Collected random tidbits of fuckedupedness.

Watched the various pundits this morning and had this thought:

If Sarah Palin were Dan Quayle, would guys like Colin Powell be supporting McCain?

How much of her being an idiot is amplified in people's minds by the fact that she's female?

____

From the NOW newsletter, Kim Gandy apparently said at the 2008 NOW conference:

"The next president needs to make economic equality for women a priority. This includes promoting educational opportunity, workplace equality, ending job segregation, educational segregation, [emphasis added] and promoting participation in good paying careers, like the STEM careers"

____

From one of the pundits this morning, they said Barack Obama's campaign defines "middle class" as individuals who make over $200,000, or over $250,000 for couples.

Implications of that:

1. Dear Kim Gandy, mrphd + msphd make a combined income yearly of less than $80,000.

DOES THAT SOUND LIKE A GOOD PAYING TO YOU???

Nobody can guarantee we'll get jobs doing what we have been training to do.

DOES THAT SOUND LIKE A CAREER TO YOU???

2. Is the assumption that the man makes $200,000 per year, and the woman makes $50,000 per year? Is it??? Because that's what it sounds like from those numbers!?!!

3. Where are the republican pundits getting these numbers? They're not front and center on the Obama campaign's website.

____

A recent study on the career paths of PhDs from the Yale graduate program:

Only 1 out of 30 from a top bioscience department obtained a tenure-track faculty position. I found the link over at a blog called Sandwalk.

____

A disturbing secret of the job market, and sign of the extreme fuckedupedness of the current postdoc system:

I recently learned that several of the people I know who were able to get faculty positions in the last few years did it by having funding.

How did they have funding, you ask?

They wrote R01s with their PIs, which many of us have done. The difference is whether it says this in your recommendation letter (which nobody reads unless your CV already looks spectacular!), vs. whether the postdoc co-author was listed as co-PI on those grants.

Why is this fuckedup, you might ask?

1. Postdocs are not eligible to apply for R01s. I think this is a major problem with our current system.

2. Senior PIs are having trouble (and rightly so!) getting multiple R01s.

Listing a young scientist as co-author is just a new way to exploit the system.

The PI gets credit for "promoting" young scientists, plus they get money when they otherwise wouldn't.

And did I mention that in most cases, the postdoc does ALL the writing, and the PI just adds his name [the only examples I know of involved male PIs]?

3. This is becoming an expected qualification for an assistant professor position, at least at some schools, and particularly in the current economic climate.

BUT IT IS AN UNSTATED REQUIREMENT.

We need to have a system, and it has to be transparent and consistent. It can't be fair if it's based on unwritten rules.

4. At least at my school, but I suspect at many others, making this a promotion requirement is a massive catch-22. You can't write the grant unless you're promoted; and you can't get promoted until you get the grant. Some major string-pulling has to happen behind the scenes to make these kinds of arrangements.

In other words, don't expect to get to do this unless you work for a powerful PI.

5. It favors the favorites (and in most cases, this means it favors the men). I've seen different versions of these kinds of scenarios play out.

One is that only the favorite guy (let's be honest) in the lab gets to be co-PI.

Sometimes other postdocs (god forbid, some of the women!) would benefit more from writing a grant, either because they need the boost to their careers, or are more senior, etc.

Often, multiple lab members contribute substantially to the grantwriting and submission, but only the favorite guy gets official credit.

Another scenario I've seen is when a senior female postdoc does the same amount of work as the favorite guy, but she gets screwed when she leaves the lab.

For Favorite Guy, it is seen as an equal partnership or a friendly competition. Communication lines are open, reagents are shared, etc.

For Former Female Postdoc (FFP), the PI reneges on their agreement about who does what going forward, and FFP can't afford to get into a turf war with Former PI. Former PI does not keep her informed, and refuses to send agreed-upon reagents after FFP leaves.
And there's nothing she can do. Former PI controls everything from who speaks at meetings, to who publishes in what journals, to her chances at future grants.

What's an FFP to do?

If the only option is to not attempt to write a grant with the PI, she's screwed.

Hunker down.

It's funny how these things happen all at once.

I had some major shit going on when 9/11 happened. It lent an even stranger perspective to the already-nightmarish quality of my life at the time.

Now I'm seriously wondering about switching careers and how I'll make a living, not to mention giving up on what I've been working so hard for, and look what happens to the stock market.

My timing, as usual, is perfect.

So I woke up this morning with the clock-radio blaring about the latest drop, and I find myself grateful that I have, at least for the moment, even a piddily salary coming in. At least for a few more months, anyway.

Then I was thinking about some of my friends and other people in my lab.

And I realized, it could be a lot worse for me. I should be grateful.

I could have a mortgage or a house that I needed to sell. Thankfully, I don't.

I could be leaving now, instead of later. At least I have a little hope that things with the market might get better (?) before the shit really hits the fan in terms of my employment options.

I could be one of the grad students who is about to defend, but has not yet found a postdoc position (or an industry position, good luck with that).

I could be my friend who is already unemployed (whether I helped her with her interview or not was, as I suspected, irrelevant).

I could be my friend clutching a Canadian passport and talking about how her industry job is in such a specialized niche, she's going to have to get out soon before her company goes under. She's ready to run in a split second if McCain gets elected.

At least what I have on my side right now is: uncertainty.

Which in some ways, means I still have lots of possibilities. At least my fate is, at least not yet decided.

