My best mentor

This year has been the fastest year ever. I can't believe it's almost Thanksgiving.

I've mentioned before that my best mentors were not in science. I'm going to keep this short, with no details. I'm especially missing this person lately, and having crossed paths is one of the things I'm most thankful for.

She's about ten years older than me, and probably the most thoughtful teacher I've ever met. She's the kind of person who watches her students like a hawk, and then goes home and thinks incessantly about what they need to learn and how to teach it. She'll go out of her way to learn new things herself so that she can help her students with whatever they need. No one asks her to do this, and no one told her this was part of her job. This dedication really makes her outstanding.

Some days are better than others, but no one ever doubts that she loves her work and that this is the best way for her make the world a better place.

She leaves her crap, as they say, outside the door. And she expects her students to do the same. If she's not feeling up to the task, or is otherwise distracted, she'll have someone else take over her responsibilities, rather than flaking out or doing a half-assed job.

She expects the best from everyone, and accepts no excuses, while still being genuinely concerned and supportive.

She's ambitious, and sometimes works a little too hard. While I can see her struggling to learn how to be patient with herself, she's always infinitely patient with her students.

She knows who she is, and has her priorities straight, but she's not going to impose them on anyone else.

All of this, and she's not at all self-conscious despite being in a very visible position. She exudes a kind of confident calm that puts everyone around her at ease.

She makes everyone feel like we're each her favorite student, while giving everyone enough attention and encouragement that there's no jealousy at all.

***

Looking back over this list of warm fuzziness, I still think one of the critical problems in science is the central conflict of interest built into the assumption of a mentoring relationship with the PI of the lab.

The best mentors I've had were always people whose own careers did not depend at all on my accomplishments.

All they asked of me was my continued effort.

And we knew that I was free to leave at any time. But I didn't want to, because they were awesome.

What I got from them in return for my hard work was a generosity of spirit that I think is impossible in a system where the PI's success rests far too heavily on the shoulders of the mentee, who in turn is shackled to the PI even if they're not getting what they need to make progress.

***

I miss my best mentor, and think of her often.

Response to comments & Mad Men

Kea, you're right. I tried it both ways. I did tell them my funding was running out. They either didn't care, didn't believe me, or just plain rejoiced.

FrauTech, you're also right. Older women think that because we're ungrateful, they're not obliged to be sympathetic or helpful at all.

***

As an aside- did any of you see Mad Men this week? (warning: I'm trying not to spoil it for those who haven't seen it yet, but I don't know if I achieved sufficient ambiguity)

I just love how Peggy deals with a situation and then Joan gives her an earful about how that didn't really fix anything and maybe made things worse for both of them. For all of them.

I love how the show illustrates the multiple layers of catch-22: that women have had to resort to these convoluted sneaky machinations to get back at men who screwed them over, because taking the high road (and taking advice from their male bosses) only seems to dig a deeper hole.

But that reduces them, essentially, to backstabbing manipulation. Also, it requires a lot of access, pre-existing organizational knowledge, and ingenuity.

And Joan isn't mentoring Peggy. Don Draper is mentoring Peggy.

***

Anyway, yes of course when there are multiple available benches, someone as proactive and assertive as me would certainly just pick one out and start using it.

But haven't you ever joined a lab only to find they hadn't made room for you to work? Or told you to "sit tight"?

I thought that science was so overcrowded that by now that had happened to everyone at some point in their career!

Anon 2:35, Just reading your comment makes me feel like blogging is worth continuing even when sometimes from day to day I think it's just too hard to keep it up.

I'm always stunned when people say shit like that to me, at work or otherwise. Wish I had a way to instantly generate witty or cutting comeback remarks to turn the tables on those jerks!

Bee, I'm not sure I understood your comment. You mean women have this problem all over? Or getting crappy advice has nothing to do with being in a male-dominated field? Because that was sort of my point. I think women in women-dominated fields have a totally different experience (and I know a few areas of science where all the bigwigs are women).

Anon 7:37, thanks! Glad you liked it.

Advice well-meant

A comment on the last post gave me the idea that maybe I should say something explicitly here, since I'm not sure I've said it before.

When does it make sense for young female scientists to take advice from young or old men?

I ask this question because the answer is unequivocally: NOT ALWAYS.

But I think this question deserves more dissection.

Coming from a field that is almost exclusively men, I had two choices when I needed mentoring:

1. Ask men in my field
2. Ask anyone outside my field

Now, obviously, if it's a field-specific thing, you have to look harder to find outsiders who have parallel problems in their own field.

For example, smaller fields have different problems than bigger fields. Younger disciplines have different problems from older disciplines.

I've written about this recently, using computer/tech as an example of a younger discipline that may come to experience some of the same issues that much older disciplines, like Biology, have long held deeply entrenched as part of the traditional hazing.

So you might meet someone who seems older and wiser yet similar to you in important ways, like personality type or country of origin or gender. You might try to ask them for advice, thinking they might be a good mentor.

And you might still feel like you're trying to have a conversation with a wire stretched between couple of tin cans. Where yours is located on the moon.

For example, I tried to ask an older woman from a different field for advice on how to handle sexual harassment from my advisor. I didn't feel comfortable talking to any of my male mentors or colleagues about this issue. I told MrPhD and he didn't know what to say, so he just said something like, "Oh my god. That sucks." So I thought maybe I needed a female mentor in this case.


MsPhD: I don't know what to do. I've tried dressing conservatively but he still doesn't take me seriously.

LadyProf: Oh, just play along.

MsPhD: You're kidding, right?

LadyProf: Aren't you? He's not really that bad, is he?

MsPhD: Um, yeah, he really is. That's why I was asking.

LadyProf (stunned): Um, have you been to the Office of Sexual Harrassment?

MsPhD: Yeah, they were no help. They said I could file a complaint but they can't protect me from any backlash.

LadyProf: That's true. They can't do anything about that.

***

Did that conversation make me feel better? No.

Did she give me any concrete advice or support? No.

Did I feel like I could approach her again about similar problems or if things escalated? No.

Did I have this identical conversation over and over again with many older women professors before I finally gave up? Yes.

Did some of them share their own horrifying anecdotes, as if commiseration was going to make me somehow feel better? Yes.

Did it make me feel better? No. It made me feel worse.

***

It's often hard to get to know people well enough, and build enough trust, to find out whether there are similar problems across fields. It can take a long time, and some scientists find it too painful to even think about these issues. Those kinds of people, even if they're friends, aren't going to be much help when you're deep in the mire.

But asking men in your own field, when you're a woman, can yield little or bad advice.

I recall one conversation I had with a male colleague when I started in a new lab.

MsPhD: Hey, did you get a bench assigned to you when you first started? Or did you have to ask?

Dude: Um, I didn't have to ask.

MsPhD: Well, I don't have a bench and I still don't have one, even though I asked. Any suggestions for what I should do about that?

Dude (baffled): I don't know. I didn't have to ask.

***

Now, was this an oversight on my advisor's part? Maybe.

Just bad luck on my part? Maybe.

Was my colleague particularly unsupportive? Not really. He had his own shit to worry about.

Were there any women I could ask if anything similar had happened to them? No.

*****

Here's another little story that I think also illustrates how confusing things can be. I consulted several male assistant professor friends for advice.


MsPhD: Well, my grant got rejected.

NiceGuy: Welcome to the club. Want me to read the reviews and tell you what I think?

MsPhD: That would be really helpful, thanks!

NiceGuy: Oh wow, these reviews are really good. I'm sure you'll get it next time. You're really close. You just need a better letter of support from your advisor.

MsPhD: But he's refusing to write me one.

NiceGuy: Oh. Well I guess you should move and get a new advisor then.

MsPhD: Okay. I'll think about it.


I had this same conversation with several different assistant professor guys. I mentioned this to a woman who sits on search committees regularly, because she asked what happened with my grant.


MsPhD: So I've been told that I should revise and resubmit, but I have to get someone to sign on as Co-PI.

MentorLady: Oh, you can't do that.

MsPhD: Why not? At least two of my male mentors told me to do that. Actually maybe three or four.

MentorLady: Yeah, that will help you but only in the short term. But you'll never be able to get another grant after that so it won't help you in the long run. I mean, you can ask. But you'll never get another grant.

MsPhD: Really? Why not?

MentorLady: Because you're a woman. No one will see you as independent. I see this happen all the time. You'll never be able to get a faculty position and you won't be able to take the money with you anyway. Besides, if you switch labs, they'll want you to work on their projects. They won't sign onto yours.

