Take the challenge

Okay those of you who are currently PhDs or just graduated in the last two years. Here's your chance to win some cash and a free trip to Paris.

If I had a chance, I would totally do this because you have nothing to lose plus what a lark if you win, huh? Check it out.

This made me smile.

To share or not to share?

Over at Academic Jungle, GMP has a controversial post on sharing code. A scientist requested some code that was used in a published manuscript. She says this in her post,

"I actually replied politely, thanking him/her for the interest and stating that regrettably I cannot share the code. My group develops detailed microscopic simulations of certain physical phenomena. These codes can have wonderful predictive power and take years to develop. Sharing the codes is absolutely not the norm in my field, and there is no way in hell I would share any of my research codes with anyone other than close collaborators and colleagues.

Now most of the responses from commenters are in complete disagreement with GMP and I want to add I believe that it is utterly wrong to deny any request of published data to anyone, if the science is publicly funded.

But before jumping on GMP and calling this "despicable behavior," I think it's important to delve a little more into this issue.

GMP would not be first researcher who has refused to share. According to Heather Piwowar at Research Remix, almost 40% of scientists are not willing to release data. Why? It could be as in the case of GMP, an outright refusal, or because researchers are "not able to retrieve the data."

How many of you who are now well past your graduate work could provide data from a paper in your postdoc or PhD?

I have experienced this problem when I wrote to request data from someone who completed their PhD in the early 90s . The person responded by saying they didn't have a copy of it anymore, but that they could send summary tables from their dissertation. I wanted the original data because I felt that the analysis used at the time was incorrect and sending me the summary tables simply recapitulates the analysis.

GMP's post indirectly raises the issue of do we share data?

First, I define data to include but not limited to cell lines, evolved critters, genetic data, morphological measurements, images, maps, character matrices, seeds, and maybe (with some qualifications), computer code.

I am firmly in the camp of yes, we share data. If it's published, its not yours anymore. (Not that I really think it ever was...but that's another blogpost.)

In an editorial written in the journal Evolution, Rausher et al. (2010) outline the reasons for data sharing. As they highlight, much of our progress in understanding the natural world depends on building upon previously collected data. But too often that original data (not summary stats) is lost because the researcher just moved too many times or technology advances such that the data irretrievable. Who remembers floppy discs or zip discs? I have stuff that I can't access on a floppy and not that it matters, but in 10-20 years when whatever we're using now, becomes useless, how will anyone be able to access that data? An online database would preserve our scientific history.

Researchers typically refuse to share data for many reasons, probably top among these reasons is that they want to publish more papers and/or they want exclusive use of the data. But let's say decades later, after the faculty member retires, a young upstart researcher wants to conduct a meta-analyses on original data. A common data repository would make this young person's life a lot easier. And as Piwowar states in her slideshow called Research into Open Research Data, not sharing data is hurting mainly the young. She cites a survey of doctoral students and postdocs, saying that 28-50% report a negative impact from data withholding on progress, discovery and the quality of education.

Rausher et al. (2010) also suggest that data that is archived and available is more likely to be useful and to be cited more by other scientists. We only have to look to GenBank to see that this repository has afforded many different researchers a chance to use data collected by others to ask very different questions.

A final reason that we should share our scientific data is accountability. Data that is made accessible means that it can be checked for errors. Good data means good science and progress. According to Piwowar, more than half of all papers contain errors, but only 5-10% contain errors that change conclusions. Sigh of relief.

Recently, several journal editors within the ecology and evolution subdiscipline of biology came together to form DRYAD.

"Dryad is an international online repository of data underlying peer-reviewed articles in the basic and applied biosciences. Dryad enables scientists to validate published findings, explore new analysis methodologies, repurpose data for research questions unanticipated by the original authors, and perform synthetic studies. Dryad is governed by a consortium of journals that collaboratively promote data archiving and ensure the sustainability of the repository."

Already journals like The American Naturalist (American Society of Naturalists), Evolution (Society for the Study of Evolution), Molecular Ecology, Journal of Evolutionary Biology (European Society for Evolutionary Biology) have become interim partners with Dryad. These journals will be introducing a new data-archiving policy which will state that as a condition for publication, data used in the paper should be archived into an appropriate public database. The policy does, however, allow for an embargo period after publication and for longer periods of restriction at the discretion of the editor.

So what about computer code?

Unfortunately, Dryad is not set up to accept computer code. My programming friends tell me that the main reason coding geeks are reluctant to share code is the licensing problem. Freely available code means that anyone can take your code and use it to make a commercial program that they could then sell for cash. A second reason, I'm told is that computer code is dynamic and changing unlike data that is collected. For computer nerds, it's important that code change and evolve because that makes it better. And really in my field when I think about it, this is true. But, some of that evolution comes because the code is made public. Feedback from the user is essential to finding the bugs or problems with a given code.

In a recent article to Nature, Nick Barnes, a software computer engineer suggests that turning raw data into published papers requires a little programming, meaning that scientists write software. And he argues that yes, it isn't very good because of poor commenting, weird variable names and a lack of indentation. But it works. And if it works it should be made accessible.

But I would ask, all of it? Some of my R code is just a one-off and it isn't really necessary that I archive it. I do, however, have code that is associated with a particular dataset and could be useful to future users. And I would like to deposit my code somewhere and ensure that it was associated with that particular dataset.

Luckily for us in biology, things are improving, we have places where we can access shared code. Often the code is located in websites run by researchers but this means that it is essentially anywhere in the web. What is needed is a single resource where users can find and share code. Well, a new place called The Molecular Ecologist, associated with the journal Molecular Ecology Resources will provide a blog that highlights important papers in the field; list computer programs and other code (e.g. R packages) useful for analyzing genetic data; and a site to discuss methods.

I know it's a lot of work getting your "data" ready for submission - there's the formatting, the organizing, and the worry about mistakes being found or the data being misinterpreted.

But in the end, I feel better for having submitted data to a public repository. After all that blood, sweat and tears, I don't really want my hard work to end up in a black hole.



Photo taken from Website: Astronomy Picture of the Day

Other Sources: Rausher MD, McPeek MA, Moore AJ, Rieseberg L, Whitlock MC. 2010. Data archiving. Evolution. 64-3: 603-604.

What is the purpose of a university?

Okay, thanks to those of you for your words of encouragement.

It's in the making. In the meantime, I suggest that you follow Nat Blair's lead and refresh your memories by reading these posts.

Or you could just chew on this quote from Alfred North Whitehead,

"The tragedy of the world is that those who are imaginative have but slight experience, and those who are experienced have feeble imaginations. Fools act on imagination without knowledge; pendants act on knowledge without imagination. The task of the university is to weld together imagination and experience."

So you wanna do a PhD? Advice to undergrads

DISCLAIMER: I'm feeling cantakerous and frankly all that buddhist gratitude shit hasn't been working lately. So this post is bitchy and long. Real bitchy and really long. Read at your own risk.

Last week, two of the undergrads working in our lab asked me advice about grad school. At first, yes, I shuddered. I wanted to scream - run, run very fast in the opposite direction.

But then I decided that such a reactionary response is not very helpful nor frankly true to how I really feel. Instead of saying, "Don't do it," I sincerely asked her, "Why she wanted to go to grad school?"