It's not clear what I should do, and that was kind of driving me crazy. So it actually makes me feel a little better than the rest of the country is also in a panic!

More consolation: if I fail now, I can blame it on the circumstances. Who's to say that, even if I had done everything perfectly, this same series of events wouldn't still have torpedoed my chances?

So I find it oddly comforting that the world is slipping on its axis.

It's hard not to picture the doomsday scenarios. The ones where our landlord suddenly decides to kick us out, but we can't sell any of the stuff we thought was at least worth a little money, because nobody is buying anything, so we have to leave it out on the street. What a waste that would be. Then we would have to leave, with nothing more than we can carry.

In these scenarios, the world turns black and white, like old movies.

Or as a friend put it, in the worst possible case, we're a whole generation of people who will have to move back into our parents' basements.

We'll have to do this either because we have no savings and lost our jobs, or because our parents' retirement savings are worthless, or both.

Won't it be fun, to hunker down with our families? You know how I love my family!

So I've got that "waiting for the other shoe to drop" feeling, which is kind of silly since I think I've been kicked in the head enough lately.

Now I'm expecting that any one of the following would really seal our fate:

a) a pandemic, like the bird flu in Germany jumping from chickens and ducks to humans

b) another hurricane or other natural disaster that costs the country a fortune and sends more people scrambling for a place to live

c) someone to attack the US while we're clearly not ready to respond

In that last scenario, I picture myself and mrphd having to join the Army.

Do you think they'd give me lasik surgery? That would make me so much more useful, at least in a military capacity.

Biology in Industry - "Just Don't."

So a while back I wrote that I had given my CV to a friend in industry who offered to show it to her relatively-high-up mentor at her relatively large company, and see what kind of advice she had for me to apply for jobs there (or at other companies).

Well, this was a while ago, before the market crash.

So I finally talked to this friend yesterday. I hadn't heard anything back so I figured her mentor didn't say anything good.

The word back was basically this:

NOBODY should go into biology right now.

ANYBODY who can do ANYTHING ELSE should leave and GO DO IT.

There are NO JOBS right now for biologists.

We're LAYING PEOPLE OFF, not hiring.

My friend didn't want to tell me, but I appreciate that she did.

While I was surprised that her mentor was so blunt, it wasn't exactly news.

---

Ironically, literally an hour after I had this conversation, a different friend, who has been unemployed for a while, told me she got an interview at a small local company.

And then she proceeded to ask if I could coach her on what to say during the interview, and what to do if she got the job, because the job is MUCH closer to my expertise than hers.

My answer?

Ask google first, then we'll talk about it.

(What I really wanted to say? Uh, NOOOOO????)

---

She's a really good friend. What could I say? It's not like she asked me to be on a microphone inserted in her ear during the interview.

And when I thought about it, I realized that most of my frustration recently has been working with people whom I didn't think were actually qualified for their jobs.

But you know what? Some of them worked hard and learned fast.

And THOSE people ended up being the ones I DO want to work with. Those are the kind of people I would want to have in my lab.

---

She also thinks that, while the company sounds pretty desperate and like they'd take anyone willing and able to do the work, it's going to be pretty competitive for this one position.

Apparently this company is interviewing a lot of people in quick succession, because rather than the usual full day visit, they have my friend scheduled to visit for 1 hour.

My guess is that they'll take someone with more experience using these kinds of methods, but who knows. My friend works hard and learns fast.

And she has been working in industry already, so I don't know if that will count for more than someone coming straight out of a grad program or academic postdoc.

---

So that's two data points. Can't really interpret much from it, unless it's true that big companies are doing badly and small companies haven't been as hard hit?

I'll also say that I would not want the job my friend is interviewing for, unless I were really desperate, because I think I would be bored.

For her, it might be fun since it will be mostly things she hasn't done before. And she loves doing new things.

And she really is pretty desperate at this point.

I told her if she can get it, it would be a good stepping stone, since she could broaden her skills. And who knows, maybe the company will do really well?

---

Now, if I could just find someone to help me the way I've been helping her. Hmm.

Where to begin? The Search for How To Search

So I've been thinking about it, and unless something really more catastrophic happens in the next few months, I should be starting to apply for jobs.

I had to be completely honest with myself: I think I've been putting this off partly because I just don't know where to begin.

Some of you might recall that when I first started this blog, I kept a log of rejection letters from my first attempts at applying for jobs.

That time around, I basically applied the generic formula my own advisors followed:

1. Put together packages
2. Send out packages in response to ads in Science and Nature
3. Wait

My memory of that time was just that it was a waste.

It was a lot of work, and a waste of time when I should have been working on other things (like publishing more papers in C/N/S journals!).

Funny, though, how re-reading old posts about rejection letters did not make me feel bad. Or rejected. I don't think it's that I fear rejection. So in a way, that was kind of a liberating realization.

But for the last couple of years I've applied to only a handful of places that had a deadline and I knew they wouldn't have another opening in my field for a while.

The only feedback I've gotten on ANY applications has been vague or limited to the single comment: that I need to publish at least one more first-author paper.

Or that, while I was on the short list, someone else "fit better".

Hard to argue that I could do anything about that particular criticism, short of being an apple who dresses up as an orange?

So while that "at least one" paper is not yet published, but the time is ripe for applying, once again my funding is running out, and deadlines for applications are passing me by.

I've met with various people and had them look over my application, and mostly gotten not much in the way of feedback.

Mostly, people are kind of baffled that I haven't had a single interview. Not a one.

