live this way?

We actually want our own labs. And some of us actually want to change the system when we get there. So, you're just wrong. I'm not wasting energy complaining. Sometimes I think blogging, and having things to blog about, is the most important thing I can do, because it's one of the only things I can actually control.

What's the point in willfully putting yourself in situations to be exploited if you aren't going to document all the abuse?

Yes, I love it.

I've noticed that my blog continues to attract votes for this category of "Are you a postdoc?"

In light of this, I'm going to post another poll here.

If you like being a postdoc, how many years have you been one?
	less than 1 year
	1-2 years
	more than 2 years
	my how the time flies when you're having fun! (way more than 2 years)
pollcode.com free polls

A day in the life of a good citizen.

Early morning: Spent over and hour troubleshooting someone else's project. Someone who has never given me any help with mine... yet?

Mid-morning: Attempted to execute experiment, only to find that samples had gone bad since yesterday. f--k!

Lunchtime: Advised a friend on lab management issue, while we were both eating. That counts as multi-tasking, right?

Early afternoon: Hunted for a reagent for someone in lab next door.

Set up new samples for myself to try again on failed experiment.

Mid-Afternoon: Advised a friend on a job talk for industry.

Late afternoon: Started attempting to do actual work. Interrupted by panicked friends in search of special equipment.

Dinnertime: Any minute now. Not getting anything (of my own) done anyway.

Can't figure out how I could have said no to any of this, and most of it was fun, but what do I have to show for myself at the end of the day? Good karma?

A less edited version of myself.

One of the reasons I started this blog was to have some kind of outlet, so that as I am told to conform, conform, conform at work, I can continue to be ME ME ME somewhere else.

I was pretty un-selfconscious about starting this blog, but then the trials of Botanical Girl getting outed in her department and other bloggers sharing their various tracking techniques have made me somewhat more concerned for remaining anonymous. Which makes it less fun.

See, there I go, I just started to edit that last sentence frag, but it's hard to do the Allen Ginsberg first-thought/best-thought method of writing when you're contantly on the backspace key correcting your smaller mistakes... it's easy enough to just keep going and take out anything incorrect or otherwise, you know, personalized.

Lately I feel like a shell of a person, probably because I spend too much time worrying about my image at work. I dress differently than I'd like to, keep different hours than I want to, and try to watch what I say to everyone, all the time. I edit emails over and over until I'm sure they're short and to the point and don't contain anything that could be perceived differently than how I intend. And I hate all of it. I've dropped most of my hobbies for lack of time and energy, leaving very little of anything I enjoy or identify with...

One of the things that worries me most about the academic lifestyle is how you're supposed to be well-rounded in some ways, but in science it's pretty much impossible to really be good at anything outside of work if you also want to have a personal life of any kind. The people I know who have one major activity- their family, or a sport- seem to manage okay, but add even one more thing onto your plate and you get divorce and sports injuries instead.

Sigh. I never wanted to be one of the people who had a 9 to 5 job and then some lame hobby horse activity in the evenings or weekend warrioring, but the older I get, the more I can see why people do that. Separation of church and state. And a chance to be something other than a cardboard cutout imitation of who you wanted to be when you started out.