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!

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.

How to motivate your students.

I had a very interesting Friday and Saturday. I learned a little more about how to motivate students using lab socials. But first, I want to describe an interaction I had that relates (albeit remotely) to the topic of student motivation.

Friday afternoon, LookALike and I went out for a second coffee date. (Here is a description of LookALike.) This is one of the things I really miss about LargeUniversityInCanada.

LookALike, it turns out, had a life event that made the last few years of her PhD quite stressful. What was difficult was how the supervisor responded to this event. Her supervisor suggested she "throw herself into her work to forget it."

Sigh.

It's hard for those who have either chosen to ignore the experiences of life or have had very few experiences in life, to understand how to help a grad student in just such a circumstance. So I'd like to make a couple of suggestions:

The first is realize that

a) the hardest part about a LIFE EVENT is not the immediate aftermath, but the many difficult days and nights that follow. Immediately after some LIFE EVENT happens, there are a ton of people around you, but all that support disappears in the months that follow. It gets quite lonely then and this is the time when understanding and support is the most crucial.

and

b) not everyone responds in the same way to shit happening. Sometimes it can just paralyze you. For others throwing themselves into their work, is exactly what they need. As a supervisor, it is your job to know your student. I think the biggest mistake is to assume that your student will react in the same way you have or might to such an event. By knowing your student, you can ADVISE them as to how they might deal with the professional aspects of their life.


****

On Friday and Saturday night, I went to two lab parties. Not my own lab outings, but those of HippieHusband. He belongs to two different labs in the biology department. I will talk about the second lab outing because it highlights a few excellent ways to bring cohesion and excitement into a lab group. It was inspiring.

The group, also a joint lab social between a male PI's lab and a female PI's lab, was mainly from North America and young. A lot of the students had just started in September. People in these labs are studying relatively big things in large and really cool areas of the world. It was a vibrant, enthusiastic, and loud group.

The purpose of this lab social was just to bring people together "for a party and travel slide show, to remind us of warmer times and inspire our thoughts heading into winter." This is a direct quote taken from the email that was sent around by the PI. And the party was held at his place. It was fun. Although the travel slide show was mostly a snooze, the rest of it was quite enjoyable. We played the game Mafia and this was a great tool to encourage students and postdocs to get to know everyone in the lab. At the end of the night, I think both PIs were largely successfully at making the lab group more cohesive.

In the end, I think that the atmosphere of the lab social is probably a good predictor of the working environment of the lab. The event was held at a faculty member's house where the atmosphere was homey and welcoming. People sat in a circle where they had a chance to interact face to face with everyone.

The question is was the second lab social successful because the people involved were young and still enthusiastic, untouched by the bitterness of academic defeat?


Note to self: Locate the fun-loving, confident, and inspiring individual before taking on a tenure-track job.

I'm turning into an asshole.

I met with my supervisor on Wednesday and he told me the undergrad that I've started supervising is feeling a little overwhelmed and feels pushed just a little too hard by me.

I'm turning into an asshole. This is one of the disadvantages of "growing up" in the academic environment of LargeUniversityInCanada - I have become way too intense.

Our undergraduate, CakeBakertoAnimals, I call her this because apparently she is a professional cake baker and wants to go to Vet School. The lab experience, is just that; research experience that will help her get into Vet school. I actually don't think that that's a bad thing. With the lack of available jobs for PhD graduates, it's a smart thing to try and get education that will lead to a job. It's great if she wants to do Vet school. More power to her. But unconciously I think I resent this choice.

The week before we left for BigCity, Canada, I had her start her own experiments. I gave her some simple things at first just to see if she had good "lab hands." When it was clear that she worked really hard and well, I thought I would tie one of her experiments to mine. This was a big mistake. I was relying on her to do one part before I could do mine.