MsPhD: I'm sure you're right. What else am I supposed to do?

MentorLady: Apply for jobs and hope for the best.

MsPhD: What if that doesn't work? My fellowship is running out. And I'm not eligible for anything else.

MentorLady: You'll think of something. You're smart.

MsPhD: Um, thanks.

****

These are rather trite examples and may not best illustrate the point I was trying to make here. There are many others, like asking my male colleagues at a meeting whether they ever felt left out of the loop when the senior boys' club discusses things over beer.


Guys: Yeah, you missed a great time last night. It was so cool, Drs. So and So and So were all there...

MsPhD: But I wasn't invited. I didn't even know you were going.

Guys: Oh, well you'll have to go with us next time. You're always welcome to join us. You know that!

MsPhD: Actually, I didn't know that. And now the meeting is over.

Guys: Well there's always next year.

MsPhD (silently): Not really. I won't be here next year. I don't have any more funding.


My point is, while there are all kinds of problems and all kinds of people you could ask, it's not just as simple as finding other women or asking people in your field.

If you're the only data point, you can't draw a line. You can't know if you're being treated differently because of your gender, or what you might be missing out on, or whether any of that is deliberate.

You can't know what tactics to use to approach solving these new problems, because it's uncharted territory. Especially if you're one of the only women in your field.

Sure, you can rely on anecdata from other model systems where similar things have been reported, but there's no placebo-controlled phase III spreadsheet you can reference for potential side-effects that occurred in a small percent of patients.

And meanwhile, you're staying up nights worrying about this, when really supposed to be putting your time and mental energy into analyzing data for your.... science.

When navigating your career becomes a full-time project in and of itself, and your data all seem to be garbage in/garbage out, it's no wonder women working in male-dominated fields are more likely to drop out. This happened to me over and over and over again, where I got advice from my junior prof male role models, only to have my female mentors point out why it would never work for me to follow in their footsteps because of hidden bear traps I didn't even know about.

There is something to be said for critical mass and safety in numbers.

At least with numbers, you know where you stand.

Response to comments on last post

Sorry to have to do this in a separate post, but Blogger ate my last attempt and now there are even more comments here...

Becca wrote: Oh the horror! He offered you a job- how very offensive. ;-)
Mind you, it sounds like this particular fellow was a jerk and managed to blow the communication badly. Maybe there was some body-language



Becca, it wasn't a tenure-track job. And I have it in writing.



Kea wrote:the MAJORITY of women with jobs have partners in the field, or a closely related one

which also kind of answers profgrrrl's question about how common it is. This is also the case in my field (and Kea and I are in different fields).



geekmommy prof: I misunderstood. I thought your comment implied that you both have tenure-track jobs. That is what I mean when I'm talking about couple hires.

you also wrote:

you present your advisor as a spineless, gutless, completely uncreative shmuck. Yet he must have had some redeeming qualities at least when he was young, otherwise he would not have been hired

He had pedigree. And he does have some skillz.

He is also uncreative, extremely clueless in many ways, and a big fat liar. But I never said spineless or gutless. In fact I think it takes great courage (or arrogance?) to be a brazen, self-serving liar.

Good luck to you and your group.



Anon 6 pm wrote: Another implicit assumption you are making is that anytime someone makes a spousal hire, someone else does not get hired. Being on the other side of the hiring committee, I can assure you that this is not true. I have seen several occasions when deans have opened up specific slots for spousal hires from some sort of faculty-retention fund, and these positions are positions the department would have never gotten otherwise; the money would have simply been lying around in the university

This may be so at very rich places, but in the current climate, and at most universities, it is either/or, not both.

Very few schools have a lot of money "lying around" with which to hire tenure-track faculty and give them startup.




Lou Dobbs: you bring up the important aspect that being a woman in any department can be crazymaking. I already had that as a postdoc. I think this is a MAJOR reason why a lot of talented women leave academic science. On top of having to defend your research to peers both internally and externally, women have to fight an extra battle for credibility in the career path just because we're women.

I lost.



Anon 6:02, thanks for commiserating! sorry you are getting this too. congrats on the job! you're one of the lucky few. Very few.




prodigal academic wrote: The employer doesn't care about sampling the whole wide world of available employees.

This is a major point for women and minorities and why our numbers in the tenure-track are not representative of our numbers coming into the pipeline.

particularly in regions where professional jobs are difficult to find.

This is actually a believable argument, and it makes sense to me. But I've seen a lot of spousal hires in major, multi-institution cities with a high density of job opportunities.




Anon 3:47 wrote: In addition to dealing with male scientists in her department with super-egos, now she even has to deal with people like you!

Um, no, she doesn't. I'm not there.

Don't you think you are being hypocritical here by assuming that just because a woman was hired as a spousal hire, she has no merit?

I never said that, actually. I've been talking more in general about whether this women are a) willing or b) able to act as mentors to younger women, given that they got their jobs via a rather specialized route that may not apply to their mentees.

In my field, when I went looking for women mentors to help me with my applications for faculty positions, I realized that almost none of them had gotten their jobs by applying on their own. I asked anyway; they had no idea how to advise me.

And actually I also want to point out that all of my spousal hire complaints apply to men, too. It's just that in my field it's still mostly the husbands being recruited and the wives following; others have posted here (and on previous posts) that they know of several examples in other disciplines where the wife was recruited and the husband followed (as in geekmommyprof's case, except that her spouse took a non-tenure track position).

I've read FSP's blog for a long time, as have most of my readers (I think). I often find her posts inspirational, but she's coming from a slightly(?) older generation, a very different discipline, and she's just one person. She has been highly successful, I think, and may not be representative of the average experience of most women in science. Neither would I say that I am representative of the "average experience". But on the spectrum from me to her, I think we both have valid points to make, and deserve to be heard.

The difference between respecting your mentors and BS-ing your way to the top

One of my biggest pet peeves is people who can't see shades of gray.

These binary-brains think that lack of ass-kissing equates with disrespect.

It does not equate.

Personally, I think that you respect your mentors enough if you take most of their advice, discuss it with them, argue back occasionally, but mostly seek and take their advice (granted, everyone has a subjective impression of what it means when we say "most")....

I've been thinking about this from the perspective of being a mentor as well as having mentors. Mostly, I prefer mentors who see through bullshit, who don't want their asses kissed and rubbed and polished.

Sadly, you can't always pick the people who have power over your career. They may not be mentors, but they may need a good butt-rub to get moving on your behalf.

Maybe you didn't realize what you were getting into; maybe you just overestimated your own ability to put up with it.

Or maybe, as has happened to me more than a few times, your mentors just disappointed you. You took their advice; it failed. They say they don't like bullshit, but they fall for the brown-nosing from the guy at the bench next to yours (even when it's patently obvious to the objective observer that it's not sincere, just a well-acted manipulation tactic).

So I don't like it when my mentees, or anyone for that matter, give me false compliments in an effort to win my favor or recommendation. I say no, I won't write that letter for you, and please, stop trying to butter me up. I'm not a muffin, cupcake.

But sometimes I do wonder if my mentors know how much I genuinely appreciate their efforts, especially the ones who really gave me advice in good faith, tried to encourage me, and sure yeah, maybe none of it worked out like we hoped.

Every once in a while I'll send them a card or an email and just say Thanks, I appreciate it.

To suggest that doing more than that is actually necessary, even required, for success, just means the quality of people in science is rather low.

Seems to support the idea that science is full of insecure liars who can't tell the difference between a fake compliment and a real one.

And what does that say about their ability to evaluate any other kind of data?

Building confidence

In response to a comment from 2nd year physics grad student Becky:

Random question - You have very good confidence in your abilities. Some of your commenters seem to take offense at this, but I think it's a highly useful trait to have as a scientist.

I, on the other hand, feel like a moron everyday. How did you develop such a positive attitude about yourself?

Here are my thoughts on this. But I'm going to start with instructions to mentors, and then move onto instructions for students.

3 things for mentors to do:

1. Encourage small accomplishments early and often

The people who trained me early on showed me how to do everything. They were patient with letting me practice until I got things right, but they supervised me until that happened. And then they said, "Just like that. Good job."

Ahh.

It doesn't take that much to see if the student is following directions and executing steps correctly, but it really helps to give that confirmation and validation that the effort is appreciated and noticed.

2. Give independence in gradually increasing amounts

I was allowed to be pretty independent in the lab pretty early on. I loved this about lab.

