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.

Relative vs. Absolute

One of the analysis programs I use gives you choices. At one point when you're choosing how to display your data, the choices basically come down to the title of this post. It doesn't change the result, just the scale and portability of the results.

...

Yes, my therapist means to help me. Yes, my advisor may (or may not) have (at least some) good intentions, too. Yes, the same could be said about my parents, who could also be said to have screwed up any number of things about my personality and ability to function in adult life.

This week I've been thinking again about how, while intentions are nice, it doesn't really matter if the outcome is still fatally flawed.

Yes, it's nice to have someone on your side. But if that person is steering you wrong, and you're attaching to them only for the sake of having something to hold onto, that's not really going to help you make any progress.

If that person continually lets you down, whether through selfishness or a lack of appropriate expertise, would you keep on trying? If this is your partner, wouldn't you think hard about whether to continue the relationship? If it were your student, wouldn't you think hard about how many chances to give them? If this is your advisor, wouldn't you want to leave the lab?

At some point, good intentions are not enough.

And maybe not even relevant. Doesn't the bad guy usually think he's doing the right thing? Anybody see Watchmen?

...

I really believe that truth in research is relative. Because whatever we think is true now, it's probably only partly right, and years from now someone with better tools and more insight will realize that we were almost always at least partly wrong.

And yet, some things are absolute. Maybe only hindsight has this property: knowing what you know now, sometimes there was one answer better than the other. But you didn't know that then.

Somehow I find this concept easier to accept in research than in real life. Maybe because it's more clear to me how we couldn't have known. In research I read everything I can; I review my data as much as I can; I run all the analyses I can think of and that the software can manage.

In real life, I often find myself wondering if I could just have read the right books or talked to the right people, would I have known sooner what I know now? Because most of this is probably not new, not the way cutting-edge research is new. I'm sure most of my struggles in life and philosophy are old news. What I'm doing in life really is re-search.

So while intentions can only be relative, outcomes can be absolute.

...

At some point, you have to look at the data and say, is this working well enough to justify the time and cost?

I do this almost every day in research. I'm not sure everyone does- there must be a few labs with so much money, that it would be possible to get your PhD and sail through your postdoc never realizing how expensive it all is until you go to write your own R01.

But that isn't how my career has been. I'm always asking, usually before I even do a pilot run, can I afford this even if it does work? What will I do if it's working and I need to buy more and we can't afford that? How much information can I get if this is all I get to do?

It is all worth it?

It's really hard to work this way. It's like having a phobia of commitment. As a serial monogamist, I can tell you it's really a strain when your natural inclination is to throw yourself all in, but you know it's too risky because you'll just be heartbroken when it ends.

On the other hand, you have to start everything with a relatively open mind. There is no absolute intention, because we're all biased whether we mean to be or not.

So when we say "have an open mind' in science, we mean that you try to be objective, whether that means quenching your optimism or your pessimism, sometimes it depends on the person and the day of the experiment. Maybe you can't suppress your gut feeling, but you also know from (relative) experience, we're all wrong about 50% of the time. So you get used to acknowledging your fears and trying anyway. Some people call that brave.

...

Science has taught me a lot of things (so far?).

The length of diligence is always longer than you think.

Courage to try even when you think you'll fail again and again; even when you have failed.

Persistence doesn't even begin to cover how many times you have to pick yourself up and keep trying.

Patience with yourself can be harder than any other kind of patience. Patience with experiments can be easier than patience with other people or with circumstances.

Anger can be empowering.

Silence can raise your stock, but it isn't always powerful. Sometimes it's just passive.

Some people define truth from all angles.

Some people define truth like this:

if you just say it this way, it's technically true, and everyone will be happier.

Some people define truth as outcomes; some define it as implications.

Response to comments on last post

Thanks to Blogger's idiocy, I'm not even going to try to reply in the comment box.

Anon 3:03,

Actually, I started therapy hoping it would help me figure out how not to sabotage myself with my tendency to get too depressed to function. My therapist rejected that as a concept from the outset, but I actually kind of think she was wrong about that.

re: being poor, I know because my therapist sometimes gives examples from her own life, and she hasn't for this. I also know a bit about how her business works and I'm pretty sure she's doing just fine.

