I've been kicking around science for a long time - a loooong time. My apprenticeship to this tenure track position has been over 20 years in the making. For any of you out there that thinks professors are overpaid, and over-protected, think about that. I've been slogging away for 80+ hours a week for crap wage, no benefits and often for free for almost 21 years. There is no possible way that a job paying 5 digits is paying me anywhere near what I deserve.
But, that's not the point of this post. The point of this post is to discuss the lab meeting. Lab meetings - every P.I. thinks they need them, few P.I.s know how to run one. I've belonged to at least two labs that did not hold them, and one lab that held one for multiple hours on random Fridays. Both situations set me back as a student, as a scientist. Given I have taken the responsibility to train several students early in my position, I've spent a lot of time thinking about how to run a lab meeting. Why would I spend time doing that rather than hacking away at my data? The lab meeting is the cornerstone of lab productivity. Run it well, and you provide a good scaffold for your students and staff to complete tasks, produce science, publish papers. Muck it up, and you breed resentment, get confused about what is actually being done, and waste everyone's Monday morning.
I have one major suggestion, under which all other suggestions fall
Respect the time of your staff and employees
This is basic stuff. You may be the P.I. but you aren't a god, a king or a totalitarian president. If you are holding lab meetings so your staff and students can update you on minor issues, listen to you discuss the square footage of your new apartment, watch you grill one person relentlessly over their work, sit and wait 20 minutes for you to show up, or listen to you speak to one person the entire time, you are demoralizing your lab, and you need to take some courses on effective people and project management. Contrary to raging popular belief amongst the more senior of scientists, there is no place for enormous egos in experimental science. Act this way, and you will lose talent in your lab. Act this way, and your work will make you unhappy.
What does this mean? It means do, do the following:
1) hold a regular group lab meeting - even if you think there might not be any major break-throughs that week. Hold a regular meeting at least every two weeks where you discuss scientific progress, or attempts at progress in the lab
2) hold individual staff/student meetings at other times - no one wants to hear you discuss your grad student's class schedule, or the blow by blow of setting up purchase orders or reagents with your lab tech. It's an enormous waste of everyone else's time. Save that for your mid-week 15-30 minute update one-on-one meeting, in your office.
3) require update slides - make your staff and students provide you with slide that state the precise things they have done since your last meeting. Screen the slides. This is really important - all to often lab meetings turn into "round table discussions" that are really just a P.I. talking a single person about their progress without letting anyone else in on what that person is actually doing. I once sat in a lab for 2 years and had absolutely no idea what the person next to me was actually studying because it was never explicitly discussed. You want to kill morale, make a student feel like an imposter? Talk to only one person at a time and never provide your staff with an overview of the activities of the lab. You will succeed in alienating everyone but the tech in no time.
4) show up on time - seriously. If you are showing up to your own meeting late, why the hell are the rest of us sitting here?
5) hold the meeting at a sane hour - you have to teach at 9 am? Great. You teach at 9 am. The rest of us do not need to be in a meeting room at 8 am on a Monday. To a person who works an 8-4 job that probably sounds a little uptight. When you work 80 hours a week and have a very reduced social and recreational life (i.e. when you are a grad student, a postdoc), you aren't heading to bed at 10 pm on Sunday. You are up troubleshooting problems, launching analysis, reading, sending those update slides at midnight. When you as a P.I. holds an 8 am meeting on a Monday you are saying "I don't give rats a$$ how exhausted you are" to your students. You are taking parental time from their kids. You are effing up morning work outs. You are basically saying your little update matters more thant their real lives. It doesn't. Early morning meetings are not the hallmark of productivity. They just mean you don't care about how they affect the people who work for you. You teach at 9 am Monday? Fine - hold your meeting Tuesday morning at 9 am.
6) dedicate at least one meeting a month to reviewing articles - part of your job as a P.I. is to train students, and training them how to read and evaluate papers is part of that. A major part of your job is to provide an atmosphere where productive creativity can thrive. To do that, you have to provide space for your students and staff to read what interests them. Let them bring articles to you on any topic. Let them talk about these things out loud and invest in the science.
