Exodus to marketing?

Is it just me? I can name about 15 female friends with PhDs who all left bench science for policy, writing, marketing, sales, and public relations jobs despite being very good at the bench. Not all of them loved the bench, but some did.

Seems like a lot of women think they'll have an easier time, for at least three major reasons:

1. Gender ratio - more women in these other positions means less sexism than in a "wet lab" position
2. More flexible hours/shorter hours than research positions (easier to balance with family)
3. More jobs available (especially now)
4. They're encouraged by women already in these jobs (the network is already in place)

It's really sad to me because most of them say they don't really use their PhD or bench experience at all. A few say bitterly that they could have left after a year or two of grad school and that should have been enough, but they felt like they needed the PhD stamp of approval.

I think this is what the hole in the postdoc pipeline looks like. A giant arrow pointing from PhD ---> sales.

May Scientiae: Humps and Bumps

For better or worse, this topic makes me think of a book called The Dip.

I was talking to a friend about this book recently, because she said she favors listening to motivational tapes to keep herself going. She said she especially likes advice for getting past failure, that tell you "yeah, things suck now but you'll get through it". Or something to that effect.

The Dip isn't like that. The Dip is about knowing when to quit.

The main point I got from this book is that if you quit when you're down, you'll always have some regrets. He suggests you should only quit when you're at the top of your game, because then you know you're quitting for the right reasons: because you want to do something else, not because you're just discouraged. Because everyone knows it's hard to make the right choices for the right reasons when you're upset.

What's interesting to me about dealing with setbacks is how much I've learned and yet, I still don't know anything. Sometimes I think that, the more I think about it, the worse my decisions get.

Sure, I've surprised myself over and over. The first time I had a major setback, I was fatalistic and depressed. Then I rationalized, found other things I loved to do, and rationalized some more.

I was surprised to find I could love to do so many different kinds of things.

Looking back now, I never really gave up, but I didn't really keep going, either. I just kind of held onto the dream and put it in my jewelry box. Sometimes I take it out and look at it, but mostly it's just nostalgia for something old and tarnished.

That was before I started doing science.

***

My first major setback in science wasn't about science so much as it was about politics. I went with my gut reaction; I put my nose to the grindstone; I got mad and used my anger.

And that more or less worked out just fine.

Not exactly ideal or a fun time, but I had a clear goal in mind, I set my sights on it, ate my power bars and worked around the clock to show that no matter what anybody said about me, they couldn't sneeze at my science.

I was surprised at how angry I could get, and how I could use that as fuel.

***

The next setback was harder because I felt that my life as a scientist was being shortchanged; I was being treated badly. I said Oh no, Not Again, and I left. I rationalized it as being equal parts about me and the science I was doing. I was very invested in it. I've always found it's easier to stand up for something or someone other than myself. So that helped get me out of an abusive situation, but really I was able to do it because I rationalized that I was shepherding what I thought was an important finding. I rationalized it as not really being just about me, but in reality, I was watching myself get beaten down, and I needed an excuse to get out.

Then I had really serious scientific setbacks in the sense that I had gone out on a limb with a telescope and I was trying to point and wave and say Hey, you've gotta come look at this! but everyone was too busy looking at the tree and they didn't want to see where I was pointing. They weren't mean about it, they just ignored me or said I seemed a little bit crazy.

But still, I kept on fighting. I started blogging and I was very philosophical about all of it. I focused on people I admired, both scientists and non-scientists, and how they had all gotten through setbacks and succeeded anyway.

The idea being to view every hump, no matter how tall, as just a bump in a very long road.

So I got past that bump and then there was another bump and it looked exactly the same and I felt like I had taken a wrong turn somewhere. I thought whoa, am I trapped in some kind of loop here? Didn't I just do this bump?

And then I started to realize that you can keep powering through, up and over, and you can get people to help you, etc. but it does make you tired. And it's actually kind of boring.

Persevering seems glamourous at first (Cue the Montage!). But then, it's really not. It's actually just really tedious. And unlike a montage getting ready for the big fight or the dance recital or the romantic speech in the rain, persevering is infinite. Nobody can tell you when it will be over.

Then I learned that some people will think you're lazy or pessimistic if you say "Hey, I need a rest".