GP,

Ha. Yeah, my last session was like she was trying to mirror my feelings by repeating back to me basically exactly what I was saying, and I was saying, "YES, NOW TELL ME SOMETHING I DIDN'T ALREADY KNOW."

I don't think I need someone to help me narrate.

Lou- I think she is trying to listen, but yeah I think that is part of the problem. And I did tell her that I don't feel completely heard.

Alicia- Great analogy. I do think that's part of the problem, the race-car mentality is just so not me.

But don't you worry that it's mostly because it's such a boys' club? Isn't that infuriating?

Anon 7:18- Great point about how even the good parts pass.

I have felt like you describe, "Oh yes I do have skills" but I think the problem for me is that I feel like every time I start working with new people they assume I am an idiot and consistently undervalue my work for a long time.

Every time it is an uphill battle to get them to look past my appearance as female, etc. and pay attention to what I am SAYING and DOING and just LOOK AT MY DATA.

Eventually they (usually) come around, but in the process I have been burning the candle at both ends. One end is doing the science, the other is holding the sword.

And sometimes- rarely, in recent years- I just get really pissed off and give them a piece of my mind. And that always backfires.

Anon 11:31- Good point. I think right now the devastation of the dream ending is still worse than the potential relief. Hence the hesitation.

bsci- Yes. But as a scientist I feel like it's hard to know until I try something, how much I will actually like it. And if I stay where I am, I can't really do the experiment, can I?

chall- I agree, it gets harder as we get older.

I am kind of taking the route of looking to apply for Those Jobs and
maybe do some interviews and see what seems exciting. Maybe I will receive one of those shiny over-the-head lightbulbs I've heard the universe sometimes sends?

Anon 8:42- You sound like my therapist. She is also of the opinion that even if it worked out somehow, I probably wouldn't be happy, because it won't be worth all of this misery.

thinkerbell- by coach you mean what exactly? I tried paying someone to advise me on job apps a few years ago, and it was an enormous waste of money. Would not go that route again.

also, postdocs are not eligible for career center services at my Uni. Great idea though. Maybe you could tell the administration for me? 'K, thx.

I have thought about other kinds of jobs, a lot. But I don't know enough about what the reality would be for me, with my current skills, etc. to try to get a job I would actually enjoy. Most things, it seems, involve a period of suffering before you get to do the good parts?

rocketscientista- hold onto that optimism. i wish i still had mine.

psycgirl- I did tell her, a couple of sessions ago.

Anon 9:34- It's funny you should say that, since it's my instinct too that it's better to decide and move on.

My therapist has been trying to encourage me to take more time deciding, which I think is helpful in a way but also makes it harder- sometimes it's just a prolonged period of second-guessing back and forth, right? She likes to say that it's important not to just be "reactive" and try to jump on the first safe thing that comes along, which she is sort of accusing me of having done in the past (as if I didn't solicit advice and do my homework before making the choices I've made). I'm not really sure if I agree that choosing from what's available to you in a short time frame, armed with as much information as you can gather, should be labeled as "reactive".

It doesn't really make sense to me since part of my problem is that I am already blaming myself enough when I am depressed- that is essentially the definition. how did I get myself into this mess. But the truth is, it doesn't make me feel better to have her go back and label my choices as bad decisions- if anything it makes me feel even less confident that I can make good ones now, no matter how long I deliberate.

Interesting point about system vs. daily tasks. As many others have said, a big aspect is that it's in large part my current toxic environment that is the problem. I have definitely been in situations where the daily tasks were a joy, but not here, not for a while. When even the daily tasks are an uphill battle, and you have no control over that, that's when I really want to get out.

I have always hated the system.

It's always personal.

I'm thinking about firing my therapist.

Having said that, I want to talk about one of the things my therapist mentioned recently while talking about deciding when/how to give up on one's career.

She told me to watch You've Got Mail. Because it's about a woman bookstore-owner who loses her store thanks to competition from a giant, male-dominated superstore.