The experiments were time sensitive, which meant that to get out of the lab at a reasonable hour, I needed to start pretty early in the morning. She was late to start. I had given her a paper to read and she didn't read it. When she did get into the lab, the experiment started late so it required that someone stay and stop the experiment. When I asked her about staying to finish up her experiment, her answer was a little wishy washy. All of this made me frustrated and I remember thinking - it's because she's just not dedicated enough.

Whoa nelly. Who invited the asshole to dinner.

Apparently, I have forgotten what it is like to be an undergrad in second year and I want her to be as crazy as me.

The paper I gave her to read, well, I laugh now when I think about it, but even a fourth year undergrad with a specialization in my area would have difficulty. I realize I have to start right back at the basics. She has only had first year biology which means that everything is new.

I immediately apologized to the student and told her that she needs to tell me when I'm being crazy and I promised I wouldn't bite (well unless I get rabies).

I'm starting to appreciate just how hard supervising really is. I guess you do your best and hope that the trauma you inflict is minimal. Kinda like parenting.

Mentoring Moments

Last Thursday, at our weekly lunch seminar, two of the senior professors: BigCheese and GuruOfSmallThings gave mentoring presentations. They were asked to give their top ten pieces of advice. This advice was largely aimed at the young assistant professors who were embarking on an academic career. The irony: a majority of the audience was made up of PhD students.

First up, I think it is useful to describe their definition of academic success: getting the respect of your colleagues.

Well, in my opinion the ultimate form of respect is to get hired. Usually the university committee is made up of your peers, who in essence by hiring you are saying, yes we respect your work and we want you on our team. So while this advice is useful if I ever get a job, it doesn't help me determine what I need to do to get that job. (Although really, I do know. PUBLISH IN HIGH IMPACT JOURNALS, AND PUBLISH A LOT)

The other thing that is clear to me and to many people in that room is that the landscape has changed. In a report by The Survey of Earned Doctorates, the number of doctorates granted by U.S. universities, has on average, increased by approximately 3.5% per year since the early 60s. In 2005-2006 that number was 5.1%. The biological and biomedical sciences saw the largest growth in the number of doctorates earned.


(Interesting fact, in 2006 45% of all doctorates were earned by women, in the life sciences that figure jumps to 52%.)


As biologists, we know that continuous growth is unsustainable (Case in point: the global economy). All the textbooks teach us that when a resource is limiting, competition becomes severe. And in our case, the resource is that academic job. This essay cites a 1995 report from the Standford Institute for Higher Education that stated,

"The Production and Utilization of Science and Engineering Doctorates in the United States," (William F. Massey, ed.) states that the "natural production rate" of science doctorates exceeds the demand from all sources by 22 percent.

Both BigCheese and GuruOfSmallThings acknowledged that the academic landscape had changed. So what advice did the BigCheese give his Ponzi adorees?

1. Stick to your goal. (Presumably for the audience he had in mind that was tenure. Though you could *insert goal* here. I think of things like get a publication record that would get me a job.)

2. Practice saying No. (No! No, I can't really. Authorship, you say? Okay.)

3. Tempo, tempo, tempo. (I can't remember the point of this.)

4. Get used to disappointing people. (I'm already an expert at this just ask my PhD supervisor.)

5. Hire the best people you can and get out of the way. (Luckily, I'm good at this too.)

6. Put your pants on - one leg at a time. (Hmm.. what if you wear skirts to school?)

7. Collaborate. (How? They don't teach this in grad school.)

8. If it feels good, do it. If it feels real good, do it alot. (This, I think is the most useful piece of advice.)

9. Stay in student mode. (In terms of learning - not, of course, the power dynamic).

10. Remember Tinkerbell. (Yeah, cause some tiny little fairy in a stupid blue tutu is going to bring me my ideal job.)

Women in Science: Now What?

Today I attended a round table discussion on women in science. It was focused on a particular woman scientist, EveryWoman, who had come to give a special seminar. But the most interesting thing about the discussion was the personal story of EveryWoman. She made choices in her career because of family. The result - she was thrice divorced and on soft money for 16 years.