But if you don't take a break when you need one, it's basically impossible to climb up anything for a while. You start looking for a way to go around the hump, and maybe it takes longer but it will eventually get you to the other side.

So now I'm on the other side of the latest big hump, but I don't really feel any better because there's no celebration ticker-tape parade. And I know there's more where humps where that came from.

***

What's sad to me is how our culture views setbacks: it's all about the end.

We seem to see everything through a movie lens: if it has a happy ending, then you made the right choice. But, if the ending is just "okay", then, my friend, you can expect to be second-guessed. It couldn't have been that big of a deal, they say, because you're still here! You must be exaggerating.

So here you are, panting on other side of the biggest hump in your life, and the important thing is that you're still in one piece.

But nobody cares about that. Or maybe they just can't identify? Your friends will pat you on the back and then get on with their lives.

What our culture really cares about is the photo-finish: you're supposed to die trying, or at least be wiling to die. But mostly you're supposed to grasp that trophy and hold it high! Smile pretty!

Except there's no trophy besides being able to say you survived.

What I still don't understand is that while science is all about the journey, getting a job is not about the journey. Getting a job is about the end. The end of being a postdoc. The long-awaited, much-coveted, highly unlikely victory. And if your work isn't published, if you don't get the tenure-track faculty position, it's like you never did anything. You might as well be dead.

I don't know of a way to point and wave and say, Hey! Look at what I did! See how I came, that route there? See all the cool things I learned? ... And shouldn't the journey itself count for something? Wouldn't you rather have ideas and experience than the perfect pedigree?

But everyone is too busy looking at the trees.

So am I on top of the hump, quitting for the right reasons? A month ago, I would have said yes, definitely.

But some days I wonder if I'm still in a Dip.

Then again, I read a statistic the other day that the odds of becoming tenure-track faculty in the biosciences now are pretty much on par with the odds of becoming a successful rock star. Seriously, if someone had told me it was that much of a long shot, I would never have made it this far.

There was an episode of Grey's Anatomy recently that has been haunting me. It's a cancer patient who explains how, past a certain point, hope is scary. It's so true. And ironic, because I've been accused of everything: being too pessimistic, being too naive, being too stubborn, quitting too easily.

Hope is the scariest thing, because it's very hard to learn how to let it go.

Little throwaway.

Reminded by this post, I wanted to write about a talk I saw this week.

My department, as I've mentioned before, has very few women faculty. However, of late we have one seminar series that includes, in little bursts, several women speakers in a row from other places. This was one of those weeks when we got to see an unusually successful FSP.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed her talk. Her science was cool, and she's gotten a lot of rewards and awards for it along the way (and is tenured faculty at VeryGoodU).

Having said that, she did a lot of things wrong in her talk. Things I've been told not to do.

Her opening slide was white with small black text, no images, nothing catchy. UGH.

She apologized a lot, and laughed nervously a couple of times in this very particular way that I've only ever seen women do (which I was particularly taught to stop doing for that reason).

Perhaps most distractingly for me, she was wearing a t-shirt, and kept standing in such a way that I felt like I had no choice but to get an eye-full of the outline of her not particularly attractive boob. I kept wondering if she was doing this on purpose or was not aware of it. And thinking, BOOB, BOOB, please put away your boob!

So to sum up, she was not professionally dressed or using her body language to convey expertise or confidence, and her slides sucked.

But I couldn't help thinking that while her stuff was cool, and she seemed smart, I think I'm those things too (plus I'd like to think I give better talks-?).

So I couldn't help feeling just sick with the unfairness of it. I found myself wondering why she gets to do her science at such a high level, and receive all these awards, and I don't get anything but discouragement.

Granted, she came up at a different time, in a different sub-field, and who knows what other factors are involved in who her mentors were, funding, etc.

So here's the thing. I'm glad she's doing good science, setting a great example and all. Yay, role models.

--------------------------------------------

But coincidentally this week, the flip side. If it's timing, it was a small window of timing.

This week I also had a conversation with a retired professor who had just a miserable, sexist experience in her time coming up (before the woman speaker I mentioned above). Ultimately, she moved into more adminstrative and teaching work, a slightly different career than her research, just because it was the best way available to her to get away from all the harassment and discrimination.