7) make arrangements for food and coffee/tea - you don't have to provide it yourself. Have rotation. Food lightens the mood, creates community, and forgives the poor person who ran out of their house to get to the meeting on time and skipped breakfast.
8) hold a early-mid meeting at the beginning or end of the week - no one wants to talk on Wednesday for the first time and no one can effectively act on bench work or even order processing in the afternoon.
Do not
1) hold meetings that run more than an hour
2) speak to lab members individually without explaining the context of your discussion to everyone else
3) speak in languages that the less than the entire lab can understand. Practicing your Spanish? Good for you - but if anyone else in the lab does not speak Spanish, you have just alienated them. You have just told them that it isn't important if they understand what is happening in the lab.
4) yell
5) lose your temper
6) insult your staff or students
7) grill anyone - really need to get down to the nitty gritty of some tiny aspect of data collection, save it for your mid-week one on one meeting
8) hijack a regular lab meeting to discuss some minute aspect of theory or analysis that has always bothered you. Book a part of a meeting to discuss that stuff. Give your staff and trainees time to prepare so they can contribute
9) talk about your personal life for more than a minute - no one showed up to this meeting to hear you wax on about your ongoing search for the perfect apartment.
10) declare "we are having a lab meeting in an hour" whenever you please - lab meetings are regular scheduled meetings. They are not meetings that happen in the space called "Friday afternoon" just because you feel like having one. You couldn't have one Monday? Oh well. You'll have one next Monday.
11) don't skip multiple meetings in a row - as a P.I. you will have conferences and special guests and grant deadlines and inconvenient overseas skype calls. Sometimes all of these things will get in the way and you will have to cancel meeting. One cancelled meeting is fine. Two makes it difficult for the staff and students to keep on top of what is going in the lab. Three cancelled meetings - not cool. Everyone falls behind. You want to book a month long vacation or field expedition - fantastic. You want to tell everyone on Thursday at 5 pm that for the third time in a row you don't see a point in holding a meeting that Monday, you will fray the morale of your team.
With that, I give you guidelines for productive lab meetings. Good lab meeting = healthy, happy lab and science.
Showing posts with label I am no longer a graduate student. Show all posts
Showing posts with label I am no longer a graduate student. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 24, 2015
Monday, June 22, 2015
The tenure track
After all that education, you'd think the tenure track job at an R1 institution would fill a person with a sense of relief. As an undergraduate, graduate student and postdoc you train for years and years. More than a decade - sometimes more than two decades. You'd think the logical feeling would be "finally, I get to be in charge".
I wish that was my feeling. I think had someone come to me in the middle of my PhD and said "you can ditch this and run your own lab now", maybe I would have felt differently. I certainly felt more competent at the end of my PhD than I now do at the close of my postdoc.
Part of my hesitation is certainly due to the growing detachment between my benchwork and my analysis. My analysis requires a team of people with stronger math and computational skills than myself. I don't mean "strong math skills", like someone who took an extra statistics class. I mean someone who got a PhD in math. Someone who is writing bioinformatic programs. My feeling of inadequacy has certainly grown since 6 weeks ago, when I was ordered by my boss to tear down the analysis of my most important paper for the 7th time and do something completely new - and was assigned a collaborator who, by and large, creates analytical structures and codes by himself without must explanation.
So the jump to tenure track is extremely nerve racking.
It's also a bit of a financial hit. That might sounds kind of crazy, but my husband's income will take a hit in this move. Our income, overall, will be lower than it was during my graduate school days. As we near the end of our 30s, and develop our little family, the question for me really becomes how much longer am I willing to ride this horse?
From the perspective of asking questions, starting research and pulling papers together I'm willing to ride until I can't ride any further. From the perspective of sitting in one spot for hours on end while I work out the tiniest of coding problems that had halted all progress for 3 or 4 weeks - AND at the end of that process not being sure how much more willing I am to continue coding....research.....getting out of bed....
