Impervious to cheerleading?

Got a very encouraging email today from one of my newer supporters.

In the last couple of years, I have acquired a few of these people. They're sort of like mentors, in the sense that they are partly giving advice, and partly cheerleading. Cheerleading mostly consists of them finding gentle but firm ways of telling me repeatedly that I have a warped view of my own accomplishments because of my toxic adviser's manipulation tactics.

Yes, some small part of my brain has a conversation that goes like this:

Are they just saying that to be nice?
Why are they being so nice to me?
Are they just being nice because there are so few women in science?

And part of my brain says:

Um, no. They have no reason to just be nice. So, they must mean it. DOES NOT COMPUTE. DOES NOT COMPUTE!!

But no matter how many nice things these cheerleaders or various strangers say to me, I still suck at taking any compliments about my work.

They say, "That sounds really interesting! What a great project! What nice results!"

And I say, "Well I think it's interesting. And it's very nice of you to say that, thank you."

But what I'm actually thinking is, I should really let this poor polite person get on with their day so they don't have to pretend to be interested in my project any longer.

It's really kind of sad. Supposedly this is one of the symptoms of "depression" - warped thinking, the inability to perceive positivity. So even though I'm feeling better than I was, I think this is a symptom I have had my entire life.

I just really have no idea how to genuinely thrive off of compliments. Applause, okay, I can enjoy that. Who doesn't like that? Gifts are fun too! But from a young age I had it drilled into my head that when people say nice things, it's just hot air and you should always ignore it. Worse than that, compliments could be dangerous - you might become arrogant and lazy!

I think this is partly related to gender roles. Girls are supposed to be seen and not heard; be helpful around the house instead of playing outside until after it gets dark. If someone gave me a compliment when I was little, it was usually for something meaningless or shallow, as in, "What a pretty little girl you are!" (and aren't most little girls pretty, anyway? isn't this something everyone says? doesn't the impersonality of it make it automatically meaningless?)

Then again, I was also the kid who openly disagreed with compliments. I distinctly remember being chastised by my mother after a random visitor to the house complimented me on something I was doing.

He said, "You're very good at that!"

I was probably about five years old, but I looked directly the guy and said, "No, I'm not."

I remember being baffled when my mother told me that it was more important to say "thank you", since it seemed like a direct contradiction to her general attitude.

Although she occasionally says it to me now (about things like cooking, for example), she would never have used the phrase "You're very good at that" about anything that mattered to me when I was growing up. For example, from a young age, I loved writing, but she always said she couldn't understand why I liked it so much because I wasn't very good at it.

As if enjoying something and being good at it are mutually dependent, or something.

I was taught that, just because I enjoyed doing a particular activity, and even if other people said I was doing well, that was never enough to determine whether I was actually good at it. I never won any awards, and I really wasn't a straight-A student. Therefore, I wasn't really very good at anything, as far as my parents were concerned.

So maybe it's partly because my adviser has not been exactly laudatory, and this is the pattern I learned from my family, but no matter how much positive feedback I get from other people, most of the time I feel like this is all well and good but the existing evidence suggests it might not matter much, practically speaking, in the long run.

Which is sort of the point, I think - the idea of living in the moment of a genuine compliment is to get that little glow, I guess, and say for right now, I am doing just fine, and all that matters is right now.

Right?

I was raised to worry about the things that last, though, in the sense that actions count for more than words. Reaching your goal, in my family, is more important than enjoying the process.

Which is stupid, because most of life is really about process, and reaching your goals usually just means moving on to the next one. If you just live from achievement to achievement, you're going to spend very little time actually enjoying anything.

And yet, science is set up so that certain types of goals are all that matter. You don't get credit for developing methods, unless they're published. It doesn't matter how much fun you had or how long it took. Process is nice, but achievement is what matters in the long run.

So while compliments can almost always be taken back or easily forgotten, if somebody is really willing to go out on a limb and do something to get you where you need to be, that's meaningful.

But I think these people are genuinely trying to do something by being my much-needed cheerleaders. I just can't quite get it through my thick head how to use positive feedback as persistence protein instead of discarding it like corrupting candy.

