Evolution of a project.

1. Pilot experiments

Expectations: none

Interpretation: Oh my god, did it actually work?

2. Repetition

Expectations: I hope it works

Interpretation: Was the result of the pilot just an artifact? Maybe I just fucked it up. I should try it again.

3. Reproducibility

Expectations: This better fucking work, and it better be publication-quality

Interpretation: This would have fucking worked if someone else in the lab hadn't used up something I needed, and I didn't know until the last step on a Friday night and I can't order more until next week. FUCK. Well that's another week of my life I'll never get back.

4. Drafting the paper

Expectations: This is fucking cool! Everyone will love it!

Interpretation: Wait until they see my amazing contribution. It was totally worth all the hard work.

5. Waiting for advisor to read the draft

Expectations: Can't be much longer now. I'm next in line after only 2 other manuscripts.

Interpretation: Everyone has to wait, I should just be patient. I am so far ahead with this work, I don't even need to worry about getting scooped.

6. Waiting for advisor to read the draft part 2

Expectations: This is taking longer than I hoped.

Interpretation: I should revise a little more while I'm waiting. And add those other experiments I did while I was waiting. It's getting better so it's just as well that nobody read the first five drafts I gave them.

7. Writing with advisor.

Expectations: Give and take, right? A meeting of the minds?

Interpretation: Advisors always think they are great writers, but they rarely are. And yet, I will have to pick my battles. And this is taking longer than I hoped.

8. Submitting the paper.

Expectations: It might get rejected right away. Then we'll know in a week. It might get reviewed and then rejected. Then we'll know in a month. If it takes longer than that, it's buried on someone's desk and they forgot about it. We'll call if we don't hear anything in a month.

Interpretation: Who the fuck knows what will happen. This is the part where we pray, even if we don't believe in God.

9. Waiting to hear back.

Expectations: It will probably get rejected one way or another. Will probably have to do more experiments.

Interpretations: Quick! Do all those personal errands you put off while you were writing, before it gets rejected!

10. Getting the reviews.

Expectations: This is going to suck. Nobody likes being criticized.

Interpretation: Have low expectations, and you'll always be pleasantly surprised.

11. Revise.

Expectations: I'm going to get this done quick, before I'm sick of this project.

Interpretation: This is par for the course, but the end is in sight.

12. Resubmit.

Expectations: I will be sick of this project before we finish revising.

Interpretation: I need a vacation when this paper is accepted.

13. Repeat steps 5-12 at least once, maybe twice.

Expectations: None. I am already sick of this project. I might get scooped.

Interpretation: I'm not getting that vacation anytime soon. Everyone is wondering why it's not published yet. I must be a total loser. And I am so fucking mad at my advisor.

14. Accepted for publication.

Expectations: I was thoroughly sick of this project months ago. It's old news.

Interpretation: This is totally anticlimactic. I thought it would get into a better journal, or at least get into this journal a whole lot easier. Why did I think I'd be excited when it finally got published? Maybe I'll be excited when I see it in print.

15. Print copies arrive.

Expectations: This will mean nothing to me. I am dead inside.

Interpretation: Huh. My name looks pretty good there up at the top. And the figures look nice. I guess we did a pretty good job. I hope somebody reads it. Maybe I should go look myself up on Pubmed again.

Updates from the trenches: Dr. Babysitter.

I often find myself the repository for random bits of information, some of which are crises I can really do nothing about. Sometimes I can help.

The blog helps me cope with both.

1. The friend-of-a-friend grad student.

Her 2nd-ish year qualifying exam is coming up. She did the right thing and met with each of her committee members before the actual exam. But it kind of backfired. One of her committee members called her advisor and said he doesn't think she has what he called "sufficient logical thinking ability."

Point here: Nobody does this kind of thing to male grad students. Ever.

Silver lining: Her advisor disagrees with the guy. (At least for now.)

If I hear any more about the outcome, I will blog it.

2. A grad student friend.

The first chapter of her thesis completed, her advisor is coming up for tenure soon, he decided to send it to Two-Name Journal.

She has never written a paper before, never published before. Still keeps getting the journal name wrong because she doesn't really care that much.

Over a month later, paper comes back un-reviewed. She's thinking, fine, we'll send it to 2nd tier two-name journal.

Advisor instead wants her to do the same experiment 10 times more with different samples and resubmit to the journal that wouldn't review it in the first place.

So this is already fucked up, right? Especially since it's not really what she and her committee agreed would be her thesis project.

But it gets better. When she said look, this is going to take forever and there's still no guarantee it will get published, he said "Look, I'm the PI here, I get to decide."

She says she feels like her spirit is broken.

3. Unemployed friend.

You'll all be glad to hear I offered to teach her everything I know. She has a lot of time on her hands and is going a bit stir-crazy. I think she's going to take me up on the offer.

Point here: I realized I do have time to help her, and there is something in it for me, so I don't feel like I'm being a martyr.

4. Postdoc friend who wants a job in industry.

Has been asking what he can do for me in exchange for me teaching him one of my more unusual, yet coveted skills. We're still negotiating what he can do for me and when I can teach him.

But I think it will be very funny if he and #3 both get jobs in industry while I'm still struggling. Although honestly, the economy looking the way it is, I doubt they're going to get jobs all that soon anyway.

5. Me.

Looking into getting a therapist. Yeah, it's time. I burst into tears at another unsuspecting coworker yesterday. I can't go on like this. I don't know if it will help, but damn if I'm not going to spend all my benefits while I have them.

I also made a dental appointment. So there.

6. My PI.

PI is apparently feeling a bit defeated.

Here I thought, I picked this person with all the experience, I thought by the time you reach that level you're more weathered and better able to deal with setbacks. Maybe even view them as just a small part of the job, you pick yourself back up again and keep going.

Right? Because it's part of your job? You can't wallow in self-pity and anger for more than, I don't know, a month each time something gets rejected?

As it turns out, we are going to have to take turns being each other's cheerleaders.

I dislike this part of my job, aka Leading Up, but I think I can do it now that I understand that's what I have to do.

Apparently it is my turn to keep my advisor going, because I DO believe in my work, I have to be the Obama here and keep chanting Yes We Can.

But I have to say here, something is seriously wrong with this system where EVERY PI I have ever worked with required me to SIT with them and make them read my manuscripts. Because otherwise they will not do the job.

And before you say it must be because I'm a terrible writer (blog popularity notwithstanding!), everyone in the lab does this babysitting nonsense.

It not matter if you are a postdoc or if you have published several papers already.

I did it as a grad student because I believed that, like most grad students, I would learn something in the process.

But as a senior postdoc? It's not only an enormous waste of time, it's degrading, stupid, and makes me wonder how any of them ever got to where they are now.

Who made them do their work when they were younger? Their PI? Their mother?

Hahahahaha.

Yes, I am laughing at this ridiculous situation. I can't help it. It's just so unbelievably stupid.

It makes me think about those ultra-mature little kids who take care of their alcoholic parents and call 911 when mommy passes out on the kitchen floor and hits her head. I seriously can't think of a better analogy.

The good news? Advisor likes to work on manuscripts to avoid other more onerous tasks (yes, this is mature time management at its best!).

So the bad budget news? Other irritating chores? Working in my favor.

Helping me is a day at the beach compared to that. Especially when I'm chanting Yes We Can. Yes We Can. Yes We Can.

More and more about less and less?