I grew up with very little personal freedom and really controlling parents. According to my parents, I was Stupid, I was Lazy, I was Ugly, I was Fat, etc. I was always scrambling trying to please them, which I would later realize was impossible anyway.

In school, I was Student. It was a role we all played. Show up, take notes, maybe ask a question if you're feeling brave. Go home, do homework, pass tests. Check.

In lab, I was suddenly Person. I was treated more like an adult than ever before, and I was amazed. I could come in, do my thing, maybe show someone my results before I left, maybe even get a "Good job!" and then go home. Eventually I would finish whatever I was doing and be taught a new task.

I liked the idea that eventually I would learn enough tasks to be able to work longer and longer without having to ask anyone anything.

I realized later that this was probably pretty unusual. I worked in small labs and big labs, but the people who trained me were, with no exceptions I can think of, both remarkably rigorous and extremely generous with their time.

Nowadays, I don't see this very often. I regularly see poorly trained postdocs training students poorly; I regularly see grad students flailing in the wind because they have no one to ask and no idea what they're doing. It's no wonder grad students lack confidence in that kind of environment.

Trust me when I tell you, the good labs are NOT like that. They're hard to find, though.

3. Quit biting their heads off

Recently, I've been involved in mentoring students in other labs. These students find me, and maybe they don't even tell their advisor I've been helping them out. In every single case, at some point their advisor blows up at them.

The reasons an advisor might yell at a student include but are not limited to:

-advisor is crazy/stressed out and it has nothing to do with the student

-advisor made a mistake but would rather lash out than admit it

-student was flaky (irresponsible and/or passive-aggressive rebellion)

-student was willfully disobedient (some PIs can deal with this when it is justified; some can't no matter what the reason)

-student made a mistake on something important

But it's really only the last one that I want to talk about today.

Students often make one major mistake: they don't always ask for help. This pisses us older folks off, because we interpret it as meaning any or all of the following:

-student is arrogant and doesn't think we know anything worthwhile

-student is embarrassed to be asking, which means we're too intimidating (not a good thing, we blame ourselves when this happens)

-student is so clueless that they don't even know to ask, which means we've been sucky mentors (not a good thing, we blame ourselves when this happens)

Sometimes it's really really hard to keep your calm when a student makes an otherwise totally avoidable mistake. Especially if they could have asked you and didn't, and you're not sure why.

However. In our role as mentors, we have to recognize that Every. Single. Time. you blow up at a student, especially a new student, it is probably our own fault.

I'll say that again. It's YOUR fault, mentors. YOU NEED TO KEEP YOUR CALM. They're just students, they can't really be expected to know as much as you. Get it?

Now, having said that, I've had students who were such bleeping hothouse flowers they couldn't take any kind of criticism. No matter how gently put, if I told them they did something wrong or needed to do something over again, they would just freeze up.

I've tried "Here, you want to avoid that because of XYZ, try it this way." Nope, too sensitive for that.

Or, "Okay, so that's not quite right, next time I'll show you what I want you to do differently." Nope, too sensitive for that too.

You know, they tend to be the straight-A types. I don't know what to do with them. I tend to think science is not the place for people who can't deal with making mistakes and getting honest feedback on their performance.

3 things for students to do:

1. Buck up, cowgirl

If you're not used to criticism, get used to it. Those of us who played on sports teams or did any kind of competitive performing arts are used to being given feedback with few frills attached.

The trick is, and I'm going to say this in all caps, IT'S NOT PERSONAL.

Okay? Get it? It's about your work, it's not about you. We're not saying you're not good enough, we're saying "Here's how you do it."

It's instruction, it's feedback, it's not that we think you're stupid or incapable.

The good mentors know that you can't possibly know these things unless we teach you, show you, and let you practice and ask questions. That's our job. Your job is to keep trying until you get it right. Even if we tell you over and over all the little ways you can improve. We really do want to see you succeed at everything you do. But we understand that research involves an awful lot of falling on your face. All of us were grad students once, too.

2. If you're not sure, Look it up, and Then Ask

Eventually, we want you to get to the point where you can look things up and then decide for yourself whether the answers you find in the literature or via google make any sense or not. Half the time, they're probably wrong. But by the time you're 2 years into grad school, you should be able to look things up on your own without too much effort (thank you, internet).

If for some reason you can't find what you need in the lab protocol book or on the internet, or if what you find there makes no sense, then ask us.

If you don't take notes, or don't try to look things up, or don't ask in an intelligent way ("Hey, I'm trying to do X, I'm not sure how to do Y, would you have time to show me? When would be a good time?") eventually we will get annoyed with your laziness and disrespect and we will treat you the same way in return.

Some of us will give you references instead of helping you because we can't stand talking to disrespectful, ungrateful students.

Others will just plain talk down to you. There are two ways of dealing with those types.

1) Look things up on your own (and find other people to ask)
2) Get upset.

I recommend choice #1. People still talk to me like I'm an idiot on a regular basis. And eventually I realized that those types talk to everyone that way. I realized it's not me, it's them. Use this as your mantra when you're being treated like a moron.

Note: students usually feel like morons when they're treated like morons. It may have nothing whatsoever to do with your actual abilities and everything to do with the people around you being jerks.

3. Whatever you do, don't guess

Nothing pisses us off more than when students are too lazy to either look things up or ask.

The central principle of research, as far as I can tell, is knowing what you know and what you don't knowm, and then figuring out how to fill in what you don't know.

This is true at all levels. PIs regularly make assumptions about what we know, and we're wrong All. The Time. The same is true for students. You might think you know more than you do, but more often than not, students think they know nothing. You are not alone in feeling that way.

I always say it's like learning a foreign language. At the beginning, you work on comprehension. You can read the words, you know what they mean. You hear the words, you know what they mean. But you're shy about speaking the language yourself. You don't have the accent. It's harder to use it than to understand it.

So yeah, it's rough at first, doing your own research independently. You will make mistakes. You will feel uncertain. Probably for a long time. That's OK. Your data should be telling you if you're on the right track.

If nothing is working, it helps to find people to mentor you (not in the vague MentorNet sense of the word). I mean people who are willing to answer your day-to-day questions about how to do things.

Later on, even if my questions were just, "I'm going to try this now, do you think it will work?" knowing full well that their answers might have no correlation with the outcome.

It still gave me more confidence, just to have said out loud "I'm going to try this now." And sometimes I got good advice that way before I made stupid mistakes. As you go along, you'll find the ratio of times they're right: times you're right shifts. At the beginning, they're usually right and you're usually wrong. By the end, you'll be right more often than they are.

I was lucky that I had people like this for most of my career, who were willing to let me bounce ideas off them, and willing to admit it when I was right (though not always).

When I reached the end of grad school and I didn't have anyone to help me in the lab, I realized I didn't need it anymore. Not in that lab, anyway, where I actually knew how to do everything our lab did (!). Sometimes you don't realize this until a new person joins and you start seeing them making all the same mistakes you made.

And if you become a postdoc, or start a new job, or a new project, the cycle starts over again. You ask stupid questions for a while, you feel bad having to ask but now you know it's part of the process. And then you go do some experiments on your own. Training wheels are off.

Eventually, you realize that when you're really doing research, NO ONE KNOWS THE RIGHT ANSWER. There an incredible freedom in that. All you can do, all anyone can do, is come up with a hypothesis, and then test it. But that's not the same as guessing.

You'll know you're there when you can design, execute and interpret experiments on your own. Even if someone tells you, before you even start doing it, that you're doing it all wrong. When you do it anyway, that's confidence. Even if you're not always right. Do the test.

Just for the fun of it?

Been thinking a lot again about the old "art for art's sake" part of doing science. In other words, just to know the answer, even if no one else knows or cares.

This is very similar to the pressure of blogging vs. writing just because I enjoy writing. Almost every time I sit down to write lately, I debate whether I should be writing here at all, or if I shouldn't just be writing in my journal for writing for my self's sake.

This analogy got me thinking again about the Journal of Visualized Experiments (as in, "By JoVE, I think she's got it!"). It hasn't really caught on yet, at least not in my little corner of science. But ever since it appeared, I've had real hope that it will fill a serious hole in science.

The thing is, no matter how carefully done, there is really no substitute for doing the experiment yourself, or short of that, witnessing it (live or recorded). JoVE is the opposite of science for science's sake: it's science for everyone else's sake.

My frustration with my PI lately mostly stems from this central problem of trust. My PI does not watch me do experiments. Therefore, my PI, being a control-freak, does not trust my results. Does not trust my skills as a scientist. Does not trust me.