Shut up, subconscious!

Been doing okay with the whole work-stress thing lately. At least, when I'm fully awake.

When I am angry or anxious, I go to the gym.

Switched to a new Omega-3-6-9 supplement and that is helping a lot with the apparently mild depression that seems to have gone away almost completely.

Calling a ridiculous and stressful situation at work "major depressive disorder" made even less sense to me after I met with the psychiatrist my now-former therapist recommended. When the doctor is hawking drugs like a street seller (Don't you want it? Come on, you know you want it! Take the drugs!), my answer is the same as it is on the street: uh, NO. Keep walking. Always feel better as soon as I turn the corner and get away from people shoving things in my face that I don't need or want to buy. And I really do feel very confident about that decision. There is no doubt in my mind.

The only lingering problem is the early morning hours when I'm not quite awake, but not entirely asleep.

At night, I have real dreams. Some of them are interesting, some are about food or vacations, but they are mostly not about work.

Sometimes I wake up very early, anywhere from 3-6 AM. Sometimes, just before I wake up I figure something out that has been puzzling me with science-related issues like what experiment to do next. That is always satisfying, and I say, Thank you, subconscious! I knew you would solve that for me!

But sometimes it's not productive, and I'd rather not be waking up at 3 AM at all. Exercising to exhaustion usually helps me sleep through the night, but it's not always practical to be tired and sore every day of the week.

Even if it only happens rarely, it's still kind of annoying because I'm more tired the rest of the day than I should be.

I usually try to go back to sleep, and sometimes it works better than others.

Those early-morning hours are the time of day when my brain insists on processing and reminding me of all the things that people have said that had implied meanings; things my adviser should have done but didn't; things that I have no control over; and worrying about the future. Etc.

For example, when some of the students or postdocs in the lab want to complain to me, I'm supposed to be sympathetic, but if I say anything in return about being frustrated with our adviser, they jump all over me like I'm the one who started complaining in the first place.

And I know they aren't sympathetic because they just don't understand. I know they're either too clueless or too terrified to admit that if it's happening to me, it will probably happen to them eventually, maybe already has and they've been trying to pretend like it hasn't. Or they've swallowed their pride or integrity or both, and tried to tell themselves that it will all be worth it.

I know it doesn't occur to them that I feel really isolated and let down by their complete lack of empathy or respect. I know all of that. But it's all I can do to politely listen and just say, "Yeah, that sucks" and stop myself from actually sharing, because I know they'll hold it against me.

So when I wake up at 3 AM, part of my brain is pointing out that I really just want to
say to them: please quit whining to me, I do not want to be your friend
because you're incredibly two-faced, self-centered and insensitive!

About half the time, I get up for a little while and do some yoga or writing or even watching tv, and when I go back to bed half an hour or an hour later, it's fine.

The rest of the time, I just can't make myself get up because I'm very tired, and then I end up having these little episodes of replaying irritating situations in my head and wondering whether I could have handled them differently.

My theory is that if I write about these things in a journal or blog before I go to bed, that might help avoid them popping up on their own and wrecking my sleep. I think it helps.

The thing is, when I'm awake I'm pretty good at noticing my thoughts and identifying them and saying, Okay, yes, that was annoying, but I need to let that go now. It's a conscious effort, though, and when I'm half-asleep apparently I can't quite pull it off.

So this is my message to myself via the internet. Shut up, subconscious! You can talk during the day if you want, but you have to let me sleep! The hours of 11 pm to 7 am are OFF-LIMITS! I will write to get you out of my system if I have to, but then you have got to shut up! Got it? Good.

Nice.

This was written as a response to this post over at Science Professor. Then I noticed that she's apparently taken me off her blogroll.

Interesting. I wonder what that's about.


***

Briefly, in this post she writes about what to do when someone she's pretty sure is a competitor sends an email asking for help on a method her own lab has struggled with but eventually solved (and hasn't published yet).

This is one I can see from both sides... sort of.

In my field there is a lot of perceived competition when, in reality, personal tastes strongly influence what actually gets done.

That means two different groups can be working on "the same thing" and do totally different experiments. There's plenty to do and everyone has different skills.

