Lies, damn lies, and statistics

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

For fun, you can also download the data tables.

***

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

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

No kidding.

Should you go to graduate school.

A commenter writes:

I'm deciding whether to apply to PhD program in science (basic science research) or not. I've been unsure for many years, and time is tickling away.

If you could turned back time, would you have chosen to do the PhD route?

No, I don't think so.

How about Post-doc's?

No, I don't think so.

How hard was it to just walk away from the dream of getting tenured?

Honestly I never had a dream of getting tenured. I just wanted to run my own lab. I just wanted to be able to do my own research for a living, for a while. I don't even know if tenure is going to exist anymore, if you read the Chronicle of HIgher Education you'll see that tenure is... tenuous at best.

Deciding to walk away was a long, slow process of being miserable for a lot of years and thinking for a long time that what doesn't kill us makes us stronger... and then realizing that it still added up to a cumulative appearance of professional problems that I couldn't cure.

It took multiple friends and one therapist telling me that this was literally killing me, that it was eating me alive, that crying every day was not okay and that it wasn't worth being a martyr.

It also took realizing that while none of my so-called science "mentors" ever said I wasn't good enough, they weren't particularly encouraging, either. They were afraid to admit they might not be able to help me get a job, and one even told me I should quit. And maybe I should have quit when she said that, but I thought at the time (and still think) that she is unhappy and wanted to live vicariously through me leaving.

I realized I had to figure out my own limit.

And then I reached it. The second time my PI stabbed me in the back, I decided I had reached my limit and had to formulate an exit strategy, even if that strategy consisted of nothing more than putting one foot in front of the other until I made it out the door.

I've been following your blog for some time now. You seem to confirm everything that I have always feared about walking into the PhD, Post-doc, aspiring tenure position path.

I know it is hard -- based on observing grad students, post-docs, and those continuing to do more post-docs... many eventually go into industry, 1 actually got an assistant staff position (after over ten years of post-doc).

I might do this since I might have some of that slight chance. or I might have to make a DECISION now, and know that it is too small of a chance.

Yes, and even industry positions can be very hard to get, especially at the post-PhD levels. Especially if you have no industry experience.

Honestly, if I had to do it over again, I would have gone to work at a company for a year (at least a year!) before I applied to grad schools. It would be invaluable on your CV later, and it gives you a chance to see if you like doing research while having some gainful employment with benefits, the potential to stay on, and maybe even the chance to move up.

Or you might decide, after doing some benchwork, that you'd rather go to med school. I sometimes think I should have done that instead.

Or you might decide to do patent law or business school instead.

I might apply to professional schools (eg. PharmD).

My impression is that there are jobs for pharmacists, and that they pay well.

There are also lots of jobs for people with nursing degrees.

What are your thoughts, Ms.PhD?

Well, you've read my blog and my opinion hasn't changed.

I still think that the system is broken and very few people get through grad school and postdoc without regrets.

Some decide halfway through grad school that they're miserable, but they finish anyway and then leave.

Almost everyone else gets through grad school just fine but then runs into trouble during their postdoc.

Personally, I went in blind. I liked research and I had worked in labs, so I thought I knew. But I didn't realize that everyone was sheltering me and lying to me up until I went to grad school.

To this day, I think there were one or two people who genuinely believed (still believe) I would make a great PI someday. One of them told me, even as I was losing hope, that he thought I could be "one of the best". Whatever that means.

But I also think most of the people I came in contact with were barely hanging on themselves, and rather than telling me about their own uncertainties, chose to say nothing at all.

For example, I only found out later how many of my colleagues have been on anti-depressants.

A wise woman told me early on that I should "read between the lines". But I didn't know that she meant you have to pay attention to the silences.

Over time, I noticed that other students were getting better fellowships than I was, and I wondered why no one had encouraged me to apply for those or why my letters weren't good enough to help me win one. Or why grades from undergraduate classes seemed to matter more than the research proposal I wrote myself and got feedback on from my advisors.

I didn't know that many PIs write their grad students' and postdocs' fellowship proposals themselves. I didn't know until much later that I was competing with people who were willing to do that.

I wondered if it was that I wasn't good enough at science, but I don't think that was ever the problem.

It just didn't occur to me to find the Most Famous Dood I could find and kiss his ass to make sure he would write me a Most Glowing Letter (and possibly the entire research proposal section) for my grad school and postdoc funding applications.

I really thought you just showed up, figured out what interested you, and that if you worked hard people would notice and it would pay off.

But that's not how it works at all. You have to be strategic from before Day 1, you have to have all the political skills and then some family connections wouldn't hurt, either.

And don't kid yourself, that's probably true in all professions, to some extent.

I still think the most heartbreaking aspect of academic science is the hypocrisy inherent in claiming that science is the highest calling because it is supposedly supremely objective and ethical.

When, in fact, many of the most powerful scientists are neither objective nor ethical. There are subjective aspects to publishing, funding, and hiring, and there is plenty of room for unethical hijinks in those three areas.

And that is how the system determines who is successful in science and who is not.

Make no mistake, you will be competing with cheating, manipulating liars at some point in your career.

If you're bothered by that, then you probably won't be happy doing academic science.

Personally, it made me angry and depressed. I will not cheat, and I could not out-manipulate the liars. And I realized that for every one of these mini-battles I might win, there will always be another one to stress me out and make me more powerless and invisible when I lose.

And sure, I can blog about it, but there will always be trolls telling me I'm paranoid or that I should just put up with it like everyone else does.

Yeah, like everyone else who puts up with it by taking mind-altering drugs. Like that's a great solution.

Selfishly, I could tell you to go to grad school because I want more conscientious students to go into science and change things.

Realistically, I don't know if it's possible. I think that science is in a time of crisis (danger and opportunity) and it's anybody's guess whether things are going to change or just continue in a decomposing, downward spiral.

And I don't think it's fair for anyone to tell you it's worth investing your life in such a risky and potentially painful proposition.

The purpose of posters

Poster sessions have always reminded me that Everything I Needed To Know I Should Have Learned in Kindergarden.

But didn't. I always really sucked at that stuff. That's why I was in science. If I had been good at cutting, pasting, drawing, etc. I would have majored in art.

I always got the impression that girls were supposed to be good at that stuff. I had more than one male advisor tell me they were surprised at my complete lack of skills in artistic pursuits. I told them I was in science because I got kicked out of girl school.

Towards the end of my postdoc, I finally started getting compliments on some of my posters, just as I was starting to be chosen to give talks at major meetings. So of course by then it didn't help or matter anyway.

I think the culture has changed somewhat, at least in my field. Posters are only useful for

• beginners

• those working on the truly obscure

• those whose work is already in press but who hate public speaking

• chumps who want to get scooped.

Anyone who wants to get anywhere had better be invited to give a talk, or stay at the bench.

But I have been thinking a lot lately about whether I stayed in science longer than I should have, and why I stayed despite multiple setbacks.

One of the first things that should have been a clue that I did not fit the existing science mold was my graduate program's annual retreat. There, the students were required to submit an abstract, do a poster, and if we were lucky, present a talk.

From the very first one, it was obvious to some of us that:

a) Prizes were awarded based on publication, not on the quality of the poster or talk

b) Publications were largely a matter of

• timing (picking up the end of a project that had already burned out several postdocs and completing it during a summer rotation)

• politics (working for someone who happened to be on the editorial board of a Major Journal, for example)

• isms (it was probably not a coincidence that males seemed to have more opportunities to get on the perfectly timed, high-impact project in the highly connected lab than did females)

c) The best way to get through these events was to bring alcohol, start drinking early in the day, and escape as soon as the Administrative Psycho had finished noting our attendance.

Our program was very secretive about how this all went down. We didn't know which faculty were judging the posters, so we had to try to be standing there talking to any and all of them if we wanted a chance to win the coveted $500 prize, to be spent on travel or supplies. We had to at least pretend to laugh at their lame jokes.

Of course, the irony was that those of us who were most desperately in need of money for supplies or travel were also the least likely to have completed and published our rotation projects, much less working for a politically influential PI.