This soft money tenure came a result of staying in the same place (a consequence of the two-body problem) as she did her PhD. Although she became the second highest grant earner in the department and had as many publications as any PI, she was not a tenured professor at this university. Five department heads (two women) had rejected her application for a tenure-track position, citing one excuse or another. She described the consequences of this 16 years on her self-esteem.

"It was demeaning. They let me come to departmental meetings but I couldn't vote. I was only allowed to have students if they had an academic co-supervisor. Eventually, I became afraid that if I asked for too much, they would say no. So I stopped asking."

One day, the 6th department head was in her lab talking with her and said, "why aren't you a full professor EveryWoman?" It turns out, when the department head wants something, it gets done. In a matter of weeks, she became a tenured professor.

The second interesting thing that came out of this discussion was a website that measures implicit attitudes people hold but are unwilling to report. Harvard psychologists have created The Implicit Association Test that allows you to assess your own prejudices. Take it. I found it quite revealing.

Although I am not opposed to having discussions centred on "what are the issues facing women scientists," I am tired of having the same discussion over and over again.

We all know the issues.

We know that there are biases in the way women are evaluated both in random encounters (see this post by FSP) and systematically within academia (Nepotism and sexism in peer review).

We know that academia doesn't make it easy for women to have a career and children (see the National Academy of Sciences 2007 study on women called Beyond Bias and Barriers).

We know that contributions by women in collaborations are often overlooked (Nobel Snubs).

We know, if a woman gets a job, both men and women will make comments like, "oh did they have had to hire a woman?"

We know that women are paid significantly less than male colleagues. That many women in academia live on soft money.

We know that as academics they tend to get less lab space but are allocated more service work than their male counterparts.

I understand the need to share stories and I do enjoy and get inspiration from them, but I want some constructive solutions. Or at the very least some ways of changing the system. I too need a bitch session every so often, but I think we need to ask the question,

So what can I do about it?

Ego sum postdoc

On Friday, a PhD student from one of the other labs came to talk with me about his project. Specifically, he wanted some advice on the genetics for his project. So we talked for about one hour, or rather, I talked. I gave him insight into some of the things that I thought he might want to think about.

I felt great. Confident. I felt like I had entered a totally different realm of being. I was no longer this nervous, unsure grad student always second-guessing what she knew. While I am aware this is large-fish-in-small-pond syndrome, it was a really good idea for this fish to leave the large pond. I have no doubt that the size of the pond is inversely correlated to the magnitude of the insecurity of the graduate student. Low self-esteem and lack of confidence, however, is something that I grappled with in my PhD. I know now that other grad students feel the same but it wasn't always clear that that was true. During the last year of my PhD, I would have these conversations with my supervisor that would make me come home and cry. Luckily, HippieHusband was there to just hold me.

So I came across this popular psychology website www.coping.org that suggests reasons for why a person feels insecure. It might as well be called, "My life as a grad student."

1. Had a chaotic, unpredictable environment in which they were kept off balance, on guard, or on edge. (Read: Relationship with committee)

2. Experienced a major tragedy or loss in their lives and are having a difficult time in accepting this loss and adjusting to the change. (Read: My mother died while I was in my twenties and my family was still dealing with it in the early part of my grad school career.)

3. Experienced a major failure in life that led them to question their personal competency. (Read: Divorce during grad school. Not with HippieHusband. Yes, HippieHusband is my second. Sheesh, I hope I don't end up like Liz Taylor.))

4. Had an unrealistic list of rules and expectations prescribed by significant others in their life, rules they are striving to meet even in their current life. (Need I say more?)

5. Been given very little direction, guidance, or discipline in their earlier lives leaving them unable to cope with the current pressures of life. (Ibid.)

