Grad school mode.

With as much benchwork as I've been doing lately, I've been in what I call my grad school mode.

Hey, it got me through, so it's not all bad.

Good things:

- get lots done
- get that nice virtuous feeling from getting lots done
- no guilt about reading blogs, skipping seminars, or dressing badly
- being too focused on the immediate goals to stress about the future... yet.

Bad things:

- eat badly/too much just to keep going

- wacky sleep schedule (work late - come in late loop)

- put off almost everything else, including most chores, exercising, and committing to plans with friends (because "I might have to work that day, I just don't know")

- put off making actual plans to take a long weekend break (see above re: "might have to work, don't know")

- eventually the future is here, with all of its associated stress (health insurance, taxes, will-these-other-experiments-actually-work-after-all-this-work, and will-the-paper-get-in-oh-please-oh-please-can-this-be-over-soon)

****

In other news, I started working on a presentation I'll be giving, eventually, on my latest work.

In some ways this is a small victory, and I am getting kind of excited. I realized I was getting nervous wayyyy in advance, so I might as well get started. And that little ounce of prevention seems to have worked to calm my nerves.

I ordered a book online about how to stop sabotaging yourself. I'm curious to see what it says I'm doing wrong. Probably things I already know I'm doing. I'm really curious to see if it can tell me how to stop doing them. The reviews of this book are pretty spectacular, "It changed my life!" and so on. I figured what the hell, might as well do the experiment.

More random musings.

I'm reading a new book right now and it has been really inspiring. The section I'm in right now talks about hunting. The description matches perfectly with what I like about research: being in absolute observation mode, with every muscle and neuron poised to act on the right cue. Taking aim with skill and hitting the mark dead on.

I wish I could quote the book directly, but I've told so many people about it that I'm sure it would out me.

Anyway it reminded me of what I like about my job, and what I think I'm good at, and made me wonder what the hell else is there where you get to use that part of your brain so much?

Apparently hunting is the life for me?

Any other ideas for jobs like that? The only other thing I could think of might be as a recruiter, some kind of talent-spotter for Hollywood or modeling? Get it? Like a Headhunter?

Except for the part where I have no pedigree!

Yes, mediocrity is the life for me.

***

I'm really having a lot of trouble rising above. People treat me like a grad student, I tend to act like one. And lately since I'm doing a lot of wallpapering, like I did as a grad student, I can't help feeling like I'm reverting backwards into what could potentially be called the worst part of my life thus far.

When I say reverting, I mean I'm dressing like I did then, wearing my hair like I did then, and eating badly. I had been so good last year, but this year I am reverting to eating badly. Because I am too tired after a day of wallpapering to cook anything.

There is one sweet grad student in the lab who actually congratulated me the other day when I thought things were working correctly.

This morning I was thinking about a student I had a few years ago. I told her if she wanted to work with me and learn to do wallpapering, one thing she should do is cut her nails. She didn't want to do that, even though she said her ultimate goal was med school.

Um, I wouldn't want someone with those nails operating on me.

Anyway she didn't last that long, less than a year, and now she's working at a company. I picture her now, wallpapering at the company with her long fingernails.

I guess I have a lot of baggage about wallpapering. Sooner or later, someone will probably come up with robots to do it (and maybe there already are, but we can't afford them). Until then, it is monkey work for me.

Yes, monkey work is the life for me.

My job sucks.

Bad day.

Well, it's a new day, and nothing is working.

It's probably fixable- most bench things are, with enough time and elbow-grease (and sometimes money)- but I'm frustrated to the point of wanting to go home and cry.

But benchwork is not the only reason why.

...

Spent part of my day counseling yet another distraught grad student, who is being bullied by a sexist visiting professor in her lab. Her somewhat sexist advisor is nowhere to be found when she needs an authority figure to step in, and while her co-workers all agree that this guy's behavior is inappropriate, nobody will stand up for her or with her to either confront this guy or the advisor.