So in that sense, I should have known. It was really kind of a hopeless feedback loop, and hard work alone would never get me unstuck.

But this post was inspired by a comment, which described an anecdote where a highly accomplished female student was initially overlooked for a poster award in favor of less productive male students, until our local hero App spoke up on her behalf, noting that her work was published.

Two things about this anecdote gave me a visceral reminder of what I hated about those fucking poster sessions in grad school.

1. The inherent bias in the "whoever comes to mind" process of giving awards

I've witnessed this firsthand, and most anyone who has served on an awards committee probably knows exactly how it works. Some people sit in a room, and maybe call out names of people. Other people say yay or nay.

The main problem with this approach is that, more often than not, many otherwise eligible participants are ignored. Because not everyone's work is scored based on defined criteria, it usually comes down to whether they like the person enough to remember who they are, much less their work.

In other words, it's inherently biased towards charisma, and whatever else appeals to the judges.

It's terribly subjective, but most science faculty will deny that it's unfair. They believe themselves to be ultimately objective in all things. They get very defensive if you tell them they might have implicit biases without even being aware of it.

2. The implication that peer-reviewed, published work is more worthy or "better" than the earliest stages of unpublished but groundbreaking research

And truthfully, it's not. Not at all. But at my school, peer review was always viewed as validation.

Really? Three random people say it's okay, so it must be wonderful? Try again, guys. It just means it was deemed complete enough to publish. That's all it means.

In fact, if I were in charge of a graduate program, I would insist that published work be disqualified from departmental poster sessions. I think it's only fair that everyone present work-in-progress.

Isn't that the point of grad school? To shelter students for a few years so they can actually focus on doing something useful, instead of being distracted by all the unfairness inherent in peer-reviewed competition?

Moreover, if I were in charge of a graduate program, I would disqualify projects on which the grad student in question is not first author. Which is usually the case when it's a new graduate student whose work is somehow miraculously already published. And no co-first author nonsense, either, unless the other first author is also a grad student. Fuck that.

But when we're talking about contests that don't include separate categories for new students vs. senior students, this is just kind of stupid. Why make students waste their time worrying about layout when they don't even have a defined project yet?

All those years of practicing making posters (montage!) did not lead me to a moment of victorious poster-making. It was not a cumulative gain: it was a waste. What changed was the technology. I was never going to have patience with cutting and pasting on cardboard, but I do okay when I can make my poster using Adobe Creative Suite. I think the new era won't be posters at all, just walls of video presentations with animated models and raw movie data. And hopefully, publications will be that way, too.

Seems to me that poster sessions should be more about discussion and feedback, and less about prancing about like puppies at Best in Show. If the project is finished and published in a peer-reviewed journal already, you don't really care what we think, do you? You already have the stamp of approval from your so-called "peers". Now you want money, too? Who do you think you are?! I mean, puh-leeze.

My field became very secretive very quickly, in the last 5-10 years, everyone started holding their cards very close and lying to each other about how far along they were or what they were planning to do next.

If that's all we're doing, then poster sessions are just about competitively bragging about work that's already finished, and I'd rather stay home and practice drawing futuristic cartoons with crayons.

In my imaginary future I'm the head of a graduate program where there is only open publication. No anonymous peer review nonsense, and no poster sessions. Also, naptime is mandatory.

Smartening up: who would ever wanna be king?

Got this Coldplay song stuck in my head. Seriously though, it's relevant.

Random tidbits from the trenches: Special Quitting Research Edition!

• Friend is leaving her postdoc, early on. I think it's very smart to get out now. I hope she can find something that pays well, but at least she likes her parents enough that she wouldn't mind living with them if she had to.

• Another friend is planning her escape from grad school, and debating what to do next. Not research, she says. I don't blame her at all, but it's really a waste. She's one of the most talented people I ever worked with.

• Another friend is graduating, and his wife is planning to leave grad school when he defends. They're both planning to look for non-science careers. The husband has been reasonably successful with a supportive advisor, but disheartened nonetheless by some of the things he witnessed going on in the lab (data faking, among other things). The wife has been struggling pretty much from the beginning, with an unsupportive advisor, in an unsupportive graduate program.

• Another friend says she's ready to try applying for industry positions again, but this time plans to go for sales rather than science. She's gotten the impression that despite her PhD and postdoctoral work experience, she can't get a position as a scientist, but she might be able to get something that capitalizes on her science background on paper while mostly utilizing her social skills to do the actual work.

• Wife of another friend is leaving her assistant professor position. Rationalizations include that her husband can make more money in his non-science career, but they'll have to move. Also, she wants to spend more time with their baby. She already took maternity leave; the husband stayed home for a year because he could work from home, but she does lab research. Seems to me that the countries with 9 months-2 years paid maternity leave (e.g. Sweden, Canada) should have a better chance of hanging onto women's careers, but I don't know if that's actually true.

• Another friend just quit a postdoc to take a higher-paying non-science job. Ironically, that same day we learned that a coworker in the same lab was making 20% more salary all along. Why? No particular reason. No fellowships of any kind involved. Just the usual nonsense: nobody checking, nobody talking to each other, nobody negotiating, and nobody getting paid what they're worth.

• Another friend quit a tenure-track position, again due to a two-body problem, and left to go back to school for something different.

Note that this list includes 5 women and 3 men, all with more or less the same number of years in grad school, plus or minus postdoctoral experience.

Anyway it's sad to me because in all of these cases, these are smart, talented people who just feel like it's a dead-end: that no matter how hard they work, achievement is not rewarded, and there's no work-life balance at all.

And this is all happening right now. In a way, it's encouraging to see that people are wising up (yay, wisdom!).

Can't wait to see what happens next month. Tune in to see if we have another edition of Smartening Up!

Or, remind me. Who knows what I'll be doing next month.

Science is great: Just don't major in it

Yesterday I read an article about the layoffs at ABC. The author wrote that about 400 people were laid off, and interviewed one guy in particular who said he was 58 years old, had a family and "a dog who likes to be fed" and no idea how he was going to be able to get a job at his age, at a time when journalism is disappearing and the economy is still pretty shitty.

This got me thinking about how journalism, such as it used to be, is dying. I recommend checking out this blog if you don't know what I'm talking about.

Why does it matter that journalism is dying?

For one thing, I see universities going the same way: to be replaced by the internet. We should be paying attention to what is happening to journalists, because the same thing will happen to academic faculty.

Another reason to pay attention is that among the many so-called Alternative Careers science graduate programs love to tout, Science Journalism is usually listed as one of the top options.

But clearly, that's not going to absorb all the scientists leaving with masters degrees and PhDs.




I regularly receive articles about pharmaceutical and biotech layoffs. Yesterday I read one that said no one is really sure how many scientists are out of work right now, or whether it's better or worse than it was two years ago.

Really? No one is tracking this?

I regularly hear NIH and NSF saying that PhD-holding scientists supposedly have among the lowest unemployment rates, but that may be completely apocryphal, and it sounds like nobody actually has the numbers to back it up.

Which would not surprise me, considering that no one was tracking postdocs at all until about 5 years ago. How could they possibly know? There isn't exactly a strong biotech-wide union.




What else is among the top "alternative careers" touted so widely as a solution for the overflow of PhDs who can't get academic tenure-track positions?

Teaching in public or charter schools, maybe. Sure, we need more science teachers. But where is the money for that going to come from? I read an article today about how education specialists can't decide whether charter schools are working better than public schools or not. I found many of the lessons (pun intended) quite relevant to higher education: that schools with the highest accountability showed improvement, while those that tolerated mediocrity stayed in business despite showing no progress.

What about science policy work? How many jobs can that really provide? My guess would be in the hundreds, maybe the low thousands, at most?

But we have tens of thousands of science PhDs in this country. And nobody seems to know how many are doing anything related to science within, let's say, 15 years of leaving their PhD program. Let's say you do 5-10 years of postdoc after you graduate. Then what? Where do you end up?