This experience of repetitive failure has had me thinking about Fabulife and how I want to move forward with this blog. It seems to me that most of my time in this space has been spent trying to convey that graduate school doesn't have to and, more importantly, shouldn't financially devastate a student. I came out of my graduate degree with a really nice chunk of money in the bank, my credit cards clear, some investments and a student loan paid off. I'm leaving my postdoc with a lot less money in my pocket, and I'm heading into a tenure track position that will not pay me what I deserve for my training or efforts. On top of that my days, because I work in experimental biology and deal with great deal of computational work, are filled with failure. Like every other scientist, I fail every day. I fail and fail and fail until something works. It's tough on the soul. The repeated mousing is tough on my wrists.
Enjoying oneself within the means provided by the tight budget my academic life has provided means more than just figuring out how to buy a low cost engagement ring. It really means being able to cope with the academic life as a whole. So, this is where Fabulife is headed - a more honest description of the totality of life on a budget, life on the campus. You've been given a heads up. It ain't all going to be cheery accounts of budget friendly whathaveyous. S#$% it getting real in this space.
So, to recap - tenure track still means counting change, starting your own lab is frightening when your postdoc work isn't published yet, the blog is shifting in focus.
See you soon!
I wish that was my feeling. I think had someone come to me in the middle of my PhD and said "you can ditch this and run your own lab now", maybe I would have felt differently. I certainly felt more competent at the end of my PhD than I now do at the close of my postdoc.
Part of my hesitation is certainly due to the growing detachment between my benchwork and my analysis. My analysis requires a team of people with stronger math and computational skills than myself. I don't mean "strong math skills", like someone who took an extra statistics class. I mean someone who got a PhD in math. Someone who is writing bioinformatic programs. My feeling of inadequacy has certainly grown since 6 weeks ago, when I was ordered by my boss to tear down the analysis of my most important paper for the 7th time and do something completely new - and was assigned a collaborator who, by and large, creates analytical structures and codes by himself without must explanation.
So the jump to tenure track is extremely nerve racking.
It's also a bit of a financial hit. That might sounds kind of crazy, but my husband's income will take a hit in this move. Our income, overall, will be lower than it was during my graduate school days. As we near the end of our 30s, and develop our little family, the question for me really becomes how much longer am I willing to ride this horse?
From the perspective of asking questions, starting research and pulling papers together I'm willing to ride until I can't ride any further. From the perspective of sitting in one spot for hours on end while I work out the tiniest of coding problems that had halted all progress for 3 or 4 weeks - AND at the end of that process not being sure how much more willing I am to continue coding....research.....getting out of bed....
This experience of repetitive failure has had me thinking about Fabulife and how I want to move forward with this blog. It seems to me that most of my time in this space has been spent trying to convey that graduate school doesn't have to and, more importantly, shouldn't financially devastate a student. I came out of my graduate degree with a really nice chunk of money in the bank, my credit cards clear, some investments and a student loan paid off. I'm leaving my postdoc with a lot less money in my pocket, and I'm heading into a tenure track position that will not pay me what I deserve for my training or efforts. On top of that my days, because I work in experimental biology and deal with great deal of computational work, are filled with failure. Like every other scientist, I fail every day. I fail and fail and fail until something works. It's tough on the soul. The repeated mousing is tough on my wrists.
Enjoying oneself within the means provided by the tight budget my academic life has provided means more than just figuring out how to buy a low cost engagement ring. It really means being able to cope with the academic life as a whole. So, this is where Fabulife is headed - a more honest description of the totality of life on a budget, life on the campus. You've been given a heads up. It ain't all going to be cheery accounts of budget friendly whathaveyous. S#$% it getting real in this space.
So, to recap - tenure track still means counting change, starting your own lab is frightening when your postdoc work isn't published yet, the blog is shifting in focus.
See you soon!
Wednesday, December 11, 2013
Most useful baby items during the first 6 months: Ergo carrier
and the list continues. I had intended to post more than one recommendation here today, but I have such unabashed love for the Ergobaby original carrier that I'm dedicating an entire post to it.
5) Baby carrier - Ergobaby
5) Baby carrier - Ergobaby
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| Carriers are great, when you have a baby who HATES her stroller |
Truth be told, our little one was pretty cranky for the first four months of her life. She had reflux and was extremely colicky as a result. When I say "extremely" I am not kidding around. She would cry for 13 or more hours a day - uninterrupted - during most of her second month.