So it's really rare that two groups are doing exactly the same experiments exactly the same way.

Then you might as well help each other, advance science, and all that? Right?

Except that I have been on the other end, trying to ask people for tips, usually not on unpublished work (I'm usually too out of the loop to know to ask until the paper comes out). More often I'm asking about things they've published... with necessary details lacking.

Hard to know if it's deliberate or accidental when people publish sloppy & incomplete methods sections??

I've witnessed both- the PI who is distracted and doesn't read the manuscript carefully, and the PI who tells the student/postdoc to omit certain particulars on purpose.

But sometimes I write to the authors asking for clarification, and I can't get an answer out of these people.

I've gotten all kinds of excuses, my favorite of which is "I can't remember how we did that, it was so long ago."

Yeah, there's this amazing invention called writing it down???

I can only guess that they

a) think I'm trying to scoop them?
b) think I'll find out they faked all their claims?

Why else act that way?

So invariably they're paranoid (for whatever reason) or lazy about sharing, and I end up moving slower than I'd like, reinventing the wheel and wondering how we can enforce adherence to the scientific method (write your paper so that ANYONE can reproduce your results COMPLETELY).

It might all be moot.

Things have been going pretty well in terms of experiments. I've been getting enough data that my ideas are advancing... that's the fun part, what keeps me going despite all the s**t. In fact, I am downright excited about the science.

But this week I have had this awful feeling, like something really bad was about to happen and I wasn't sure what.

Today I got an inkling of what it might be, and realized that it probably doesn't matter how good my science is, if politics are really so important.

Which is really too bad, since I think I'm onto something of potentially wide interest, but if I can't finish it, nobody will ever know.

So I'm having that feeling again, like I should just try to hang in there until I can finish this project and get it out there, since I think other people would benefit from knowing what I did, even if it doesn't get me a job or any accolades whatsoever, it might save someone else from wasting time and effort reproducing what I've been doing all this time.

But I think it can't be coincidence that everyone always seems to be putting obstacles in my path, making everything harder than it needs to be. At some point, it's too much to be unintentional, it must be deliberate.

They are never acknowledging how hard I work, both on my own experiments and to help everyone around me get their experiments working.

You'd think they would appreciate it, but instead I get nothing for rescuing their grad students, saving them money by troubleshooting BEFORE expensive mistakes are made, calling the repair people to maintain the equipment, everything.

But no. Instead I am getting into trouble.

First I'm in trouble for spending too much time helping other people when I should be focusing on my own work.

Then I'm in trouble for not helping people as much as I used to, even though I still try to make sure everything is taken care of, and everyone knows I have my own work to do.

I don't know if it has to do with being female, maybe it has nothing to do with that. But I do think that male scientists can, and do, get away with personality quirks and flaws, and a lot less generosity, than female scientists can right now.

In fact, I have NEVER seen a male scientist, of any level, help his coworkers as much as I've been expected to help mine, while still getting all my own work done. If I fall down on either of those counts, I must be a failure.

But maybe I'm just playing the game all wrong. I'm sure I did something stupid along the way, but it's too late now to go back.

Yes, this is probably all my fault. Too bad nobody ever gave me the keys to the club, or the location of the manual of unwritten rules.

***

I was thinking of this guy today who started his own lab a couple of years ago, and how it's amazing that anybody would want to hire him, much less want to work for him.

This guy was not a team player. He was not liked by anyone. His science wasn't even that great. And he was among the most arrogant people I've ever had the misfortune to meet.

I can think of plenty of examples of people like that, who are not likable at all, whose science is mediocre, but who have somehow managed to what, dodge the politics? Blackmail someone? How does that even happen?

Because I'm wondering if I should change my strategy. Maybe, instead of trying to be liked by the right people, and do the right thing, I should just figure out what people do whom nobody likes. How those people are successful despite being selfish jerks.

I hate being paranoid.

Lately I am wishing I had rose-coloured glasses when it comes to the people in my field.

For a while I have been trying to ignore the fact that I don't trust the other postdocs in my lab.

We all know we will be competing for jobs the way we are already competing for papers and the PI's attention. And it's hard to pretend it's not happening. It's a source of constant stress for me.