Beaker, the undergrad, wanted to get the highest level of education possible and she didn't feel it was enough to get an undergraduate degree or even a Masters. Beaker was the first in her family to go to college . I asked her what her expectations were for the end of grad school, she said that she did not want to be an academic.

The second undergrad who asked me about grad school, SoYoung, just loves doing science. She's the one I worry the most about. I've seen so many colleagues of mine come to grad school with a true enthusiasm, curiousity, and love of science only to leave disillusioned with academia. In at least two cases, the supervisor was to blame. The others...who knows it was probably some combination of the institution, the supervisor, life events, and the academic environment.

These two made me think a lot about my own situation and whether if I knew what I know now, would I go to grad school to do a PhD. The honest answer is, "I don't know."

So here is my advice on how I might go about figuring out what type of school and supervisor to consider if I were an undergraduate again. I know that there are probably a lot of people who have given advice. But I thought I would throw my two cents in anyway.


1. Make an active decision about your future.

From what I've seen and read, when undergrads ask current or past PhD students advice about grad school, the most common piece of advice is, "Don't do it."

I don't think that this advice is really useful, if the student has already made an active choice. Too many students do grad school because they don't know what else to do or are just scared to leave the system. So the advice, "Don't do it," is really someone asking "Are you making an active choice or is it because you don't know what else to do?"

Anyone past the age of 21 years old who is old enough to drink, drive, and vote (hopefully not in that order) is old enough to make active decisions about their immediate future. "I don't know what else to do" is not an active decision. If you don't know what else to do, take a year off, travel or work, but don't just go to school because in the end you will regret it.

2. Why the fuck do you want to do a PhD?

The biggest question you need to ask yourself is "Why do you want to do a PhD?" If the answer is, "What's one more PhD? (This was the answer given to me by one Masters student in a neighbouring lab.) Not good enough, dumbass. And frankly, I don't care if you do your PhD, but you should.

In 5-6 years when you're done your PhD and you go looking for a postdoc cause remember there are 90,000 of us in the USA - it will matter to you. Or when you've realized that that less than average friend of yours who left college with an undergraduate degree, now owns a house and goes off to Europe for 2weeks every year with their gorgeous partner, and all you have is a stupid degree and a really bad headache. Oh fuck it will matter. Or when you're finished the 10th postdoc and still looking for that t-t position. So ask yourself do I really want this higher education.

This question forces you to become an active participant in your career trajectory.

Remember, that if you are interested in a PhD, at some level, you are trading off reproductive success and lifetime earning success. A typical PhD takes 5-6 years and sometimes 7 years. That's a lot of time in your your adult life to be choosing to have your head in the sand.

If an academic position is something you're chasing, good for you, but then understand the game. Yes, academia is a game and the rules aren't hard to figure out. What matters is pedigree and publications. So set yourself up for a win. (See the next advice).

Nowadays there seems to be a belief that you have to do a PhD to get a job. This is such bullshit. If a non-academic position is something you are interested in, do you really need that PhD, if so, what type of position are you interested in - industry, consulting, government work? Again talk to people in those places and ask them what's important then go out and get it.

3. Mobility and the size/level of school.

Because academic success is in large part a result of pedigree, you will have more mobility after your PhD if you go to a BigMFSchool. Most undergrads are naive and think that the supervisor's research should match their own interest. Yes, in some ways this matters because you'll be doing it for 6-7 years, but ultimately you will discover that the subject of research doesn't matter as much as the sociology of the department, university environment, and ultimately academia.

At the end of the degree, if you go to a small unrecognized school, your vertical mobility is less elastic. If, however, you go to a big school, in a lab whose supervisor is the latest thing since sliced bread, then for your postdoc, you can go to that small school, BUT you have the opportunity to also go to a large school. If you go to a small school, you'll have to be the superstar of a small pond to have that kind of vertical movement.

What are you going to do if you don't become that major league baseball player? If you leave a BigMFSchool with a PhD in hand, chances are you have more mobility outside academia. I'm sorry but that podunk school in the middle of nowhere'sville doesn't carry as much weight to the outside world as say BigMFUniversity does. Think about that when you're serving a non-fat soya latte at Starfucks in the same SmallTown you did your PhD.


4. What you like in research is irrelevant, what you like in a Supervisor is not.

A good supervisor-student relationship is responsible for an enjoyable and successful PhD.

For fuck's sake, make sure that you interview the Supervisor as much as they interview you. In order to do this, you need to be clear about what you value and expect in a supervisor. I'm talking specifics, none of this vague nonsense. So read about mentorship in academia - there are tons of blogs and other places like Sciencemag and Nature Careers and make a list.

Identify if the Supervisor is interested in your career and how are they going to help you. Don't work with someone who has no investment in the work you are doing. Make sure that person is honest about their investment in you. Set up a written but FLEXIBLE agreement about the expectations of progress during your grad career. Revisit this every year.

If you want independence in your question, experimental design, and analysis then think hard about taking a project that is funded by a grant. Ask about the flexibility of the "specific aims." Ask to read the grant - and yes, you can do this.

Ask about authorship rules and publication expectations. Conferences and travel expenses (who pays). If you have field work or lab work, how will this be funded? Will you have a chance to see the budget? If they will support you for 4 years what happens in the 5th, 6th year???

Get everything in writing, especially stuff about funding and authorship.

Find out how this supervisor deals with life events in his/her student's lives. You may think nothing will happen, but fuck...

Tenure. If the supervisor of interest, is a young prof seeking tenure - it could go either way. It could be good in that publications and grants will be important to them and thus if you are in their lab you are how they get this stuff. But it could also be be bad and exploitative. You need to decide. My personal feeling is that if I were to do this again, I would look for someone who is seasoned. Think pancakes. When you make them, what happens to the first one?

Don't work with two bosses. Or if you do - follow the money.

Lastly, you want to embark on a research career in whatever form that might be? Then start now. Get the names and emails of previous students who left happy and disgruntled and start asking questions about the Supervisor. Look at the publication records of the most recent students - where did they publish? How many? In which journals? Were they on other papers that came out of the lab? Where did these people end up? Academia? Industry? Does this match with your career trajectory?

I once told a student to run very far away from her potential supervisor. None of his PhD students have ever ended up in academia. Many left their MSc. degrees quite bitter. Did she listen? No she insisted that her relationship would be different. If you are going to douse yourself in some hot and sticky self-delusions, don't cry about how stuck you get at the end. Listen and read between the lines.

5. Genotype x Environment

The collegial environment matters to your growth as a scientist even if you're not interested in academia. It includes two things: the intellectual and social aspects of a school.

Intellectual Environment:

I wouldn't go to SmallUniversity, if you paid me an incredibly high stipend and especially not if I came with my own funding. As a grad student (and postdoc) the environment here is an intellectual vacuum. There are grad students and faculty but never the twain shall meet in a discussion group (unless it is for course credit).

Here faculty are not interested in mentorship but only in shameless self-promotion and the fulfillment of a bare minimum of teaching requirements. Seminars, discussion groups, joint lab meetings, and journal clubs are the life force of a biology department. It is where you have a chance to meet people doing science from a totally different pov. Because a lot of this was critical discussion of papers at LargeUniversityinCanada, I learned how to read science by watching and hearing how faculty did it. You need this as a grad student.