The word on the street is infant carrying eases colic. The idea is that much of the crying stems from indiscernible reasons and that being close to Mom or Dad is comforting despite whatever discomfort or oversensitivity the child is expressing. That might be true for some kids. It is very hard for me to judge, because our daughter was so uncomfortable with reflux and cried so much it was nearly impossible to leave the house. We, literally, could not put her in a carrier or car seat or stroller for the first 2 months. She would scream hysterically and unrelentingly. This meant that all tasks outside of the house had to be completed by one parent, while the other one sat at home holding the baby with both hands. However, once the reflux and colic started to ease up, the very first tool that let both H and I out of the door at the same time was the infant carrier. For that reason alone, I will always be indebted to Baby Bjorn and Ergo.
Around month three, we managed to get our little girl into a baby bjorn classic carrier. Once ensconced, she would travel with us to the grocery store and even sleep on my chest while we ate at a restaurant. We even used it to get her down for a nap, on occasion. I really liked this carrier because it had several easy to snap into place locks on the shoulder and waist that made it easy to slip and secure the baby into place - and, importantly, lay a sleeping baby onto a bed and release the carrier without waking her.
The baby bjorn classic carriers are a two piece structure of straps for parents and a separate pocket structure that attaches to those straps and carries the baby. The pocket attaches, with a number of locking mechanisms, chief amongst them a large plastic lock that forms part of the carrier seat. Around month 5 this large plastic lock became very uncomfortable for our little one. All of her weight sat on it and she would cry every time we put her in the carrier. At this time we moved onto the Ergo, a one piece cloth carrier, the seat of which is formed by a large cotton pocket that tightens against the parent's stomach via a large and well padded waist strap. While the baby bjorn places the baby's weight on the parent's shoulders and between their shoulder blades, the Ergo places most of the weight on a parent's hips. As a baby grows, this carrier becomes infinitely more useful, as the child's weight is carried by the primary weight bearing parts of a human's body. Weight placements and the over structure of an Ergo means that a child can be carried until a child reaches 45 pounds in this carrier - outstripping most other carriers by at 15 pounds.
We were introduced to the Ergo coincident with our discovery that our little girl hated being in a forward facing stroller (the only way our current stroller faces). Turns out, many children are not magically induced to want to face away from their parents the second they turn 6 months and can no longer be left in a bassinet stroller or a car seat stroller without danger of injury. Our little girl wanted to see us at all times. With the bjorn carrier too small, and the stroller too forward facing, we were a miserable bunch. All of our outings were marked with the anxious screams of a poor little girl who didn't want to face the world alone. The Ergo was such a life saver - again allowing us to leave the house without hysterical screams.
I would say, between the two, the Ergo is a the better deal. It retails for a little over $100 and can be used (with an insert) from infancy to 45 pounds. They are continually posted on craigslist for less than $100 and are easily washed. It can be adjusted to hang off a parent's side (presumably accommodating twins if you have two carriers) and, when the child is older, it can be positioned on a parent's back. If I could go back I would have used an Ergo with an infant insert from the very beginning.
The word on the street is infant carrying eases colic. The idea is that much of the crying stems from indiscernible reasons and that being close to Mom or Dad is comforting despite whatever discomfort or oversensitivity the child is expressing. That might be true for some kids. It is very hard for me to judge, because our daughter was so uncomfortable with reflux and cried so much it was nearly impossible to leave the house. We, literally, could not put her in a carrier or car seat or stroller for the first 2 months. She would scream hysterically and unrelentingly. This meant that all tasks outside of the house had to be completed by one parent, while the other one sat at home holding the baby with both hands. However, once the reflux and colic started to ease up, the very first tool that let both H and I out of the door at the same time was the infant carrier. For that reason alone, I will always be indebted to Baby Bjorn and Ergo.
Around month three, we managed to get our little girl into a baby bjorn classic carrier. Once ensconced, she would travel with us to the grocery store and even sleep on my chest while we ate at a restaurant. We even used it to get her down for a nap, on occasion. I really liked this carrier because it had several easy to snap into place locks on the shoulder and waist that made it easy to slip and secure the baby into place - and, importantly, lay a sleeping baby onto a bed and release the carrier without waking her.