I always try to be up front with people and just assume, well we are all smart enough, or at least I know I am, so why be insecure? There should be enough work to go around, we all have different interests and different strengths, we can try to work together.

Right?

But they always play dumb when it suits them. We are supposed to share reagents, but they can't remember where anything is when I need it. Or they give me an aliquot of the wrong thing.

Part of this is the PI's fault. If there were a system in place where we could all access everything independently, they wouldn't be able to do this.

Instead I am left making tough decisions about whether it's worth it to spend what little reagent money I have for my own project duplicating lab reagents, just so I can have a stock that I know is good, and keep it somewhere safe from their greedy little fingers.

It doesn't help that they are almost all men. I recently heard someone refer to the one bay in the lab that has three women and one guy as the "girly bay."

Nobody calls any of the bays with four men the "manly bays."

I mean, give me a break. Apparently it's still so unusual that it bears commenting when there are more than two women working in the same place!

Then yesterday, there was a speaker here who is pretty big in our field. I really enjoyed his talk and found myself thinking maybe I made a mistake not going to do a postdoc with him.

Now I should back up and say that I never applied to his lab, because a friend of mine interviewed there and told me a horrifying story. She said that when she finally had five minutes to use the restroom, the women from the lab cornered her and told her the PI was a misogynistic pig and that she shouldn't go there, because she would definitely regret it.

She said she had no way of knowing if it was true or if this was some kind of competitive, manipulative ploy to scare her off, but it worked either way because she said the atmosphere was decidedly scary.

So she went elsewhere, and I never applied to even go visit.

Maybe a mistake, I don't know.

So I enjoyed this guy's talk enough to have second thoughts. But then I introduced myself afterwards and asked him some questions, and I am still feeling uncomfortable about it.

He was SO dismissive, as happens to me about half the time with visiting speakers, that the encounter is still ringing in my ears. I don't know if I made a mistake talking to him, or if I should send him my paper to review.

Yes, I'm that conflicted about it.

They all say you have to win over your biggest critics, find out what they want to know and then show them why you're right.

But some days I just want to crawl under my desk and hide.

I intellectualize, therefore I am.

Enforced relaxation time this weekend. Tried to make the most of it by focusing on relieving stress via busywork intellectualizing.

One of the career/confidence/self-help books I read included a little bonus: a Neuroticism Test!

For me??!! You shouldn't have!

I had no idea what neurotic meant. The official definition of neurosis is suffering from anxiety out of proportion to real threat.

Yes, MsPhD is officially neurotic about the whole faculty position thing.

So then, since I thought I had found something potentially insightful, I got another book. The take home message being, of course, "I'm neurotic, you're neurotic, and we're both ok!"

I'm not sure this revelation is going to help me in major life-changing ways, but I'm learning a little bit of psychology theory, which helps to pass the time.

I am trying to get away from this habit of blowing things out of proportion, which is apparently common in neurotic people, and feeds the negativity monkey on my back.

I also read some scientific journal articles, which was oddly comforting. And it was comforting that I enjoyed it the way I used to: it was both relaxing (easy) and stimulating (fun).

Maybe it's too soon to retire after all.

I know getting a job is highly competitive, and that staying funded in science is extremely difficult. But am I panicking out of proportion to a real threat? What's the real source of the problem: them or me?

(aside: I'm having deja blogging vu. I think I've written about this before.)

I'm trying to liken it to something a teacher told me when I was a kid. I was in a competition, and I was watching the other kids go before me. I thought they were better than I was.

She said I was better than they were, but I didn't know whether to believe her. I thought maybe she was just saying that to be nice, trying to build my confidence.

Objectively, I was trying my hardest to observe these other kids, and I really thought they were much better than me!

Objectively speaking, I have a similarly hard time figuring out where I fit into the whole job competition scene. My CV is really not that bad, I think. What I don't know is how worried I should be. Okay, that's neurotic, worrying about how much to worry!

One thing I can say for sure is this: if I'm neurotic, then working with, around and for highly neurotic people has certainly made me more paranoid, and more neurotic, then I would have been otherwise.

That's definitely them, and not me.