And when I say "people", I mean my Department Chair, my advisors past and present, friends who are young faculty at various institutions, and collaborators at various levels (mostly full professors).

The only consistent piece of advice is to get a C/N/S paper in press.

But I've gotten mixed feedback regarding that, and everything else, from both the real world and this blog.

Many people have told me to apply anyway, but I think I'm just reluctant to repeat my past mistakes.

So if I'm going to do it, I don't want to do it the same way.

I should do the following, because I think I can do it now and save myself some stress later, although I can't quite get up the nerve to start just yet:

1. Start calling faculty and committee chairs and talking to them about what they're looking for and if they think I'd "fit" in their departments.

These articles that the Chronicle has been running on "fit" have made me feel like I will never, ever get a job in academia. They really do make me feel like there is no reason to even try.

Just being honest here, people. You want to know why women leave science? Because we feel unwelcome.

Very unwelcome.

2. Start talking to my letter-writers about what they're planning to say in their letters.

If there's one thing I can't confirm, but suspect, it's that certain buzzwords were missing from my recommendations. I also know that at least one person said something inappropriate and incorrect to a search committee chair about my personal life (e.g. implying that mrphd would need a job and that they would have to find him a position).

But honestly, here again, one of my problems is that I fear the people who wrote my letters in the past were not completely honest with me about how much they did (or did not) support my career ambitions.

Or maybe they just meant well and didn't consider the consequences of their word choices?

One of my fears is that if I can really force these people to be honest with me, we'll end up having more of those talks about their regrets, and how they just can't see why anyone would want a faculty position.

And where does that leave me? While I do have some choice about who I ask to write my letters, there's only so many people to choose from.

I read an article the other day about how it's good to choose your letters based on where you're applying, because it doesn't always make sense to use the same generic letters from the same group of people.

I thought that was interesting and made sense, but in academia, certain letters are expected. I know that in industry and in some other kinds of careers, it's not uncommon to get a 'character' letter from a friend or neighbor. But for a faculty position? Don't they have to be from, uh, faculty?

Wouldn't it be considered a bit irregular to get a letter from, say, a former student or a fellow postdoc or a former colleague who is now in industry? Do people ever get jobs that way?

3. Revise and update my Research Plan.

I've been working on this for years. It's quite funny, because once a year when I revise, I've already done half the things on it, even when I thought at the time there was no way I'd be a postdoc that much longer.

Ha ha ha. So I need to update that.

But I'm never quite sure how much detail to put in. I've tried both the Big Idea style, with fewer details, and the more practical what-I'd-actually-put-in-a-grant style, with more immediate plans. And I've tried mixing them, trying to have a clear timeline to show I'm thinking about both now and later.

And since there's nothing consistent about what schools ask for in their ads, some want short (2 pages) and some want longer (5 pages or more). This makes a huge difference in how much to put in. Some also want a personal career goal statement in there along with specific research plans, and some don't.

My impression is that nothing I say in this portion of my application will GET me an interview, although it might PREVENT me from getting one.

I say this because I've seen the research plans of ~10 people I know who have gotten jobs, and none of them were impressive to me. At all. I found them hard to read, sometimes impractical, sometimes full of typos. All of these people got faculty positions anyway.

Ideally, I can see how a really good research plan would make the search committee say, "Boy, we have GOT to meet this person! I can't wait to hear her talk!"

But in practice? It's pretty hard to stand out that much from a pile of 250 or more applications.

The only single example I've heard of someone who thought they got a job because of their Plan was the recent commenter, who heard at her interview that they were impressed with her writing.

If 1 in 10 people who get jobs got them because of their writing, I would probably not be that 1 person.

But I strongly suspect it's not 1 in 10, and that person who got the job at her alma mater? Had more working for her than she realizes. My guess is that someone made a phone call on her behalf.

And hey, more power to you if that's what happened. Right?

4. Revise and update my cover letter.

This is another thing where I've had lots of people look at lots of versions, and nobody ever really had strong opinions about what does and does not make a difference.

Make sure it's addressed to the right person and lists the actual job you're applying for. Nobody likes getting a letter addressed to a different school. Check.

The main piece of advice I got here is to not say anything that will put you in the trash bin right away, and to make sure to put in buzzwords in case it's being screened by an admin/HR person who doesn't actually know anything about where your research fits.

Sound, you know, enthusiastic about the place.

5. Suck it up and send them out.

But for this, I think I have to wait a while longer. My advisor can write a strong letter swearing up and down that my paper(s) will get into the right places, but I just don't know if that would be enough.

I'm hearing that lots of places having hiring freezes right now, not just because of the mortgage mess, but because of state budget shortfalls, people not retiring, etc. The kinds of things that have only been made worse by the mortgage mess.

So ironic that, after all this time, of all the times for me to be thinking about applying, it would be now. If there were ever a good time, this is not it.

I guess one of my big problems here is that I usually follow my intuition, and that is almost always right in science, and always at least partially right.

I don't like doing experiments that won't yield data. My past experiences with job applications yielded experience, I guess, but no data.

I guess I'm worried that this is sort of like trying to use someone else's system to do an experiment in your lab.

You've read the paper, you have your doubts about it, you've pointed out all the potential pitfalls, but your advisor just won't listen.

So you're stuck doing a doomed experiment just to prove that it won't work. Does that get you anywhere? No, not really.

I guess the question, as they say in the Matrix, is choice.

Read these.