Dear readers, I want to disabuse you of a common assumption: that all life-science PhDs are about such narrow little areas.

I was struck by this because about a week ago, our lab interviewed a wannabe postdoc who came and gave a seminar on his thesis work.

It was a good talk. But it was NARROW. It was so narrow, in fact, that I was struck by how rarely narrow it was. I can't remember the last time I saw such a highly specialized thesis project.

In my experience, nowadays we have the world at our fingertips. Most PhD students want to learn lots of techniques, so they can ask lots of different kinds of questions. Most want high-impact papers, and for that you need some bigger picture experiments.

So I just wanted to put this little rant out there. WE'RE ACTUALLY NOT AS NARROW AS YOU MIGHT THINK.

And if you find yourself writing a thesis about a single protein or gene, with no context or in vivo function whatsoever? Try to see the forest for the trees.

Tear 'em down, then build 'em back up.

Oh, the process of apprenticeship is a strange one.

First, you have to strip away all the bad habits of the trainee.

The sloppiness. The tendency to give long-winded answers. The expectation of being treated like a human being. The defensive argumentative whiney crap.

You do this by muscle confusion. You make them jump when you ask, then ignore them for months. Criticize them as much as possible, even when they did everything you asked. Criticize for being too obedient.

Only when they're completely confused and helpless, when they've thrown their hands up in the air and said, "Whatever!", then you can start to imprint the qualities you want.

Organization. Promptness. Brevity. Humility.

Then, slowly, you force them to learn confidence by forcing them to stand up for themselves. Repeatedly.

Eventually they start to argue with you again, but now they do it more effectively.

You are proud. You take credit for their progress, although what you've done was not always pleasant for them.

But it is the way, alas, that it has to be.

Now they are ready to go out and present their progress to others. This is the time when you help them build back up. You praise their good habits to their peers. You pat them on the back.

To them, it seems like little reward for a lot of suffering. If they are grad students, they will get a PhD, and to most people outside, this is the mark of achievement.

Eventually, they will realize it was little reward for a lot of suffering. When they are postdocs, that little pat on the back is all they're going to get. Because by the time they are ready to apply for jobs, the economy will be tanking.

The end.

Grad Student Planet.

Get it? Like Animal Planet.

I don't actually watch Animal Planet but I briefly watched the scene in "Dude, where's my car" the other night where Animal Planet knowledge of ostriches saves the day!

Inspired by that, a brief life cycle of the average top-tier grad student:



Larval.

Characterized by optimistic arrogance and denial.

Stage 1: "That will never happen to me"

Stage 2: "It will all be okay. It will all work out. It has to."



Chrysallis.

Characterized by a thickened skin and a residual form of denial.

Stage 1: Ignores scientific advice.

Stage 2: Equates success with luck (on the assumption that everyone works equally hard and that luck is the deciding factor of who succeeds.)



Hatching.

Cracks are showing.

Stage 1: Defensive about their advisor, even when it is pointed out that the project did not work as originally proposed, and no papers are forthcoming in the promised journals. In other words, the carrot was a fake.

Stage 2: Takes some scientific advice. Agrees to submit papers to 'lower' journals than originally planned. Begins to realize it's not just about "being good", "working hard" or "luck."



Flying away.

Bitter like an unripe kumquat.

Stage 1. Accepting of defeat. Relieved that any papers are published anywhere. Applying for jobs in industry.

Stage 2. Resentful enough of advisor to stake claims, stand ground, and set deadlines.



Full-fledged.

The optimism returns. Surely the postdoc lab will be better???



----

(to be continued, might do a similar one for postdocs if this is interesting to anyone.)

Useful things you'll need to know for modern biological research.

A nervous student interested in grad school asked me to elaborate on this since I said most undergrad departments don't teach what you actually need to know to do modern biological research.

I have lots of coy ideas for this post. For example I considered writing simply:

If someone would give me a faculty position, I could just teach it.

But since other helpful commenters have written things like:

No department would ever hire the person who writes this blog

I guess you probably don't want to wait that long to hear what I think. It could be a while.

---

I think most funded biological research now is biomedical. That could be a generalization, but I think most biology that's not even slightly related to medicine is probably underfunded these days.

That said, let's assume the basis of modern biomedical research is molecular and chemical.

Currently, biomedical research includes computational, nanotech, physics, and mathematics of biology.

At least, that's the stuff that gets funded.

Once upon a time, a few decades ago, biology departments did a lot of genetics research. They still do, but maybe not as much. Now it's a lot of stem cells, drug delivery, and signal transduction.

So far as I can tell, lots of departments still teach phylogeny like it's the epitome of biology and the obvious place to start.

Well, it is and it isn't. I personally think you can skip it, or maybe do it later on rather than as an 'introductory' course. It doesn't frame anything, really, so it doesn't make sense to do it first.

---

They still teach a LOT of genetics, and that makes sense to me.

DO take at least one genetics class.

If you want to work with flies or yeast, or make knockout mice, take more genetics. Lots more.

Otherwise, stop there and make sure you got at least 1 good semester of organic chemistry.

I don't mean memorizing and spitting out, I mean DID. YOU. GET. IT.

Do you know the pKa's of the amino acids?

Do you know what a buffer buffers?

Why are some things soluble in water while others aren't? What should you do about it if you need something to dissolve and it doesn't?

How does PCR work?

How long does a PCR primer have to be to make it specifically bind a sequence of DNA?

---

Take statistics.

Take differential equations.

Take a nonlinear dynamics course if you can get into one. It's usually a pretty high level elective.

If you can't do that, read Sync by Stephen Strogatz.

---

Take some history of science. Did you read The Double Helix and The Dark Lady of DNA?

Have you read a biography of Marie Curie? There are several to choose from. How about Barbara McClintock?

---

Did you do optics in your physics class? Do you understand how microscopes work?

What about lasers?

Lots of modern equipment is based on lasers and fluorescent light. Do you understand where fluorescence comes from?

What's the one critical feature that lets us separately detect different colors of fluorescence dyes?

Do you know how modern DNA sequencing works (hint: it uses fluorescence)?

---

How's your computer science? Could you write a program to sort files for you if you knew the file name format? Do you know what symbols are generally frowned upon filenames, and why?

---

Do you know how to use PowerPoint? What about a spreadsheet program? What about Endnote?

Have you ever taken a writing course - of any kind?

Have you ever taken a public speaking course?

Have you ever taken a drawing course?

---

I'm not saying you have to know these things. I'm saying you should make it your business to learn these things.

I could make a much longer list, but I'm kind of tired. I spent the day on an experiment that didn't work.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that if you want to do biological research, you need to learn how to deal with failure on an almost daily basis.

I know, they don't teach THAT in college.

I learned it from my extracurriculars. Ever watched America's Best Dance Crew? You should, because dancers are used to getting criticism even on their best work, EVERY DAY. Musicians too. Sports are the same way, if you play semi-seriously, your coach will be on your ass to always be improving.

If you can handle that, and be your own coach, you'll do okay.

You have to learn how to pick yourself up and just keep bashing your head against the wall until you make it through.

Most people don't learn that until the end of grad school.

If you already know it going in, you'll probably wonder why everyone else is always complaining.

Comparisons of biologists vs. math, continued.

Anon 2:22,

Well yes and no. The paper might be only the tip of the iceberg in terms of the work.

The problem is that papers are still really the only currency we have, iceberg tip or not, we don't have much other proof that we did anything.