This is such an old story, but this poor student feels like we all feel when this happens:

Is it me (no)?
Am I alone in this (sort of)?
Is it because I'm a girl (probably)?
Is this what I can expect if I go into academia (or maybe the workforce in general) (yes)?

Is this worth putting up with (questionable)?

I wish I could go over there and give the advisor a piece of my mind, but I somehow doubt that would do any good (?). After all, I'm a Nobody.

Meanwhile, she can't get any work done because the bully is literally monopolozing her equipment, and sending her harrassing emails.

He's only there for 6 more months, so I told her that she's tough, if she has to she can suck it up. I gave her a bunch of other suggestions (including to document, document, document), but mostly I just hate that she has to go through this at all.

Perhaps most nauseating about this whole scenario is that she asked another postdoc what to do. This postdoc (whom I don't particularly like or respect) told her to just act sweet and stupid and do whatever he says to do. And then he will like her.

Thankfully, this grad student is more like me than this other postdoc. We agreed she would be setting a bad example and hating herself if she tried to 'act sweet.'

...

Worse than that for me on a personal level, the interview talks are starting up, which means I'm getting details on the people who are getting the interviews.

What's most sickening is that they aren't much different from me. They don't have more papers. Their projects aren't even that interesting.

What they do have is pedigree. Their papers are in Nature Something journals and always with famous co-authors.

I'm trying to be happy (?) that at least some of them are women.

...

In other news, while I'm thinking about going to industry, it's also because I'm worried that I'm either way too smart or way too efficient to be in academia.

(You're either standing in the shoes of a genius or a fool?)

Bear with me for a moment while I explain.

I agreed to host a speaker for a group.

I invited the speaker. Speaker agreed and we set a date, time and place and picked a title.

When I informed the group that this was all set, they were amazed that I had done this so quickly (it took 1 email, and 1 to confirm).

I was stumped, but pleased that they seemed impressed.

Some time goes by and we need to confirm the room. There's a staff member who is supposed to help print the flyers and book the food, etc.

Group Leader asked me to make the flyer. I said I thought the staff person did that, and I had already sent all the info that would go on the flyer (date, time, title).

Two more emails back and forth, I just made up the flyer and sent it, just because it wasn't worth the time to argue.

Eventually Group Leader writes back that Staff Person will make the flyer with the Logo.

I was thinking: Ok so you didn't send me a template, but now you're saying my flyer wasn't good enough? Does anybody even recognize the logo? I know I don't pay any attention to those things.

But I didn't say anything.

Now I am getting emails about the room. The room we wanted is booked. There are literally dozens of other rooms on campus we could use.

They are conferring amongst themselves about which room. Several emails about this. The most obviously available ones, they argue, are too hard to find.

I'm thinking: Um, is this a college campus? Shouldn't we assume that people are capable of reading a map? Or asking for directions?

But I don't say anything.

This is not a big event. The audience will definitely number less than a hundred, maybe less than 50, maybe less than 20, I don't know and I don't care. I wanted to see this speaker, I will be there.

All of this got me wondering, is this how academia does things? Because I am horrified at how inefficient it is. How pointlessly democratic. Do we really all need to agree on the logo? The flyer with the logo? The room? NO. We don't. It just has to be functional for what we want to do.

And I have to wonder what Group Leader and all the other group members do all day. Because it can't possibly be actually productive, actual work.

Benchwork and being benched.

Been doing a lot of benchwork lately, which means I don't feel like doing much else.

I have relatively short breaks while things are incubating, 30 minutes here, 10 minutes there. So during these breaks I'm doing something I haven't really done since grad school, when I used to do a lot of benchwork and often found myself exhausted, late at night, just trying to stay awake to do the last step and go home. My main activities during these times were playing little games and reading junk on the internet.

And I mean junk: I'm reading my junk mail and clicking on the links for clothing sales, etc. I mean, how pathetic! I normally would never do this during the day.

It's especially funny since I'm usually pretty good about working at work, but I just can't do it right now. I. Just. Can't.

Meanwhile, most of my co-workers are diligently working at their computers. One is applying for a greencard; one is writing a paper; one is writing a computer program; one is putting together a talk for a job interview.