Here, at SmallUniversity, I started a discussion group, in the same vein as one that had a rich history of attendance by faculty, postdocs, and students at LargeUniversityInCanada. The response was muted. And only a small proportion of grad students came. All the postdocs attended but that's because we were starved for intellectually stimulation. Oh sure they have "lunch-time seminars" at SmallUniversity, but these are really just masked faculty meetings where everyone listens 'attentively' to the Godfather pontificate about the latest toy. Price of admission: Your balls in his purse.

Go to a lab meeting. Here is where you will get a chance to see how your chosen Supervisor interacts with his/her students. How interactive is the lab? Are they critical or just soft about the work. Critical is essential in a lab group.

Seminars. These are where you get to hear about work that has really impacted the scientific community or in some small way impressed either the grad students or faculty. The second reason this matters is it will become the base of your network. When a seminar speaker comes to a department, you can meet with them and should. Day1, as a PhD student you should be thinking about building your academic network. Who knows where this could lead? Collaborations? A postdoc? So find out who has come in the past to these things? Look at the publication record of the past speakers because this will tell you about the level of science that your university of interest does. You can ask for this information from the person who has coordinated these events or even the secretary in the department. One advantage of a BigMFSchool, is that they don't have difficulty attracting speakers. Here at SmallUniversity, I've heard grad students complain about how hard it is to get speakers and then the expense at bringing them to a place in the middle of nowhere. And I think as a result, the Biology seminar series here is spotty at best.

Funding creates the environment. If I had to do grad school all over, as a Canadian I would choose to go to a grad school in Canada over a school in the US, simply because the funding situation. In the US, it's really difficult to get grants partly because the grants are large and there are so many people chasing money. Although the typical grant is $150,000 (subtract off ~50% for university overhead), the chances are slim, between 7-12%. Furthermore, most of that grant tends to go to salaries. As a direct consequence of this boom-bust cycle of funding, I feel that there is an atmosphere of self-preservation and intense competition within labs, departments, and US schools.

In Canada, the average grant is between $35,000-40,000, but the chance of getting that is 77%. It's a more sustainable system. Labs don't crash and burn if they don't get renewed because they don't grow to unsustainable sizes when they get funded. A second difference between Canada and the US is that NSERC funds a lot more graduate students. This really makes a difference. At SmallUniversity, the money is in the hands of the PI and as a result so is the power. Money in your hands means that no one can leverage that against you. If you come with your own funding, you have more power and thus options. In my mind, money in the hands of graduate students is better spent and way more democratic.

Social environment:

I'm not going to talk about the obvious social life of grad students because as a potential grad student coming in you can easily find out about this. Instead, I'm going to talk about the atmosphere. The soft selection so to speak of the department. Walk around and look at the walls of the department and the different labs. What's on the walls - what's being highlighted? Only posters from scientific conferences? Lab photos of people in a social context? Or both? How does this fit with what you want out of the PhD experience?

How is the departmental space organized. Where are the faculty offices? Where are the grad students housed? postdocs? Walk down the hallways. Are the doors to the faculty offices open or closed? At SmallUniversity, the faculty are segregated from the students and postdocs and the doors are never open. This reflects the accessibility and interaction of the faculty with the grad students or postdocs. In other words, here, it is limited at best. At LargeUniversityCanada, the faculty and grad student offices are interspersed and the doors are always open. There it was encouraged. In the grad student offices, who shares with whom? Is it lab focused or more interactive so that there is a mix of labs? While at LargeUniversityInCanada, I learned a ton from my office mates, most of whom were not in my lab.

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None of this advice matters, because no matter how much you tell someone that they're in for a bumpy ride, they think that they are special, the exception.

Don't lie to yourself about how important or smart you think you are. Because you're no different than the rest of us.

Stay humble, always.

On a Sunday.

When I started my life as a graduate student in the biological sciences, I was met by opposition from both sides of the family, but for very different reasons. My mom's side of the family lives with a very strong religious belief. What is important is strengthening and developing your religious practice and being a good Muslim woman. This meant believing in a God and marrying well - this meant a good Muslim boy. I had three choices of a career: medical doctor, medical doctor, or medical doctor. Going to graduate school and studying evolution was an affront to their belief system.

On my dad's side, money is a very powerful and motivating force. His belief (echoed by his siblings) is that stuff will liberate you. This meant having a big home, expensive cars, expensive adult toys, and lots of expensive clothes. Stuff. Stuff will buffer you from the harsh realities of the world (here they meant racism). Or at least you can buy your way out of the discomforts of the real world . From their perspective, I had three choices of a career: medical doctor, lawyer, or get an MBA and go into business. Going to graduate school was a waste of time not to mention condemned you to a life of poverty (if only they could read this blog, how they would laugh and say I told you so).

Needless to say, my life to date has essentially been a big "fuck you" sign to both sides of the family.

Given the pressure I felt to become a medical doctor, it didn't seem surprising to me that I was one of the few minority biology graduate students in the biological sciences. I had thought that most children of immigrant families tend to become doctors, lawyers, engineers etc.

I was quite interested then in the NSF data that documents the participation of Women, Minorities, and Persons with Disabilities in Science and Engineering. I have summarized the report in a series of graphs because some interesting facts emerge.

When we look at the proportion of graduate students in the biological sciences we still see that minorities make up less than 10% of student population. Asian Americans make up the largest percentage of the minority graduate student population at approximately 8%, followed by African and Hispanic Americans at 5%. A second noticeable trend in Figure 1 is that over the last 7 years these numbers have not really changed. What do these statistics mean? Well, let's explore this.

In 2000 and 2007, demographic data showed that 12% of Americans were Black or African American, 15% were Hispanic or Latino, <1% were Native American, and only 4% were of Asian origin. This means that the per capita representation of Asians is actually double what you would expect given their representation in the population base. The issue of under representation of minorities in STEM lies specifically with African and Hispanic graduate students. If there was equal opportunity available to all, we would expect that African and Hispanic Americans should, at the very least, make up 12% and 15% of graduate students in biology. But they don't.

And yet it seems like when minorities do get through graduate school they do quite well. In 2006, 15% of all science and engineering faculty were Asian, 4% were African American, 4% were Hispanic and 1% are Native American.

(I didn't have numbers specific to biological sciences faculty.)

The picture looks even better in non-academic settings. In 2006, 23% of those employed as life scientists with doctorates were Asian, 3% were Black or African American, and 3% were Hispanic. Of the 2000 forestry and conservation scientists in the year 2006, none were Asian, Black, Hispanic or Native American.

Although the representation is still something to be concerned about, there doesn't seem to be the attrition levels that are associated with women.

Under the same per capita logic, in the year 2000 and 2007, women made up 51% of the American population. The number of women that graduated with doctorates in that same year was 43%, by 2006, this number increased to 47%.

In that same year, 2000, women made up 38% of the postdocs in the biological sciences and by 2006, were at 41%. And if you look at these numbers by discipline within the biological sciences, other than biometry and epidemiology, women are generally hanging tight at ~40% across the six year dataset.