CC,

Although I consider myself at least as smart as most physicists and mathematicians I meet, I guess you are qualifying it by saying that physicists and mathematicians are 'smarter' than most biologists "on average"?

I would tend to disagree, but I've blogged at length in the past about the different kinds of intelligence/smarts, so I won't do it again here. Of course I'm too lazy to figure out which posts those were. One of these days I swear I'll go back through and tag them.

I guess I can see what you mean by physics requiring more raw brainpower.

If you're not good with your hands, if you have no aesthetic sense, you won't be good at biology.

Some people seem to think 'raw brainpower' measured in math is somehow more important, more valuable, or otherwise more useful in life.

It's not.

Raw brainpower isn't all that good at running pretty gels or observing differences in morphology. Raw brainpower is usually not such a great mentor or teacher, either.

If you want to be good at biology, you gotta have good hands, and you gotta have good eyes. So raw brainpower is part of the equation, but it's not the whole enchilada.

I think you can train most any muscle, including your brain, but only so much.

If you're totally uncoordinated and tend to knock over bunsen burners and set benches on fire (like a lab partner I had briefly in college), you'll tend to feel safer doing math. Only so much damage you can do with paper cuts and broken pencils!

I did not know that physics majors do better on the MCAT than biology majors. But honestly, it doesn't really surprise me. Most of the people I work with in biology now were not biology majors in college.

Modern biological research requires a very different background than the curriculum most college biology departments teach.

And by the way, to hell with the MCAT. Why do I care about anyone's scores on the MCAT? So far as I know, no one has done a study to show any correlation between MCAT scores and rate of obtaining faculty positions doing research.

?!

As for (3), that really was not how your original comment read.

Your general implication, that most biology postdocs are idiots who are easily mislead, is pretty condescending. Maybe that's not how you think about it, but that's how you sound.

On the other hand, I do think that if biology did what physics does by limiting the number of slots, it might be better for everyone. But I don't see it happening. Just the opposite.

Did you see that Congress will discuss the possibility of increasing the number and salary for NSF graduate fellowships? The theory is that better students will have more incentive to stay in science if they get one of these.

I definitely think grad students should be paid more.

But I don't think we need more of them. Far from it. I'd rather have three great students, paid well enough that they don't need to worry about it, and have plenty of time to mentor them in my (future imaginary) lab, than 9 mediocre grad students and not enough time to help them all.

But hey, that's more than just raw brainpower talking.

Are most postdocs and grad students just glorified technicians?

CC said:

Math is a completely different situation, where advisors do their own research and mentor the research of others. In experimental sciences, where the advisor's job is almost entirely driving the research of others, the vast majority of grad students and even postdocs are glorified technicians. They contribute a bunch of figures and some methods and results text to the PI, but do not "write papers" in what I would consider a reasonable sense of the phrase. Only in the top 10 or so programs in the US, and their counterparts internationally, do even a majority really manage publications.

REALLY??

I can't say I would know. But here's what I think.

I've worked at places that are maybe in the top 20, maybe top 30, and at least one or two in the top 10.

So far as I know, most senior grad students were doing a significant portion, if not most of the writing, of their papers. Most postdocs were putting together their own manuscripts... or at least I thought they were?

Ever since my very first paper in grad school, I've been doing everything myself. My advisors have contributed edits only. Which I think is perfectly reasonable.

Having said that, though, my most recent manuscripts have gotten more edits, and more useful comments, from people who are not authors.

In fact, come to think of it, on my last few papers, the second/middle authors contributed a reagent, technical help, and/or maybe up to a paragraph of text.

None of these people made even one figure for the paper. The senior authors did even less than that.

But you wouldn't know that from looking at the author list.

So I think it's hard to know how anyone would have such a broad sampling of that kind of inside information as to be able to comment on 'the vast majority' of grad students or postdocs with regards to manuscript writing.

So far as I know, detailed documentation of actual contributions of individual authors is spotty at best (?).

It has only been recently that journals have started including specifics of author contributions at all in my field. Even now, it's not in all journals, and it's often optional or inaccurate.

Here's the kind of thing we put when it's required of us:

Professor X contributed helpful discussions of the results, and contributed to the writing and editing of the manuscript.

Here it is with the subtext revealed:

Professor X contributed (un)helpful discussions, and contributed (very little) to the writing and editing of (an earlier version) of the manuscript (and hasn't read it since, despite being given multiple drafts, junk food bribes, and a deadline).

And here's what I would have written if I were being completely honest about my advisor's contributions to my last few papers:

Professor X rewrote some of my sentences to make them run-ons. X made me use a title I hate, but the paper got in so I don't care anymore because I'm tired of fighting about it.

Professor Y did not contribute more than a few word changes, but is nevertheless an author since Y's grants funded part of the work.

Professor Z read an early draft of the paper and said it looked fine. Z is an author since the work was done in Z's lab space and we can't afford to piss him off.

What do you think, readers? Is CC right? Are math students so much more independent than we are? Is the vast majority just glorified technicians?

Or is this yet another myth being used as justification for keeping us down?

Is this why NIH gives more grant money to people over 70 than to people under 30?

Maybe we should all just quit and come back in 40 years, and see how science has progressed without us?

Whether and when to quit grad school: response to comment on last post.

Dear Erin,

I feel so badly for you.

I am against people working in careers where they're miserable enough to need medication to function on a daily basis. To me that just says it's not a good fit.

That's not your fault, in my view, it's a problem with science in all of its un-touchy-feely current glory.

Ugh! Would that we could make it a little better, somehow! Blogging will have to do for today.

Of course I suspect some of the reasons you have anxiety, if not all, are the same things I blog about all the time.

We all just feel it to different degrees.

You must feel raw all the time, and that makes me sad.

I'm a little confused about how your advisor got you to work on a project that you found out later has nothing to do with your project. I guess it seemed related, but then you found out it can't go into your Master's thesis?

I'm also confused about whether your advisor has always been more on the supportive side and just recently became abusive (because what you're describing is, to put it mildly, taking advantage of you)?

Or was this advisor always like this (and therefore a major source of anxiety)?

Regardless, I think it's great that you have a job lined up. That gives you tremendous power.

I think you should try first to negotiate a way to get your degree before you give up. In this, though maybe not in all things (if they're like mine), your parents are right.

Here's the MsPhD part of the advice:

Perhaps you need to stand up to this advisor?

Perhaps that won't work in this case and you need to approach whatever passes for a graduate program/advisory committee where you are?

Figure out who has the power to give you what you want, and who is more likely to give it.

Being willing to walk away is very powerful.

In fact, it's the first thing they teach you in negotiating school (okay, so I've never been, but I've read some books).

I'd recommend getting a couple of good books on negotiating. As much as I badmouthed it recently, the one I just read might be helpful for you. It's called A Woman's Guide to Successful Negotiating: How to Convince, Collaborate, & Create Your Way to Agreement and you can get the e-version on Amazon instantly.

There are plenty of books like this out there, and it's worth your time to do this now, breathe deeply, and try to marshal your strength.

You do have some. It's in there.

And then, don't wait too long. Give it a shot. Ask for what you deserve. You want your degree? Say so. You don't have to be confrontational about it. You can work it in as part of another conversation.

Get someone to go with you if you need support, maybe a labmate or a mentor?

If nothing else, you will learn something from this experience.

Personally I hate to see someone go to grad school for 4 years and leave empty-handed, and I blame the advisors and the grad program.