Well, I could look for industry jobs online. And decide they all look like they're concentrated in ~ 3 cities, and none of which look like fun.

Then I could read this post about this post.

And then I could remember why I'm not applying for faculty positions.

Next on the list? Maybe a visit to the campus coffee place?

One of these days, I swear, I'm just going to start walking and never come back. Forrest Gump style.

Arrogant wannabe.

Several commenters said it's typical of women to be the 'silent fixer.'

I've heard that, too.

I'm pretty sure that is NOT my problem.

These same commenters asked if I had made my ambitions known and/or asked to be promoted.

Yes, yes I have.

No, no it has not helped.

In fact, it got me branded Arrogant. And got me nowhere.

Apparently, my ambitions exceed my perceived (Note the qualifier!) abilities/achievements, and that means Arrogant.

At least for women.

I think there is some magical formula whereby if women are:

Extremely Nice + Sufficiently Self-Promoting + Gently Express Ambition = Success!

Maybe. Maybe it's not that simple. But I've seen a lot more success from women who fit the stereotype, at least outwardly, of being soft-spoken and shy, who suddenly learn to stand up for themselves and then everyone is impressed ==> Maybe she had it in her all along but we're so proud for bringing it out of her! She gets a JOB!

I think my problem is that my personality is not sufficiently Feminine:

Nice When I Can Muster It + Inconsistently Self-Promoting + Openly Ambitious = Arrogant.

Also, if anyone ever actually TOOK my advice, I'd be The Fixer.

Instead, I am just the wacko in the corner who makes suggestions everyone ignores. And that often includes PI.

Yesterday I reminded PI of something I had suggested a long time ago. THIS time it was a GOOD idea, apparently, but I actually got in TROUBLE because PI couldn't REMEMBER my having suggested it before!

I love it when I get blamed for not nagging often enough, to make up for other people's cluelessness & senility.

When I nag too often, I'm told I'm being Very Pushy.

Dr. J, that company job is sounding pretty darn good.

How would you fare if science were a meritocracy?

First, in answer to the summer student who wants to submit a co-first author paper:

Use asterisks. You'll see examples of this all over the literature, and it will look like this (sorry I won't do it in LaTeX here!):

Name, Yours*, Name, Friend's*, Name, Supervisor, Name, Figurehead PI.

Name of University.

*These authors contributed equally to this work.

------


Anon asked in a comment:

What would be your opinion on a scenario in which all PhDs/postdocs were qualified individuals who actually wrote their own papers and grants? Surely, of all the people who actually make it to the coveted tenured positions, some people actually deserved it. My question is basically if the system only allows a chosen few to ascend, what do the rest of us hardworking, decent scientists do? Clearly, there are biases that prevent this from happening in reality. I'm just saying if these egregious offenses weren't happening, would you feel any different? Like, ok, I gave it my best shot but it just wasn't meant to be. Or maybe something else?


Honestly I haven't thought about this in a long time.

I would have quit before/during grad school if I thought that, objectively speaking, everyone else was better than me and therefore I had no shot at a job in this business.

In fact, I had no expectation of a job when I started my postdoc. I was kind of figuring I would hate it, the way I hated grad school.

But you know how YFS is, she had to do the experiment.

Instead I had this bizarre realization: I am good at what I do. (Maybe even really good!)

It took me a while to figure this out.

Not many people have ever given me compliments on my work, until very recently.

But during my postdoc, I've gotten lots of little clues that I'm doing things the right way.

1. Lots of people cite one of my papers from grad school. In fact, it is my thesis advisor's most-cited publication of all time (so far!). This was a weird little ego boost, since to this day, when I go to meetings, most people have not heard of me or my advisor. But the ones who have, know of us because of that paper.

The whole idea of that paper was my idea, not my advisor's. Nobody knows that from looking at my CV (!), but it is nice for me to know that I have good ideas and I know how to test them.

2. After I left my thesis lab, the senior postdoc who had never really been friendly admitted to me that nothing got done after I left. She hadn't realized, until I was gone, that I was the one ordering anything when we ran out, refilling the tip boxes, autoclaving everything, taking out the biohazard trash, making all the buffers, etc.

Needless to say, I had to laugh at that. Minor victories! Not only did I keep my work going, I kept everyone else's going, too. Not to underestimate the amount of work it takes to set up and fund a lab and hire people (a lot), but there's no question that I could run a lab, if I had one of my own.

3. A couple of years ago, I had the opportunity to do an experiment that would test one of the main hypotheses of my thesis more directly than had been possible at the time. Hooray for technological advances!

And, yes you guessed it. It worked! Hooray for confirmation! That was very satisfying.

Even if it's not the sort of thing I could publish on its own, it was very nice to get that result.

(I'll admit though, one thought that crossed my mind was, "Okay, that's my contribution, I can quit now!")

4. More minor victories: friends who come to me to help troubleshoot their experiments. I have one friend, a couple years ahead of me, who needed to learn some basic molecular biology (not her field). So she came to me. And we got her stuff going.

My proudest moment of that whole story: when she told me she was helping other people do their molecular biology now, using my protocols.

Another random example, I have a grad student friend right now who swears her project would not be working if I hadn't given her a couple of little suggestions along the way (and she actually followed them!).

This got me thinking that yes, I do have the expertise, I could be a good advisor. I like that part of the job.

5. This is the last one, because my timer is about to beep. I think I've mentioned it before on this blog, when someone told me they never believed my data before, because they could never get a certain (critical) technique to work that well.