(We won't mention the tech who plays solitaire on his iPod. All. Day. Long.

We also won't mention the Not So Super Doc who sells things from his eBay website. All. Day. Long. )

But I'm too tired to read, write, or otherwise construct much of anything intellectual on days like this. I am just a pipetting machine. And then I am a couch potato.

***

One thing I did read was kind of disturbing, included as advice to candidates looking for faculty positions (which I reiterate again, I am not):

The best, meaning most useful, letters, by the way, are the ones who say things like "This candidate is very much like CCC and DDD were at this stage in their careers." Real comparisons like that are much more helpful than "The candidate is bright, creative, and a good communicator."

from this blog.

The author seems to miss the point that this automatically discriminates against women and minorities. There aren't enough obvious choices to compare us to, and most people wouldn't think to compare us to successful white men.

Another point missed in this kind of advice is that it assumes the people writing you letters have known some famous CCC or DDD at some point. So if your letters are from younger folks who move in less ritzy circles, they can't honestly say 'this candidate reminds me of so-and-so' because they didn't actually ever meet so-and-so!

Does anyone ever bother to check up on that?

***

In other news, I was amused to be invited to join a networking group and find that I had more connections than I thought I did (and more than most other people in the group).

I'm not exactly sure, but I think that's probably why I was invited. But lately I get these invitations to be a representative of 'my group' and I'm not sure which one they mean. My university? My gender? Postdocs? One of my professional societies? Because the invitations usually don't say, and they seem to expect me to self-identify.

Bored benchworkers everywhere, unite! I represent you!

A maybe yay.

I think my experiments are finally back on track. I'm afraid to say it out loud though, because I am a little superstitious about the mysterious part between adding the reagents and getting the result.

So I am glad because I got some data today. But I am also tired, almost too tired to muster a 'yay!'

Tomorrow I will hope to keep building momentum. Last night I actually went home and read papers (while watching Project Runway) for the first time in a while. And I didn't mind.

I used to read journal articles almost every night. But lately I've been running around during the day a lot and so annoyed in general that I couldn't work before bed, or risk not being able to sleep for anger or anxiety.

But I am hoping things are on the upswing. I like the part where I get to read papers and think about my latest results.

I especially like it when I can perform the reaction:

idea + reagents = experiment ----> results.

Keeping in mind that all steps of this reaction are reversible, and it only yields product in the presence of large doses of hard work.

And here I add a letter of the sort profgrrrrl likes to write:

Oh, benchwork. Sometimes you are a soothing, meditative activity that doesn't feel like work at all. And sometimes you are a ball and chain.

I love you benchwork, but I am ready for our relationship to progress to a new level. Let's try to get there together. Sooner would be good. Is soon good for you?

Sum total.

I wrote a post yesterday, and blogger crashed and kicked me out just as I was hitting "publish."

Ironic, since it was about how we're such slaves to publishing and I think it's ultimately really bad for science.

Argh. Nevermind.

Of the experiments I tried to do today:

1 failed
1 half worked, but was annoying, so I'll go back to it another day
1 is half finished and I will try to get it closer to finished before I leave tonight
1 is not finished but I hope to do it tomorrow

Data sets I need to analyze: at least 6

Abstracts I need to write: 2

Forms I need to get signed by my PI: 2

Getting to sleep in on Saturday?

Priceless.

Am I alone? I think holidays suck.

Holidays suck.

There. I said it.

I'm bored. And depressed. My family is giving me guilt trips.

What else is new.

I have very few people to share this with, since most people around me, and even in blog-land, seem to be saying "Happy holidays! Cheers!" and that kind of crap.

I just want this week to be over, which is stupid because from what I can tell, January has the potential to be really, really bad.

Seriously, I'm looking at what's on my calendar, and it does not look good.

So I'm trying to figure out how to get out of this funk. I'm thinking about trying to get some errands done, pretend I'm a Real Person, with a Life, even if I'm not and don't particularly want to be.