At the risk of sounding repetitive, the report by the AAUW, "Why So Few" is still important because there are areas where women graduate students are few and far between, like computer sciences oddly. But focusing solely on the early stages simply sets us up for continued failure and disappointment.

We really need to explore why there is such an attrition rate in women at the postdoctoral level. What good is it if we can achieve 50% representation at the doctorate level in all STEM sciences, if women never end up in tenured or tenure-track jobs?

We have an opportunity right now because women in the biological sciences are almost representative of their population base at the doctoral and postdoctoral level. It is that crucial transition from postdoctoral scientist to faculty where things fall off a scientific precipice.

A study that examines the employment routes of women with doctorates would be incredibly useful. Do they go into industry, publishing, consulting, etc? What proportion are women in these different scientific workplaces? Is it because they have actively chosen to pursue other routes or that they have tried, but unsuccessfully to obtain a tenure-track job? And if they actively made a decision to pursue another career route, what factors played into their decision?

At present my chance of getting a tenure track job is the pr(t-t job as a woman)x pr(tt as a minority)= 0.22x0.15=3%.

It would be nice, if just this once, the older generation wasn't right.

Less painful than gradschool?

Carl Zimmer has this posted at his blog. Here is the link. This guy tattooed a model of the molecule fulvic acid, which he worked on as a graduate student. Apparently, it was less painful than grad school.

I only have one question - then why do you want to be reminded of it every time you look over your shoulder?

A two-week challenge

Well, HippieHusband and I have decided to take an aggressive stance on saving money. I guess uncertainty does that sort of thing to you.

The rule is that you should have 3-6mths salary in case of an emergency. But frankly, as a PhD student, that was nearly impossible - I mean maybe if you had a grant and TA'd you might pull something off. Mostly, however, the PhD students I knew - they were living paycheck to paycheck or largely on credit.

And when we did become a two-income post-doc family, because we had lived on so little, we started accruing a little bit of money in the bank. It was so great. But then my father died and we had to dip into the money to pay for airline tickets. Almost immediately after that, I went into the hospital for a small operation. And then of course the brain tumour followed by brain surgery. So our savings basically whittled its way down to - well not much.

In December, we started thinking very seriously about our financial situation. Given that we're both on contract and HippieHusband's latest woes, we decided to start off the new year by saving his salary and trying to just live off of mine until the end of our contracts. So I've been squirrelling money away into our savings account. It was all fine and dandy until I miscalculated and we came up short in our chequing account.

Despite my association to the mathematically inclined, I can't add or subtract.

Ugh. I hate those stupid overdraft fees.

So yesterday was the beginning of new two-week experiment. Since we came up short, we have made a pact not to buy any more groceries or food items until our next pay day - two weeks from now. Instead we will just eat whatever we have stockpiled in our cupboards. We will have to be creative with the dried, canned, or frozen foods - and of course whatever vegetables and fruits I bought before I realized we had a shortfall. Thank god, I bought a bag of apples.

No problem.

This morning we realized that HippieHusband didn't have any milk.

Oh, geez it will be an interesting two weeks.

The overlap between friends, faculty and postdoc

Recently, I received an email from a friend who has been asked by a "casual friend" to do a post-doc with her. "Casual friendships" arise because of the overlap between academic stage and real age. In our line of work, people may be at different stages of their career like grad student or postdoc but be within the same age range. Add to that that people get to different stages of the academic career at different paces. So you may start out as grad students together, but one of you fast tracks through a post-doc and becomes a junior faculty, while the other takes a year off or ends up in a post-doc for a much longer period of time. Another scenario that could arise is that as a senior grad student you became friends with the post-doc in the lab or adjacent lab group largely because you were similar in age. Now this person has gone on to become a faculty member. So I think the confound of age makes this even more challenging.

Here is his email:

I'm also writing to ask for your thoughts on something. When I finish my PhD I'll be looking for a post-doc in (insertCityName). Yesterday, I got a surprise offer from (insertFriend's Name), whom you know. We're decent friends and I'm enjoying getting to know her. She wanted to bend my ear yesterday about a project she's planning, and at the end she informally suggested I do a post-doc with her. My response was that the thought had crossed my mind previously (she does really cool stuff), but that I was wary about doing a post-doc with a friend as a boss. It still seems to be an open offer.

Here are my thoughts on whether I would recommend this type of post-doc:

1. A starting faculty or junior faculty has one thing on their mind - tenure. Faculty get tenure by writing and getting grants. They get grants by pumping out papers. Papers are produced by grad students and post-docs. If a grad student and post-doc start at the same time, the post-doc is expected to produce at least two papers per year, one of which should be from their current work even if this work is completely different from their PhD. The pressure that this places on a friendship can strain that relationship. It's not really fair to place all the blame on the junior faculty but at the same time, many junior faculty choose tenure over a friendship with a transient post-doc. They're doing what you're doing - trying to survive and thrive.
2. Friendship is compromised by the unfair hierarchy that is academia. The inherent structure in academia changes the power dynamic between friends from one of equals to an asymmetric one. This person will evaluate your work and write you letters of reference.
3. I believe that as a post-doc, it is really important to work with someone who is older than you. It becomes confusing for both parties when the age of the two individuals are so similar. That's because there is an expectation of friendship causing the lines of friend and mentor to become blurred. If you are much younger than the person there is no reason to expect friendship. It becomes even more difficult when two people enter this relationship as friends - the expectation is already present. When two people are friends and supervisor-postdoc, actions and words become interpreted in ways that make people feel bad about themselves or the other person.
4. I think that for both post-docs and grad students the most important thing is how you get along with the supervisor. Personality conflicts can tank a career and make you miserable for years. Despite the cutting edge research and the productivity of a lab, it is really important to make sure that your personality is one that meshes with the supervisory style. Supervisory style is a different beast than how that person relates to you as a friend.
5. A second factor to consider is the lab atmosphere. In the end, you are likely to spend more time with your labmates than the faculty member. This is not to say that you won't develop friendships with other faculty in the department but because your friend, the supervisor needs to cultivate ties in the department (think tenure), s/he probably won't have time to just hang out that much. This can cause resentment.
6. The post-doc is a place where you do a lot of work - if you're lucky it's innovative and sometimes exciting - but don't expect to get any credit for the work. The glory will come later when you have your own lab. This lack of recognition can sour a friendship, which is based on mutual respect.

Lastly, I know three people now, who have done post-docs with people they knew as "casual friends." All of them claimed to get along well prior to being a post-doc, but the friendship was soured by the end of the postdoc. Frankly, I think it takes two really awesome people who value and respect each enough other to rise above all the politics. Sadly, I don't know of any examples.

My answer is that I would not do it. Even if science was exciting and you knew that you had a really good relationship with the person, my response would be no - don't do it.

Well that's all I can think of - does anyone have any other reasons for or against doing a post-doc with a friend? Or any cases where two people are friends and remain friends - I'm sure that there must be, I just haven't heard. It would be great to pass along the advice to my friend!

Early warning signs

When I first started writing this post, HippieHusband and I were fighting at the drop of a hat. This was largely because we had reached our threshold value of stress that both of us could handle. And his job situation just tipped the balance.