I was totally baffled by this, since it was sort of a backhanded compliment. (Because it was brought up in the context of, now they believe me....!)

It had never occurred to me that not everyone's data looked that good. I mean, sure, I've read lots of papers with crappy looking data and wondered why it looked so bad. But it took a long time for me to realize I'm good at that technique, and it's actually a useful skill.

It is one of my (last remaining?) missions in science to get everyone to learn how to do it the way I do, and get great results like I do.

So I guess my point is, I think if science were a meritocracy, I would be one of the chosen few. Otherwise I would have quit by now. Any rational person would!

But since science is not a meritocracy, I might quit any day now. As any rational person would.

More ways for research to die.

More atrocities from the trenches-

I'm hearing from young faculty at R1 or near-R1 universities that their departments are adding more (irrelevant) criteria to their tenure reviews and candidate searches because of a disturbing trend.

Apparently more and more of the last generation of hires are so burned out, that by the time they get tenure, they shut down their labs, stop doing research, and declare from now on that they will only be teaching.

Then the department is screwed, because they sank all this startup money into this person, and now they can't afford to hire anyone new, even if they have plenty of candidates who are actually doing research.

Of course, this 'backup plan' only works at places where your salary is covered by teaching a minimum courseload every year.

Still, I thought this was bizarre, and kind of funny in a horrible way, and I had never heard of it before.

I could just picture these newly tenured faculty, smoke still coming out of their ears they're so burned out, saying

Take that, stupid broken system! We're going to sit on our asses and to hell with this bullshit about a research career! Muahahaha!

(Not to say that teaching isn't hard work too, but assuming that they aren't taking on a double load of teaching now that they have no lab management or funding obligations.)

I've heard plenty of stories about people getting tenure and then quitting to go to industry.

You've heard of these people, they go to places like Genentech. Initially you wonder why, but then you think, $$$$$$. Oh, I get it.

But I thought this teaching-only solution was a new twist, especially at research universities.

Is this happening at your university? I haven't heard of it happening at mine, yet.

Better vs. not really

Well, taking the weekend off helped in a lot of ways, and I got a lot done yesterday.

One thing I found out this weekend was not very encouraging. It's funny, though, in a black humor - aha I knew it! that explains a lot! - kinda way.

....

Although we hear lots about how "most" universities are either trying or are forced to use some kind of affirmative action in their faculty searches, not all of them are actually even trying.

This weekend I found out from a friend that one of the places I always wanted to go is among the worst when it comes to hiring.

Case in point: last year they interviewed 6 people.


1) 1 of the 6 people they interviewed was female.



2) The search committee consisted of: two guys.



3) They concluded after the interviews that the one woman they interviewed was
"too unfocused" and "sounded like a first-year grad student."



4) They also concluded that "the best candidates" are "waiting" and "not applying right now."

(I can't quite follow the logic of why the best candidates would be waiting to apply, but hey, since I think I'm one of the best candidates and didn't apply last year, I kind of have to laugh at that.)

However, when asked how they chose the candidates, and whether they even tried to take diversity into account, the answer was that they "just interviewed the top candidates."



5) The reason these two guys ran the search: the department chair is basically a figurehead. They're sort of the puppetmasters of their department. But how would an applicant know that before applying there, unless they had friends inside?



6) The two guys said there were no women faculty on the search "committee" because they were given "ample opportunity" and "chose not to participate".

Uh huh. I can think of about ten reasons why that might be, and none of them make me feel better about the outcome.



7) Last but not least, the department somehow 'dictated' that they wanted new faculty who work in particular areas, so topic was one of the major criteria by which candidates were chosen to interview.

However- and this is in some ways the best punchline- neither of the two guys choosing the candidates knows anything about the topics that were supposed to be top priority.

One has to wonder, then, how qualified these two guys could be to evaluate the quality and impact of the work from these candidates.

My guess is that lots of departments conduct searches this way, and even if there are more bodies on the search committee, it doesn't mean anyone in the whole group knows anything about the research topics of the candidates they're supposed to be evaluating.


....

So there you have it, folks. Another example of the scientific ways in which we hire scientists, while making conscientious strides towards increasing diversity.

Not even out of the gate yet.

I was still at home when I got an email that I can only file under sexual harassment.

Not actionable, I don't think, but definitely not the sort of shit I should have to deal with at work.

This was before 9 AM.

The person who sent it is, I'm sure, totally unaware of how inappropriate it is.

And I am not in a position to do anything about it.

I had kind of already given up on today turning out like I had hoped. And then I had the whole ride to work to think about how much it pissed me off.

....

Number of times so far this month that someone has asked me how my job search is going:
~ 20.

They ALL ask "Why not?" when I say I'm not applying.

Eventually I am going to start screaming uncontrollably when asked.

That day might be today.

Too bad I need to meet with my advisor today too. I am having that FUCK IT ALL, I WANT TO QUIT!!!! feeling.

Maybe it will pass. Hopefully it will pass before I do anything stupid.

Don't count on it.

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

Hasn't happened yet. Might not ever.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It's definitely not all sexism.

Was talking to a friend last night who has run into many of the same kinds of problems I've had.

We're in different fields, and opposite in many ways, including gender.

But we do share certain personality features, which I can only describe as lack of natural talent for academic politics.

The only friends I had in grad school whom I'd say are similarly handicapped have all ended up in industry. They couldn't, or wouldn't, play that part of the game.