And sure, you can always go back to school for patent law. How many science PhDs are going into debt to attend, of all things, more school??

At some extreme, if we're really being hyperbolic and facetious, we can see how not all scientists (with degrees or otherwise) can be patent lawyers. There would be nobody left to invent or find anything worth patenting.




The article I cited in my last post talks about how undergraduate education now yields only about 8% of students majoring in the humanities. It cites a large percentage as majoring in business, but fails to mention science and engineering. I have to assume they account for the majority, which seems to be supported by data such as these.

Parents don't check these data, either. Mine didn't; others are just misled. I had a conversation with a woman recently about how she felt her daughter should major in science rather than engineering, and get a PhD so she could have more possibilities for finding work. I had to control myself to say, as calmly as possible, that she had it all backwards and wrong.

I understand that universities budget for faculty positions and building space according to student enrollment numbers in the classes. In that sense, faculty in every department want more students to choose their discipline to major in, or at least they should, because it means their department will get more money and resources. Universities are a business, and at some schools, students are treated as consumers. It is the faculty's job to woo the students. It is the students' job to choose.



Personally, I agree that humanities are a necessary ingredient to teaching critical thinking in higher education. I think humanities classes should be required; I think science requirements are less than they should be. To educate the public on science and technology-related issues, we need to start by turning out students who at least understand the basics.

Having said that, I think we've duped far too many students into majoring in science.

Then they find they can't get a job, or can't move up, without a PhD.

Then they're duped into grad school.

Then the cycle repeats, so they do a postdoc.

Then what? Cut them loose and absolve everyone of any guilt? Tell the student "you chose to do this"?

The least we could do is collect the data and tell the truth.

Students: you'd be better off choosing an alternative that will guarantee you can find work.




In the interest of full disclosure, I don't know what the best alternative is now; I don't know what it will be 15 years from now, but I can almost certainly guarantee that it will keep changing every few years. It's no secret that people tend to run in herds. Baby names are trendy; so are majors and careers.

Some disciplines seem to have it all figured out. I've heard of some departments choosing to be exclusive, admitting fewer majors and building up their reputation as a great department by taking only the best students they can get, rather than trying to earn strength by numbers. Those people seem to have no trouble finding jobs when they get out.

I don't know if the secret is in top-down regulation of earlier specialization, having more but smaller departments, or more options for specialized majors, but it might help control and direct the pipeline. It would be a way to potentially combat the common misconception that there are plenty of jobs for everyone who majors in science.




One final thought from this particular soap-box: I still think one of the major problems with the approach to careers in science is the overly long incubation time. Part of the disconnect between input of students majoring in science, and output into an actual job, is the lag time.

I often think if I had gone to a vocational school or majored in engineering that at least I could have gotten a "real job" after just 4 years (or less) of classes.

Nobody can see 4 years into the future, whether the oil spill in the Gulf will completely kill the fishing industry, or whether in another 4 years after that, it might come back.

Even fewer people can say that in 10 years, there will be jobs for people with PhDs in X sub-speciality of biotech.

Fewer still can say that in 15 years, there will be jobs only for people who did a PhD in X and a postdoc in Y and published papers on L, M, N, O and P.

But that's how it actually is right now. Does that sound very scientific?

So spin your dice. You either have to be psychic, or very, very lucky.

Scienciae carnival post: Sustainability in science

When I think of sustainability, I think of fairness, cost, burnout and all the potential wasted.

We can't sustain science if we keep treating women like this.

To wit:

private college tuition ~$100,000 and 4 years

grad school salary ~$100,000 and 4 years

postdoc fellowships ~$100,000 and 4 years (give or take)

publications >10

number of extra papers women postdoc candidates need to be seen as equal to men ~ 3 more high impact or 20 more in lesser-known journals

job offers = zero

unemployment benefits = zero

Taxpayers' investment in my "training"?

Priceless.

********

Other Recommended reading:

Women disproportionately leave male-dominated fields for reasons of pay and promotion opportunities

Lessons learned in grad school, continued

When the advisor does not want to admit (s)he is wrong even after seeing the data

I wish I had such simple answers to this question as I did for the last post in this series.

I'll give you some suggestions. You'll have to do the experiment (and other readers can comment).

1. If you are a grad student, you should first go to your committee.

First, meet with each committee member one-on-one and present the data along with the context of why you think your advisor is reluctant to see the light. Be compassionate, not arrogant. Try to see it from your advisor's perspective. In my experience, it is usually because said advisor him/herself generated the original data, and it is published. They probably won't retract the paper, but what you're saying is essentially implying that they should.

Second, do whatever additional experiments your committee members suggest.

Third, have a committee meeting. Hopefully - and this did work for me - their mere presence will shame your advisor into agreeing to let you pursue your project and/or publication.

Finally, and this is really sticking your neck out, you can threaten to give the data away to some competitor to work on. Sometimes you can shame your advisor this way, by triggering a competitive/possessive reaction.

If these steps don't work, you should consider trying some of the more advanced steps below.

And/or you can shelve the data and promise yourself that you will work on it sometime later in your career. This is what most people try to do. In the short run, it's better for your career. But it's bad for science, and it's bad for you in the long run, and it might come back to bite you in the ass. You can't cite the truth if it's not published.

2. If you are a postdoc, things get a little more complicated.

First, the Safe route. In theory, you can do essentially what a grad student does, but some of it is more informal since you don't have an official committee.

Talk to other faculty at your school; talk to other experts in your field. Get suggestions on what other evidence would be required to convince your advisor. Sometimes you can overwhelm even the most stubborn, insecure person with enough data.

Second, if this is not enough, you'll have to push harder and broader. Get yourself invited to give talks at meetings and other schools (like job interviews!). If your advisor won't pay or won't let you go, call it a vacation and pay for the trip yourself.

It does help, and here's why: Because people will see your data; they will hear your arguments; and you will get useful feedback. And if you do a good job, word will get back to your advisor that s/he should be proud of the solid work you're doing. Sometimes you can overwhelm even the most stubborn, insecure person with enough praise.

Third, if you are really screwed, your options are to a) publish the paper yourself, without your advisor, and this will most likely mean you will have to b) leave (and take your project to someone else's lab).

There are many drawbacks to this route. Your career will likely be over, or you will have to take a series of postdoc positions or teaching/research-track positions, because you will probably not be able to get the coveted Cell, Science or Nature publication on your own.

But, your work will be in the literature. People will see it. You will drive your field forward, whether they are ready for the future or not.

And hey, if you're a postdoc, chances are good that you're screwed anyway. Might as well make a mark on the world on your way out the door.

Lessons learned in grad school, part whatever

This week I want to emphasize an important lesson I think everyone should learn before being awarded a PhD.

Do you want to get the right answer, or do you want to be obedient?

Lately one of my biggest concerns with ethics in science is the enormous pressure I see on grad students and postdocs, which leads them to fudge or even fake data.

I see this happening out of desire to be obedient, to be liked, and out of fear of being fired, or being wrong (or losing their visas and being deported).

So here is my two-step plan, because I think it's a major source of evil in science.

1. Do what you adviser says you should do, even if you're sure it's not going to work.

I say this for two reasons.

First, because YOU might be wrong about whether it will work or not.

Second, because then you can show them the data and show how obedient you were. And they'll never admit they were wrong without you showing them the data. They'll be much more likely to swallow their anger if they see that you did what they asked in good faith.


2. STOP doing what your adviser told you to do when it's clear that it's never going to work. Do what YOU think will get you the right answer.

There are two important lessons in this step.

First, knowing when to stop. This is a hard lesson and many people don't learn it until their postdoc is over and they're hunting for a new career. Don't be one of these people. Learn how to assess when you're making progress and testing possibilities, and stop and find another approach when you're just banging your head against a wall.


Second, knowing how to be brave and disobedient. This is a really hard lesson for most people in science, so there are options for how to go about it.

Doing what your adviser asks first is generally the safest route in this regard, although it might be the most inefficient.