The cumulative effect was that we were angry all the time. Angry at each other, angry at his supervisors, angry at the school, angry at SmallTown, and yes, even angry at the sheep. Being angry all the time is exhausting.

Needless to say this did nothing for our science. Sure maybe I spent a few extra hours at work but then I was frustrated and tired when I came home. That tired feeling never left my body. When I got home, all we did was talk about TheBully and each day I felt myself falling deeper down the rabbit hole of anger and frustration.

I know for some people acute stress is like a energy boost drink and for these people, their science thrives, but I'm not one of them.

All I knew was that something had to change or eventually we would be talking about the custody of our broken cell phone.

Well this got me thinking back to my "good ol' days of getting divorced in grad school." What was weird at the time was how many people came out of the woodwork to tell me that they too were divorced. My own supervisor told me at the time that lots of long-term relationships don't survive academia.

If 50% of marriages end in divorce and re-marriages face an even higher rate, are academic couples more at risk because of the high levels of stress? How does our work environment exacerbate the situation?

I think that we spend the majority of our time with two sorts of groups in our lives: colleagues at work and our family. Early on in an academics' career, immediate (both physically and emotionally) family is usually the spouse. So if you pick someone - pick well, right?

A number of couples I know are made up of two academics. This may be due in part to our social group, i.e. grad students and post-docs. But the two-body situation means some compromises will have to be made and as a result for two people to both have jobs, long distance may play a part in the equation. I knew of one couple where the guy lived in New York and the woman lived in San Francisco. They told me that the distance was helpful to their relationship. Really, what kind of relationship requires distance to make things better?

Long-distance can put a strain on a relationship but then the trade-off may be that the couple suffers in trying to find academic jobs for both parties. HippieHusband and I have made a decision that we won't accept a position unless the other person has *something* lined up. This doesn't mean we won't be flexible - I think we're quite open to even sharing a position if necessary, but we want to be in the same city.

One bonus to a relationship, where both parties are academics, is at least there is some understanding about the 70-80hr work week, right? If a spouse is not an academic but has chosen a smarter path in life, then it can be difficult to explain why you are so doggone stuck to the thermal cycler that you spend more time amplifying (insert organism) DNA than you do replicating your own (nudge, nudge, wink, wink). Or imagine justifying to your carpenter husband why you need to spend Sunday with E.coli and not him.

In either scenario, when the stress is intense and real, relationships suffer from what psychologists have termed, emotional transmission. "Emotional transmission," is the psychological term for how emotions are carried from one context to another and/or how emotions are passed from one family member to another. It seems that job stress and emotional or physical exhaustion can cause marital distress. Go figure?

In this one paper by Roberts and Levenson (2001), they defined emotional exhaustion as "a chronic state of physical and emotional depletion that results from excessive job demands and continuous hassels." Wow, perhaps these people have read about academia? Exhausted and stressed out individuals are generally more angry, anxious, complain more, and are less able to communicate and problem solve effectively.

This same paper referred to previous work, which showed that an increased autonomic nervous system arousal (flight or fight response) and a higher proportion of negative emotional interactions compared to positive ones are the early warning signs of divorce. Constant ANS arousal can make it difficult to think straight and problem-solve.

In examining 19 male police officers and their wives, Roberts and Levenson (2001) showed that high levels of job stress were associated with a physiological response in both spouses. They observed elevated levels of cardiovascular activity and lower levels of bodily movement not only in the husbands but also in their wives. In other words, what they characterized as the "freeze" response associated with great fear had carryover effects in the spouse. Furthermore, and clearly not a surprise, but job stress reduced the positive quality of the marital interactions and the reciprocity associated with that positive exchange. So if you're angry at work, guess what you'll likely show impatience and anger at home.

This is exactly what was happening with HippieHusband and I. I have to say I did feel like I was in constant flight or fight mode and with the recent brain surgery, it has been more like fight. I know that our year was probably a little unusual, but I'm sure that at some level every academic goes through a battle that leaves them exhausted and beaten down. According to the above research, then their spouse also goes through a similar battle.

I think about the academic journey. If finishing a Ph.D. dissertation was not traumatic and highly emotional, then during the post-doc, the pressure to produce publications within short periods of time is huge. Only because it makes you oh so competitive for that faculty position. If somehow, you are one of those lucky people who just sail through life, then perhaps the post-doc is a joyful and carefree period for you. If that's true, then when you do get that job and that carefree period ends, as a faculty member, you will find that students or grant deadlines will put you in a tailspin. Now multiply this by two. No wonder most relationships tank in academia.

The key to surviving seems to be what the study suggested - minimize the negative and increase the positive. For HippieHusband and I, we put a moratorium on talking about TheBully. This meant that we restricted our conversations about the work-related situation (not science) to an hour a day. The second thing we did is spend quality time together doing fun things. It's so simple and yet because our work consumed us, we got lost.

Now, as I finish this post I started almost a month ago, I can happily report that things in the Girlpostdoc's household are a lot lighter. Although the work situation is still unresolved, HippieHusband and I remain steadfast in our commitment to each other.

Why small universities need to step up.

Today, I awoke from a dream feeling like I had been hit by a U-haul truck. In the dream, I was trying to take a hot bubble bath - one of my favourite ways to relax. But I couldn't even get into the water because floating at the surface were a ton of 10 uL pipette tips as if someone had taken one of those filter-tip boxes and just dumped it into the bathtub . Before I could get in, I had to fish each one individually out of the tub. Then, just as I had fished out the last of the pipette tips and was about to get in, I was interrupted by a banging at the door. I opened the door to see one of my old boyfriends standing, as always, like a peacock who thinks his tail is more magnificent than it really is. He looked awful (small mercies). The last time I saw this guy - he was pretty fit but now looking at him his face was all pudgy and red surrounded by this black, curly, ear-length hair. He didn't say anything then just disappeared. I closed the door and was met with yet another interruption. Needless to say I never got to relax.

This was one of the more straightforward dreams I have ever had and I'm totally aware that it is a metaphor for my current life. Normally my dreams are vivid and suspense-filled movies where I am chasing or being chased, searching for lost treasure, zipping in and through time, taking part in some major espionage, living in a concentration camp, the list goes on. Once, I was a big, black, male jazz singer and HippieHusband awoke to me shouting in a gravelly voice, "Bourbon, oh yeah bourbon." Geez, I've never tasted bourbon before in my life.

It's only when I'm truly stressed by the everyday that I have the tedious and highly mundane dreams. When I was in the deepest and darkest part of the Ph.D. thesis, I had a dream in which I stepped into a graphical representation of my data to examine each and every datapoint. Yawn!

Well, I think that HippieHusband's current work situation is interfering with my ability to relax and enjoy the holidays. It's funny because everyone that we spoke to in BigCity Canada about the situation all responded with the same answer, "You can't stay there." This statement got me thinking a lot about how hard it will be for this SmallUniversity or any small university to attract and keep smart, independent, hard-working, and productive post-docs.

If the supervisor within a small university can't offer a working environment that is fun, stimulating, and most of all respectful (quitting a collaboration and firing your post-doc from the lab is just not respectful), then really why would anyone in their right mind stay?