Now, I saw this movie years ago when it came out, and I was disgusted at the time that the main message seemed to be that for women, it's more important to have a charming, rich man love you than to have a fulfilling career.

But it's funny, I really didn't remember that it's not just a love story, it's about a woman who has to close up shop. I guess at the time I couldn't really relate to it. In fact, I've always wondered whether it wouldn't be better to inherit a family business than to have to go look for a job. If it's just going to be a job to pay the bills, does it really matter what it is? At least you'd get to be your own boss, without having to work your way up.

So this movie has been on tv again lately, which I guess is why my therapist thought to mention it. I watched part of it one day, and the rest today when it happened to be on again. It's funny to hear the modem sound when they log on, and see how big their laptops are. I mean, does anyone even use AOL anymore?

Some of the writing is superb. I think my favorite sentence in the whole movie is the line about how she sees a butterfly on the subway, and she thinks it must be going to Bloomingdale's to buy a hat, which will surely be a mistake, as almost all hats are.

But as far as advice goes, this movie is a terrible analogy, because while Meg Ryan's character says she's heartbroken, she doesn't really seem to be very upset.

Somehow, her character never cries in the movie, despite losing her shop. She fights a little, she mopes a little, and when she finally closes the shop there is one scene where she sees the ghost of her mother and says the shop will be something depressing in a week, like a Baby Gap. But it's flippant the way she says it, and apparently she doesn't have to walk by the shop every day or run into people who constantly ask her about it?

Instead, the next time we see her, she is at home with a cold. Sure, getting sick around the time of a major loss is just a way of your body expressing what your mind can't handle, but probably since it's supposed to be a romantic comedy, not once do they show her sobbing with grief.

Okay, she is a little wistful, and it's a little bittersweet, but she's almost relieved. She doesn't seem to need medication or therapy! Maybe because the whole thing seems to take place in the space of a few weeks?

And it certainly doesn't hurt that someone offers her a job she wants, and almost immediately. Someone who sees her talent, and like all things movie-esque, it's a job she doesn't even have to apply for. The movie ends before we find out how things turn out with that.

The motivations are a bit understated, and as a main character she's a little bit spacey. You kind of have to assume that she's a bit sheltered and overly optimistic, otherwise as a character she doesn't really make any sense. They try to develop this theme by this one particular line about how things in life remind her of things she's read in books, but shouldn't it be the other way around? But apparently, she was completely happy with her job and, we have to assume, always had been.

I think one of the things that I'll never really understand about psychology is how sometimes, the harder we work for something, the more we think we want it. And this is definitely the way science works. Sometimes it's that much sweeter when you make an experiment work perfectly after a hundred tries. And knowing that elbow grease can win the day can be infinitely comforting as you're slogging it out, sometimes only inching along, but we always say it's better if things are at least moving at all. There's something gratifying in that, having a sort of noble goal and making progress toward it.

But in the same sense, the more the bad parts of science make us miserable, the more we want to justify that misery by trying to make our own happy endings. We think that if we just persevere long enough, as with our experiments, we can win at the political game, too. But what if we can't? What if we're just making ourselves miserable for longer, and like Meg Ryan's character in this movie, we're ultimately doomed to lose?

Being aware of the possibility that we're locked in this game of misery-begets-more-misery doesn't really help you overcome it. Because it's not so clear-cut as it is in the shop-keeping world, or in the movies.

And that is where I think I am a little fed up with the idea of therapy. Yes, I have learned a few things, but I think as a guide to helping me figuring things out, it hasn't been any better (and less cost-effective) than anything else. And perhaps most importantly, it hasn't made me feel any better about what is happening to me. It hasn't given me the critical tools to improve my situation, as I had hoped I could do if I just knew how.

Anyway the title of this post comes from a line in the movie, where Joe Fox tries to apologize and say it's just business, it's not personal. And the main character responds by saying It's always personal, everything is personal, and what's so wrong with that anyway?