And yes, after all the hard work I have been doing, yes that is depressing.

But it's not just my PI. I spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to convince not just my PI, but my scientific "peers" and "colleagues" (aka competitors and reviewers) that my results are real. They may be stranger than fiction, but the data are what the data are. And I might not be able to explain it all right now, but the default setting assumes that I can't be trusted to have at least, in good faith, done the best I could with the best of what's available right now.

And nevermind the part where I should be given a chance to continue to try to figure it the rest of it out, because I'm really the best person to do that.

But given all the hurdles to getting your science seen and respected by everyone else, wouldn't it be easier to just do it until you yourself are convinced? And screw the part where you're working your ass off trying to convince everyone else, when they're not even open-minded enough to appreciate how hard you've been working?

Especially if there's no jobs anyway? What the hell difference does it make if I piss away what's left of my funding just amusing myself playing with scientific toys until my time is up?

I wonder how many people are daily asking themselves these kinds of questions? Is it just me?

Lately I'm not sure what gets me to lab everyday. Sheer work ethic, I guess, to bring home a paycheck and health benefits, if not any sense of accomplishment or respect.

Sometimes I try to console myself that, even if it doesn't work well enough to convince anyone else, I should try to have fun doing it, at least maybe that would restore some sense of personal accomplishment (even if it's not professionally recognized). Sometimes this works, at least temporarily.

But I think the central hypocrazy is that constantly having to worry about how to convince everyone else is sucking all the fun out of it for me.

Is this what it's like for the rest of your career? Always worrying about what everyone else thinks? Or is it really true that you can hide in your little corner, do your little thing until you think it's good, and then put it out as an offering when think you can't possibly make it any better?

This is the part of mentoring that I never got. My thesis advisor was a hide-in-corner type. The GlamourMag wannabes tend to be the crowd-pleasing type. Guess which type has more funding?

I can't figure out how to reconcile these. The cycle is wearing me out. Here is a stripped-down version of how things have gone for me. This was sort of an interesting exercise. Maybe some of you will recognize it as familiar:

1. Have exciting idea for a way to answer a cool question.
2. Do experiment. Have fun doing it!
3. Get exciting result. Feel slightly nervous that it might never work again.
4. Mock up figure. Try to contain excitement.
5. Repeat experiment somewhat nervously.
6. Get reproducible result! Hooray!
7. Revise figure, rejoice in the scientific method!
8. Present figure to various people (including PI).
9. Receive criticism from various people (including PI). Feel slightly deflated but still determined.
10. Perform different experiments to address criticism, slightly annoyed but mostly confident that they will be consistent with original result.
11. Mock up supplemental figures.
12. Repeat supplemental experiments.
13. Get reproducible supplemental data. Phew!
14. Revise supplemental figures. Rejoice that the scientific method works!
15. Draft manuscript. This part is fun, too.
16. Submit manuscript to PI. Don't expect an immediate response, but need a break from looking at it myself.
17. Time passes. No response from PI. Not a big surprise.
18. Present work to other people; ask for comments on manuscript draft.
19. Receive feedback from other people (no response from PI). Some of the feedback is very positive! This is fun too!
20. Approach PI and ask if/when draft will be read.
21. Perform additional experiments as per feedback from other people. That was helpful; rejoice in the scientific community!
22. Get additional results. Make additional figures and supplemental figures.
23. Revise manuscript. Yes, glad we did that, but no, these additional results did not change the point of the paper. Maybe it is a stronger claim.
24. Resubmit revised manuscript to Journal of PI's Desk.
25. Commence Nagging.
26. PI reads manuscript, does not understand it.
27. Long meeting with PI. Leave thinking PI understands somewhat better.
28. Repeat steps 18-27.
29. Commence reading books on Negotiation.
30. Attempt to convince PI that it's time to submit manuscript.
31. Repeat steps 18-26.
32. Consider quitting science.
33. Write blog; visit therapist; cry a lot. Think about alternative careers.
34. Diagnosis major depression. Make appointment with psychiatrist.
35. Repeat steps 18-32.
36. Watch peers from other labs gets papers accepted into High Impact Journals.
37. Repeat steps 32-33.
38. Get asked if I'll be applying for jobs this year and did that paper ever get published?
39. Repeat steps 32-33.
40. Avoid confronting PI for fear of bursting into tears, yelling, or both.
41. Repeat steps 36-40.

Dear PI: it's your fault I'm depressed

Drugmonkey has an interesting post up about depressed trainees and what it's like to be the PI in this situation.

The comments devolved, as they usually do on scienceblogs, into some kind of childish argument, so I stopped reading them. But several people made interesting points before that happened.

This discussion seems very timely to me, since my therapist told me she thinks I have major depressive disorder, and last night the Southpark episode on alcoholism aired as a re-run.

Now I know what you're thinking, MsPhD is an alcoholic??? Well, no, I actually don't drink much and don't like to be drunk (too much of a control-freak, I guess). But I love the way the Southpark guys wrote about the 12-step program, as in making fun of the irrationality of "You are powerless" and "alcoholism is a disease" and how, even if it's partly true, that can be a completely dis-empowering attitude.

My point being that depression can fall into some of the same traps, i.e. that because it's a disease, you should put all your eggs into your psychiatrist's bag of pharmaceutical tricks, surrender to their higher power, and hope that like a magician's hat, you'll stick your hand in and pull out happiness.

Having said that, it's interesting to think that depression is what gets us trapped into negative thought patterns, not the other way around.

Or that it's a feedback loop that continues to get worse for biochemical reasons, even if you're only there because you fell into a psychological trap.

The idea that long-term depression can actually change your brain so that it doesn't function as well as it used to, that's just scary, especially to a scientist where creativity and problem-solving are key. That's the one reason I am considering trying anti-depressants. I never thought of depression as a neuro-degenerative disease.

I have definitely felt that, in these really dark days (and despite how it may appear on this blog, not all my days are bad ones), the worst part is feeling like I can't think.

Can't focus on making decisions about what to do next. Can't remember anything. Might be constantly repeating myself (I think I've blogged about this before...?).

I really HATE the feeling when someone is asking me something, and I know I did the experiment (or tried to), or read something relevant somewhere, but the details are just out of reach. And scientists being as they are, they won't take my word for it unless I can provide sufficient detail that I sound like I have enough expertise (or you know, a PhD).

Then, when I can't make decisions, I fall into these patterns of asking other people for advice (see under: blog comments).

This includes talking to my PI, who knows nothing about my project and more often than not, steers me into doing experiments that waste time, money, energy, and are totally uninformative and ultimately, unpublishable.

So the hardest part of my job, even when I am fully functional, is not choosing my own direction so much as (1) talking my PI out of stupid pointless or expensive time-wasters; (2) persuading my PI that I know what I'm doing and (3) that it's worth the investment. Because given the lack of mentoring, pretty much the only reason I'm still in this lab is to get my experiments paid for.

Having said that, arguing persuasively does not come naturally to me (case in point: blog comments). But it's especially fucking hard, I'm learning, when you're depressed.

So I end up feeling like I'm depressed because my PI is dragging me down.

So here's my analogy: it's like having an angry zombie chained to your leg. I'm trying to move forward with this huge weight to carry, while simultaneously making sure it doesn't bite off my head. I'm pretty sure I won't be able to cure this zombie and turn it back into a person, but until I can cut the chain, I'm stuck with it getting in my way.

...

It's possible, as my therapist pointed out, that I actually did get some good career advice from someone somewhere along the way, but in my depressed state I was unable to recognize it and instead fell into the same old patterns that my fucked-up family made me think were going to lead to success.

And maybe it's just the depression talking when I feel like I've been arguing as hard as I can for years. Reading books about how to argue more effectively. Taking classes on negotiating. And yet, I'm pretty sure that my PI is like most PIs (and parents): just not hearing me.

...

I was talking to a former alum from our lab the other day, and got some advice that absolutely will not work for me. NO, I will not wear cutesy clothes and try to charm my way into getting what I want from the PI. NO, I do not know how to "manipulate back" my manipulative PI. NO, standing my ground has NOT worked and has only led to enormous backlash, resentment, and my PI flat-out avoiding me and refusing to read my manuscripts. NO, I can't talk to my PI about my depression, because acknowledging any kind of emotional anything is deemed as a weakness, not a strength.

What has worked is also depressing: playing into my PI's comfort with the female stereotype by letting myself be steered right into the pitfalls.

In other words, I am "mentoring up" in the sense of trying to help my PI learn the hard way.