6. Always felt overshadowed or overlooked due to the people in their lives who seemed to be more successful, smarter, prettier, more handsome, more athletic, higher achievers, getting much attention. (Read: Other grad students at LargeUniversityinCanada)

That was then, this is now. Lately I've been feeling like I belong in academia. I feel on equal footing with most of the faculty here. At lab meetings or seminars, I am asking thoughtful questions. Even when someone else asks a question, I reason out the answer to help out in lab meetings. Conceptually, I really do know a fair bit.

Although, the students here are quite productive and they end up with strong publications, they don't own their projects. HippieHusband and I were talking about this on our walk home from school. They don't often understand the larger context to their research and as a result they can't pinpoint the biological question. So often lab meetings just end up unfocused and a discussion of data collection rather than proof of concept. At LUC, I came up with the question, designed my project, wrote the R-program to analyze the data, and wrote up the manuscript. I had much help along the way but my PhD thesis was my project. I owned it.

Before I left, a good friend, FullofLife, said to me, "You don't realize just how much you know. LUC trains their PhD students well. You will do well."

You know FullofLife, I think you're right.

Stinking PhD - get published already.

I'm feeling really frustrated right now.

Right now I am desperately trying to finish up some manuscripts from my PhD. But I can't figure out why I'm having such a hard time converting my efforts into something productive (ie. pubs). I've been working on this one analysis for what feels like ages and it's essentially preventing me from getting this work published.

I feel quite alone in this endeavour.

I know the project is a good piece of science and I know that I'm not stupid - but right now I feel incredibly dumb and like shelving the stinking PhD forever.

AHHHHHHH!!!

Reflections on human relations in the academic environment

It’s really very simple – if you treat someone well and respect them, they will want to work hard for you. But if you treat someone poorly, they will respond in kind. So how come as academics, we haven’t figured this out. I have been reading posts by YoungFemaleScientist and I have heard many horror stories about grad students who are treated like shiza. I don’t understand why human relations training is not mandatory for academics who need remedial socialization.

I mean if I were a faculty member and I had a PhD student, who is likely to be working for at least 4-5 years (if not on average 6 years) for you, I would treat this person…well gosh darn it, with respect. Treating this student as a colleague makes sense because eventually that’s exactly what they will be. In addition, I would also ensure they had a work space that enhanced their productivity and the resources they required to do the work. I’d also be very clear and honest about what I had available in terms of my time and resources.

I hope I don’t get stupid with ego and forget I wrote this.

My new supervisor is great. He really seems concerned about my working environment. He bought me a new computer, an awesome chair (eat your heart out GeekBoy), and all the office supplies I needed. He said I should let him know if I wanted anything else - that he would do his best to make sure I got the things I needed - and this is the best part - he wants me to be happy about coming to SmallUniversity in SmallTown. This makes me want to work hard for him because he is working hard for me.

Unfortunately at LargeUniversityinCanada (LUC), we had a lobster-faced administrator who was known to make certain grad students’ lives hell. If you were an ecology student (and packed into a 15-person office formerly a lab), then you were lucky if the administrator didn’t take your stuff and shove it in the fumehood so that she could give away your desk space while you were away doing field work. I guess I think the faculty should stand up for their students but this would require that a) they be present (both physically and mentally) and b) that they care about their students.

At LUC, I was one of the lucky ones whose supervisor made sure that her students had desk space. For her new students, she bought a computer and a chair. In the end although she was not perfect, she made time for us and she cared.

What’s really interesting is how my relationship with her changed in last few months of my PhD to now. I think it changed because I let go. I let go of needing her approval. I let go of needing her to respect me as a scientist. I let go of my expectations of her. Basically, I just let go. This is what enabled me to finish the PhD. In addition, my confidence in myself as a scientist grew. Now I have an easy, relaxed, and comfortable relationship with her. In fact, I think we are friends. Looking back on the trying times, I’m pretty sure that each grad student teaches the supervisor something new - if not academically, then at least in terms of personal relations.

Just as much as we learn from them, they learn from us.