What exactly does SmallUniversity in SmallTown America have to offer? There is little intellectual stimulation from within department because a) there are few journal clubs of note, b) the labs are small c) few invited seminars by cutting edge colleagues, and d) even fewer post-docs outside your lab. Outside the university environment, in the SmallTown there isn't a whole lot to do. Unlike BigCity, if all hell breaks out with your supervisor at SmallUniversity in SmallTown, you can't retreat to that yoga class, or go to that alternative cinema, or find theatre to attend, or de-stress at a concert, or go and take an art class at the art school, or eat wonderful food at great restaurants, or just hang out with friends in really cool places.

If you work at BigUniversity in BigCity, then as a supervisor you can be an asshole to your postdoc and probably get away with it. Why? The post-doc will probably stay because if you are a supervisor are at a BigUniversity then you are probably hot shit and can offer that post-doc something more - I call it the "by association." Plus the post-doc has colleagues and resources outside the lab that allow for intellectual stimulation. And finally, they get to live in BigCity X with all of its cultural activities and a myriad of restaurants.

So I believe the SmallUniversity tenured faculty have to STEP-UP when they learn that a post-doc is being mistreated and bullied. They need to advocate for their postdocs. And yes, I purposefully say "their" post-docs. Even though the post-doc is not directly in their lab, the presence of this post-doc contributes to the overall intellectual attractiveness of the university - making it a place that new Ph.D students might want to go. They can provide knowledge and advise to Ph.D. students not just in their own lab but to those students in the department. They are potential collaborators and colleagues. They are the ones to start those journal clubs that enrich the intellectual life of the school. The postdoc carries the weight and expertise of a faculty member in small labs where there are no lab technicians. And ultimately, they produce the papers that allow the faculty in the department to look good and get grants.

So if you think that the biggest attraction to the department offers a work-life balance or how inter-disciplinary collaborations at the university make it an exciting place to work - think again.

People don't quit environments they quit their bosses.

When the workplace betrays you...

Okay, let's say you had a friend who came to you for advice about his workplace. Here is a brief scenario:

There is a powerful man who has a great deal of influence at work. This is because he is in charge of a lot of money. But TheBully shits on most of his colleagues, who for some reason just accept this as his "personal style."

Your friend was not hired by TheBully, but by another person who directly supervises him. He simply borrows space in the TheBully's factory because the supervisor has a different kind of factory. And so, there are weekly meetings with his direct supervisor and TheBully.

In these meetings, however, TheBully verbally beats up on your friend.
Meeting One: TheBully, calls your friend, "Not passionate enough."
Meeting Two: TheBully claims, your friend is not working hard enough or fast enough, that TheBully will have to find someone else to replace your friend.
Meeting Three: TheBully tells your friend that he has two strikes against him. That he is not meeting expectations.

Now you know this friend quite well and you know that he works really hard. You know, for example, that your friend spend a month of unpaid work to learn the job from a previous factory worker who was leaving. That he didn't take a Christmas holiday so that he could replace the raw materials in a production line. Finally, in the course of literally one year, your friend has managed to get enough raw materials to produce two finished goods. By way of comparison, the person previously employed by TheBully for six years produced raw materials of very poor quality and thus no finished goods. Not only that, TheBully's factory has not produced any goods of high quality in the last 5 years. Needless to say, your friend's real supervisor has been quite happy with your friend's job performance so really it isn't a question of productivity.

Finally, Meeting Four: TheBully shouts questions at your friend about the raw materials. Remaining calm, your friend tries to answer the questions. But this was a 'question and answer game', where your friend answered, "Yes" and the bully would say "Wrong, it's no." Similarly if your friend said, "No" the bully yells, "Wrong, it's yes." After angrily spitting false accusations at your friend about stealing company materials, TheBully screams at your friend calling him arrogant. Several times, the supervisor tried to intervene but TheBully shut him down too. Then, TheBully stormed out of the room several times, and when he finally came back, asked your friend to get his raw materials out of his factory. Furthermore, TheBully ended the relationship not just with your friend but with his supervisor, saying he didn't care what the hell they did.

The next day, worried about some of the raw materials still in production in the TheBully's factory, the supervisor approaches TheBully. He tries to ask him what to do about the raw materials and to address the angry words in the previous meeting.

TheBully denies ever asking your friend to get his raw materials out of his factory. He denies it all.

What advice would you give your friend about this workplace situation?

Work-life balance

Last week, SouthernBelle, the lab tech of the PI that shares our lab space had a really rough time. She is having one of the shittiest months of her life. There must be a singularity somewhere in our lab because not only did SouthernBelle have a clusterfuck in her personal life, but mine, as most of you know, has been nothing but challenging, and our undergrad CakeBakertoAnimals, also had it rough with some family issues. The good news. For all of us, experiments are running smoothly and we're starting to get some fabulous data.

Based on a sample size of N=3 (and my own autocorrelated data of lifetime experiences), I think the concept of "work-life balance" needs revising.

I've captured this new definition in Figure 1. Work-life balance means that there is an inverse relationship between how well things are going in your personal life and your work life. So yeah, my entire study population was demolished in a fire and my supervisor has told me that I have to finish in two years, but at least my boyfriend has asked me to marry him and I just won a trip to Spain.

I hate trade-offs.

Oh sure, there are the occasional outliers when both work and your personal life have you head first in a toilet. Or the time when things are all candy apples and cotton candy and you know it so you ride that wave. But for the most part I think this inverse relationship is really true.

And as a result, this is the one and only time I can honestly say I'd rather not have work-life balance.

Revisions on the monkey

Well, I did it. A day late, but whatever - it's off. I finished the revisions on the monkey and I've sent it off to both of my PhD supervisors.

So I'll just sit back and wait to hear from General Solution Guru, who always has excellent comments and thanks to her the work is far more sophisticated than I would have been able to do on my own.

I really hope that we can submit this baby soon. I'm dying for that Jack Daniels.

Update on my mentorship skills.

I am happy to report that YoungEinstein has stepped up to the bar. In this post, I explain how I chose I different tactic to manage, what I thought was an underperforming lab tech. Instead of telling him all the things he did wrong, I chose a more respectful and compassionate approach.

Low and behold, it worked!

I am totally aware that there are some people who just have a hard time with certain tasks, but all in all, I'm convinced that if you just treat someone with compassion and respect, they will do their best for you. Sometimes people will fail, but we all fail at some point or another. You just have to have a little faith in someone.

This is so true for students - if you take someone on as a student, then it's important to try and have faith in that student and not give up on someone, even when you're exasperated with them. There are always ways to resolve a situation that is respectful to both parties even if it means parting ways.

So last week, I decided that instead of just producing data, it was high time YoungEinstein learned how to analyze it using R. And although, I know that this will be useful for him during his PhD, I really believe that a lab tech is more than just a minion. And it turned out that this was clearly something he enjoys and is quite capable of doing.

I work in R because it is the most accessible, intuitive, transparent, and flexible computing language out there. We used the data from our experiment and I gave him a few pointers, set out the problem for him to solve in R, and then let him go. He came back 3 days later with the solution. And I know he worked on this at home and every chance he got in between experiments. I think it must have captured his imagination.