I was actually just talking to a student today about accreditation, and she was saying that although they claim they want honest feedback, the committee that reviewed her program didn't seem like they would do anything about any of the problems.

So I also blame the accreditation process for letting it get this bad at this many places.

And with that, I have to go right now so I can't write more, but I'll keep thinking about you and see if I can come up with anything else.

I'm sure my gentle (!) readers will have more to say that might help you.

And I'm sure you're not alone, by the way. There are others just like you, probably reading this blog. Thanks for writing. I'm sure it will help them, too.

The two-body problem (youngfuturefemalescientist's question)

In response to a comment on the previous post-

There are lots of ways to answer this.

The shortest answer may not be the right one, but here it is:

My gut says your bf should follow you. I say this because I have a friend who was in a similar situation, bf followed her and worked as a tech, got a Cell paper and got into the U that he wanted.

Put another way, there are a lot more potential bf's out there than chances to get into the grad school of your dreams. If he's not able to see that, you should upgrade. You can replace him a lot more easily than you can get a do-over on this choice.



On the other hand, it sounds like the two of you went about this the wrong way?

If you had done it the right way, the two of you would have applied only to schools in cluster areas, e.g towns that have at least two, if not three or four schools in close proximity.

That way, if you're an upper echelon candidate (better grades/GREs? maybe a publication or few?) and he's more of an average candidate, at least on paper, you would have had more options in the same location, and none of this headache.

Maybe his field is more competitive, or there are fewer places that have the kind of program he wants.

Either way, from what you wrote, I'm hearing that he's limiting you, not that you're limiting him.

Anyway I guess I thought everybody knew the cluster-town approach is the best and easiest way to deal with the whole two-body problem? Is that not common knowledge now?


---

The longer answers are below. Given what your options are now, you have to break it down and play out the possible scenarios.

Scenario 1. You follow him.

1A. Things go well.

Hooray! Now you're a rockstar in a small pond, as it were.

Will this hurt you in the long run? Nope. Not one bit. It's MUCH more important to get Cell papers than it is where you got your degree.

Caveat 1: it's harder to be a rockstar at a place with less resources (that includes options for good advisors/famous well-connected advisors).

Caveat 2: it's harder to be a rockstar if you're bored or otherwise unhappy.

Note that I say "harder" but it could just as easily be "MUCH harder" or "nearly impossible".

There is no way to know in your particular case, until you try.

1B. Things go badly.

Boo! You hate it! The school sucks!

Worst case scenario: you quit science because of it (don't laugh, it happens a lot).
You resent him. You resent yourself for following him.

Best case scenario: you stick it out, but you're not a rockstar. The two of you stay together and your personal life is great, but you always wonder if you would have been happier at the other place.

Somewhere in between: you're miserable enough that you transfer to the other school and have some kind of long-distance thing to hold your personal life together (see below).

Scenario 2. He follows you.

Scenario 2A. Things go well.

You are a rockstar among rockstars. You are working your butt off, but you love, and you look down the hall and see an endless parade of doors opening before you.

Your bf is happy enough working, and eventually gets into school. He's now a year or two behind you and will take longer to graduate unless a PhD in his field is faster than in yours.

(And then your next move, assuming you both want to have careers, will be just as confusing and difficult as this one. It could be worse if you're even more asynchronous, depending on whether he also wants a postdoc-requiring type of career.)

On the other hand, he might not be all that happy. He might resent you. He might be jealous of your success. He might be threatened by it. He might quit science. You still might break up.

The good news: You'll get your degree and your chance at being a rock star, and you'll have that whether your personal life with him is good, or not.

The other good news: There's plenty more guys to choose from. Upgrade!

Scenario 2B. Things go badly.

Contrary to popular belief, Big-Name U is not utopia. You hate it.

You're a small fish in a big pond full of rockstars.

BF is miserable, and you feel guilty and/or angry at yourself and at him.

The good news: If you push through, you'll get a degree with a little bit of "pedi" in front of it.

This will help you slightly, especially if your publications turn out to be less than stellar. But then the pressure will be on to do a really good postdoc if you don't want to give up your rockstar dreams. Having a PhD from a "good" school alone will not open all the doors for you.

The person who commented (somewhat snidely) about having the right boss, has a good point. There are all kinds of advisors at all kinds of schools. Unfortunately you don't really know until you do your rotations, and even then sometimes it's hard to tell what lab will be a good fit.

But which lab matters a lot more than the school, and the lab might move. Make sure that, before you make any decisions, you ask your potential future advisors point-blank if they plan to stay at Big-Name U forever. You might be surprised to learn that labs move all the time.

All your planning might be moot if he follows you, and then your lab moves!

Scenario 3. You break up and go your separate ways.

It might not seem like it could ever happen, but note what you said:

You're very committed to him. That's what you said.

You didn't say, "We're very committed"

You didn't say, "He has offered to follow me, because he knows it is harder for women in science so I have to take every advantage I'm offered"

Or anything like that.

Did he?

But I digress.

Many of my friends, and myself included, tried to do a long-distance thing with our college sweethearts.

We all failed. Miserably.

Trust me when I tell you that in every story like this, the first year of grad school was a bit of a blur, starting with long phone calls and exhausting visits, followed by the agonizing decision to break up, followed by crying a lot, and finally ending in the inevitable rebound dating new people at the new place.

Ugh, rebound dating. Very distracting. Not good for lab productivity!

But seriously though, I have one friend who is doing a long-distance thing right now, and a few others who carried them on for quite a while, but in no case did it work out in the magical fairy-tale way they had hoped. So far. We can still hope it will work out for them.

But I personally do not recommend the long-distance option, and you don't sound like you would consider it seriously.

But it is an option.

I guess my question is, if you're this ambitious, why are you even considering following this guy to a school you didn't like?

Why? I kind of don't get it. I mean, I get it. I really do. But you should seriously talk about the possibility of him following you. It sounds like he wouldn't mind going to Big-Name U, if he can get in.

I guess what I don't see is why you should compromise your dreams to make up for his (potentially temporary) under-achievement?

My very very short advice: stay away from a school you visited and didn't like!

At. All. Costs.

(fyi, you do sound a little bit conceited in some of your word choices, but the fact that you're even considering following him makes me think you don't have complete confidence about your abilities or more importantly, your relationship.)

Good luck and let us know what you decide.

Career Myths about Grad School and Postdocs

Today I'm thinking about some things I used to think, and some things I know are still common beliefs about science. All of them can be dangerous assumptions, to differing degrees.

1. Appearances don't matter as much in science.

One of the things that attracted me to science was the false belief that it was more about putting in an honest day's work for a good cause than anything else, and that smart people didn't care what you wear or whether you're a minority or not.

Boy was that wrong!

Looking back, I got this impression based on working in the lab, down in the trenches, as it were. I liked the uniform of jeans and a t-shirt.

It never really occurred to me until relatively recently, but I've blogged about it a lot: to get from the trenches to the office, some people will judge you based on totally irrelevant criteria.

I knew this was true in other jobs. I just didn't think it would matter as much in science.

2. A PhD automatically means people without a PhD will respect your opinion more than they would have before you got the PhD.

When I had already been a postdoc for a while, I found myself in a sticky situation with a technician who just would not listen to anything I said.

Once upon a time, I looked up to the technicians. Many of them had more experience than I did, and some were immeasurably helpful to me.