The baby bjorn classic carriers are a two piece structure of straps for parents and a separate pocket structure that attaches to those straps and carries the baby. The pocket attaches, with a number of locking mechanisms, chief amongst them a large plastic lock that forms part of the carrier seat. Around month 5 this large plastic lock became very uncomfortable for our little one. All of her weight sat on it and she would cry every time we put her in the carrier. At this time we moved onto the Ergo, a one piece cloth carrier, the seat of which is formed by a large cotton pocket that tightens against the parent's stomach via a large and well padded waist strap. While the baby bjorn places the baby's weight on the parent's shoulders and between their shoulder blades, the Ergo places most of the weight on a parent's hips. As a baby grows, this carrier becomes infinitely more useful, as the child's weight is carried by the primary weight bearing parts of a human's body. Weight placements and the over structure of an Ergo means that a child can be carried until a child reaches 45 pounds in this carrier - outstripping most other carriers by at 15 pounds.
We were introduced to the Ergo coincident with our discovery that our little girl hated being in a forward facing stroller (the only way our current stroller faces). Turns out, many children are not magically induced to want to face away from their parents the second they turn 6 months and can no longer be left in a bassinet stroller or a car seat stroller without danger of injury. Our little girl wanted to see us at all times. With the bjorn carrier too small, and the stroller too forward facing, we were a miserable bunch. All of our outings were marked with the anxious screams of a poor little girl who didn't want to face the world alone. The Ergo was such a life saver - again allowing us to leave the house without hysterical screams.
I would say, between the two, the Ergo is a the better deal. It retails for a little over $100 and can be used (with an insert) from infancy to 45 pounds. They are continually posted on craigslist for less than $100 and are easily washed. It can be adjusted to hang off a parent's side (presumably accommodating twins if you have two carriers) and, when the child is older, it can be positioned on a parent's back. If I could go back I would have used an Ergo with an infant insert from the very beginning.
Monday, December 2, 2013
2013, gone so soon
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| My "home only" to do list the day before our little one was born |
- become unemployed
- landed a postdoctoral position outside of NYC
....and subsequently messed with just about every other life plan H and I have made in the last 5 years
- landed a postdoctoral position outside of NYC
....and subsequently messed with just about every other life plan H and I have made in the last 5 years
- hired several immigration lawyers
- became pregnant
- made several weeks long trips to research centers to complete work for said postdoc
- moved to another country.
This is no small feat when you have possessions you intend to keep. A move like this requires a detailed manifest of every packed box with an estimate of how much the items inside the box cost. It took months to pack
- settled into a new home
- became the sole breadwinner on a much, much lower income.
- wrote many grants, and won three
- handed in one grant while in labor
- gave birth to a beautiful baby
- discovered the wonders of cloth diapering
- pumped out 4 publications
- started three major research projects
- started a work-related book proposal
- submitted quite a few permanent job applications
....and have started to pack up to move again.
- became pregnant
- made several weeks long trips to research centers to complete work for said postdoc
- moved to another country.
This is no small feat when you have possessions you intend to keep. A move like this requires a detailed manifest of every packed box with an estimate of how much the items inside the box cost. It took months to pack
- settled into a new home
- became the sole breadwinner on a much, much lower income.
- wrote many grants, and won three
- handed in one grant while in labor
- gave birth to a beautiful baby
- discovered the wonders of cloth diapering
- pumped out 4 publications
- started three major research projects
- started a work-related book proposal
- submitted quite a few permanent job applications
....and have started to pack up to move again.
Huh, I guess that's it. It seems like more.
Thursday, November 28, 2013
Moment of Happy in home decor
My dissertation killed the happy in my apartment
In the wake of my PhD I published papers- or at least I tried to publish papers. While I did this and waited for my postdoc to start, I dwelled in burnout. The author of my favourite blog in the whole wide world would call this "dwelling in possibility". That chick, however, gets stuff done. She is setting up a school, building and organizing a house, raising a two kids etc.. I, by contrast, sat on my couch, working up the energy to get to the gym at 2 pm. It occurs to me that had I taken a trip after my dissertation was deposited - if I had even chilled in a organized way that week, I would have been more productive in the weeks that followed. I might even be more productive now.