Doing both your adviser's stupid idea and your awesome new thing at the same time can work for some people who are good at time management (not everyone can manage this).

Finally, doing your new thing at night or on the weekends when your adviser is traveling is the sneaky way. Notice that I did NOT say you have to ask them. DON'T ASK YOUR ADVISER. Just do it.

Most of the time, they will be overjoyed that you showed some independence and got the right answer. And if it's really a big deal, they'll claim is was their idea to do it your way all along.

.....

What to do if you find out your adviser was wrong and they don't want to admit it even after being faced with data proving they were wrong?

That's a different blog post.

Happy pipetting, y'all. Oh and don't eat too much turkey.

How to choose a lab

Prof-like substance is asking a good question:

So, I would like to find out from you why you chose the lab you are in or got your degree from? Was it a good choice and would you do it differently now? Was it the subject or PI that got you interested? How much did suggestions from others influence you?

This is interesting to me because I've blogged about it before, from the perspective of advising grad students (but don't ask me where, I didn't tag it intelligently).

So here we go, as vague as possible for pseudo-anonymity.

1. Why I chose the lab where I got my PhD

a. I liked and respected my advisor as a person and as as a scientist (that changed over time, of course, as I learned that everyone is human and people tend to fall off of pedestals)

b. I liked the other people in the lab- it had the right atmosphere. Nobody was condescending to me, I was not in a minority. It felt like a family, not like a factory.

c. I liked the way they did things- their priorities matched my priorities. They were smart about the practical aspects. I had already worked in a few labs so I had seen some really good labs, and I had rotated in at least one that did not match what I was looking for.

d. I liked my rotation project (even though it didn't work!)

e. I was excited about the subject for my thesis (even though it didn't end up being my thesis!)

f. I was drawn in by the graduate program (even though I quickly learned to hate it!)

2. Was it a good choice and would I do it differently now?

For reasons I can't blog about, I'd say it was good and bad. Would I do it differently knowing what I know now? Absolutely, yes I think so. But not in the sense that I can name a lab where I'm sure I would have been happier or fit better.

I adored my PI and my labmates, still do. But we had our ups and downs, some things happened that nobody could have seen coming and others that should have looked like an oncoming train if I had known what I was seeing.

Still, if some angel or devil had taken me aside in high school and showed me a movie of what my life would be like, I would have done a 180. Would have gone to a different college, and majored in something other than science.

3. Was it the subject or PI that got you interested?

Both, in approximately equal measure. But there was no way I was going to work for an asshole on a subject I didn't care about.

Subject was primary in my mind, and my PI got me excited about our subject. I had never heard of it when I was in college.

I interviewed with and rotated with a few other labs. In some cases, the subject was appealing but the PI was smarmy ("stop staring at my boobs!") or otherwise seemed like an abusive jerk ("everyone in my lab works 80 hour weeks!"). Those were immediately struck from the list.

In other cases, the PI was nice and seemed to have the best intentions, but I didn't like the other people in the lab.

In still other cases, I liked the PI but the project was hopeless, not at all what I wanted to do with the subject, even though the subject was still interesting to me.

I still think rotations are key. And I don't mean 6 week rotations, either. I think 3 months, minimum, is probably about right. If you can't get through the honeymoon period without getting heebie-jeebies, GTFO.

4. How much did suggestions from others influence you?

None of my advisers in the labs where I worked even tried to recommend people for me to work with. I asked where I should apply. They named the top schools, of course. I didn't end up going to any of the ones my advisers recommended. I went somewhere another person told me about. Scientifically, it was a good fit. Program-wise, it was not a good fit. At all. But I didn't know how bad that would be until after I arrived.

My advisers just said of course you'll get in. I didn't get invited everywhere I applied, but I did get interviews.

Then they said go, see how you like it when you interview. So I did.

Then when I got in, they said go, do rotations, and then decide. So I did.

Basically it was what everyone else seemed to be doing. I didn't think I was missing out on some amazing insight. There were no blogs or anything to read with advice at the time. At all.

I really didn't have a big network to draw from. I had a lot of older friends, and they all told me not to go to grad school. Of course I didn't listen. Of course I later realized why they said that. It's funny though, I really thought they were joking.

Seriously, I really did.

When I got to the point of choosing a lab, I heard a rumor about my PI that supposedly originated from a former postdoc. However, I also heard a rumor about the postdoc who said it. I figured that made both rumors uninterpretable and/or false. I later understood that both rumors were true, which is sort of the same (but not quite).

I don't like gossip. I don't like second-hand information, especially when it comes to people, unless it's really from people I've known for years and deeply trust. Even then, I find sometimes people disagree or have different experiences, due to different commonalities and different conflicts. I'm not best friends with all of my friends' friends, and they aren't best friends with all of mine. The same principle applies. To really be successful, you kind of have to be best friends with your PI (I know this now, I didn't know it then).

I have never liked to judge people on others' opinions. When I have done that, I made some terrible choices.

Now, I'd rather meet them and decide for myself (although sometimes it helps to know what to look for, and then forewarned is fore-armed, or whatever that saying is).

And, let's be honest, I really hate it when people spread rumors about me, and I hate it when other people choose to believe them without investigating (although I know most of science works this way, I reserve the right to hate it).

Having said all that, I ended up in my thesis lab because of a different rotation. That PI said, "You know, I think you'll like this friend of mine, you should rotate there and then if you want you can come back here." And I didn't end up going back.

Now, I am much more careful to listen to what people are actually telling me. I'd like to think I always make up my own mind, but I'll admit I am influenced when someone I respect tells me they think somebody would be a good mentor.

That was actually how I ended up in my postdoc lab. Boy, was that a mistake. Needless to say, that particular blunder has made me revisit my original policy to try to ignore what anybody says. But it's hard. You don't always realize you've been influenced by advice (good or bad) until it's all hindsight.

I guess I'm flattered?

Realized today that the sum total of graduate students at my university who would have liked to work with me for their postdoctoral training has crossed over into "enough to start my own lab, complete with sports team".

Sigh.

Since I can't hire them myself, the conversation always devolves into the same old question that all graduate students ask about choosing a postdoc lab:

Who should I work for?

aka

Of this list of famous guys, who should I NOT work for? What about this guy? Or this guy? (yes, because the famous ones the students choose are usually all guys)

Even if the student is smart enough not to make a list of the Usual Famous A**holes, it's still tough to answer. I can't think of many people who both impress me scientifically and seem to have a clue about mentoring (and aren't either anonymous bloggers, currently unemployed, retired, or all of the above).

And the list has to be further narrowed because most students are already somewhat picky about what they want to do. Without realizing how narrow they've become just during their few short years in grad school, most of them will already tell you: animals or no animals; cold room or no cold room; computers-only or no-computers. And so on. And they don't listen when you tell them the kinds of thesis projects to avoid (hint: certain animals!), so why would they listen about choosing a postdoc lab? Let's be honest, they won't.

The only thing I can do that I think can make an impression is to quiz them about what they really want to do in the long term. Where do they want to live in 10 years when they're done with postdoc and job search (ha ha ha? you think I'm kidding?).

It's amazing to me how many graduate students don't feel they have permission to ask themselves these questions. Even more frightening: it's because they're waiting for their advisers or thesis committee members to ask them these questions!

Yes, some students do the soul-searching part while agonizing over The Dissertation. For too many students, it's the first (only?) time they've been allowed to really take the time to ruminate on where they came from, what they learned, and what they have to show for the time they spent toiling away at the bench.

So here's my tiny piece of advice for today: you don't need permission from your PI or your committee to start figuring out what you want to do with the rest of your scientific career.

Even if all you're sure about right now is that you're being told you have to do a postdoc "no matter what". This is what they tell the students on my campus, sadly, and most of them buy into it as the gospel (even sadder). Because "no matter what" boils down to two kinds of jobs: faculty or R&D industry. There's zero recognition there are other kinds of jobs that don't require a postdoc.

Hint: there are some jobs where you don't have to do a postdoc at all!

And, you DON'T have to wait until you have permission to write your thesis to start figuring that out.