I am playing dumb. I am playing passive. And it is working better than anything else has, except that it's taking fucking forever.

And the truth is, because I'm already depressed, I don't have the energy or creativity to come up with a better plan right now.

So what I really resent is when other PIs assume that my situation is entirely my own fault for not having tried, you know, arguing. It's so frustrating, I just have to laugh.

And I really resent that if my PI chooses to say that I am lazy and "difficult", everyone will most likely believe it. The only way I could have effectively countered that argument would be a High Enough Impact Paper to show that while my PI might be unappreciative, I am at least highly accomplished.

Except for the part where everyone seems oblivious to the fact that the first hurdle in getting your work shown to the world is: your own PI.

So yeah, I'm depressed about all of that. And despite what many of you write about how I should get out ASAP, leaving the lab empty-handed will definitely not cure my depression anytime soon.

So what could my PI do? (for Drugmonkey, and those of you who might be wondering):

1. Recognize that the problem is at least partly you.

Yes, your trainees are younger. Yes, we have things to learn from your experience and yes, you take care of us in ways we probably won't fully appreciate unless we eventually have our own labs.

However, we do have unique insight. We do a lot of things you probably don't know how to do. We don't feel appreciated most of the time, and we don't feel encouraged.

Maybe you could encourage us, maybe you could take our word for it one time in ten.

Maybe you could ask for outside help when you're in over your head. Indeed, you could at least admit it when you're in over your head, instead of trying so hard to pretend like you know it all already. We don't, but you don't either, and we know it.

2. Pretend like we're in this together.

My PI does this sometimes, and I do find it oddly comforting, even knowing that it doesn't actually help in any real-world sense. At the end of the day, I'm the one who has to make my projects work.

But psychologically, it does help to think that it doesn't all fall on my shoulders, or that at least someone is standing beside me making sure I won't drop the ball.

3. Show, don't tell.

Lead by example. Don't be a fucking hypocrite. Don't tell us to do things you criticize in other people's papers when you see it presented in journal club. Don't just assume we respect you because of some hierarchical bullshit tradition.

We want to genuinely respect you for your integrity. We want you to be a role model.

Be a good one.

4. Listen.

One thing that stood out to me on my graduate school interviews years ago was how little any of the PIs asked me. I thought it was an interview, so they would ask questions and want me to do some talking.

No, what they wanted to do was talk at me. And I am pretty good at listening, so of course I got offers everywhere that I "interviewed". Perhaps it would be more accurate to say I "visited". I was never interviewed any of these places (maybe if they had realized who I am and how I think, I wouldn't have gotten in!).

So yes, out of necessity PIs are great at talking about their work. But when it comes to mentoring, listening is the number one tool you need.

I don't need you to listen to me talk about my emotional state. I need you to listen to me about my work. I need you to LISTEN TO ME ABOUT MY WORK. I need you to LISTEN TO ME ABOUT MY WORK.

Well anyway. I said it.

Response to several comments on last post

yolio- That's exactly the point of this post. NOBODY told me that you should choose your adviser rather than your research topic! It's actually kind of irrational, don't you think?

Perhaps relevant to our readers- Who told you? A faculty member? Friend from school? Friend of the family?

Anon- What if you're not working on XYZ and you have no interest in XYZ but the only "good" advisers work on XYZ? Might I be just as well off being bored making bagels as working on XYZ if I don't give a shit about it?

I think the big picture is that many people are NOT doing interesting science! Most people are doing "me too" science! Or "fund me please I'll do whatever is in style!" science!

And I really find disgusting the notion that I should have to work on something else just because the climate is foul and the mentoring missing in my field.

I mean, just think about that for a moment.

To me, this is the tragedy. Science could be making SO MUCH MORE PROGRESS if it weren't so supremely fucked up. We could have cured any number of diseases if it weren't for this "I gotta protect myself by finding a friendly mentor" limit on choosing a research topic, and the assumption that it's not just the ONLY but the "best" way to become a scientist. It may be nothing more than the best way to get a degree in how to do irrelevant science, as far as I can tell!

It's like that parable about the person who drops their keys on a dark street, but they keep looking around under the lamp. When someone asks why they're looking near the lamp they say, "But it's so dark where I actually dropped them!"

labrat- It has been suggested to me repeatedly that I should consider working for free. PIs already know it can be gotten under the right circumstances from desperate people.

It would be one thing if my adviser were a good mentor who had really tried to help me up to this point and failed due to outside circumstances and if I knew it would be temporary and I were guaranteed to get a job after a short period of volunteering. Unfortunately, that is NOT the case.

Anon @4:28 said:
Postdocs do rotations, but they are one or two years long. That's the beauty of a post-doc: since you already have your degree, if the situation sucks, you can walk away.

This is LUDICROUS. And perhaps most importantly, while it may be kind of true, apparently nobody has told any of the funding agencies. If you want to get, or already have a fellowship, you CANNOT do this.

And who the hell goes into their postdoc assuming they will switch at least twice before they find the right one? WTF is that?

But I totally agree about the "didn't get tenure" advisor generally being the one who actually was a good mentor.

Toni- I think the point is that most of us have tried lowering our expectations, but sometimes you can end up selling yourself short and getting stuck (see case in point: this blog).

But I agree that in the current climate, even more people are feeling pressured to take really shitty situations they would never have considered otherwise.

Anon- @ 9:29- thanks, will check out those links on mentoring.

Anon @12:08 wrote:
I agree that the chances of having an advisor and lab that meets all the ideal criteria are extremely slim. But is it necessary for all those criteria to be fulfilled in order to be successful? I think as long as a couple of those criteria are met, then surely things should be OK?

That's what I thought, but look where it got me!

I think the point is, you can't have everything. You might muddle through and publish a paper or a few, even if the mentoring is lacking.

But my point is that at the endgame, if the critical things are missing, you also CAN'T GET AN ACADEMIC JOB.

The "system" as it currently exists assumes that everyone behaves ideally (like an oversimplified college-level physics problem). Unfortunately, very few people even try to be the best mentors they can be.

And since we're all human, very few actually succeed at being the ideal mentor even when they have good intentions.

We need to deliberately design a system where mentoring is a bonus, not a pre-requisite. Perhaps if we had more objective criteria, bidirectionally anonymous review, and a variety of other improvements, this is something we could actually do.

The current half-assedness that passes for being systematic is wasting a lot of talent, effort, and taxpayer money. Not to mention time for people who are sick and need our help.

How to fail again

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And, of those 5:

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

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

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

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

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

Very slim chances indeed.

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

Yeah, good luck with that. Roll the dice.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*And no, blogging does not count.

If only, part 2.

So here's the funny part.

Felt like crying all day but did not. As usual, after our last meeting, instead of letting me do everything, Advisor insisted on doing something... and did not do it. I was pissed about this happening again. Among other things.

Finally sucked it up and went to see Advisor, promising self I would not cry. And I didn't. Go, self. (minor victory)

I think I do better when I'm angry.

After all the talk about mentoring, Advisor's big advice?

I don't know what you should do. It's really up to you.

Something must have changed since last time we talked, because every. single. time. before when I said "I want to do X" the answer was always Very Anti.

Now? Advisor seems worn down.

It reminds me of how my parents were:

with me (very Anti)
with my little sister ("whatever you want, go ahead").

So actually, despite the total lack of, ha ha, mentoring, I think I'm calling it a minor victory.

And despite the unbelievably bad timing of, well, everything in my career, this might actually be an example where I can take advantage of the timing. Advisor could have stayed Very Anti for another year, and that would be worse than this.

Now I will try to fail my way, maybe?

Except with Advisor's name on the paper, that's supposed to help?

I've been at "I don't know" for a while now. I think now I'm back at "Ask around again". We'll see if anyone will get back to me, or if, since the people I need to ask are all faculty, they'll also just ignore me.

And still funny to me, in the process of getting to where I wanted to be, I've been so worn down for so long, I'm not sure I have anything left to drag across the finish line.

It's like those commercials for the Olympics this year when they showed that one guy who had an injury and two people ran down to the track to help him limp to the end. I don't really have anybody like that, but I'll try to ask.

And if that doesn't work, maybe I'll just lay on the ground and laugh.

The person who commented that nothing seems to have changed in 2-3 years is mostly right. Except for one thing: I'm wayyyyy more burned out than I ever thought a person could possibly be. I thought I was completely burned out already back then! Boy was I wrong. There are so many levels to down.

So I guess my goal is that between me and Advisor, if I get to drive, and Advisor is willing to keep me company but basically be a passenger, we might get farther than when I'm bound and gagged in the trunk?