I've always believed that, in terms of day-to-day things in the lab, a PhD just means you've logged a certain number of years at the bench. And experience, so far as I can tell, reigns supreme at the bench. And you never really know how much experience anyone has until you work with them.

Appearances, even in science, can be deceiving.

I didn't expect him to just take my word for anything, I would patiently try to explain my reasoning, but he just refused to listen.

Looking back, I think things were fine until he found out I had a PhD.

I've run into this a lot. People treat you a certain way when they assume you are a grad student, and they treat you differently from the moment they find out that you are not.

In retrospect, this was a horrible example of exactly the kind of sexism I have always tried to avoid, because I literally could not get my work done.

The PI was unreceptive. On the other hand, I never really spelled it out because I sensed that it would get me in trouble AND do nothing to improve the situation. Maybe I was wrong about that, but there's no way to know. And these things do have a statute of limitations.

I was thinking about this because someone I hadn't seen in a long time was asking me how my work was going since last we met.

I was thinking back over the setbacks I've had this year, large and small.

This last year was crippled with mostly small setbacks, but several of them could be traced to the same couple of sources. But there were at least a couple of large setbacks. In at least one case I lost a lot of time, but there was nothing I could have done differently.

But I'm not sure there was anything I could have done to make things turn out differently with this guy.

The biggest problem was that it took me a while to figure out if this guy was just weird. You know how some people in labs are just argumentative. I know someone who is like this, but it's how he behaves with everyone, no matter if you're young or old or tall or short or male or female or any color of the rainbow. That's just how he is.

And for a while there were no other women around, so I couldn't help wondering if it was really just me, or if it was actually because I was a woman.

The worst kind of woman. A woman with a PhD.

3. Sexism used to be worse, so women who complain about it now are just ungrateful and negative.

Maybe it's actually worse to be aware of sexism. That's certainly the message I've gotten from talking with older women faculty, who were either born with blinders on and apparently never took them off, or cultivated a kind of denial that I just can't muster.

It's like the conversation over at Jenny F. Scientist about whether outright falsification is worse, or not as bad, as cherry-picking from non-robust data.

The argument is that totally false data is much easier to identify than data that has been 'massaged.' By this reasoning, cherry-picking or massaging data is much more insidious, and much more dangerous, because it's a much bigger waste of everyone's time.

So while it might seem intuitive that blatant sexism is worse than subtle sexism, I don't think that's really the case anymore. Everyone agrees that blatant sexism is bad, and most people will speak out against it.

The problem with subtle sexism is that it's not minor. Passive aggression can be just as destructive as overt aggression. But it's much harder to prove.

Seems to me this is like the cherry-picking. Everyone's first inclination, when they can't be sure otherwise, is to blame themselves. And then we end up in situations like the one I just described, where you miss the crucial moment to do anything about it.

4. Faculty have not only personal experience, but also lots of ideas about what you should learn in grad school and as a postdoc.

False, false, and false!

For a while now in science, the gradual creeping increase of time in grad school and postdoc has been widening the generation gap.

But I had the unusual experience recently of hearing someone with an MD talking about what should be taught in grad school.

This same person was telling students to finish their PhD just because it would be useful.

I'm sorry, but what the hell would you know about it???

Similarly, I noticed pretty early in my postdoc that most older PIs have no concept whatsoever of what it's like for us as postdocs now. Most of them did a postdoc that lasted a maximum of two years, and then they got a job.

The end! Ta da! Wouldn't that be nice??

Again, if you haven't ever been through it, how much could you really know?

And yet, these are the people in charge (you know, the ones I'm always ranting about).

Worse than that, I heard a PI recently exhorting grad students to do a postdoc, but when asked about what exactly should be learned in a postdoc position, this PI had no idea how to respond.

(Here's a hint: if you're a PI, you should know the answer to this!)


5. A PhD is a useful jumping-off point for many careers, so it's a degree worth getting, even if you realize early in grad school that you're miserable.

This was probably true when grad school was less than 5 or 6 years. It may still be true in the UK and some European countries where grad school is ~ 3 years max.

But I don't really think it's true anymore, or good advice at all.

I mean, sure, if you're miserable and more than halfway done, you should probably finish. But isn't that true for most endeavors?

But if you know before you take your qualifying exams that you hate it?

Get out.

And whatever you do, DO NOT go to grad school to figure out what you want to do.

Figure it out first.

Along those lines, I'm starting to wonder if we shouldn't be requiring students to go out and work for a few years before grad school.

I sincerely doubt that graduate programs could get away with the same kinds of abuse if students knew a little more about how much better it could be, and demanded it.

But that's just one theory.

On the flip slide, I've noticed a disturbing trend among my friends who worked before grad school: they tend to want to just put their head down, do their work, and get back out of academia as fast as possible.

I think this is bad because these kinds of students are not invested in giving back as they go along. I don't like the idea of grad school as a purely selfish undertaking to get a degree. I think this really misses the point.

If you just want to pay your dues and get your degree, get an MBA or a JD.

If you can see that things need to be better, but you're not willing to say it, please go away. We already have enough people like you.

Response to Distraught grad student

Ok, as usual Blogger is not cooperating (or I'm too busy to use it properly).

Someone wrote a really long, very disturbing comment about her horrible situation with a verbally and physically dangerous sexist advisor, financial problems, thesis project that isn't what she wanted to work on, and no idea what to do. Oh and severe insomnia.

My heart goes out to you.

Dear Insomniac,

First let me say that if your health insurance covers mental health at all, you should get some professional help from someone near you.

Where I went to grad school, we had so many suicides that they added free mental health benefits to help cover their asses. Your school sounds about as bad, but if they're adept at covering things up, they might not have this benefit.

Friends, family, anyone you can vent to, try to get yourself a support system. Make sure you're getting enough exercise and cutting out the caffeine and limiting your alcohol. I know this sounds trite, but trust me, it's critical. Make sure you're eating well. Take care of yourself!

All of that said, your situation sounds pretty bad.

Let's try to break it down and talk about your options in order of easy --> hard.

Option 1: stay where you are and keep your mouth shut (aka the Suck It Up option).

You're already doing this. It's the easiest in the sense of your not having to take any overt action. And you will most likely finish and get a degree, though you won't be learning what you said you wanted to learn.

You said you're in your 3rd year? Doing molecular biology? I'm guessing you have at least 2 years left, then?

Two years is a long time to not sleep. I think the only way you can make this work is to develop an iron-clad coping strategy.

Oh and whatever you do, write everything down. Keep a journal where you record, in as much detail as you can, anything abusive that happens in your lab, to you or to others. It could be handy should there be a need for a lawsuit or an anonymous call to the press.

But keep this one thing in mind: you could get hit by a bus tomorrow. Don't you deserve better?

Option 2: Stay where you are, but speak up.

I think it's debatable whether this is harder than Option 3, but it's worth trying if the later options seem appealing.

Basically, you can stick your neck out.

You can say to your advisor that you hate your project and you want another one. You can do this with your advisory/thesis committee present, better yet ask for a meeting in the Dean's office.

You can try to organize other witnesses in your lab and at your school, to make a formal protest to the administration about your abusive advisor and their inadequate response to the things that have already happened.

It's unlikely that this will work, but sometimes it does. It all has to do with timing and critical mass.

If there is an Ombudsperson or Office of Sexual Harrassment or anything like that, go talk to those people for advice about your school's policies. They're required to talk to you anonymously and you can be given the choice whether or not to file charges and go forward under conditions that will reveal your identity.