You just need to make a little time for being really honest with yourself, and one other thing-

Talk to people who teach, and people who don't. Talk to people in different kinds of departments, at small schools and big schools. Ask them about their funding sources. Try to picture yourself writing grants. If you were a grant writing maniac, what kind would you be? And the sooner you start, the better.

If you don't know any of these things, you might want to plan to do more than one postdoc, in different kinds of places (pretty common now anyway). How else are you going to do the experiment?

And here's another hint: if you can't face doing more than one postdoc, consider that you might need to take a long vacation after grad school to sort out what you really want to do longer-term. Because nowadays, it's pretty much required that you do a lot of postdoc for a very long time. And if you want to know how much fun that is, read this blog. Or just read the tag on this post.

...

As for myself, I'm trying to draw encouragement of the "I don't completely suck" variety from wherever I can get it these days.

So if these students really do think my science is cool and that I'd be a great mentor, I'll take that as a HUGE compliment.

Even if I can't actually be that great mentor helping launch them into illustrious careers.

Oh well. Can't help everyone all the time, I suppose.

Stop Beating Yourself Up

Lately I'm struggling with watching younger women putting a lot of pressure on themselves to be competitive. I'll mention three examples here, although of course these are just a few of the women I interact with at work.

One is a grad student whom everyone admires for her hard work, intelligence, and personality. She's looking for a postdoc position and afraid of making a mistake.

Another is a new postdoc writing fellowships. She keeps saying she has no chance at getting one, but is trying anyway.

A third is a new grad student barely started on her thesis project. She's terrified of getting scooped, or that she might get kicked out of the grad program, and constantly beats herself up when her experiments don't work perfectly.

It's really hard for me to watch this. I really identify with the first two, in the sense that I worried about finding a good postdoc lab, and still fucked it up. So in a way, I think the first one is afraid of ending up like me. And like the second one, I also applied for fellowships, most of which I didn't receive. Nobody told me not to try, but I also didn't get the mentoring I needed. (But despite what I've told her, she refuses to get help from anyone other than her PI.)

I have a particularly hard time watching the third grad student, though. Her project is hard, and she already knows she's in a race with several other labs. Her PI expects her to be like a postdoc already, and since she had some research experience as an undergrad, she does too.

Now, we senior postdoc types all know the difference between experienced grad student and experienced postdoc. Along the way, if you've been paying attention all those years at the bench, you've learned a lot of stuff. You've figured out how to avoid the really big traps, and a lot of the small mistakes, too. You're just faster because you don't waste time worrying about the wrong kinds of details, or taking advice without looking things up (at least, I don't). You figure out who knows about what, and you ask them first because it saves time.

I'm trying to figure out if there's anything more I can do for these women, because I know they don't believe me when I tell them they're doing fine and to stop putting so much pressure on themselves. To some extent, they're still clinging to that hope that if they just work hard enough, the luck part will work out. But we all know that's not quite how things are. Sure, Jim Watson said it, and it's mostly true for experiments that there's no substitute for just trying a lot. But there's a lot to be said for having patience with your experiments and with yourself.

I feel like I've made a lot of progress in the patience-with-self department. Patience with the system, not so much, but these women haven't really caught on yet that the "luck" part is largely politics. Intellectually, they're aware, but they're aware like I was. Where they are right now, it's sort of like a warning light dimly blinking through the fog, not a blaring alarm right next to your ear.

...

I was watching the Sotomayor hearings and thinking about this concept of "disparate impact", which I had never heard of before. The way I understand it, this is a way of saying that a situation can have discriminating consequences against a subset of people, even if there was no "disparate intent".

It really fits the problem for women in science, that we usually feel the effects of disparate impact before we have any evidence of disparate intent. And sometimes there isn't any intent to discriminate at all, it's just a matter of context- if you're the only woman in your research group, for example, you're going to feel the effects of being a minority sometimes, even if all the guys are super-supportive and really respect you a lot. Even in those situations, every once in a while, something will come up that makes you feel uncomfortable and left out. That's disparate impact. Whether it's a big impact or not. And then we come to the "death by a thousand pinpricks" metaphor for being a woman in science. That's a lot of little disparate prickings.

...

Anyway I am watching these young women and their sort of nebulous fear, and it's hard because it's not so nebulous to me. I know exactly what they're scared of, because it has happened to me. Even if they can't quite name it yet, they have a vague idea of what is likely to be ahead. And they're scared they won't make it through.

Two of them have told me they're interested in industry, and disgusted with academia. And yet, they feel pressure to stay in academia until some arbitrary point when they might feel competitive enough, or when the economy improves enough, that they can get the kinds of jobs they want. Part of their fear is that the economy will never improve in our sector, and they'll have to find something else to do. And then all the suffering will have been basically pointless in terms of helping them reach their original goals.

The third one, bless her heart, wants to be a professor.

The funny thing to me is, I think all three would make great professors some day if they wanted to do that. So it's a little hard for me to watch them suffering, knowing all the factors that go into making them miserable, and knowing that there's not much I can do to stop them from suffering, not to mention stopping academia from losing these talented young scientists due to their being completely and righteously fed up.

I guess I'm writing this post because I can't figure out how to make them understand when I say, Look, it's hard enough without you also beating yourself up.

How to fail again

I was talking to a friend of mine this week about the disappointment of not making progress with therapy. She said she finally, after several years, stopped choosing the wrong kind of guy. And how she finally realized that she wasn't just making mistakes, she was seeking out and attaching onto things that were bad for her.

I was saying how part of what my therapist wanted me to do was stop blaming myself for my current predicament, since that kind of thinking obviously worsens depression. However, there's a logical paradox when you're also telling me, if I understand it correctly, that according to this kind of psychology, I got myself into this situation by choosing the wrong thing for the wrong reasons.

So of course I've been over and over and over my decisions, obviously, trying to figure out what I could have done differently, knowing what I know now. Trying to hash out for myself, what were my motivations at the time, did I really do everything I could have done given the circumstances, etc.

1. Was I presented with better options that I passed up?

Not really, no, I don't think so.

2. Could I have waited longer and looked around more?

Sure, I guess so. You usually can look harder if you can afford the time.

3. Would that have made much difference in where I ended up?

Maybe. But the statistics being somewhat against me, I think I probably would have many of the same problems no matter what lab I joined.

When I said this, my friend and I talked some about the whole "where did we go wrong?" thing and the improbability of finding a good lab. And I had to laugh my ass off at something she said. I think she'll forgive me for posting it here (although I'm not sure if she even reads this blog).

So we were saying how, if you go into grad school with even a vague idea of what you want to work on (let's say you want to research Cheeseburgers), you're already limiting yourself tremendously. So here is what she said (more or less):

First, you apply to a bunch of schools and maybe you get some offers so you have some choice about where you live, etc. and you pick one based on how the interview went.

By picking one school, you've just limited yourself to X number (let's say a few hundred or at most a couple thousand at a huge school) possible science labs on that campus.

Of those advisers, let's say only 50 or at most a few hundred are in your Graduate Program and have space in their labs or whatever.

Then, of those in your Graduate Program, only about 5 of them work on anything related to what you want to do with Cheeseburgers.

And, of those 5:

1 is completely crazy
1 just found out they won't get tenure and they're leaving
1 will lose their funding in two years and one day they'll suddenly say they can't pay you

and the other two were married, but they're getting divorced, and the guy is sleeping with his postdoc (and they'll all three be embroiled in the lawsuit over child custody for the next several years)

Granted, she was joking, but it was funny because it's SO TRUE in academia that it's really hard to find a good "mentor" who is also not going through a personal or professional crisis of some kind.

As graduate students and postdocs, we're not supposed to have any ideas, much less the desire or ability to work on them (and certainly not the resources!). But nobody tells you, as much as they want you to succeed, that it's almost statistically impossible to find someone who is smart enough, sane enough, funded enough, and supportive enough to really be a good mentor.... oh yeah and then there's all that stuff about personalities meshing and biases and whatever else that means even if you do find someone who isn't a wreck, you might not really mesh.