Lately, he's been on top of our experiment, reporting more carefully about any anomalies that he sees. His lab notebook is much more detailed and he keeps this up to date. (Occasionally, there's a lapse, but we're all human. ) I get weekly reports from him on the status of my requests. He has kept up to date on all the ordering of our supplies and has managed to do most of the lab management tasks.

Best of all, I think he is happier about coming to work. Instead of our previous professional interactions, our conversations are relaxed and friendly.

I'm thankful to YoungEinstein for giving me a little insight into mentorship, and when we get the next lab tech, I'm sure that I will learn a little something more about myself.

Science is a Gaussian distribution away from truth.

Today I had a very interesting conversation with YoungEnthusiasticScientist (YES) over lunch. I was asking him some statistical questions because I was having trouble getting my head around how to do certain things. And then our conversation veered to the dreaded question, had my paper gone out for review? Have I submitted TheMonkey yet?

I sheepishly said 'no.' But then explained I didn't want to submit something that I didn't think wasn't truthful. How could I submit something that wasn't accurate to my best ability, wouldn't that be lying?

His reply, "Then you'll never be able to submit it." Gesturing with his hands, he drew a line up in the air, "Truth is up here." Then he drew an imaginary Gaussian distribution below this imaginary line. "And all of us that do science, we're down here. Science is an approximation of the truth. I have papers that I submitted years ago that I totally disagree with the conclusions now. That's how science progresses. You do shit - find out its wrong - change how you do shit and do some more shit - then find out that it's wrong, etc. Science is recursive."

I answered, "But won't the reviewers reject it if they find problems? And my PhD supervisor, GeneralSolutionGuru says you should be your own worst critic."

YES responded with, "Reviewers will often reject something when they can feel clever. If they read your paper and find something that they can go, 'aha, now I feel clever' your paper will be rejected. So don't let them feel clever, just put in all the caveats and then send the thing out!"

Okay, YoungEnthusiasticScientist. I will. I know I have a problem called perfectionism, but I can do this. Despite the personal shit that is currently happening, I will have this paper to GSG by the end of next week. I can let go.

Reflections on a successful transplant.

I'm back in SmallTown, America after a week long visit to BigCity, Canada. The reason I went to the BigCity was to help out some colleagues with an experiment we started while I was still living there. This is not my first attempt at a collaboration and I really hope it does not go the way of my two other 'collaborations'. Those ones ended badly for me. In the first case, I was brought into a postdoc's office and told that I was being taken off the paper because she had decided it wasn't worth it to her to have too many authors. Myself and one other grad student were "summarily dismissed" after we contributed a great deal of time and energy collecting data and help with building a model.

So when we started this experiment, I have to say I was a little uncertain and hesistant about contributing time. I know that it is often the case where you start a bunch projects with people, some will go nowhere, while others will bloom. My past experience suggests that the ones which are likely to end badly (where someone is removed from authorship, despite the contribution of data) may have more to do with the self-serving motivations of the people involved.

Right now, I'm working with two people who do not let ambition dictate how they operate in their professional relationships. The lead on this project, LivingtheScottishLife (LSL), is respectful and keeps me involved in the decision making process, despite the fact that I live so far away. I really appreciate this and so I do my best to participate fully and help out as much as I can. This in my mind did not happen in the two other cases - I was not seen as a colleague but merely a doorstep for someone else's career.

The experiment was so involved that while in the BigCity, I spent most of my days transplanting many little seedlings, from a shared space in a tiny little pot into their own larger pots. A lovely metaphor for what has occurred in my own life. I have moved from a large university so crowded with students all competiting for space and recognition to a small university with tons of space to allow this little seedling to blossom. It was ironic that I did all of this work in LargeUniversityinCanada's (LUC) greenhouse but it gave me time to reflect on my own transplantation.

One thing I thought about was how my interaction with GeneralSolutionGuru (my PhD supervisor) was different than that of the interactions I have with Dr.Add'emUp (my postdoc supervisor). Both supervisors are incredibly smart and supportive, but when I talk with Dr Add'emUp I feel like a colleague.

I am sure this has more to do with my confidence.

It was good to return to LUC having spent time away in a small place where the emphasis is on collaboration because I now understand that despite the strong academic training, I was finished my training at LUC.

Even though SmallUniversity is small, the people here have big hearts and there is plenty of space for me grow.

The Math Boys Clubs: The Visiting Scientist

Yesterday, I met with my supervisor, Dr. Add'EmUp and a visiting scholar, SampleSizeScientist, at SmallUniversity. SampleSizeScientist is a big shot statistical geneticist, who works with data that comes from the most cutting edge technology.

In my field, meeting with visiting scholars is an essential part of the training process of a graduate student or postdoc. There are several reasons why you should participate either in a group meeting or one-one-one time with a visiting scholar. First, the visiting scholar will ask you about your work. Even if the visiting scientist is not directly connected to your field, you will be forced to describe what question you are asking, how you are answering this question, and what results you might have, if any. All in the span of one or two sentences. This is not a simple task, but it gets easier.

If you've done a good job, usually the person will ask a question or two and, I say jump, at the chance to think and discuss your own work with someone more senior than you. Thirdly, sometimes 'talking science' can mean learning to have a conversation with a perfect stranger and/or someone whose work you have admired. One way initiate a conversation is to ask a question about their work - either specific or more general. This means reading one or two papers about their research. This in and of itself, gives you breadth as a scientist, something sorely lacking in my opinion.

Finally, while you may *think* that the visiting scientists work is completely unrelated and therefore irrelevant to your own research, think again. If they've been invited by a member of your department, it's for a reason. So take advantage of the expertise and network like heck. Now I'm not suggesting that if you work on neuroscience in newts you should meet with a particle physicist, but in my field, the type of work people do is quite broad. So I could meet with someone, who is say working on African toads, even though I study processes in SmallandFastUnits. Even if it is just once, there is the minute possibility that I would connect with someone and a collaboration will fall out of the conversation. The other reason. Job prospects.

So I really appreciate that Dr. Add'EmUp invites me to meet with him and the visiting scientist because it means that he cares about mentoring me. Dr.Add'EmUp is unlike most mathematical biologists, in that he wants to understand and implement the biology. For him biological reality matters in his models. They're not negligible error terms that can be ignored.

Although he does use continuous differential equations, much of his work is done with spatially explicit simulations so that he can account for biological complexity. The best thing about the work he does is the synergism between empiricism and theory. In this lab, the empirical work feeds theory which then ultimately feeds back into the empirical work. Its the best use of theory I have witnessed.

The meeting with the two male scientists started off interesting - SampleSize said to Dr. Add'EmUp in a hot danish accent,

"I was really suprised to hear that you had started a lab - I think that's very brave of you."

"Yeah, but it is only possible because I hired excellent people, like my postdoc." (Thanks Add'EmUp!)

And then SampleSize turned to me and asked about the science, we talked briefly and for a while the conversation was engaging. I asked him if he thought that the recent developments in technology had changed the way people were doing science, i.e. are we no longer interested in formulating interesting questions, or are we asking different types of questions, given the magnitude of data we are innundated with? He gave a somewhat satisfactory answer, but then it quickly degenerated into a discussion of stochastic calculus.