Four out of six are women. Three realized early on they didn't have the patience or the stomach for it. One realized painfully this was a weakness, still isn't particularly happy in industry, and sometimes talks about coming back to do a postdoc (I keep telling her not to).

The two remaining who stuck with it AND got interviews for faculty positions are guys. (Coincidence?) But they apparently never understood why none of those visits yielded offers.

And who is still sticking with it? .... Yours truly.

...


On the one hand, my friend says I'd make a great investigator. He thinks I'd be good at running a lab, I would know how to set things up from scratch and manage people and so on.

And his perceptions of sexism are entirely different from mine (although he himself often makes what I'd consider highly offensive comments).

Most of the women from the last lab he worked in have gotten faculty positions, so he thinks things are improving. (Somehow he forgets about the lab he worked in before that, which is more like the kind that I've worked in, where the women all end up quitting.)

But to him it's much more universal than sexism, or at least, it's not sexism alone. Even he has to admit that sexism only makes it that much worse. But he has a much broader theory about what's wrong.

He thinks this is the worst possible time to get into science.

And I've been hearing that a lot lately. My own advisors seem to think it's a bad career choice for... just about anyone. Which is probably why they're not exactly overjoyed that it's what I want to do. They keep asking me if I'm sure.

The more they ask me that, the less sure I am.

If nothing else, writing this blog has made me realize all the times people tried to discourage me from a career in science. And that I stubbornly ignored all of them.

In college, my grad student friends told me not to go, that it's a miserable existence.

During grad school, the faculty told me I wouldn't make it.

And so on until now.

Now, my friends who are PIs are all saying it's not the great fun they thought it would be.

Aside from some few happy examples like FSP, most of them are not particularly happy at all.

Almost all the new PIs say - and this really makes me cringe - they wish they could go back to being postdocs.

...

My former-scientist friend is doing something else these days, but all he can talk about is science.

The people he worked with, the disagreements they had, how frustrating it all was. But I have to assume the real reason he can't just let it go and get on with his life is because he really loved it.

I don't know how I could live like that. To me, the worst thing would be to quit, but then never get over it.

I would not want to end up like my friend, who might never stop obsessing over the wonderful time he spent working in lab. That part just makes me really sad.

Accidental information

Hey! This is a pop quiz! Guess what I accidentally found out today?

a) My department is interviewing people with fewer first author papers than I have now. Fewer, in fact, than I had when I applied for jobs before and didn't get any interviews.

In one case where the candidate is very likely to be interviewed, the candidate has not published a single first author paper in several (>5) years, but has a couple of recent reviews in High Impact Journals and works for the very famous ex-spouse of someone in the department.

Hmmm.

b) The candidates' packages are each reviewed by no more than 4 faculty, but usually only 2 or 3 faculty, to determine whether they are worth interviewing.

You might get reviewed by two faculty, and get turned down because one of those hated everyone. Meanwhile someone else might get reviewed by two totally different people. Or maybe you could be the lucky one and get reviewed by the softie who wants to interview as many people as possible. But only if you pick a department where you know there's a softie who works on something related to what you do, or if you have a friend who will snatch your application out of the pile and insist on being the one to review it.

But I'm not saying this happens. Nope. I wouldn't say that. I wouldn't say it's a lot like the way NIH reviews grants, either, or how fucked up that is.

c) The administrative assistant gets the first run at the stack of applications, which means you could get cut by a non-scientist before a scientist ever sees your application.

You might have thought that was more common in places that have applications filtered by HR, like companies and places with staff. You'd be wrong.

This must be why buzzwords matter so much, eh?

d) There are no standout candidates on the list that everyone can even agree is worth interviewing, but they're going to interview some of the ones they have already looked at and deemed mediocre, rather than going back to the original pile of packages to see if the admin threw any good applications in the trash.

(I'll refrain from mentioning that this admin has a proven history of throwing out the best candidates for staff positions, since there's no chance that would be an issue here!)

e) all of the above

f) none of the above, I'm just making crazy shit up, nobody in their right mind would do it this way

g) why I am really glad I am not applying to this department, or anywhere else right now

Career Myths about Grad School and Postdocs

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

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

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

Boy was that wrong!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Appearances, even in science, can be deceiving.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

False, false, and false!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

Get out.

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

Figure it out first.

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

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

But that's just one theory.

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

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

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

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

On a positive note.

Things I still like about my job:

1. A little positive feedback goes a long way.

2. Not having to sit at a desk all day, every day.

3. Working with young people who haven't yet had all the personality beaten out of them.

4. Working mostly with liberal people who believe in reproductive rights and letting women wear pants to work.

5. The occasional good feeling when experiments work.

6. Every once in a while, still getting to learn something new.

7. Just because I'm a girl, they never would have let me do this a hundred years ago.

How I would apply for jobs, if I were ever going to do it again.

Yellowfish pointed out that I should discuss what I would do differently.

Well, let's start at the beginning.

Step 1. Choose a grad school that you like, that actually likes you.

My grad school was a bad fit for me. Or I was a bad fit for it. Either way, I did not get off to a shining start. I did not make as many good contacts as I should have, and I certainly did not get a glowing sendoff from my thesis advisor, who was oh-so-relieved to be rid of me.

Yeah, if I had to do it over, I would have paid more attention to my gut instinct. Though honestly, of the places that I got in, none of them felt like the right choice. So there you go. I should have applied elsewhere (?) gotten in elsewhere (which would have necessitated, I don't know, perfect grades and perfect GREs?) and gone elsewhere (or not at all).