Or maybe instead of me being the puppet, I can write the script and Advisor will read it like a newscaster?

Oh, if only it were going to be that easy.

Not just science.

Lots of random marbles rolling around in my head that I haven't had time to write about. This might be another grab-bag post.

One of the highlights of my week was talking with my very best friend, which I don't get to do nearly often enough.

We were surprised to find we both feel the same way about our very different careers: like we're in free-fall.

We both feel our bosses don't really know what they're doing, and we're very nervous having our fate in their hands.

We're trying to figure out where else to get the information we need, but when we follow the standard procedures for advice-getting, we keep getting the same empty suggestions like "You need to find a mentor."

We had a long chat about how hollow this advice is. We decided we think it's a myth. A total cop-out. A pass-the-buck from whomever you're talking to.

I've spent the last several years trying to find the Mr. Miyagi of my career, with no real success. I've sought out people and introduced myself, and I've found the same thing over and over.

The people with whom I hear an audible click, aren't very familiar with the eccentricities of my field. And they're wise, so they decline to give a biased opinion along the lines of what they would do if they were me.

The faculty in my field are

a) almost all men (mostly clueless about what it's like to be female in science, if not outright sexist)

b) mostly jerks (or insane, or both)

c) my age, and consider me competition

OR

d) very old, and can't relate to me at all ("What are YOU doing here, little girl? Can't you find a husband?")

So I can't find mentors among these, and believe me I've tried.

Instead I've tried the approach of getting different kinds of advice from different kinds of people in other fields, to try to cobble some mentoring together like a patchwork quilt.

The problem is that nobody really wants to voice an opinion, but when forced to say something honestly, nobody really agrees on what I should do, so when I get conflicting advice it makes me feel even more conflicted than when I get no advice at all.

So I've kind of stopped asking for advice from scientists and career counselors... I'm still trying to figure out what I want, given that I'm pretty sure what I really want does not exist, at least not for someone like me.

I also learned that it can be very psychologically draining to feel undecided for a long period of time.

This was a major lightbulb for me, since I have felt a lot of doubt about my career choice lately, and I think it has been contributing to my feeling burned out.

And that is somewhat unintuitive. I always equated feeling burned out with working too hard for too long.

It turns out that it's more important how you feel about working hard, than how much working hard you actually do.

Oddly, when I heard this, it made a lot of sense. So it gave me about a week and a half of psychic freedom. I decided, okay, if that's part of my problem, I will decide to just go with this, at least for now. That is the healthiest thing to do.

But couple of weeks later, that wore off. My experiments haven't been working, and my advisor is doing the passive-aggressive dance again, and I'm back to feeling overwhelmed with doubt about whether I'm wasting my life and making myself miserable for no good reason.

According to one of the books I'm reading, you have to let go of your desire (check), anger (check), and fear.

Maybe it's about having a balance of these, because while I've learned to get some distance from my desire for something that I can't have, and anger about not having it, my fear seems to be rising in some kind of weird psychological compensation.

It's as much about fear for the future as fear that I've been wasting my time. Fear that I've already missed the one good chance I had, and if I knew that, I would stop torturing myself.

It sounds really stupid to write it that way, because basically what I'm saying is that I'm afraid of future regret. Which would imply, in a sane world, that there's still time to affect the future and avoid the regret, right?

I guess the problem is I still feel like I can't get control over the things that matter most to me. So despite all this struggling, I still feel like I'm bound and gagged and watching the train come to run me over, and I can't expect anyone to swoop in and save me.

Somebody hand me a blindfold. I can't watch this part.

Next stop: cultivating denial. I can't think of anything else to do.

...

In job search news: I found out that a co-worker had a faculty interview, only to learn that the school lost the funding for the position, so regardless of how the interview went, they won't be doing any hiring.

I suspect, from reading the Chronicle this week, that this scenario will repeat itself a lot this year.

I do think it's pretty ironic that, of all years for me to decide to go back on the job market, it had to be this year. I mean, that's pretty fucking funny when you think about it. And in a way it does justify my hysteria a few years ago. I felt like it was my best chance on the market, because it probably was! By that calculation, I've wasted the last 3 years as a postdoc being a miserable wreck and I should have quit then.

I have that thought a lot, actually. I think about all the chances I had to quit, and didn't. And I wonder why not, because lately the desire to just give up is overwhelming. What did my past self know that my current self forgot?

....

Political updates: Less than a week until the election, and I have to wonder if it's going to be the amazing panacea as some of my friends are assuming. It is definitely time for a few changes around here. I just doubt that many of them are going to affect my life directly.

------

Random movie recommendation of the week: Sister Kenny

About the nurse who developed what became western physical therapy while treating patients with polio. The doctors didn't believe her methods helped at all, preferring instead the opposite (immobilization). They even went so far as to say the patients she was able to make walk again had never been sick in the first place. One of my favorite parts: in the movie they use the terms "doctors" and "men" interchangeably.

------

Major blogging disappointment of the week: FSP listed different categories of university folks in a poll on her website, and wrote it like this:

•faculty
•grad students
•undergraduate students
•staff (incl postdocs)

Please, go over there and tell her how wrong this is. And here I hadn't even noticed the way she lists us BELOW undergraduate students and in parentheses. That's another nice touch. Probably unintentional? But still, somewhat revealing how we rank on people's radar. As an afterthought.

Oh, the irony.

After I wrote that post yesterday I sucked it up, went through the motions of finishing a few minor things that absolutely had to get done*, and left a little earlier than usual.

And amazingly, I felt a lot better.

I went to the gym, I went home, I watched Shaun Johnson finally get a little of the gold she should have won earlier (if it weren't for the fucked up women's gymnastics judging).

This morning I felt okay, not too tired, and came to work knowing I have some Important Experiments To Do.








And then I got some news I really didn't want.








Obviously I can't blog the details here. But PhysioProf left another comment on my last post to the effect of, I wouldn't be in this situation if I had better mentor(s). And it's relevant so I'm going to write about that again here.








Basically, my "mentor" is a great mentor to some people in the lab.

But not others.

My impression is that there are not very many really great mentors out there, because it's all about having the right match. I think I've written this here before, but I'll write it again: nobody is a great mentor to everyone.

And here's another Newsflash: just because someone has had a few people come out of their lab and get jobs, does NOT mean they are a good mentor.

In larger labs, the PI is much too busy to mentor everyone. So the favorites get the mentoring, and the rest get to wait.

Or hang.

If we complain, we're told to be patient.

If the PI should realize later that they dropped the ball, at most we get a mumbled apology.

Yeah, how many years of my life can I get back with a mumbled apology?

I'll tell you: NONE.

How many career chances does a person get in science? Not many. If a cat has 9 lives, I think I'm on my last one.

And then comes the blame. It's all too easy for the busy PI to say, after they've dropped the ball, that we should have complained more (Um, you lectured me on how I have to be patient???).

It really is like battered wife syndrome. In more ways than one.

One of the things that really made me cry yesterday was that in my effort to figure out why the thought of quitting makes me cry, I read an interview with Liz Blackburn where she was saying "because science is worth it".

In that same article, she was saying how she was (like most women of her generation, Nancy Hopkins is a great example of someone who always says this) basically oblivious to sexism when she was younger, and how she thinks that's one of the big reasons she got through.

She said her mentees are very discouraged by it.

No kidding.

She also said the postdoc associations have been very helpful for her mentees, which made me laugh.

While they have been somewhat of a crutch for me at times when I thought that was all I needed, none of that can really solve my fundamental problems.

If anything, I see postdoc associations as a symptom of just how broken the system has become, that the postdocs have to organize ourselves because nobody else really gives a damn what happens to most of us.

And here we are, still trying to be naive and optimistic that we can fix anything by, what, taking care of our training ourselves because our PIs won't do it?

Probably we should be marching in the streets, but that's never going to happen, and even if it did, it's hard to believe anybody would care.

50,000 whiny PhDs? Oh please.

So today I have some Important Things To Do at the bench, but I'm really not in the mood to do anything, because of this overwhelming sense that nothing I do really matters, no matter how good it is, no matter how right I am, I will always be screwed over.

And none of it really matters, as far as I'm concerned I've done the experiments that really tested my hypothesis, and they worked, and I'm right.

So who cares if anybody else ever knows about it?

Who cares, indeed.

Lately one of my big hangups is that if I leave, my PI will probably take my project and claim it as an original idea.

A few people might know that it was mine, but they'll forget.