The main advantage to going this route is that it might help prevent these things from continuing, and the administration might be so embarrassed that they would bend over backwards to get you into a new lab in exchange for making sure you shut up.

More likely, though, from what you said, they'll try to expedite your leaving. Which might be fine if you're thinking about taking the option of switching schools.

Option 3: Switch to another lab.

From your comment, though, I get the impression there is no one currently at your school that appeals to you in terms of joining their lab.

Keep your eyes peeled. When I was in my third year, someone new came to my school, and I immediately added this person to my thesis committee, and that helped me a lot. I wasn't unhappy enough at that point to consider switching.

By the time I was wishing I had switched, it didn't make sense anymore (it was too late).

Option 4: Transfer to another graduate school.

This would require that you pay a fee to apply, probably, but they should be able to waive it if you can demonstrate your financial straits.

If you get in and decide to move, you should negotiate to get them to pay for your moving expenses. They can do this, you know, you just have to make it clear that you can't come unless they do it.

They might even raise your stipend if they want you badly enough. A friend of mine unwittingly discovered this when she genuinely couldn't decide between two schools, one of them offered her a sort of signing bonus to go there.

Transferring would take a while to put into action, but now is the time. Deadlines are... nowish, if not already passed for this year. Best case scenario, they could admit you for Spring semester if your credits will transfer. More likely, though, you'd be stuck until next Fall.

And it would take you longer to graduate, no doubt, unless you manage to switch back to chemistry, which could be faster than MoBio in terms of completing a thesis project.

Your best chances at finding a better lab and not repeating your current predicament are to research thoroughly the labs you're considering, get in touch with the PIs and the people in those labs ahead of time, and only apply to those schools where you've already found people doing what you want and agreeing that they think you're a good candidate and/or could give you a direct admit (some schools still do this at the PI's request).

Just make sure you do your homework, find out what you're getting into.

Option 5: Quit.

Quit now and go find something else that makes you happy and/or pays the bills (not necessarily in that order).

Maybe something that only requires a BA or if you can, leave with a master's.

I've written a lot about quitting, when and why people do it and how they feel afterwards (as have many of the people who comment here, see also FSP's blog).

You don't sound like you're ready to quit science, but it might be time to pick up and move, and start over somewhere new. But that takes a lot of guts and a lot of energy, and most people avoid major changes like that (and hence would probably take Option 1- suck it up).

I'd recommend reading this short little book called The Dip by Seth Godin. The book is about knowing when to quit. But I think he'd say that you're in panic mode, which is not a good time to make a decision. You have to get yourself into better shape (sleeping, for example) before you're equipped to make a decision.

And hang in there. Our thoughts are with you. Just remember, you're neither the first, the last, nor the only person going through this exact same thing right now.

Response to comment on last post- in defense of reading a lot.

Dear Anonymous,

In terms of getting a PhD whether you like reading or not, I think that we shouldn't abuse students who realize halfway through that they don't like reading. I'm in favor of terminal master's degrees (TMS) as per the discussion over on FSP's post about that. I think it's better for people to leave at that point than to try to finish "just because", or even worse, go and do a postdoc because they can't figure out what else to do with their lives.

But, I do think that a certain amount of reading (and of course, writing!) should be a requirement for a PhD.

So maybe if you don't like reading, you shouldn't have gotten a PhD in the sense that it was not the best use of your talents?

Did you think about quitting? How did you end up finishing? Do you mind telling us (however vaguely), what you do now?

For me, getting a PhD was not easy. In fact, it would have been easier to quit (and justify quitting) than to finish.

So I wouldn't give back my PhD, either, because I know I earned it.

Whether I would do it all over again, if I had the chance, is a different question.

So I'm curious about what got you through? In fact, I generally invite comments, for the benefit of our grad & younger student readers, on that topic.

But I digress. To me, reading papers is not so much about minutiae.

I think a lot more experiments work when you read a lot and plan carefully based on what's already been done. That might sound hopeless trite, but bear with me.

Even when no one has ever done what you're setting out to do, there are always common features to be found, and those things can make or break your experiments.

I can see how those details would be boring to some, but I really like having experiments work (as you say you do). So details of that sort matter a lot to me. To me, one of the worst feelings in the world is when you find out later that someone else got your difficult experiment to work using some little trick you didn't know about. I HATE that.

Reading a lot helps me avoid getting into situations where I have to feel like that! It's that same feeling like when you leave your wallet in the backseat of the taxi cab. ARGH!

Today I was thinking about how a couple of people in my lab missed something kind of critical because of just that sort of mistake- they didn't pay attention to common features and they didn't do enough reading.

It's not my project, so who's to say I wouldn't have also missed all the clues, too. But it's kind of sad, because in retrospect, it was all sitting there in pubmed if they had just bothered to read it.

But you know, you can only do so much. And everyone handles the 'down time' differently. I think that's as much about personality as anything else. I am always in a better mood when my experiments are working!

Sometimes reading is the only thing to get me out of an experimental rut- and actually in this case, it did. The only reason my experiments are working so well lately is because of a paper I read that gave me an idea for something to do, and how to do it.

I like ideas. But I like them even better when I can show why they're right.

Mood swings.

Yesterday I somehow got out of my inertia and got a lot done. I ended by feeling virtuous and productive. So that was good. Unfortunately I know it's not a robust system: not very easily reproducible.

This morning I dragged myself out of bed. I've been feeling, as I have ephemerally earlier in the week also, like I'm on the verge of tears.

The last couple of days I have been okay because nothing has happened to push me over that edge. Yes, it's that time of month, and I am doing all the things I usually do to try to feel better or at least functional. And mostly it is working.

Today I am at that point again, and trying really hard to shore up the walls of my protective bubble to avoid bursting out crying if someone says the wrong thing or my experiments aren't working.

I never used to mind if my experiments didn't work, I would just try again until they did. Lately I've had less patience for that, maybe because my impostor syndrome is restricted to my wondering if I would be done being a postdoc by now if I just had better hands (or a technician to help me). I'm still doing it, but it bothers me a lot more that it takes so long.

I know my project is harder than most, but that it's not obvious until you actually try to do these experiments. I also know that I have higher standards than many. I wouldn't want to put my name on something sloppy or publish something no one else could reproduce.

Unfortunately this also means that my advisor seems to expect more from me, and it feels like too much pressure sometimes. Pressure without any pep talks (while watching certain coworker morons publish absolute slop, get jobs, and leave).

So today I sucked it up when I found myself doing something that gave me graduate school deja vu in the worst way, that took what seemed like forever and made me feel like I've made no progress whatsoever in all these years, and I will never, ever get out of here.

And I sucked it up when the postdocs who got jobs last year started talking about their plans for leaving.

And I sucked it up when a couple of former postdocs were in town visiting, glowing and agreeing that yes, it is better when you get your own lab.

I am going to try to get some work done, since that usually makes me feel better.
I have to admit I'm not sure it's going to do the trick today. All I want to do it go home and go back to bed.

This too shall pass.

I hope it's okay that I'm reprinting this comment and then addressing it below.

Here's the comment in full:

Dear MsPhD, love your blog, have never commented before -- let me tell you MY situation, and please advise if you can.