Perhaps the saddest thing to me was that here I found someone who understands what I'm going through because she's been there too. And I was surprised because my story literally made her cry.

She said it just breaks her heart to hear that things are not really that much better (maybe these things happen less frequently, but they still happen).

And yet, most people don't believe me when I say in my experience, things have not improved much for women at all, as long as these things are still going on.

-----------------------------------

So I found myself watching during this talk, and trying to figure something out. One of the things I've been doing lately is trying to develop the equivalent of gaydar for women-who-get-it.

I had the impression that this woman was one of those Deniers, because I noticed something very subtle in her talk.

When she presented work done by a male postdoc, she used his name and said a little about him (in a couple of cases she actually told an anecdote that involved alcohol). She apparently didn't present any work done by women, because she didn't mention any women's names, and sort of implied it was all done by (a couple or three) guys.

So I thought, great, her lab is exclusively male (unlikely, but possible).

At the end of her talk, she mentioned on the acknowledgment slide "Oh yeah, and this one part I showed you was done by (girl's name)." Like a little throwaway, an aside.

That part was actually not a minor part, and generated probably the most questions out of anything in the talk. It was an interesting, unusual result that she plans to work on in her Future Directions, much more so than anything the guys had done.

I strongly suspect she's not aware that she's doing this. And probably neither was anyone else in the room. But I swear, if I could have recorded the talk, I could freeze-frame the parts of it and point them out to you.

--------------------

So I do kind of wish we could have some kind of pin so we could identify each other as women-who-get-it. It could be something very small. But it would be helpful to know who is sympathetic and who is just completely oblivious to it all.

At one point we talked about making t-shirts that say "This is what a female scientist looks like", and I see now they are actually available online, good on the person who did that.

Maybe I'll buy one when I quit science and come out of the closet. Except it will have to say "Former Female Scientist".

Jealousy.

Hard not to notice several of my male peers getting away with, or even kudos for, stuff that is considered immature or unprofessional if I do it.

Example: a friend who is working on a manuscript and about to submit to a C/N/S journal.

Got the green light to submit, but hasn't yet even formatted the figures and has been working from a draft with everything as Powerpoint slides.

My advisor won't even discuss figures with me, much less a draft of a paper, until it looks like a paper.

I've tried before to get feedback on Powerpoint slides, so as to avoid re-making figures over and over and over, but it's always treated like I'm showing preliminary data instead of something I've actually reproduced several times.

If I reformat and label everything, I might be lucky enough to schedule a meeting.

This has been true for the last several types of things like this I've done, including grant applications, etc. with different advisors.

Interesting to me that appearance seems to matter maybe even more than substance sometimes, but it depends on whose substance we're talking about.

....

Meanwhile I am trying to forget that I know about two other male postdocs who are getting or about to get their papers published in C/N/S journals.

In one case, the postdoc was born in another country and has been in the US about 10 years. His English skills are weak, so the PI wrote all the text and had a huge influence on how the paper came together (what went in the figures, designing the model to interpret the data, etc.).

In the other case, the postdoc did everything himself. The PI is making phone calls on his behalf to make sure that when they address the reviews on the paper, the editor will accept it.

I've never had anyone do either of those things for me. I'm pretty sure I won't ever.

---

It's also hard not to notice that one of my other female postdoc friends has had a draft of a manuscript ready for a year, and her advisor keeps changing the plans.

I can't help thinking this is all the damned-if-you-do-or-don't scenario as usual.

I've noticed that many PIs seem to exploit their female postdocs more, want to get as much out of us as possible, but always with their own gain in mind and not our career success.

If we try to tell them what we think we need in order to succeed, we're being bitchy, confrontational, disagreeable, or 'hard to work with.'

And if we don't, we're screwed. Our papers get delayed, sometimes by years, and when they're finally published it's in 2nd-tier (or lower) journals.

Meanwhile the male postdocs get patted on the head, promoted, and encouraged when they're not performing to the same level. They aren't asked to perform at a higher level, and they aren't even sure they want careers in academia.

...

I have another friend who is reluctantly trying to get a paper accepted at a C/N/S journal because the PI wants him to.

This same PI is constantly complaining that her female postdocs aren't motivated enough, or are lazy, or aren't sure what they want to do with their careers.