Step 2. Kiss everyone's ass, and I mean everyone, all the time.

Step 3. Go to as many scientific parties as possible, and meet people and charm them.

Partly because I'm a girl, I've never felt comfortable going drinking with my co-workers/colleagues/potential future bosses. But I should have done this. At all the meetings, even if it was in some old guy's hotel room, I should have gone. And been charming.

Step 4. Ignore bad advice, even if it comes from Super Successful "Mentors".

Yeah, the ones who told me not to apply for funding? Should have ignored them.

Step 5. Be more bold.

I probably waited too long to start asking questions at meetings. It puts you on the radar.

I also did not go and introduce myself to certain key people at certain key times, because I was too shy. But also because I sensed that they were sexist jerks, and I am rarely in the mood to deal with that kind of rejection. But I should have done it anyway, because now we'll never know.

And that is all. I would argue that I did everything else in my power. I worked my butt off. I read books on applying for jobs. I got feedback on applications from lots of people. I collaborated across continents, and attended meetings, and presented work, and published (some of it). I polished my CV. And I blogged about most of it.

And today I will be doing some more wallpapering. Why? I don't know. Because I haven't officially quit yet.

Responses to Comments

JR,

Is being content ever more than merely fleeting?

flickamawa,

I think these are probably THE places to be in the next few years. Especially if you have teaching experience and really want to teach (see below).

Drugmonkey,

It's a little more complicated than 'I just want a job at an R1'.

See, I fall into this bizarre category of being underqualified in the teaching category and overqualified in the research category for anything other than R1. Most non-R1s couldn't afford the equipment I'd need.

Of course this is a moot point, since as you know, I'm also still underqualified for any serious R1s.

When I applied to 2nd and 3rd tier places in the past, they thought they were my safety school so they didn't take me seriously. But when I applied to 1st tier places, I didn't make the cut.

I am a B+. Nobody wants a B+.

Perhaps if I were to do this again I would have to really go out of my way to show how extra-enthusiastic/serious I would be about the 2nd and 3rd tier places.

As it was, when I did it I was totally equal-opportunity about the way I did my applications, which is to say I applied without doing nearly enough networking for any of them.

Again, if I were to apply to faculty positions, I know now what I would do differently.

But lately I am thinking I would not apply again. I just want to get these papers out. And then we'll see.

I was laughing at an article I re-read today (I'm sorry, I don't remember which site) about how it's important to take vacations and avoid burnout. But they specifically mentioned students and junior faculty. I don't think it was intentional, but the message jives with my experience: everyone gets to take vacations, except for postdocs.

Anon 8:04,

I don't know you. I'm glad you like your job and it sounds like your job likes you.

But I did 'know' this guy, or at least what he said he wanted and where other people assumed he was going, years ago when we were in school together.

To me, the interesting thing about seeing where people end up is seeing how this measures against their qualifications and people's (past) expectations for them.

Case in point, he's at a place that 'values' teaching, but I know for a fact that this guy NEVER TAUGHT ANYTHING before getting hired.

I'm also, as you might know from reading this blog, very interested in the extreme disconnect between What The Establishment Says They Want in a new professor, vs. Who They Actually Hire.

Getting that paper in requires getting those experiments done, at least to my own satisfaction that I at least tried.

I am infinitely frustrated right now because I would almost rather quit than keep fighting my way over all the everyday speedbumps, because I just don't have the patience for them anymore.

In other words, somebody else should be doing these experiments. My imaginary students or technician.

I know eventually I would come to regret it if I quit now.

But it is taking. so. damn. long. Too long!!!

You know it's bad when you find yourself fantasizing about how, if you got scooped, then at least you could justify quitting. Assuming the other guy gets it right and you get the satisfaction of at least knowing the answer (but he never does).

Not very.

Ran across the lab website of an old acquaintance today, someone I knew from school.

This was one of those people - you know the type - that everyone thought was a Genius (or at least, some did). The Very Knowledgeable Type.

Well I kind of had to laugh because this person is now a professor at an up-and-coming school. By that I mean, it's not an R1. It's maybe a 2nd or 3rd tier school, trying to put more money into research but not quite there yet. Maybe a great place to be, who am I to judge?

But I guess I'm a little surprised, and disappointed in a way. It's always that question- are we all fooling ourselves, thinking we're Good Enough, or even if we're not we can work hard until we get where we want to be?

---

In other news, I was thinking again today about how I have this one paper that I never sent back. When I got the reviews back, I wasn't ready to deal with them right away.

I was thinking about how I've always been impatient, and how this is both good and bad for research. It makes me look for answers and work a lot, maybe more than others, but it also makes the waiting parts really hard.

I think it was when I was working in a lab during college that someone told me this phrase, "hurry up and wait" and I immediately seized on it as a way to describe my life, my research, the whole vibe.

I'm in a wait period right now, which I hate. More than anything else about this job, I hate the waiting.

There are a lot of opportunities to wait. When you put something in to incubate overnight. When you send off a paper, a grant, an application for a job. When your advisor never gets back to you. The usual stuff.

I always liked the part after you send off the paper, the grant, the application. Because if you did your job right, there's nothing more you can do. But wait. It's almost like a vacation. From guilt, anyway.

I don't like the part where I'm waiting for an experiment, for something to be ordered or arrive after ordering in the mail, for equipment to be fixed, for people to get back to me.