I'm starting my 4th year of grad school after three full years (plus three years as a technician) working in a high-powered, MD-driven, hierarchical lab where I was fairly happy. In short, I was driven out of the lab because of a personal relationship I had with a junior faculty in the department - we are now engaged to be married. The PI, a clinical chairman and internationally renowned in his field, told me after 3 years that he could no longer mentor me -- not too much of a stretch, since his idea of "mentoring" was once monthly meetings to inform him what was happening with the project. Nevertheless, I was settled, productive and relatively happy in the lab. Would have graduated ahead of schedule.

I had only a short time to find a new advisor, and went to a lab which I was led to believe was equally well funded, well renowned, etc. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The new lab is staffed with four technicians, one post-doc and one other grad student. The techs run the show, and treat me as a hapless underling even though I've been doing this for 6 years, have spoken at international meetings, and am generally considered at the top of my grad school class. Now I have techs trying to impose their own lack of skill (they can't get an assay to work if their life depended on it) onto me and my project. The PI is approaching retirement, ruled by his techs, and clearly disinterested in moving the research forward in an aggressive way. I don't want to rock the boat, or revolutionize their lab -- I just want to graduate, and I'm one paper away. I feel such rage with my previous advisor over what happened to me, and I feel myself slipping into downright depression over the dismal situation in my current lab, where they have one functional p1000 between the 8 of them. Arrgghhhh!! I don't want to change labs again (i've only been here for 6 weeks), but I'm worried my technical skills will start to slip, and my committee chair (very supportive of me) told me people may start to think of me negatively because of my association with this lab. What to do??

Thanks,
Anonymous

So here is my advice.

Let me first say I totally feel your pain. But hey, congratulations on your engagement! At least your personal life is going pretty well, eh? Try to remember that you are a person before you are a scientist.

So first, I'll give you the bad news, because it's mostly bad news. Then I'll give you the good news.

The bad news is, you might be better off leaving this lab. If it's that bad after only 6 weeks, it's only going to get worse. You have to get out now if you're going to get out, but you better be damn sure that wherever you go will be someplace you can stay.

No matter what you do now, this is really going to be a test of your skills, your strength, and your patience.

It will be a test of whether you were receiving recognition in part because of your first PI's reputation. You may find that the quality of your work is the same, but the impact of your work will be less. You may have to find other, more creative ways to get the recognition you deserve. And you might not get it now, not for this work you've been doing as a grad student, and maybe not for a long while. But you will have other projects in other places, there will be more chances and that part will get easier as you move up the ladder.

The bad news is, no matter where you are, I think you already know this, you just have to suck it up.

Put your head against the brick wall and PUSH.

At this point, in this lab or another one, you're pretty close to finishing, so focus on getting your experiments done. Get your papers published, write your thesis, and get out.

Sounds simple, right?

The bad news is, it will be harder than it should be. It is always harder when you're working with people who know less than you do, and aren't smart enough to know it or even consider your input. It's always harder when you're working with people who don't share your high standards. And if you move again, you're going to lose more time.

I'm going to tell you what other people have told me, and it sucks that it has to be this way, but no matter where you are, you have to do whatever it takes to survive. Hoard pipettes. Work at night and on the weekends when you can hog the equipment.

It sounds like you've already tried to talk to your PI, and that didn't work, so I'm not going to suggest that will solve all your problems. But you might keep trying to gently bring the PI to see things your way.

Meanwhile, you can try to tune out the techs, or better yet, try to get them on your side. Bring in brownies, try to get them to like you, even if they don't yet respect you and take your advice. It's an experiment, but it might work, and it's a very useful skill to develop.

You don't want or have time to revolutionize this lab. I get that. But it's up to you whether you want to try to get them to help you or if you want to take the long way around.

There is no direct way to get where you want to go if the techs are a major obstacle. So you've got to go around them, or through them, or try to knock them down. Going around them might take twice as much work as it would if they weren't there. Knocking them down will be hard unless you have allies in the lab who agree that the techs are a terror.

What do the techs want? Food? Authorship? Long coffee breaks? If you can bribe them to move aside and just stay out of your way, it will be a whole lot easier.

If none of that seems like it will work, get out of that lab NOW and find somewhere that you can work, with a PI who wants to publish papers.

[aside: Not that it matters much, but can't the junior faculty member help you out at all with basic supplies and infrastructure?]

The good news is that you can get through this if you work hard and keep your thesis committee chair on your side. You really only need one person, ideally two, to genuinely support you to graduate, provided that no one else cares enough to try to block you, they will go along with your chair and your PI.

I know it doesn't seem like it now, but working in a 'bad' lab can teach you a lot. You've already learned to appreciate how good you had it in your other lab. You're probably learning all sorts of things NOT to do, like how NOT to be a PI, what techs NOT to hire. Try to look at it as part of your experience that will make you stronger than your peers who have had it easy all along, and some of this information might come in handy later on.

Meanwhile, I'm sure by now you regret agreeing to leave your other lab, for whatever lame reason your lame advisor cooked up, even if it seemed to make sense at the time.

Because by now you know that even with a total lack of mentoring, it's better to be in a lab where you can actually get work done.

These are the tradeoffs we all have to make. Best to learn it now than find out the hard way when you're a postdoc, as a lot of people do.

I'm curious though, did you try to fight to stay? Do you wish you had fought harder? Would you want to go back if you could? Do you think they'd agree to let you go back just for 1 more year to finish up and graduate?

But assuming it's too late now to go back (?), that doesn't mean you have to stop being angry.

USE YOUR RAGE. But also be patient. Being angry can be good, so long as it's not stopping you from getting work done. But don't be depressed. This is a solvable problem, and as a scientist you are a good problem solver. Just look at it as strategically as you look at your research, and break it down into pieces you can handle. One thing at a time, one day at a time, keep moving toward your goal.

Things like this, and much more insidious things, happen almost every year at almost every grad school in the world. You are neither the first person nor the last. It's totally unfair and stupid and bad for science.

Some of us know that we've already lost a lot of good young scientists, just like you, for reasons that have nothing to do with abilities or productivity.

So try to remember that it's not you, it's them. It's a problem with the system. And if you stay in the system, if you BEAT the system, you can move up and change it so things like what happened to you don't keep happening again and again.

After that, find a good postdoc lab, preferably in a different field, and you should be able to put this behind you. Or hey, go to industry if that's what you want to do. Or do something else. But get your PhD first, just to show them, and yourself, that you can.

Put your eye on the tiny flicker at the end of the tunnel, and whatever you do, just keep going. Getting a PhD is mostly a test of perseverance.

And do check back in and let us know how it goes. We'll be thinking of you.

Another installment of: Sometimes I wish I hadn't gone to grad school.

Recently I've had the opportunity to meet more professional women from industry, and talk to them more than I had before. Some of them do not have PhDs.

And yet. They are doing the same kind of work that a person with postdoc experience would do. They are designing new assays and doing research. They are using multiple techniques.

Multiple techniques! And here I thought that without a PhD, I'd be doing nothing but multiplex PCR, day in and day out.

(In fact, I know some people who have PhDs who do nothing but one technique, day in and day out).

They are paid well. They dress well. They get per diem when they travel. They work with other women because the imbalance is less severe. They have all the toys at work. They don't work weekends.

And so I have to wonder what the hell I was thinking. If I had known how much the industry would change, and that there were industrial bachelors or masters degree level positions where I could do a multitude of interesting things, I might have thought twice about grad school.

If I had any idea what grad school would actually be like, I'd like to think I wouldn't have gone. I'd like to think I would have chosen the chance the get paid more right off the bat and move up sooner based on abilities and experience, rather than irrelevant diplomas and other superficial measures.