I want to be in lab, doing fun experiments and having them work, but I don't have the stuff I need to do the experiments I'd like to try. The ones where I Want The Answer. The rest are things I should do, but they'll be tedious so I'm procrastinating. One thing nobody tells you about being a postdoc is that stuff that used to be fun for its own sake becomes tedious when you've done it hundreds or thousands of times.

The thought of what it would take, what I would need to do, to get what I need to do the interesting experiments just makes me want to stay in bed all day. Or give up altogether on this science thing. It just feels really pointless right now.

I've been over at AcademicSecret reading about how much it sucks to be a professor, and wondering what would I want to do that for? Is it really just more of the same?

And reading about how some fields have rumor mill blogs where people post the actual names of people who were invited for interviews. This just blows my mind. As much for the way it's done as for realizing that I'm not sure which is worse: knowing or not knowing how it really works. Is denial better, even if you know on some level just how fucked up it is?

And reading ScienceProfessor's post about all the stuff she got done this year made me cry. Literally.

2006 sucked. I didn't get anything done that I wanted, and mostly didn't have any fun, either.

And I have no reason to believe 2007 will be any different.

Another Saturday, and too much to do.

I like the hurry up and wait aspect of research. I always did.

But lately I'm coming off a long wait, and I'm up to my earlobes in hurry, hurry, hurry.

Last night- Friday night- I did laundry, emptied the dishwasher, and went to bed early. I'm exhausted from working 12 hours a day, with almost no breaks, five days a week, for the last several weeks. Weekends I work less, but I try not to count all the time I spend on the computer at home, because it's interspersed with blogging, email, and online shopping.

This morning I scanned in some gels, and I'm thinking about all the stuff I need to do in lab and on my computer today.

It's too much.

I like lab. I really do. Lately the computer stuff is a little much for me, maybe because it requires more thought. The benchwork is easier for me. Much as I love the analysis of stacks and stacks of data (I really do!), benchwork for me is like cooking. It's something I do to relax. Sometimes it's boring, and sometimes I'm so tired that the thought of pipetting makes me think the computer is more appealing, because it doesn't require much movement. But in general, I've always thought benchwork was fun.

I met a couple of young PIs recently who said they miss benchwork terribly. They talked about it like their pet puppy had died. This got me thinking about having my own lab, and whether I'll have any control over how I spend my time.

The problem is, already I'm not getting enough sunlight or fresh air. I've been a bit of a potted plant lately, and that's not a good thing. But there don't seem to be enough hours in the day for me to get enough done and still sleep enough to function.

I used to be one of those people, I had to have everything done wayyyyy ahead of time. I hate working right up to the deadline. I've gotten better about coping with crunch times, but I still have this constant feeling of being behind, and time keeps going faster.

They say as you get older, time flies. They aren't kidding. I can't believe it's almost November. The election mail keeps piling up, and I haven't had time to look at any of it yet.

I can't believe it's almost November. Where the hell did the year go?

The weirdest part of all is, when you're in hurry-up mode, you can always see so clearly, exactly how it's going to get worse before it gets better. There will be a lot more hurry before I get to wait.

I know there will be waiting ahead, eventually, and as tired as I am right now, I hate to wait. Waiting usually means you have no control, there's nothing you can do to make things go your way.

I must be thinking, on some level, that if I just push hard enough in the hurry-up phase, that it will somehow affect the outcome of the waiting phase.

I wish I knew if that were true.

Benchwork Procrastinating

I did benchwork today. It was fun. More fun than writing papers or grants, just now.

I know I should get a student to do this menial stuff for me. I know I should work on fixing up my figures for the paper, the grant, the poster. But doing experiments is a legitimate excuse, right??

I keep saying I'll do it in the morning, but then I have a morning meeting on the day I wanted to do it. Afternoons and evenings are out, I can't think late in the day. I say I'll do it on the weekend, but then I tell myself a day off (!!) is really important or I won't make it through the next week of benchwork and meetings. Right??