I think one of the weirdest things to me about asking for advice is that nobody knows whether to tell me to fight or to quit. I don't know if I'm giving something up just a moment (or a year) too soon, with the finish line just around the corner? Or if the bottom line is that I just can't win, so I'd be better off getting out as fast as I can?

And my therapist doesn't know, either. She's trying to give me advice on the personal, as if it can be separated from the rest. She's also trying to convince me not to worry about what I'm going to do to make money, which I find not very credible coming from someone who is clearly not hurting financially and apparently never has been.

When things are crappy, I just want to quit. When I'm making even a little progress, I wonder if maybe it will all turn out to be worth it. I think a lot about the tortoise and the hare, and wonder if I'm just being impatient or getting distracted when, if I just keep plodding along, eventually I will get there?

I just don't feel much closer to knowing than I did when I started therapy. And being in therapy has not made me feel better about that.

scientiae-carnival

Your work is not your own.

Anthony Bourdain is riding a horse in a fox hunt on tv in the background as I write this, and it seems very appropriate for this post. Anthony basically says that the idea of an old-fashioned fox hunt is to chase the fox around until it's cornered into a hole, and then leave it completely freaked out.

-----

So today I went to see my new therapist.

I gave her the short (less than 1 hour) version of some of the things that have happened leading up to my current crisis of wondering just how much soul I have to sell to get a job around here.

In short: some of the things I told her made her look like the back of her head was going to blow off.

As in, if forced to deal with some of the things I've dealt with, her head would literally explode.

At the end of our session, she said she learned a few things from me about how science really works.

Really? I guess if I leave science having educated a few people about the reality of scientific research, that's a contribution to society... of some sort.

[Still thinking about writing that tell-all book, when all else fails. It would include edited versions of blog posts. If nothing else, I might get some, I don't know, revenge?

Damn that would be a fun way to burn bridges. ]

Interestingly, she said that much of what I've experienced from my "colleagues" both in my own lab and when trying to publish my work "could be considered hazing".

Hazing. Well yeah that does describe it pretty well. Good to have a word for it, I guess, and some validation of my perception that it was, you know, unnecessary and brutal.

It calls to mind that quote from someone about how senior scientists are "eating their young."

You biologists out there know that this happens. Rats and mice eat their offspring quite often in the lab; frogs eat their own fertilized eggs, etc. So you might not think about how fucked up it is.

Just think about that analogy in all its grisly glory for a moment. Parents picking their children's cartilage out of their teeth.

That's what PIs do to their postdocs.

Just think, why do we let them do this to us?

That's your cartilage. Those are my bones they're using to pick their teeth.

Speaking of young, my new therapist was also surprised to hear about this concept that postdocs nowadays are usually accused of not having our own ideas or enough independence from their advisors, but especially women postdocs.

She was trying to suggest that I should try to be my advisor's best collaborator, instead of viewing it as a soon-to-be competitive relationship. I was explaining that I still don't trust my advisor, that I really think my advisor would like nothing more than for me to quit science, because then my project ... is no longer my project.

Then I explained that, even if that weren't a major concern, if I did get a job I wouldn't want to collaborate with my manipulative, dishonest boss... also because continuing to publish with one's former advisor doesn't really count towards helping you get tenure since it makes you look anything but independent.

But I was thinking again about this idea of owning your work.

My project was my idea. My advisor not only did not come up with it, my advisor did not support it. Did not believe it. Has fought me every step of the way... until now. Now my advisor believes me.

Know what that means? Say it with me, kids:

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you...
... then they say it was their idea."

The idea of other people working on it, and of my advisor getting credit for it, makes me want to shoot myself in the head.

(I'm in favor of gun laws, because if I had a gun I would have shot myself a long time ago.)

Today I also happened to get confirmation that my paranoias are, so far as I've been able to learn, right on target. Totally unprompted, one of the postdocs volunteered to me that our advisor basically planned to have him work on ... aspects of my project when I leave.

Yep. I knew that. But I was kind of hoping I was just being paranoid.

So I'm feeling like the whole "crazy like a fox" thing is really not a good state of mind to be in. Or else I'm doing it wrong. Is there a better way to hide in a hole and freak out than I'm doing right now?