Haven't I done anything already yet?

Holiday parties, part 2.

More funny things about attending parties with no scientists: the way people try to get to know you by asking about your career aspirations. This is the more polite, friendly, less-condescending version of what I described in this previous post .



Dude: So, what do you do?

YFS: I'm not working right now.

Dude: So, what kind of thing do you want to do?



I pondered a bit over that question, because I couldn't figure out why it was bothering me. It's a perfectly reasonable thing to ask someone you've never met. Right?

In fact, it's probably more reasonable than what most scientists ask, which is past-tense, i.e. "What were you doing before?" or "What's your background?"

Because really, you might not want to talk about whatever you were doing before. It might not even be relevant.

In fact, I got tired of answering too honestly along the lines of, "Well, I'm trained as a scientist but I couldn't find a job and now I'm going to have to switch careers."

I thought the short answer version might send the message:

I don't really know you and don't really want to talk about it.

Apparently not.

I'm vaguely aware that an open-ended, future-directed question is where you're supposed to give your pitch. Because you never know when you're going to meet a rich philanthropist just looking for a place to donate for a tax write-off.

So I think I missed an opportunity or two by not having a prepared 30-second commercial for My Potential.

At a scientific meeting, I know exactly how to answer the "What do you want to do" question. I may not have ever been very good at it, but I did get better at launching into my condensed blurb about my exciting research project and how I still want to continue working on it if I only had the money, a (tenure-track) place to do the work, and don't you have a search going on in your department?

But I need to be expecting to be asked anything beyond doing the usual name-handshake dance and nod.

Afterwards, I realized the problem is that I feel like they are making the perfectly reasonable assumption that I have done nothing thus far.

Obviously, because I'm not famous, and I don't drive a BMW.

Things I maybe should have said instead of just standing there clutching my drink and looking surprised:

"Well, you know I got my PhD several years ago and I have published X # of papers, so... Actually, I have already done what some people might consider a fairly significant body of work."

or

"I write a blog... sometimes."

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.

A link from a comment I received today

A commenter wrote to ask why I don't discuss this old post, instead of all these ridiculous sexism theories.

So, I (re-)read the post in question. I think the author is an asshole, though a deceptively thoughtful one. I think in many ways his commentary on science in general is exactly right (nobody ever said all assholes are idiots).

However, regarding why there are fewer women, and why sexism is still a major problem, he is missing the point.

Is sexism just another facet of the abuse heaped on junior scientists? Is it just another way of abusing idealists, and if we are minorities they insult our race, and if we are women they call us bitches, and if we speak up for ourselves we are pessimists? Are they just pushing our buttons?

Or is it a larger cultural problem we unfairly have to shoulder ON TOP OF all the existing problems in the academic science hierarchical mess?

Didn't we choose science in part because it was supposed to be different from all the other career trajectories where you're taught to expect sexual harassment, where you're expected to sleep your way to the top?

Don't we have as much right as stupid little boys do, to pursue research if that's what we want?

Or are we supposed to know better, the way little girls are not allowed to play in the dirt but boys are? Because we're supposed to be in training to wear frilly dresses and soon enough we'll have to be somebody's responsible mommy? Women are supposed to care only about money and security, is that it?

Would we be stupid masochists for saying but we wanted to do science anyway, despite all the bullshit?

Well, yes.

But do we have any less right to it than men? Really? Since when does being a woman take away my right to choose?

Oh, well, yeah, there's that whole crazy thing about it being my body. But I really did think my choice of career would be my own.

Have at it, Dr. (and soon-to-be-Dr.) Chickadees!

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?

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.

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.

Don't count on it.

We've discussed the possibility of more jobs opening up when the baby boomers retire.

Hasn't happened yet. Might not ever.

This beautifully written article in the Chronicle has quite a bit to say on the subject, and is well worth the time to read completely.

One excerpt on the subject of history repeating itself (because no one was listening the first time):

Mr. Ehrenberg thinks the majority of academic retirements will occur naturally. "I don't think colleges are going to be in such a hurry to kick people out," he says. He and others say that young Ph.D.'s should not count on a windfall of jobs as their elders turn emeritus. Cost-conscious colleges, for instance, could shift some jobs off the tenure track. And past predictions of waves of retirements helping out the academic job market have flopped: A major study published in 1989 by William G. Bowen, then president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, predicted that colleges could face severe faculty shortages by the end of the 1990's, largely because of retirements. But the expectations raised for an improving job market in the arts and sciences did not materialize.

I think there is no way these retirements are going to happen naturally. The numbers just don't add up. Scroll to the bottom of the article for several useful tables citing percentages of institutions that say they want to recruit new faculty (96%) but are clearly not thinking about where they'll put us how we'll be paid, since many fewer institutions say they are thinking about retiring old faculty (19%).