Sigh. Time is dragging on, and I'm using the excuse that I still have a couple more experiments I could do, should do, and there's no point in fixing the figures for the paper if these new data have to get put in anyway, I'll just have to remake the figures again...

It's pathetic, I know.

A vacation would be good, to the person who suggested that, but for a bunch of reasons I've discussed in previous posts, it usually backfires on me.

No, I think it would help if I used my one and a half days off on the weekend to do more rejuvenating things, but I usually end up sitting around like a frog on a log, which doesn't actually make me feel any better. I'm usually too tired to come up with fun things to do.

France sounds good. I always wanted to end up in Europe, until I went there to work for a little while. Now I'm not so sure. And I have friends who are desperately competing for jobs there and not getting them. So, kudos to the person who wrote and said she got a faculty position there. They are hard to get.

To the person who said you don't have to work 9 to 5 in industry, and that industry does more to help people than academia does.... give me a break. Where do you think all those ideas for assays come from? You wouldn't know what to measure, or how to measure it, without us. You don't get to try anywhere near the level of crazy things we do. Trust me, we're way more on the cutting edge than you are. It sucks, too, because most of the technology to do what we need to do ends up being custom-made, and thus more expensive. By the time you get to use it, we've already moved on to the next big problem.

And, what's the incentive to have someone tell me what to do, if I still have to work just as much? I'd much rather work long hours on my own ideas. Money doesn't make up the difference.

Speaking of other people's work, lately I'm spending a lot of time in other people's journal clubs. Not by choice, mind you, but to keep up appearances, and all that good networking stuff.

So I'm annoyed because the papers aren't that useful to me. Do I volunteer to do one of my own? Because that will take a lot longer than just catching up on my reading, on my own.

Along those lines, I'm working on a relatively hot topic right now, so I'm torn about whether it would be beneficial or completely naive and stupid to try to start a meeting for a group of people working on similar things. Should I be open and optimistic? Does paranoia really get you anywhere?

See what I mean? I can't think late in the day. Still can't decide whether to get the new laptop, or wait longer. Can't decide whether to go back on the pill or not. Can't decide whether to go visit my parents or not worry about it until next spring.

One thing I can decide: as soon as this gel is finished, I'm outta here. Next question: do I watch tv, and if so, what do I watch on Thursday night? Do I exercise? Yes, probably should. Will feel oh so virtuous if I do.

Labor (Day) Weekend

Yes folks, I will be working tomorrow, the day after, and possibly some of Monday. I'd like to think of it in part as a statement against the whole UAW thing. What good is a union going to do for me? Not working this weekend would actually be worse, I think, than just getting these experiments done.

So yesterday was AWFUL, but I went out with a friend and vented for a few hours about how I really can't see what staying a postdoc any longer is going to do for me. Sure, I'll have more experience. So what? Do I really need more experience?

Yesterday was particular awful for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was that I realized something really depressing this week.

I'm terrified that my PI thinks I'm going to stick around here for a lot longer than I want to. I thought I was safe, because I've been a postdoc for long enough that I can't be one much longer, thanks to length-of-postdoc limits.
But I was wrong.

Although some universities are now putting limits on how long a person can stay a postdoc, they've gone on to condone, even encourage, what used to be considered a really unusual thing: yet another intermediate step.

Yes, that's right, the Super Doc position- known as Assistant Something Scientist/Researcher, depending on where you go, is becoming more and more popular.

It used to be hard to get these positions, because these people get paid almost as much as starting faculty, and since they can't write their own R01 grants, usually someone else (usually a faculty member) has to pay them the big bucks off of his/her own grants.

On the one hand, it could be viewed as progress. It used to be quite common for a person to remain a postdoc for years and years. Some universities like to claim the average postdoc length is 1-3 years, but that's bullshit. Most people switch labs at least once. So even if they switched labs, the sum total of the average postdoctoral work (I'm talking mostly people who go on to faculty positions, here) was frequently in the range of 5-9 years.

Now it seems that, although the sum total of time is still insanely long, at least for the last few of those years, the person might actually get, you know, paid more.