But when you get the reviews back, you have to make a choice. Argue (as I've mentioned before, something I view as work and not fun), or go elsewhere.

In this case, initially I wasn't ready to argue. I think telling my advisor that was a mistake. I think my advisor determined from that one statement that I'm not cut out for academia.

A few days later, I was ready to argue, and my advisor told me we should go elsewhere. I think this was also a mistake. But now it's too late. We never published the paper, and lately I'm feeling like we never will.

---

Meanwhile, when I had samples ready a few months ago, the equipment I needed was broken. Now that the equipment is available (because the other people who normally use it are all applying for faculty positions, because their papers came out in Top Journals), I don't have any samples.

It never ends, does it?

---

So anyway I was looking at this guy's profile, and I thought, How Boring. And I realized I was less confused by him having a job at Up and Coming University (rather than Big Famous University) than I was by him having a job at all.

Sometimes I wonder why we pay anyone to do this stuff. I'd like to think my stuff is more interesting, but of course even if it's wildly different from his, it's not more interesting in any way that's understandable or useful to the general public. Not really.

It's no wonder they don't want to pay me to do this stuff.

Holiday procrastination.

Not much going on this week. Stupid holiday parties with greasy food and lots of alcohol. Yum.

Mostly I've been biting my tongue, trying not to snap at people asking how the job search is going. What is it about holiday parties that gives otherwise shy people the courage to ask incredibly insensitive questions?

I finally lost it the other day at a friend who is visiting from out of town. Hint: I'm trying not to complain so much (at least in real life), so if I'm not talking about it, I have nothing good to say!

(If you're reading this, my apologies.)

Meanwhile, I'm in holiday procrastination mode.

I don't mean I'm procrastinating about the holiday itself. I did all my shopping and delivered most of the gifts already. (I strongly suspect they have all been opened even though it's not actually Christmas yet.)

No, I mean real procrastination. I have work to do, I really do.

The work I really want to do, I can't do until January.

The work I don't want to do... seems less appealing even than cleaning my house.

So I am prioritizing (aka procrastinating about by writing blogs) how I am going to be cleaning my house. In theory, this will make me feel better about doing the work I don't want to do, because I really hate cleaning.

Do I tackle the grout in the bathroom? Or the kitchen floor? Decisions, decisions.

I did the dishes. Then I dug out my desk from a giant pile that got moved there the last few times we had someone drop by for dinner. Mail (bills, coupons that will expire before we think about using them) and journal articles tend to accumulate on the kitchen table. Actually there are journal articles everywhere. I'm trying to file them, I swear.

Dear Mac,

I love the new Preview that came with Leopard. I will try to read papers this way instead of printing them out. Thank you for saving the trees I have been killing.

Sincerely,

MsPhD

***

Mostly I love this place that we've been renting. But the other day I was noticing that I have a curling iron that I haven't been able to use in years, because we don't have any electrical plugs in the bathroom. And I thought, "Should I get rid of that?"

Mostly the thing that has been bugging me about the lack of job... is that the last 2+ years I keep thinking we might be moving, because either my funding will run out, or I will get promoted. It's a weird tightrope to live on. I think you're supposed to walk across it in a relatively short amount of time, but I'm literally camped there. I have a tent and everything.

So we might be moving, but we don't know when or where. So then I think, "Should I get rid of these old clothes? Should I get a suit for the mythical future interviews?"

And I think about getting rid of most of the things I own, because I figure hey, that helps if we move (keeps the cost down) OR if we're homeless (nowhere to put them anyway). Except for the old clothes. I'm going to need to those to keep warm in layers when I'm sleeping on a sewer grate.

The thing that bugs me the most is that we really are worse off than our parents.

I realized that somewhere deep down, I thought I would have, you know, an electrical plug in my bathroom by now. Not that I need to or want to curl my hair on a daily basis, I just wish I had the option to, once in a while. You know, when I have to get dressed up for lab Christmas parties, put on a polite face, and bite my tongue. At least my hair would look good, even if I have no career progress to report.

Okay moldy grout, here I come.

That's why they call it work.

Yeah, I didn't want to come in today, but I had to.

I have a list of things I need to do. Usually it helps to have a list, to just go down the list and check this off as they get done.

Some of them are less painful than others. Some can be put off, but a couple can't.

I can cross one off the list so far, and now I have to go do the other one.

Then comes the hard part: getting through the rest of the afternoon.

I am so tempted to go home.

Some of the things I need to do today I could do at home. Sometimes I find I get more done at home than in lab anyway.

But if I go home today, I won't do any more work. I'm sure of that.

The weekend was unsatisfying. It wasn't relaxing and I didn't get any work done, so all in all it was just kind of a waste of time.

So I dragged myself in today, expecting the whole day to be one big long battle to get anything done, since none of the things I need to do are fun.

That's what they call it work.

Then I ran into the Tormentor and didn't manage to escape without getting some bullshit on me (out out damn spot!).

I also ran into someone who has been serving on a search committee here, who started to rant at me (at me! Holy crap if he only knew) about how they can't get any "good" people for their department.

I started to tell him there is no shortage of postdoc talent, and the real problem is with how they choose who is "good."

Luckily someone interrupted before I gave him a big piece of my mind (!).

I'm trying to shake it off. I wasn't in a good mood to begin with, and really didn't want to come in, but now I'm angry on top of it.

Grrr. I know this is why it's called "work", and the fact that I'm redoing experiments because they didn't work is called "re-search" for a reason, but gosh darnit I could use some more fun.