How can that be? Here's another excerpt explaining why this is more of a problem now than ever before:

The average age of retirement in the general population is 62. But in academe, faculty members appear to be retiring at 66, on average, and that age is drifting upward, although retirement data is not always as crisp as demographers might like. The August telephone survey found that about one-third of those responding expected to retire at age 70 or later. The ability of colleges to enforce a mandatory retirement age of 70 ended in 1994, when an academic exemption for a federal age-discrimination law expired.

Maybe the academic exemption wasn't such a bad idea. Maybe they shouldn't have retired it!

It always happens in the shower.

Yesterday was a typical day. All the equipment was working fine.

And then later in the day, it died. I don't know why.

I had good samples, I thought I might actually get some useful data. So I fought with it for a while, but I couldn't figure out what was wrong.

Then I sent an email to the repair person, shut everything down, and went home. Today I will try again to see if it is really broken.

I hate how these things can spontaneously blow up in your face, and this could happen at any time, but it always happens at the worst time.

So anyway I came home last night and I was pretty annoyed, but I sat there and said to myself,

"This is stupid. You should be grateful because things could be a lot worse."

So I sat there and made a list of how it could be worse.

I said to myself,

At least I'm still getting paid (for now). So I can pay my rent.

At least I'm inside, and warm, and have a cup of tea.

At least I can watch tv for an hour before I go to bed.

At least I have a nice comfy bed, and it's quiet here.

At least my car is still running, even though it's old and that reminds me, I really need to get the oil changed.

At least I'm not in jail.

At least I'm not pregnant.

And so on.

I was glad to go to bed because I didn't sleep at all the night before. I kept waking up and realizing I was doing experiments in my dreams.

So again this morning I was in the shower, thinking about blogging and why I blog, especially why I blog anonymously, and whether I should continue to blog.

And I realized I always get depressed in the shower.

I'm usually okay when I first wake up. I'm usually okay through breakfast.

And then when I'm in the shower, I get depressed. Sometimes it's subtle, but sometimes it hits me like a ton of bricks.

Sometimes I stand there in the shower thinking, if I don't get out of the shower, I don't have to deal with the rest of the day.

But I don't linger. I force myself to get out. I ignore the thought that I'd much rather go back to bed.

I go to work, and I'm usually still depressed when I get there.

Some days it goes away, some days it doesn't.

I don't know why this happens, but it's like clockwork.

Is it a side effect of my allergy medicine, that just takes about that long to kick in?

Is it something in the water?

Something about drinking my 1 cup of coffee?

Probably not. But I wish I could skip that moment of the day when I realize, yup, nothing bad has happened yet today, but I don't want to go to lab, and I have nothing to look forward to.

Hope for the future?

Maybe it's my idealistic streak coming out again, but last night I watched the 60 minutes report on what they call the Millenials, where they were talking about the New Generation.

You know, the kids.

Keep in mind, lately it seems like 60 minutes gets it name from the average age of their viewing audience, not from the length of the show.

So when they say kids, they mean the ones in their 20s now. The ones who hate sucky jobs and say so, because they actually want to have a life, not just a career.

Those crazy kids!

It was a very interesting report, and kind of related to what FSP blogged about ambition recently.

The part that gets my hopes up is where they talk about all the baby boomers who will be retiring and how there will be more jobs than people to fill them.

Can you imagine?? It sounds like utopia.

But that is 5-10 years down the line, and most academic scientists don't retire at 64 if they can help it, so it's probably longer before it would help someone like me get the kind of job I want.

Come on, old guys. RETIRE. You know you want to.

I have also been reading several articles on the new generation and new ways of teaching these kids who are real technophiles, the ones who grew up with Google and text messaging. The ones who aren't content to be spoon-fed information and actually want to direct their own education (that was me, wayyyy ahead of my time).

You know, the ones who would actually rather do real research than sit in a lecture and memorize, and then sit in an exam and spit back out "facts" that will turn out to be false by the time they graduate.

The good news is, we finally have the technology to be able to help students direct their own learning, instead of making them wait until grad school or postdoc or god forbid, until they have their own labs.

So it's pretty inspiring. And in theory this trend should only help me get a job, right??

Unfortunately I don't think most search committees are factoring these sorts of things into their searches.

I definitely don't know how to effectively highlight my techie bent in my applications. All I can think of is to try to work it into my teaching statement somehow (?).

Anyway if there's one thing I've always had faith in, it's nerdy kids. I especially liked the report I saw the other day about tv shows like Chuck and how geek is the new cool.