But she has willfully and continually ignored my friend telling her he's not sure he wants to stay in academic science. When he says this, she says "Oh you don't mean that."

She did the same thing to a previous male postdoc who ended up going to industry.
Despite all the warning signs, she was shocked when she found out, and still hasn't bothered to process what it meant.

...

Hypothesis 1: If you're a male postdoc and you aren't sure you want a career in academia, or the PI thinks you're somehow deficient, you get more help and promotion.

Hypothesis 2: If you're a female postdoc, chances are good that your PI will delay submitting your papers longer, and when they're published they'll be in a slightly lower tier journal.

And all the studies on pipelines are asking why women don't seem to publish as much or as high impact as men do?

Anybody notice that at the postdoc level, this is determined more by the PI than by the postdoc?

Sigh.

Response to Distraught grad student

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

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

My heart goes out to you.

Dear Insomniac,

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

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

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

All of that said, your situation sounds pretty bad.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Basically, you can stick your neck out.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Option 3: Switch to another lab.

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

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

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

Option 4: Transfer to another graduate school.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Option 5: Quit.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Response to Comments on Cover Letters

Badbug,

Thanks, that helps a lot! I guess when I applied for jobs before (after my first postdoc publication, as suggested by Anonymous #1), I did write kind of a mini-scientific biography of where I came from, why I got into science and why I'm currently in my particular field, what got me interested in that, etc.

I think I will have work on how to making it sound short and sweet, even though it's a little more complicated than that.

Someone said to me the other day that I'm "too honest." So there you go: I suck at lying. That must be why I find this part difficult. But see the comment from Anonymous #1, who thinks I should quit academia just because I find this part difficult. Challenging. Let's say it's challenging.

Anonymous #1,

You come off sounding pretty negative but I don't think you mean to be. Yes, this part is painful to me. That's partly because I'm doing it with very little mentoring/support.

No, I don't like the attitude that just because one part of your job is hard you should run away from it. Most things that have been hard for me, I've gotten better at them through practice.

Actually you might have seen, there was a little blurb in Science recently about how chess masters are good because they PRACTICE. Past a certain point, everyone is talented. The ones who win are the ones who practice the most. This is my general approach to life.

Yes, I have long suspected that some people don't read cover letters at all. But I know some people do. However, you make a very good point to try to include any pertinent information in the research proposal even if it's in the cover letter, since they are more like to read the research proposal than the cover letter.

Anonymous #2,

I didn't think it was limited to females, but it is always comforting to hear that other people have had this problem. I find it interesting that your committee helped you with this, though. Maybe I wasn't like this in grad school, but my committee, while generally helpful scientifically, was no help whatsoever on career advising. The main thing I got from your comment is to discuss "motivations" and "help from other people."

One of the things I've been struggling with is who would actually be willing and able to help me with my application package. The first time I applied for jobs I had at least two new Asst. Profs look at my research proposal, and I took all their advice but didn't get any interviews. Needless to say I won't ask them again, but seeing how they just went through the application process, I guess I thought they would know, and they were very willing to (try to) help.

This time, I was thinking I would try to get people who have done the hiring rather than the applying. But I don't know too many people who have sat on hiring committees, at least not in my field, and the ones I do know are not good mentor types. At all. Either they're not available, or they're incapable of giving advice.

You know, the kind who think that good professors are just born knowing how to do everything, not that any of this can or should be taught. What are people like that doing in academia, one might ask? But they are pretty good at research, and they were hired in an era when mentoring wasn't even a vocabulary word yet. They certainly were never trained in teaching or mentoring!

Phd Mom,

That's awesome, I will definitely try that. I do think the righteous indignation concept works. I fall into this trap a lot, that I've done a lot more than I have effectively broadcasted, because formal communication in science is pretty limiting, in my opinion.

So unless someone asks, I might not have a way to tell them and they would definitely not have a way to know.

Left out.

I haven't been reading enough blogs lately, so I guess I missed the invitation.

The sheer length of The Leaky Pipeline post here depresses me.

I found it via this Scientiae blog carnival thing, which I guess is pretty new.

Maybe I will submit something for the next one. I tend to write a lot when I'm too depressed to work at night.

I'm too depressed to work right now.