If I leave, nobody in my field or my family will try to stop me. Nobody will say,

But you have to publish that groundbreaking work!

My friends have been saying it for a while, but I think at this point they realize that, as one friend put it, staying in science is killing me.

She was being hyperbolic of course, I'm eating and sleeping and not any more depressed than I've always been.

I'm just having a hard time remembering what I'm doing this for. At one point, I actually cared about having something to prove, and proving it, because I thought I could convince people.

I think I'm over that fantasy now. You can lead a dead horse to water and beat it as hard as you want, but it still won't drink.







*although I'm pretty sure neither of my experiments worked

No reply necessary

A couple of my informal mentors emailed recently to ask how I'm doing, how things are going, and so on (they don't know I have a blog!).

In both cases I responded pretty openly, saying

yeah things have been nightmarish but a couple of things are better, even though I'm still not where I want to be with my life.

And you know, I'm just trying to keep a sense of humor about the worst parts.

Neither one replied. It has been, I don't know, two weeks.

I want to email them and say

um, guys? Why bother emailing to ask how I'm doing, if you

a) don't want to know?
b) can't be bothered to tell me how you're doing or actually give me any advice?

And does it actually, I don't know, assuage your guilt to at least check in? Or was this to settle some kind of bet about whether I've quit science yet?

And then I realized, actually I don't need these people to reply. If they have no advice, that's fine.

I get plenty of advice and support from the blogosphere.

To those of you fellow bloggers who are always telling me to keep going, thanks. I've learned a lot from reading your blogs and comments here.

Read my lips. Who's in charge.

A comment on my last post regarding whether or not postdocs should be presenting their own work brings up a topic I've written about before, but which I think is important enough to keep repeating.

I went to a talk the other day where an older (though maybe only 60-ish!) guy presented the work of two of his postdocs (out of how many in his lab, I don't know).

In the talk, he did something I've only rarely seen PIs do: pointing out that one of the postdocs was present and available to answer questions "since he knows the work better than I do". I wasn't sure whether to be happy or sad that he said that. Maybe a little of both.

And since then (and the comment on my last post about who would you rather see present the work, the PI or the postdoc) I've been thinking about this quite a bit.

In one way, yes the more experienced PIs can often be better speakers because they don't get stage fright, and they've given these talks hundreds of times. They have a certain amount of authority. You get a polished product, maybe a little more historical perspective (I'll come back to that), and maybe another benefit: 1 PI can talk about 2 or more projects in a single talk. And it's perfectly acceptable, maybe even expected, for them to do so.

On the other hand, you can't ask them anything technical, usually they don't know the answer. I actually saw a guy do this at a talk once, with what I think was deliberate aim: he asked several technically challenging questions in quick succession, and the PI speaker was basically stunned into silence. I was hysterical with silent laughter.

And there is this other aspect that most PIs don't want to admit: a senior postdoc is basically the same as a junior PI. Admittedly, junior PIs don't get to give talks as often as senior PIs, but they give talks more often than postdocs.

The point of this comparison is that in at least some (!) cases the senior postdoc proposed the project, did the project, and has lots of ideas for where her project will go next, since it is presumably the subject of her future grants and lab studies. Senior PI guy might not know those things, and might not, in some cases, really appreciate the importance and implications of the work that has already been done.

In general I was thinking about this because I was noticing once again how it seems like the postdocs and grad students are actually driving the research behind the scenes, and the PIs are really just figureheads. They're not exactly puppets, but in a way they could be. In some labs they are.

The historical perspective aspect is an important one, and I can't emphasize enough how much it annoys me when a grad student or postdoc is asked a question about the history of their own field and can't answer it.

The other day I asked a question like this and the speaker (a postdoc) looked at me and said very dismissively, "That's very philosophical" and continued on without even attempting to answer. Sheesh! I actually know a little more about her field than she might realize. I know she could have answered my question succinctly, in just 1 sentence that conveyed the traditional thinking as well as her personal take on it.

Instead, I am left to conclude that she hasn't read the classic papers in her field (even though I have!). Which made me wonder if she's not one of these glorified technician types that some PI commenters are always complaining about (?).

I'll agree, I don't want to see that kind of postdoc presenting talks. I'd take a senior PI over that sort of person any day. But I think most PIs know that, and that's why they don't generally give their talk slots away to their postdocs.

Having said that, sometimes I'd rather hear one, complete story from an articulate postdoc than a bunch of snippets from a breezy world-traveling PI who can't answer questions effectively. I always feel sorry for the postdocs who did the work, because I know the talk rarely gives them the credit they deserve.

Will I give talks away to my postdocs? Sure, when they're good speakers and have a good story to tell. They might not come into the lab that way, but I'll make sure they gain those skills quickly and practice them sufficiently before they leave.

I like to travel, but I already know that most PIs are invited to more meetings than they can possibly attend in a year, and their labs suffer when they're constantly out of town. A handful of meetings a year is enough! I'd much rather send my postdocs to some of them. To me, that's a win-win.

How, indeed.

kcsphil asked, [edited for typos by yours truly]

If the PI's don't keep current on lab techniques and then teach them to the grad students or post-docs, how do the PIs expect to get their science done? And what's the point in having them mentor the grad students or Post-docs if they have nothing to teach?

This question is really loaded with possibilities. I'm going to try to break it down in parts but I'm SURE the comments will pick up on anything I might miss.




1. If the PI's don't keep current on lab techniques

In general: they can't. They don't. "Current on lab techniques" to a PI is what they learn

a) at meetings, where they see data presented in a talk (that includes their own lab meetings)

b) from reading

c) in the ideal case, if they go on sabbatical.



"Current on lab techniques" to those of us in the trenches is

a) tried it
b) multiple ways
c) have seen all the things that can go wrong
d) know how to fix them.



2. how do the PIs expect to get their science done?

This makes me laugh.

The system right now is predicated on a hierarchy. All labs are different, but typically there are two types of lab members.

a) Senior members.

This includes the PI, lab managers who have been there more than a couple of years, grad students nearing the end of their PhD, and postdocs getting ready to leave.

The benefit of these people is that they serve as the 'institutional memory', if you will, of the lab.

The drawback is that they are usually very busy, often beyond the point of really learning the newest hottest techniques, and/or one foot out the door.



b) junior members.

That's you, new grad students and new postdocs. You don't know the history of the lab, and if you switched fields after your PhD, you might not know much about the history of the field (beyond what you've learned from your extensive reading!).

The old Apprenticeship model, upon which science is supposedly based, went something like this:

Master trains first Apprentice.
Apprentice becomes Journeyman.
Journeyman trains subsequent Apprentices.
Disputes and promotion decisions are resolved by the Master.
Only when the Master dies, or if a new position opens up in a faraway village, is the Journeyman promoted.

(sound familiar?)

The main problem with this system, you understand, is that it is at least in part a game of telephone. In each round, some of the original information gets lost or distorted.

The main advantage of this system is the division of labor. The Master supervises. Because the 'team', as it were, has grown, production can increase.




3. And what's the point in having them mentor the grad students or Post-docs if they have nothing to teach?

As many of us have written before, it's not that PIs have nothing to teach. It's just that they're not really taught how to be good mentors and/or don't want to, and there is nothing in the system now that really forces them to.

Mentoring and teaching are different things.

Once upon a time, in a different era, PIs spent more time with their grad students. Labs were not so big; publishing was very slow before the internet; there were no such thing as postdocs.

The main incentive to mentor AND teach was to create Journeymen.

The quickest way to get an Apprentice to the Journeyman level is to teach them how to design, execute, troubleshoot and interpret experiments.

PIs had to do this themselves if they wanted their lab to be productive.

As the postdoc position became more prevalent, PIs were able to stay farther and farther away from the Apprentices.

Good PIs take their senior Journey-people under their wing and help them learn how to write papers and grants, polish their talks, mediate collaborations and reagent requests, and help them figure out their next career step(s).

That's the kind of mentoring we're typically talking about. Career mentoring, which is really one step up from the actual day-to-day of getting experiments to work.

But essentially this means that Journeymen (postdocs) are the ones who are teaching the Apprentices (grad students) how to design, execute, troubleshoot, and interpret their experiments. It's not that the Master is not involved. In some labs, they are. But in most labs I've seen, the Master makes a 'suggestion' and the Apprentice makes a beeline for the Journeyman who has actually used that technique, to ask whether to do it and how. Some Masters know this, some do not.