The one shining light in all this is that I know I get more freedom. And I get to read.

Unfortunately I can't go back now, and there's no guarantee that even in industry all the suffering to get the degrees and postdoc experience would pay off.

Advisor horror stories, continued.

Someone who wrote before writes again, this time elaborating on her horrific situation. I edited this comment only for typographical errors to make it more readable.

You're completely right. The key is to stay positive and sometimes things do happen for a reason...which may never be apparent until much down the road. (At least that's what I hope). I wrote to you a few weeks back about e-advice for my qualifying exam. The good news is that I submitted the written portion. The oral exam is coming up in 10 days. My advisor has been giving me a hard time about the days I have taken off to prepare.

She's giving me shit when I have 10 days left for the oral exam. Most other students have gotten between 4-12 weeks to prepare and study! I got exactly 15 days off for the written which is pretty scary since I have never written a grant before and my undergrad degree is in psychology.

Anyways what's sad is that my prof tries to run her lab like a company and she feels we are all her employees. She is constantly threatening me about taking these days out of my vacation time and about even not paying me. As a graduate sstudent I FEEL that she is being very unreasonable. When I try to reason with her and give her examples of more senior profs and their students her response is always I don't care.

It's sad because I am her first student ever. Is it legal for her to be doing this? Moreover she has been giving my experiments to other students to do while I am not in th lab and wants me to redo those experiments. I don't think this is ethical..and I also have my doubts about it being legal. I know in companies they have employees do the same experiments to see who gets the better results etc..but in a graduate school is this allowed?
I appreciate all your help. Thanks a lot.

Aside to the audience:

Ack! Can you believe this is actually going on in universities???

To the author:

Since when do graduate students have any vacation time?? That sounds like an empty threat to me.

But I don't know that there are any laws against her threatening you or even punishing you. The graduate program probably does not mandate that students be given any time off lab work to prepare for exams, nor does it mandate in any way that PIs be nice to their students.

In terms of how professors are supposed to mentor/advise/train students in your program, that is something you would have to look up in your university bylaws, graduate student handbook, etc.

You should see if there is an ombudsperson or other mediator service at your school.

Your attitude, however, could use some adjusting. Complaining that she's 'giving you shit' is not a very mature or diplomatic way to look at it.

I understand that it may be inpossible to have a reasoned, adult conversation with her about your obligations to her, to the program, and to your own career, but I'd strongly encourage you to try to do that if you haven't already. Since you are her first student, she may not realize that her behavior is only going to lead to you no longer being in her lab, if you fail your exams or if she's so unbearable that you leave or quit.

Does she realize that if you fail out, you'll either be gone and then she really won't be able to get you to do her experiments, or you'll need even more time to study the second time around? While most schools do give you a second chance, most don't give you a third.

And don't even get me started on what a crappy lab that must be for students. What kind of training is that, giving your experiments to someone else to do when you're gone for only a week or two?? Are your samples time-sensitive??

She doesn't sound like the kind of PI who is actually equipped to handle a university environment. Universities are slow. It's one of the things I don't love about them, but I've come to understand better why they are that way, so it doesn't bother me so much anymore and I know how long things take, so I can plan accordingly. Is she coming from industry or from years of maternity leave or something? Is she really young?

Sounds to me like a young, first-time grad student and a young, first-time PI are not a good match. It's the blindly ambitious leading the blindly terrified.

My advice:

If you can't talk sense into her, get out of that lab, and do it as soon as you possibly can. Ideally you need to pass your exams first, but then you should find out what you'd need to do to switch labs.

Good luck.

Sorry this is late- blame Blogger.

Blogger's been intermittently down and very slow this week, so I apologize for the delay on this one.

I agree with the person who posted and said don't try to cram in too much studying, but working hard for a specific goal can be empowering, too, some some studying can be good.

As you'll see from my original response, I also agree with that person because they said they wouldn't do grad school over again if they had another chance to choose. Every hurdle you face in grad school is a chance to say to yourself, "Leaving now is not quitting, but right now I can make a choice whether to stay or to go." I still say if you're having a lot of doubts about whether this is the lifestyle for you, getting out sooner is a lot easier than getting out later.

***

Hello- I have been following your blog for some time now and I just wanted to thank you for sharing your experiences. I am currently a phd student in biomedical science. I often wonder how i ended up here as my undergrad degree was in psychology. I don't go to a very well known university but it's in the midwest. I am weeks away from taking my PhD qualifying exam. Do you have any recommendations? Or would you be willing to share your own experience? I am really scared that I will fail being from a psychology background my basics aren't very strong and I've really just done ok in my classes while I have been here.

Recommendations:

You sound terrified. The best medicine for exam fear is preparation.

1. Since this is not your first language, as it were, it might help to Study. Get some textbooks and some friends who know this stuff and review the basics. Don't be shy about asking for help from other grad students, older grad students, or postdocs.

2. It doesn't matter how you do as long they don't kick you out. Even if they fail you, most schools will let you try again (at least once).

I say you should study because I think knowing the 'basics' affects everything we do - what is DNA, what is RNA, and how they are made, what are the amino acids, why does it matter that there are 20 and they're different, etc. There's no area of biomedical science where you don't need to know chemistry- pH, for example, influences everything we do in the lab, but sometimes a small pH difference doesn't matter, and sometimes it's the only things that matters. Even if you're doing nothing at the bench and you're injecting mice with a drug, you need to know basic physiology and pharmacology. Or maybe you're growing plants, then you need to know the anatomy of a plant.

Knowledge is power, in more ways than one. With that in mind:

Find out what your school's policy is. How well do you have to do? Can you get an extension and take it later? If you do poorly, can you take it again?

Do you do an oral exam component in front of a committee? Who's on your committee? Go talk to each of them in person, one on one. Try to get them to tell you what sorts of things they want you to know. And make a good impression, if you haven't met with them before. If they like you, they'll go easier on you. But don't let them know you're scared, just say you want to be thorough in your preparation. Ask for clarifications, but don't expect them to be sympathetic. Most scientists are not!

Having said all that, remember that it's not the end of the world if you fail.

But if you're this stressed out now, are you sure this is what you want to do?

If the answer is yes and you fail anyway, you can always go to the Chair or Dean in your department/program and try to work out some kind of probation. You're not the first, nor will you be the last, scientist who doesn't enjoy or excel at taking tests.

It's a stupid hurdle and doesn't measure much of relevance, if you ask me, but it does serve the purpose of being a filter. For example:

If you're this stressed out now, how well will you handle the other stressful things we do professionally? Public speaking? Grant deadlines? Grant rejections? Nasty paper reviews?

It's a stressful profession pretty much all the time, and people will always be looking at you to see how much you know, whether it's in a formal sense of being in the audience when you give a talk, or just from afar when they read your papers. Will it drive you crazy to worry what people are thinking about you and your work? Having studied psychology, I'm sure you've thought about this.

To be more positive, I can tell you from experience that everyone's confidence rises as you go through grad school and postdoc. At first you're asking all the dumb questions, and after a few years, everyone is asking you the same questions you asked a few years before. And then you have to say, hey! I must be making progress here!

Set your sights on what you want. Can you envision your future lab? What you want to study when it's up to you to do something no one's ever done before? Treat the exams as a stepping stone on the way to getting what you want. Sure, it's probably not all that related to what you're going to do later, but look at it this way: after you finish grad school, you'll never have to take another test, ever again.

--MsPhD