Unfortunately, this was the same pattern as our last meeting with another visiting scholar. And although I tried to participate, I'm tongue-tied when it comes to a Stratonovich integral or the Itō integral. I mean WTF? I do biology, people, not math.

For the last 5 minutes of our meeting, I found myself thinking these things.

1. This feels like a math boys club that I'm clearly not a part of. Hmff...I knew there was a reason I hated math.

2. All the people these two have mentioned are men and mathematicians. Sigh!

3. If he's married (and he is because he mentioned his wife several times during the meeting), why the heck doesn't he wear a ring? I wonder what his wife thinks about this?

4. At least I managed to eat breakfast this morning so my stomach won't scare him.

Ah well, there will always be another visiting scientist....

A perfectionist's nightmare.

I haven't been blogging for the past week because I've been in the lab trying to get our evolution experiment up and running. We are running experiments similar to batch culture evolution on SmallandFastUnits (sfus). Without going into too much technical detail, the aim is to see how genetic change occurs over space and time given a change in environment.

I have faced three challenges this week. Preventing cross-contamination between environmental treatments and within replicates. Our results are useless if a genetic change has occurred and we can't tell if it arose de novo or because of experimenter error. The second was realizing that experimental evolution is a perfectionist's nightmare. Unlike field experiments where there is no illusion of control, the lab has the appearance of a place where all variables can and should be considered. I have now let go of this absurd expectation of myself and others. You can control as many variables as you want and spend all the time in the world trying to control the laboratory environment, but then you never actually finish anything. The last challenge was the most difficult - dealing with my lab technician.

The first challenge led to me restarting our experiment twice because contamination of two kinds hit us in the middle of it. The first time I encountered the contamination I was truly surprised. This is because the technique we used had been used by a lab down the hall in a previous experiment. Apparently their sterile technique was less than sterile. The question I have is, if we found contamination in our stuff, they must have had contamination in their experiment.

Finally, the lab technician, who started in January is just out of his undergrad. I fully understand that a lab technician is a transient position, but I think that now is a great opportunity to train and get a slight edge over his classmates in the PhD programme. Plus, there is the chance to get his name on publications. But things aren't going as well as I wanted.

Today, I finally had it. This morning I came in (6:30am) to carry out my part of the experiment, but I had no idea if he had completed his part yesterday evening. Before the experiment started, I made a checklist and a template that we could use to communicate since the different parts of the experiment required us to be in the lab at different times. But he hadn't written anything down. Not on the sheets I provided, nor in his lab notebook. Secondly, I had given explicit instructions about how to carry out his part to avoid cross-contamination. But when I came in there was evidence that he had taken an easy route and risked the entire experiment.

I am totally aware that I can be intense and I know I have really high expectations of myself and thus of others. At first, I planned on leaving a bunch of nasty notes around the lab this morning. But I very quickly realized that if I were in his place, this would just piss me off and make me even less interested in the job. So instead, I took him out for coffee and I asked his whether he thought his job was challenging and what I could do to mentor him better.

Now I can only keep my fingers crossed that this "coffee talk" worked.

April Scientiae

"We do not receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness, which no one else can make for us, which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world" Marcel Proust

The above quote is one of my favourites and I feel it embodies the essence of April Scientiae, which is about overcoming challenges during one's scientific career. Since my scientific career is still a young one, i.e. I've only had less than a year of a postdoc, I'd have to say that the firey fire for me was getting divorced during my PhD.

I was together with my ex-husband for almost 12 years before things began to disintegrate. When you're with someone that long, it's much much harder to let go. I did get married when I was fairly young and as a result spent most of my young adulthood with this one person. And I rightly thought that 12 years is worth battling for, but I also realized that it was not worth dying over. This was a discovery I made at the start of my third year in the PhD. At the end of that year, I was separated.

The divorce was difficult, of course, what divorce isn't. And SkidRow, my ex, a good guy during our marriage, became angry, desperate, and mean during the divorce. To compound the situation, SkidRow had moved fourth months prior to the separation, to the other side of the country because he had just gotten a tenure track position in the arts. For the first 6 months after we separated, he would call 2-3 times a day. Sometimes he would leave horrible phone messages, other times we would talk and I'd end up huddled in a heap of tears on the floor underneath the table, not really sure if I had made the biggest mistake of my life.

Almost immediately following our official separation, I ended up in very bad rebound relationship, though in retrospect, it was this relationship that gave me the courage to go forward with the divorce. When that didn't work out, I became a complete mess. I bet you're wondering how huddled in a heap on the floor in tears is not a complete mess. Well, it's really amazing how far one can fall. Rock bottom for me was anti-depressants and Buffy reruns.

During that dreadful year of my PhD, I would come into work, sit at my desk and stare at the computer, which more often than not hadn't been turned on. Occasionally, I would flip through a growing pile of to-be-read journal articles slumbering beside my computer. Sometimes, I would wander over to the lab and attempt PCR that never seemed to work. Mostly, I exercised. Actually, I think it's all I did. Yoga, ultimate, running, spin class, pilates, cycling. Anything that kept me moving, I did. I lost 20lbs in the matter of a few months. As you can tell, those were two of the most productive years of my PhD.

The end of a PhD is a written thesis, evidence of work completed, not what and how we, as students struggled with and overcame. The PhD is littered with small and big acomodadors. An acomodador is, as described by Paulo Coelho in his book, The Zahir, "a giving up point...an event in our lives that is responsible for us failing to progress... [it] can make cowards of us and prevent us from moving on." Thanks to much love and care, small packages of kindnesses, wisdom, and play from friends, I found the courage to keep going and finally finish the dissertation.

I learned that science can wait. Sometimes the best thing is to put aside the science and take care of yourself. I did that. Ultimately, the completion of the work of the PhD is a solo effort, but it was clear to me that I had help. I could tell some fabulous stories of the small packages of kindnesses that my friends gave me, but instead I shall share with you a poem I wrote for them at the time:

A woman is weeping as she stands at the edge of the world where invisibly love has dissolved across the lines in her hand.

A procession of scar tissue,
each night
you,
a different sheherazade
sung her tale,
the body remembering
where his hands had been,
what his eyes had found
and how his voice still lingered.

I had a dream of you Memory
of you Song
of you Practice
of you Passion
of you Joy
of you Dance
of you my sisters
who found the pieces of my heart,
laced into the snow beside the tall white birch,
clinging to a wet blade of grass by the seawall,
anchored to the salt of the ocean,
flattened against glass in the apartment,
wedged into the paint of pornographic fruit,
naked in the middle of a party.
You reached for them,
embraced and dried the glistening edges,
then gently kissing each piece
returned them to their owner.

Slowly I looked up and held the gaze of Time.
She clasped my hand and whispered sweetly that this too shall pass.
And I believed Her.

I learned how to be compassionate and kind to myself during that second year. I don't think that this directly impacted my science, but it did make me more aware of the place of science in my life. I am a better scientist because I recognize the importance of a work-life balance. I am a better scientist because I realize that even during the course of really tough times, I still wanted to do science. Most of all, I am a better scientist because I know that I am more than just a scientist.