So the chances that you'll find an amazing mentor who not only lets you think and work on your own ideas and guides you but doesn't squelch you and ALSO likes you enough to really promote you and not just take credit for your work but actually give you credit and support?

Very slim chances indeed.

Oh yeah, and you don't only have to do this once. You have to do it, in most cases, at least twice. Once as a grad student, and at least once as a postdoc.

Yeah, good luck with that. Roll the dice.

So it was kind of reassuring to hear my friend do this math out loud in such a logical, funny and accurate way. It made me think a little less of it is really about choices and blame. It's just a totally illogical statistical game.

But having already thought about Cheeseburgers and the Burger Kings who run my field, I had already concluded that one source of my problems has been the field that I chose.

Having said that, I'm still not really interested in switching fields, at least not for a nonscientific reason. That just seems completely spineless and stupid to me, considering that I'm still interested in what I work on.

Nor am I entirely convinced that any of the other fields I am peripherally interested in wouldn't be just as bad (or worse) once I spent enough time there to know what's really going on.

And I'm not convinced, no matter how simple it might sound as a solution, that quitting science would magically prevent me from ever getting into these kinds of situations again.

That's the psychology way of looking at it, anyway. According to that model, I am choosing my own hell, basically, even if I'm doing it unconsciously, because it feels familiar after growing up in a totally dysfunctional household and blah blah blah.

I'm just not sure I buy it. I don't know if I was "meant" to be a scientist, or whatever. But I think it was something I chose for perfectly valid reasons. I just don't see why I should be getting blamed for the sad fact that science as a career is mightily fucked up. Especially when nobody tells you that.

Nor do I see why nobody's doing a single fucking thing* about it.

*And no, blogging does not count.

For the ones who leave.

I've been thinking about disillusionment of various kinds.

Why some people realize they just don't like science enough. Why girls decide not to major in math even though they got straight A's in the subject up through high school and it always came naturally to them. These kinds of things.

Every time I've quit something by choice, it was because I felt I just couldn't make myself fit in. I was not welcome, and nothing I could do or say would change that. No matter how much I wanted to do what I was doing, I knew I would have to give it up.

Sometimes these things were obvious, like being physically incapable of throwing a basketball. Okay. I figured that out pretty early on, and I was never invested in becoming a basketball star. (Besides, I grew up before the WNBA, so it wasn't like I had any role models until it was way too late.)

But with most other things, I reached a tipping point. Something just broke.

My favorite teacher moved away, and my confidence in the subject disappeared like a cloud on a windy day. Poof!

The other kids were not like me, and I felt isolated and fell behind in class when we had to work in groups. That subject, which was my favorite and best, became my least favorite class and a source of constant stress.

Lately I feel like something in the science part of me just broke and I can't put it back.

What broke is the delicate cocoon that let me pretend it didn't matter that I'm a Female Scientist, revealing a secret that I kind of forgot: I have been a Female Scientist all along.

Cocoon is actually a good metaphor in this case, because I think for a lot of us the dream is that we'll wake up one day and just be Scientist, with no qualifying label attached.

And then something inside me just broke when I realized that's NEVER going to happen.

Intellectually, I've always known this. But I'm not sure I really understood what it entails. There's so much baggage that goes along with this, and much of it on a daily basis.

I've been blogging all this time trying to come to terms with this as a major setback that has, in ways large and small, adversely affected my career and my relationship to science.

I'm one of those people, for better or worse, who just doesn't want to see things go on as they are when they're clearly not working very well. Science is not working well for me because of the way I've been treated. And that has been colored, ever since grad school, by the stain of sexism.

For a long time I've tried to tell myself I didn't really experience much sexism in grad school, and compared to being a postdoc that's basically true. But the truth is, none of my work was judged as fairly in grad school as it would have been otherwise.

Even my thesis adviser, whom I would never say was outright sexist, had some unconscious bias that caused undue distrust of my results, which meant I had to do additional experiments where I wouldn't have otherwise. It meant I had fewer papers, and my one "really good" paper was sent to lower-tier journals than it would have been if I had a supportive mentor who appreciated the importance and quality of what I was doing.

I know this because my one "really good" paper is pretty well-cited, and because very similar work from other labs made it into Big Journal. But mine wasn't even submitted there, so I'll never know if I really had a shot. Maybe it was just too political, but I would have liked to be allowed to try.

And it's hard not to realize, when you really stop to think about it, how much of a difference that one paper being in Big Journal would have made, every step of the way. For fellowships. For the papers that came later. For jobs now.

In my field, we don't publish a lot of little papers, we publish big ones every few years. So if your big paper doesn't go into A Pretty Big Journal, you've just wasted not just some time, but usually several years. Which is, in the life of a grad student or postdoc, pretty much all there is. And biologically speaking, those are usually your best years. Your hot shoe-wearing years.

This week I found out that yet another grad student in my building dropped out. She was there for a long time, and the explanation was that she "just didn't like it enough". But I saw this girl working, and she worked hard enough for me to know that she couldn't have hated it that much. People who hate science just don't show up. Or they show up and surf the web. She was not one of those.

But seeing this happen again and again and again, and always quietly like this, makes me angry and sad. Because I know she was the only girl in her lab. And nobody in that lab was encouraging her.

The thing about being a minority is, even if nobody is actively out to get you, you know you're a minority. You know it all the time.

Instead of being told you suck, you're being shown. Every day. How different you are, and not in a good way.

You don't have to be a genius to see how the guy next to you gets all the favors and pats on the back, while you have to beg for scraps.

You stretch yourself, you literally bend over backwards, but eventually something breaks.

And it really is like a tree falling in the forest, because nobody is ever there to hear it.

This post is for the ones who leave.

You're braver than me.

The Brainwashing of American Postdocs

Lately I am reading (in avoidance of all those papers my peers are publishing all around me): psychology books.

I never took psychology in college, so I'm a little late to the party. I did read one book about brainwashing during the cultural revolution in China.

The main thing I remember about that book were the torture techniques they used to break down prisoners' sense of self, including starvation, the water-drop technique, and making them write out pledges that said things like 2+2=5.

The idea being that if you can make them feel lost and helpless, when you throw them a rope, no matter how illogical, they will grab on.

These days I've been reading a lot of books about sales and advertising, for some reason it always amused me to watch people figuring out how to make a pitch (watched too much thirtysomething as a kid?).

It's really interesting, all the little techniques you can use to get people to comply with your requests.

I'm particularly interested because I see PIs doing these things all the time.

Some of them go like this:

The foot-in-the-door technique: You agree to something small that you don't want to do, and psychologically this makes you more likely to agree to do larger things you want even less. For a postdoc, a good example would be taking a rotation student you don't want, and then having it work out a little better than you expected.... even though it still sucks. But regardless of how it works out, this kind of give-an-inch makes you much more likely to agree to give a mile, like when you then agree to ghostwrite part of your advisor's grant.

The consistency principle : You agree to do certain things because they've become part of your persona, not because it's what you really want. For a postdoc, this is akin to keeping up appearances by being in lab all the time even when you don't want to be or have nothing to do, because you've become accustomed to everyone viewing you as The One Who Works Hard.

Reciprocation : Also known as Guilt. This is when someone you don't like or trust does you a favor without your asking, and then you feel obligated to do some irritating lab maintenance thing for them while they're on vacation.

Contrast and compare : Your advisor asks you to do something completely ridiculous, like an experiment that will take 4 years and will never work, so you say no. Then your advisor asks you to do something less onerous- say, an experiment that will take 1 year and has a slim chance of working- so you say yes. Under normal circumstances, you would never have agreed to do the 2nd ridiculous thing, but it seems less ridiculous than the first, plus you feel bad about saying no to the first thing.

So you see where I'm going with this.

Among other things, I'm interested in why, when postdocs become PIs, they suddenly switch from "The system is flawed" to "The system is fine."

I think we're losing a lot of gusto at that stage.

We're also losing a lot of women.