Masters are often too busy to notice. There is plenty for PIs to do because the operations are much bigger now than they used to be. Grants are harder to get, and papers are harder to publish. Projects are bigger, longer, and way more expensive than they used to be. And it's all a lot more competitive than it once was.

Unfortunately, Journey-people are not rewarded for mentoring Apprentices. Many of us do it, generosity of spirit, mostly (or if we're lucky, for middle-authorship and brownie points with the Master). In the long run, we gain experience. So when we have our own labs (if), we will be able to mentor our first Apprentices until we can get some Journey-people of our own.




PIs are typically good mentors if

a) they like helping people or doing experiments (in which case they might suck at getting funding because they're not spending enough time writing grants or papers)

b) they don't want to be embarrassed at their students' committee meetings

c) they don't have postdocs to pick up the slack



But as you'll note,

(a) is dangerous and rare simply by natural selection;

(b) is not much of an incentive because grad students are cheap and plentiful, easily replaced, so the strategy is more of a screening than a cultivation;

(c) is rare in the current climate because postdocs are cheap, plentiful, productive, and terrified of demanding even the most basic maintenance level of mentoring.

There is the extremely rare case where the PIs is wildly successful AND a good mentor because they just like helping people.

But my strong impression is that in MOST of those cases, behind the scenes the postdocs are actually writing large parts of the grants and otherwise doing significantly more work to keep the lab afloat than they're getting credit for, out of sheer survival instinct.

You might think you're joining a lab to work with the (famous) Master. But it's not about the destination. It's about the Journey.

You know you're doing pretty well when

All those people who ignored or snubbed you are suddenly asking what you're up to these days, what your plans are, and how things are going.

Those people in this case, are PIs who previously wouldn't give me the time of day. People whom I was content to think had forgotten who I was, or just didn't care.

I'm very amused because from these kinds of encounters, I get the impression that my scientific reputation is improving.

Sometimes I even get mentored on these little run-ins. Suddenly now everyone wants to give me advice.

I think it's funny because I think they are realizing that, rather than quitting like everyone seems to have expected me to, they might actually have to deal with having me as a colleague someday.

Maybe, just maybe, I might be worth the effort of mentoring.

So I'm laughing. Because although I will always need it, and I need it now, they were not there for me in the past when I really needed it.

----

Oh and to the people who think I always blame other people for all my problems? Maybe you're right. I'm with Sartre on the whole population issue: Hell is other people.

At the end of the day, I'm pretty sure I'd be perfectly happy if people would just leave me alone to do my job.

Most of my complaints with work and with my parents have to do with people who think they know what's good for me but who never stopped to even ask me what I want.

A lot of the crap I went through in grad school also falls into this category, where the 'adults' (PIs) were constantly trying to block me from finding my own way. Which in my opinion is a lot of what grad school should be for.

----

As a postdoc, when I ask for help, it's not because I'm lazy but because I know it would be faster to have someone teach me and/or I've exhausted all the other resources.

But what I've learned is that most faculty aren't really aware of how they got where they are. They've never been forced to articulate what matters in choosing what journal to publish in, how to write a cover letter, or how to write a good grant and make sure it gets funded. They just do it.

A lot of times they're not even sure what they did. Or they might even suspect it was partly political, but they don't want to admit they've had these advantages handed to them, and all they did to deserve it was to be appropriately agreeable.

You know, how to do these things (publish, get funded, get a job) is what we should have learned in grad school, but nobody taught us systematically. And I'll agree that it's hard to articulate and hard to teach. But not impossible. I've met some PIs who can teach it. And I think these things should be required of any PIs that universities hire.

And right now they're not.

In fact, I think I've learned a lot more about the job market, for example, from blogging and reading blogs than I ever have from real PIs in real life.

----

I had a funny/depressing conversation with a young faculty member the other day, who said that although he knows he had a great advisor in grad school and a stellar experience (which is fast becoming a stellar career), he doesn't remember being mentored. He's not sure what his mentor did that made everything always seem easy and turn out all right.

I know this guy's advisor and he was definitely a good mentor. But I think people who've always had good mentors take it for granted.

Even though they're surrounded by stories of how bad it can be, the natural reaction is to deny it, and to blame the victim. It's hard to believe it until you've experienced it yourself.

Worst case scenario, these people end up being terrible mentors themselves, just because they don't have a clue about what they should or shouldn't do.

And they might not even realize that being a good mentor is an active process.

To his credit, this guy is at least aware that he needs to figure out how to mentor his grad students, and fast. And I think he will, because he knows how important it is.

I personally have not had the stellar mentoring experience in science, but I know what it can be like because I've had other mentors in other areas of my life, and it's a wonderful thing. But in science, I've kind of given up on having that kind of relationship with anyone anytime soon, and I'm not sure if I ever will. My goal is to be the stellar mentor myself.

----

When finally given the chance, I found my own way and it mostly works for me when I have the courage to stick to it. Which isn't always easy. At all. And when I chicken out or feel pressured by 'advice' from people who 'know better', I have no one to blame but myself.

(See that, trolls? I blame myself. I don't blame anyone else!)

When I'm brave enough to do it, it works for me and I'm really glad I got the chance to find that out.

Monday Inertia.

I have plans for things to do today.

I mean, I had plans. So far I'm not doing them.

Lately I notice that when I run into a friend and they ask me how I'm doing, it depresses me more to stop and talk to them than to just mumble something about being busy, give the fake sucking-it-up smile, nod in a friendly way, and keep going wherever I'm going.

This doesn't mean I don't wish I had more friends or that I didn't get to talk to them more. But talking about how work is going, especially while I'm at work, seems to be de-motivating.

I'm really feeling a lot of "damned if I do and damned if I don't" lately. I'm doing a lot of things for show that I know are a waste of time, scientifically, because they're supposed to help me politically. But there's no guarantee that they will.

I was talking to a grad student this weekend who is depressed by the lack of guarantees. She said if things were more finite, if her advisor were capable of devising a project that had a practical chance of working and of helping her when she got stuck, she would be more likely to want to stay. But the lack of job prospects afterwards makes her think it's not worth it.

Amusingly, there is a seminar series here designed to raise awareness of 'alternative careers.' This sounds like a great idea in theory, but she said every single speaker seemed miserable in their job. The patent lawyers, the people from industry, the science journalists, all of them. So none of the alternative uses for a PhD makes it seem useful to finish getting a PhD.

So she wants to quit. She's already been here long enough that she should have a paper, if not at least a good start on one, and she has nothing. She's been frustrated for a long time, and things haven't been getting better.

Her advisor is one of those, you know the type.

Gradstudent: "My ___ isn't working."

MsPhD: "How are you doing it?"

Gradstudent:"I'm using the A-B."

MsPhD:"Why are you doing it that way? That will never work."

Gradstudent:"I know. It wasn't working using the X-Y, so I told my advisor, and he said I should use the A-B. But I know the A-B won't work, and I tried to tell him why, but he doesn't believe me. So now I have to do it just to show him it won't work."

MsPhD:"Well, here's my protocol. Do it this way, I promise it will work. Then it's up to you whether you want to tell your advisor what you ended up doing. You can still pretend you're doing it his way if you have to."

Gradstudent:"Thanks, yeah, I think I will."

MsPhD:"Will what?"

Gradstudent:"Do it your way, but pretend I did it using his."

So at this point her options are to a) switch labs, b) suffer through, c) quit. Sad to say but she's so miserable, I told her that if she wants to quit now, she should quit.

I couldn't honestly tell her that it gets better. I told her that it doesn't, and that the reasons for it sucking won't change anytime soon.

The irony of all this is that one of the most important things to me is to be a role model, to boost up my female colleagues when they're down, and set a good example. However, as I've mentioned here before, on at least one occasion I was rebuked for being 'too honest' with some of the younger women about how hard it is and how you shouldn't do it if you're not sure you love research. It was a male professor who told me that I shouldn't discourage these poor girls, but I found out later that his behavior toward me is more discouraging toward the women around here than anything I've said about my frustrations.

As much as my failures depress me because I'm not meeting my goals and because much of it is out of my control, it's even more depressing to see these younger women quitting because they're watching what is happening to me. I'm a negative example without wanting to be. But I don't really see any alternatives.

All I can do is a) fight back (tried that, it doesn't work), b) quit, c) try to rise above it all.

Unfortunately both (b )and (c) end up being bad examples, and (a) is a trap that will end up getting me forced out of here.

Hmm. Happy thoughts for a Monday.

Time to go redo the experiments that didn't work over the weekend.

1. Place forehead against brick wall.
2. Push.