I did however, reclaim certain aspects of my life and household. This included 1) destuffing/decluttering 2) reorganizing and repairing and 3) completing some decor projects.
My PhD years were fun, but the last 3 years were stressful. I worked veeeery long hours, in a very aggressive and unsupportive environment. For 3 years, I just came home and collapsed into bed. As a result, we never really settled into our apartment. It was filled with half done projects. It was messy. It wasn't a refuge. It was just something else I have to do.
So in the weeks after my dissertation, I decided to re-introduce the happy. H and I are worked a special project to pull the living room together. Before I put that up here, I'm posting my easiest solution to bringing in the happy - pretty drawer pulls. All found on Etsy - all pretty and delightful and welcome to replace the sad Ace hardware burnished brass pulls that dragged down our home.
VintageSkyes is a delightful Etsy shop that produces handstamped "vintage inspired" drawer pulls. The shop contains dozens of designs, most in black and white. While some stamped designs have 19th century science plate illustration feeling to them, others are dead ringers for late 19th century advertising typographic symbols, or actual government stamps (i.e. U.S. Post Office). I'm in love with all of them. At the cost of $7 a knob, I could happily see these ushering in the pretty in my kitchen.
I am particularly fond of this Matryoshka doll pull. I've never seen anything like it before.
I am particularly fond of this Matryoshka doll pull. I've never seen anything like it before.
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| Photo credit: VintageSkye |
Veritas Inspired sells recovered drawer pulls, amongst other metal objects. The feel of the shop is very shabby chic, but the owner does find some interesting pulls and will paint and shab them up anyway you might like.
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| Photo credit: VeritasInspired |
I'm not sure how this happened, but I have a serious case of the cutes that my grad school self would have found very amusing. I suspect it took hold after the birth of our little one (oh yes, a lot has happened since I last posted). The upshot is, I like cartoon drawings of fuzzy animals. I really dig the drawer pulls at Ebonypaws . They are adorable without being cutesie, simple but not dull, sweet but not saccharin. I have a particular soft spot for this sleeping fox pull below
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| Photo credit: EbonyPaws |
Saturday, February 11, 2012
Tada!
Ph.D
It has been a long time coming, but the day arrived. I am a Ph.D.
It's a strange feeling, knowing that my graduate school days are over. I've done all the graduate school I can do. I don't think I've ever really gotten to the end of anything before. Certainly nothing that, I hate to say it, feels this profound. It's a stage of my life that is simply done and I'm so happy that it is.
I've spend the last 8 years chipping away at a degree that should have been much easier than it was. I had three completely different sets of dissertation advisors while here. There have been lab shut downs and abuse and mess. There have been fantastic times too - new loves, friends and interests and games. I do wish that the science side had been more fulfilling, but I do have a career ahead of me. There will be plenty of time for good science from here on.
I've spent years away from the people that mattered - missed birthdays, Christmases, weddings and funerals. I racked up debt, and lived miserly to pay it off. I tried my best to take advantage of New York City, and spent months at a time locked up writing and struggling to complete a dissertation I'm not really satisfied with. Still, the best dissertation is a completed dissertation. I am happy to have finished it.
I had a chance meeting in a Far Eastern country last year. A very powerful researcher noticed a question I asked at conference. He followed me out of the room and offered me an interview. Around this time last year, I flew to his lab, here in the U.S., and met a really fantastic group of people. I was offered a great job - a career making job...cover of Nature and Science job. A few months later, it fell apart.
Since that time, I have been completing my dissertation, papers/publications, giving talks at conferences and labs, submitting grants and fellowships, and interviewing left and right. No offer has really matched this offer, except one. While it may work out, my completion of this degree is tempered, somewhat, by the uncertainty of what is next. I am unemployed, a PhD, 15 pounds heavier (dissertation weight), publishing off my work and desperate to work on something new and exciting. I'm trying to celebrate every day with little breaks I cut myself. For example, I no longer sit in front of this computer until the wee hours. I close it down and give myself an hour of no work before bed......baby steps back to normalcy :)
So, while I am no longer in grad school, I am still here, on a budget and making the best of it.
..now I just have to think up a new tag line "graduate student" no longer applies.
Little things :)
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