I had to laugh because NSF just released a bunch of new data on women postdocs, not unlike some that NIH quietly posted on their websites a while back (see for instance this link).

But talk about How to Lie with Statistics!

The NSF graphs clearly show ~5% increase in women over the last 10 years in most fields, and yet the text says, and I quote:

Women accounted for a rising share of postdocs in all fields except computer sciences and in 2006 represented one-third of all S&E postdocs, up from 29% in 1996.

Uh, yeah. You're telling me "a rising share" is a fair and balanced way to express the reality of "up from 29% to one-third"????!!!!

Just how stupid do they think we are???

Doesn't NSF have some obligation to present the data, you know, accurately and objectively?

Clearly, with language like that, they have an agenda. I don't think I have to tell you what it is.

In fact, the data clearly show we're gaining very little ground if any, especially when you compare it with the numbers of women in the same fields in graduate school (for which I am too lazy to dig up the link, but you're smart, you can find it).

So far as I can tell, it's just a really steep dropoff when you hit the end of the postdoc road.

Much of this is, I think, because of the Consistency principle. We might have some women faculty and even some sympathetic male faculty, but they are often unwilling to help us at all because of the brainwashing event that apparently takes place when you sign onto your startup.

The logic goes:

The system is broken --> but the system likes me --> therefore, the system is not broken, because I refuse to admit I got my job based on knowing people and not on my scientific qualifications alone.

In fact, I originally thought maybe I'd write this from the point of view of graduate students, who often go through the cycle like this:

grad school will be easy ---> grad school sucks and I'm miserable --> grad school was not that bad, I was never miserable at all

Not entirely unlike a prisoner in a brainwashing camp.

What do you think? What techniques has your PI used on you? And would you say they were successful in getting you to comply?

Go for broke

I've been extremely busy lately and not blogging at all, but no one seems too upset (thanks for being patient with me!).

However, Ambivalent Academic sent me this link to a post about being a grad student in a lab that is rapidly running out of money.

This is a topic I know from first-hand experience. I also know a lot of grad students and postdocs in the same boat right now, so I thought I would write a longer response here than I could do on AA's blog comment list. Especially since I couldn't sleep anyway and decided that blogging is usually calming and cathartic. Right?

My thesis lab went broke when I was about halfway through grad school. I didn't know how much more I needed to do, or what it would cost, much less how much longer it would take.

I was in a relatively good situation when this happened, but I didn't know that then. My grad school had (or found) enough money to pay my salary and health benefits, while my advisor made a half-hearted stab at writing more grants. I don't remember if any of them were funded, but we were in enough of a financial hole that it would have taken more than one grant to make much difference in my daily life (unless the school had decided to not pay me).

However, it did affect other things that were supposed to be part of my "training." For example, the department was supposedly going to cover 1 trip to a meeting per year for each student. Unlike every other student in the program, I was never able to take any trips.

[aside: this shows how 'departments' actually pay for things, grad students! Your PI is probably paying into a shared pot!]

But before you say oh boo hoo, as I know some of you will do, let me point out that the lack of traveling seriously hurt my ability to apply for postdoc positions intelligently (which, take it how you will, led inexorably to the existence of this blog!).

Anyway so back in grad school when this happened, the dean gave me some good advice. He told me to put my nose to the grindstone. So I did. That was good for a variety of reasons I won't go into here. It was also bad in some ways I regret more now than I did then. But mostly it was good, and I'm not sure my thesis would have turned out the way it did if I hadn't. I think of my thesis as a solid piece of work, and it's at least partly due to that grindstone-on-nose effect.

I think the key thing was that I was so determined to graduate and show those fuckers in my department that I could do it on the cheap, that I ended up convincing not just them but also myself. It was sort of a distraction, almost like an extra challenge that makes it into an even better story, to figure out how to do everything almost for free.

I did a lot of borrowing, and a lot of begging. I got really really good at asking for things from strangers, and from other students. And everyone was really generous about sharing. I learned that sometimes it's better to say which lab you're from, and sometimes you're better off just being the student from down the hall. I learned that it's really important how you ask, because sometimes you think you need something and nobody has it, but they have a much cheaper and better way of doing it, and they're happy to teach you. I learned a lot of random tricks this way.

And when I was really desperate, I got really good at asking for things from labs in the middle of the night... when there was no one around to ask. I never took anything irreplaceable or anything that looked like it was currently being used, but I wasn't shy about getting what I needed from labs that I knew could afford to support my research habit.

I'm not saying that's what you should have to do. But it is one way to get through, get shit done, and get out of there.

I think the key in these situations is to not panic, as ridiculous as that sounds right now. But the truth is, a LOT of labs have been operating in the red far too much of the time, and you're not alone.

Case in point: one of the labs I've worked with as a postdoc went broke a few years ago. The PI got rid of most of the people in the lab and basically covered the bare minimum of PI ass (but not anyone else's).

The favorites got their papers published; the un-favorites got treated even worse than they would have otherwise. In one really disgusting example, the PI gave an unpublished mouse project away to another lab, who then proceeded to publish a bunch of papers on it. The grad student who had done all the work is not first author on any of the papers, but the PI still gets to list them on grant renewal applications...

And fast-forward a few years, guess what? The PI eventually got more grants funded and an almost entirely new crop of slaves, er I mean, postdocs. But in the meantime, most of the people I knew there either quit science or left for greener (literally) labs.

In some ways, learning to deal with this kind of stress is EXACTLY what research these days is about. Doing it for the first time as grad student is almost a blessing, because believe me, you're going to have to do it again as a postdoc, and again and again and again and AGAIN as a PI.

Lots of PIs at my university run into funding problems - surprise! - a few times a year, because of the way the budgets are done here. Mouse costs go up by $1/cage/day, and nobody finds out for a while. Guess what that does to your planning? It's a fucking nightmare.

And there are always unforseen costs. Lots of PIs don't want to pay for maintenance contracts, because they're so expensive and you don't always need them. But when you need them, boy will you regret it! Equipment breaks down, or there are floods from the floor upstairs, and projects fall behind for months during the repairs... then the preliminary data for the next grant is delayed, not to mention everyone's papers... and in this climate, nobody can afford to be publishing a year or two late.

Anyway, so back to my story about what I did. I did two things with regard to publishing.

First, I sent my "big" paper to a slightly lower journal than I would have if my advisor had been up to the task of advising. And it got accepted faster than it would have at a "bigger" journal.

You can see the pros and cons of this. The cons are obvious. It didn't have the kind of impact on the field or my CV that it could have had (emphasis on the CV).

The pros are more numerous but less obvious. My paper got out; it got cited actually a fair amount because it was still in a pretty good journal; I had it on my CV; I got a postdoc fellowship that I wouldn't have gotten if I had no publications; I got interviews for postdoc positions based at least partly on that; my thesis was easier to write because the papers were all published.

Which brings me to my next point, which is the opposite. As they say in the fishing business, I cut bait.

I had other projects I wanted to do before I left. They were things I had been doing on the side, longer-term things that were finally starting to make sense and were really exciting to me.

But I took a hard look at the timing and I stopped them cold. I had to. I wrote my papers and thesis. There were more experiments I could have done to make my last "big" paper into a potentially "bigger" paper, but I didn't do them because I knew I had to get out.

In addition to borrowing in case of emergency, my thesis committee members let me do experiments in their labs, and they gave me anything I needed that we didn't have. This only works if your thesis committee members are not also broke, but it's worth looking into. Maybe another PI would even be willing to split your salary (e.g. if you're doing a collaboration?). Your department might not be able to pay you, but do you know people in other departments who can help cut your costs?

My current PI, for example, is always more likely to come up with ways to pay us and our health coverage if we're saving money or helping the lab out in other ways.

Maybe you can cut a deal with your advisor this way. PIs love to act like they're running the whole show when things are going well, but when things are not good, suddenly you're part of a close, dysfunctional family "where everyone pulls some of the weight". This would be a time when offering to help your PI with his/her grants would not be uncalled for. Even if all you do is copy-editing. You might even be able to secretly help by asking to write an aim as part of your "training."