After all, there's nowhere near enough faculty positions for all the people who want them. Where else are we going to put them?

Enter the mentality of "Well it worked before with the postdocs, and now they're getting all organized and starting unions and stuff, so let's see if we can't pull one over on them again."

Duh.

What's sad is, I don't think anyone has even noticed yet that the pattern is repeating itself. So, you heard it here first, folks. Those with science PhDs are doomed to repeat history because we didn't learn it.

***

In other news... well there is no other news I can actually talk about here.

On a positive note, I did some benchwork today and it was GREAT. I feel less tired, less stressed, and less generally depressed than yesterday. I'm still royally pissed off about a whole pile of things, but I'm hoping I can come in tomorrow and get some actual DATA. The day before data is like the night before Christmas, only better, because if it worked, you know exactly what you got. No need to shake the box.

Warm fuzzy.

Thank you to the anonymous person who said they found this whole firsthand account so helpful, and read all the archives, even though they didn't really want to leave a comment.

Thanks for leaving one. That's the nicest thing anyone has given me in a long time: positive feedback.

I've been posting less because I've been trying hard to get my research life on track.

I've been on a treadmill lately, just kind of marking time and not really going anywhere.

I finally made a few samples this week and hope to analyze them next week. Unfortunately I just don't enjoy benchwork like I used to. It's almost too easy to be interesting. I'm not saying all my experiments work, but the day-to-day of making samples is just so tedious. At this point, there's not much new for me to do. It's just a lot of the same kinds of things, or variations on a theme.

I used to enjoy working with my hands more, and now I'm just interested in the result and not so much in the process. So I spend my time at the bench trying to marshall my patience and not rush through things (because then nothing works, and I end up having to do it all over again). I'm so ready to have a team of students!

Oh, the Tao of work. I should really try harder to be more Zen about it.

In the meantime, I'm trying to beef up my CV, even though the idea of doing more faculty applications this year is just plain nauseating.

Plain yogurt flavor nausea. You know what I'm talking about. It makes me want to gag, just thinking about it.

But I don't see how I'm going to avoid having next June/July be the same as this year's was, with all the panicking about what's going to happen because my funding is running out and I still don't have a job.

I'm tempted to write grants just because it would give me an excuse not to do any benchwork for a month, and might make me feel a little better about having covered all my bases. If I got one, it would be the ultimate safety net (and CV booster). I just don't know what's the best way to spend my time.

I had a funny experience last week, where I was helping a younger grad student friend with writing his first CV. He asked for a copy of mine to use as a template, so I said sure. But when he saw it, he was visibly upset.

"I don't have ANY of that stuff!" he wailed.

I told him having lots of stuff on your CV doesn't guarantee anyone a job anyway.

It was all I could do not to laugh at the black humor of the situation. It was especially ironic because helping grad students is by far one of my favorite unofficial parts of my current job- and one of the things I most look forward to about a faculty position.

It's just that lately I have no faith that I'm going to have one. I just don't see it actually happening.

Recently I was talking to a couple of search committee chairs who said they had seen my application last year. They had all kinds of the usual cliche comments stored up:

Your project is novel, but it's too risky
You don't have enough pubs

As if those two things were compatible. Everybody knows you don't get tons of papers from risky projects!
But when I told them I thought I'd wait another year or two before applying again, they said:

If you've been a postdoc for five years or more, something must be wrong.

I said, damn right something's been wrong. And gave them an earful of some of the crap I've been through and said "where do I put THAT on my CV?"

They just looked surprised, like they had no idea anyone in science had repeatedly dealt with multiple advisors' personal issues (divorce, mental illness, family deaths, suicides) interfering with their work to the point of preventing them from publishing to their full abilities.

Most people I meet, when they hear these stories, are amazed I'm still doing science at all. You'd think that would get me a little credit, just for sticking it out this long.

Here's hoping I enlightened them a little.

And thanks again, warm fuzzy person. At least something I'm doing is helping somebody somewhere.

And now back to the Tao meditation. Om.