I also applied far and wide for postdoc positions and did phone interviews. This helped me figure out what I wanted to do next. But that's a blog topic for a different day.

My point being, I came up with an exit plan. I made sure my advisor knew that recommendation letters were expected, where to send them, and ASAP.

If there's one thing I think I could have done better, obviously it was choosing my postdoc lab. But in terms of the science, my first postdoc lab was great. But I do think that being in a hurry to get out put more pressure on me to find a lab faster, so I didn't have as much time to think about my options from a creative state of mind.

Having said that, I have another friend whose lab also went broke in her last year of grad school. She ended up working in her thesis lab for free for two months to finish her last paper. And now all her recommendation letters, from everyone on her committee and probably even her stingy advisor, say how she made this heroic effort and got the paper published.

I don't recommend taking this route, for a variety of reasons, but if you can keep it to a minimum, it is often possible to cut your personal expenses down (or run up credit card debt) enough to get by for 4-8 weeks, even on a grad student salary with essentially no savings.

She stayed at friends' houses, it was very poetic, the sort of thing that humanities folks are probably more familiar with. Artists and cinematographers do this sort of thing all the time. It's just that scientists tend to think our work should be, I don't know, more valued by society or something, and that our PhDs should mean some guarantee of getting paid.

Newsflash: society doesn't really value what we do, and our PhDs are not exactly guarantees.

I actually think her PI could have paid her salary out of his personal pocket, and the only reason I can see for not doing this is because there were others in the lab at the time who also had papers to finish, and he couldn't afford to pay everyone that way.

But I maintain that she might have been able to negotiate with him for some money if she hadn't let on that she was willing to work for free. Truthfully, he needed that paper at least as much as she did, and he would have found a way to pay her if he had to.

You might also be eligible to apply for your own money. I wasn't eligible for any senior grad student fellowships, but I applied for postdoc fellowships before I actually started in my postdoc lab.

Keep in mind, there are lots of awesome young PIs out there who need postdocs, and lots of senior PIs telling their grad students to go work for someone established and famous. I'm still not convinced this is good advice for anyone, but especially now.

Truthfully, your best bet right now for getting a postdoc position fast and paid for is to join up with someone young who is trying to get their new lab off the ground. They all have startup money, you see, which is even more valuable in times like these.

Another thing you might consider: go for a shorter time. Maybe 1-2 years to learn specific techniques. This is what the postdoc "training" time used to be for. It's also a lot easier for a PI to envision where to get salary for 1-2 years than for 6-7 years.

And then if it works out, you can apply for fellowships, and stay there. If not, you've had plenty of time to finish publishing your thesis papers, and find a second postdoc.

Many PIs will let you go back to your thesis lab and finish off your last paper if you need to go for a week (or a few) to finish up experiments to address reviewers' comments. So if you can line up a postdoc ahead of time, you don't necessarily have to do things in the obvious order. Sometimes it goes

paper --> thesis --> postdoc position --> fellowship applications

and sometimes it goes

postdoc position --> fellowship applications --> thesis --> leftover papers now in press

And that, my dear blog readers, is a 2-hour long post. Whew. I guess I really have a lot to say on the topic! Or maybe I was just in blog withdrawal. I think I write longer posts in the middle of the night....

See also: the drawing board, back to.

Can't sleep. Thought, eh, maybe I'll blog.

Actually I think I'm just hungry and/or went over my threshold for caffeine tolerance. I guess I should add green tea to my list of "none after 7 pm".

However, the 3 AM last homemade cookie? That I can do.

So my experiments today did not work. But hey, at least I know what went wrong because I did CONTROLS. So I don't mind. Because tomorrow I can try again.

Yes, today was one of those days when I am glomming onto the tiny glimmer of actual SCIENCE because the rest of the day was pure, unadulterated bullshit.

First, I had to listen to the 'campus expert' on a subject explain a technique to me. Basically the protocol is:

a) have too much money
b) buy anything and everything you need pre-made, instead of actually knowing how to do it yourself.

Hmph. Thanks. And you're the expert, huh? What are we, industry now? Aren't we supposed to understand how these things work in academia well enough to do it ourselves for a fraction of the price?

Or is that just another one of my delusions?

And I had to listen to - I know, this will shock you! - a grad student who does not understand controls. And his advisor who, so far as I can tell, does not understand how to train anyone.

My favorite part is how advisors blame the students, as if it's not in any way their job to provide training (or at least foist these clueless students off on postdocs who are capable of training a grad student). In this particular case, I'm pretty sure the student is clueless and/or lazy, but I still don't blame the student for not knowing. When are you supposed to learn these things if no one is teaching you?

I don't know about you, but I learned how to do controls IN LAB. I did not learn about controls in class.

.... Um, nope, not in any class.

WHY DON'T THEY TEACH THAT IN CLASS???

And finally. I had to listen to one of the ultimate White Guys telling another White Guy grad student how to go about getting a postdoc position to be successful in his career.

Okay, so are you ready? Here goes:


Find an NAS HHMI* advisor and do whatever it takes to get the recommendation letter.


Ta da! That's the advice. This is science, folks. This is THE 'mentoring.'

The really frightening part of this story was that this same guy said when he gets CVs of people who are 20 years out of school applying for various upper-level positions, he still looks at WHERE they did their PhD and postdoc. WITH WHOM.

Because he thinks that connotes quality better than any other factor.

Yes, and. This particular White Guy is young enough that he will be around giving this wonderful advice to several more generations of grad students to come.

Hearing things like this I think, who am I kidding?

According to him, I should have quit after grad school, because I didn't have a C/N/S paper from the lab of a Famous White Guy from my thesis work. Then maybe I shouldn't have gotten those postdoc fellowships after all? They should have just told me "thanks, take a hike!"? YOU'LL NEVER BE GOOD ENOUGH??

So what I got from this is, not only are generations of grad students being told the exact OPPOSITE of what I would say, even if I had my own lab, clearly there are still going to be PIs who would not want to send their own grad students to do a postdoc with me, as a junior, female, non-acronymed professor.

Not that I'm sure I could stomach having any postdocs of my own, since it would mean propagating this "system" that I hate. I guess I could still try to be the ultimate PI I've always wanted to be, and actually, you know, help my postdocs get jobs and papers and stuff.

Ha ha ha.

In other news, I started reading a book called "From Sabotage to Success" by Sheri O. Zampelli. I think it's going to tell me how to get out of my negative rut. Or something. So far it's really good, actually.

And eventually I hope I will be able to get some more sleep. This is the second night this week I had trouble sleeping. Must be all the languishing.



*(and therefore, most likely MALE)

You're closer than you think.

Yesterday I had this thought, how sometimes you feel like you're miles from getting something to work and then BANG! You're there. It's done.

And you think, wow, I almost gave up before I got here! Good thing I didn't quit!

I think this should be my new mantra for the whole job thing.

Maybe it's not impossible. Maybe this is just the part where you're falling, and you think you're going to be smashed on the sidewalk but you're actually only an inch away.

Either way, hitting bottom would be better than free fall, I think.

I was also thinking about this because I've been watching some of my grad student friends and how they manage their priorities.

One does everything way in advance. She's always asking for help, but not before doing her homework and figuring out as much as she can on her own first. And she asks good questions.

Another has been procrastinating this week about her qualifying exam, all the while saying she's going to be destroyed by one of her committee members who always gives her a hard time. And yet, she's not asking for help.

A third sent me a thesis chapter to edit last week... the day before it was due to his committee. Two weeks before his defense.

I mean, come on. It's not like you didn't know you were going to have to write a thesis, let's see .... at least 5 years ago!

So while I'm watching the CNN headline "Bottom line of hopelessness", I'm thinking, yeah, I've been trying to plan ahead. I've been getting closer. I still feel like I'm a million miles away from where I want to be with my career.

But maybe I'm closer than I thought. Maybe a few more months, in the rear view mirror, won't seem like much at all?

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.