On lab meetings

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. 

Happy deskware: Scout Creative's free pop up calendars

Scout Creative makes my desk a happier place to work

I have completely fallen in love with these papercraft monthly desktop calendars designed by Scout Creative. They are super fun, very cute and, best of all, utterly free :) You can collect your free calendar on their site on the first of every month, or you can subscribe to their email service and they will deliver it right to your inbox. Either way, you are supporting a nifty company and making your desk a more liveable place to work :) This month's calendar is a chicken coop :)

Scout Creative is a content marketing firm that specifically designs papercraft promotional items. They make all sorts of cut out and papercraft toy designs that are designed to promote, say, movies, printers, company entities..etc. They have even made little stand alone paper toy patterns for Disney. Very, very cool.

For the last year-ish, the company has designed a free paper craft monthly desktop calendar. My favorite in their archives is the July campfire scene, but the April record collection is pretty cool too. Browse their archive. The designs are clever, little color bursts that are a little tongue and cheek. They've already made my month...and I finished a PhD in the last 30 days.

Silly thing - it never occurred to me before finding these calendars that there are companies out there that produce papercraft promotional items. When I was a kid I loved, loved, loved cutting these sorts of patterns out of cereal boxes, folding and pasting. When I was doing my Masters, I even went so far as to buy a really complicated cuckoo clock pattern from a store, and assemble it. It took months, but it supposedly worked when assembled. I wouldn't know. I got the whole thing assembled, but couldn't afford the $20 of pennies that I would have had to put into the weights to get the clock started. The paper clock hung on the wall, and the weights sort of hung around my apartment. Still, that experience did not take away from my love of these little patterns. Can you imagine how much fun designing these crafts? If this science thing does not work out, maybe I'll do this for living :)

The Metropolitan Museum of Art Rooftop bar

I heart art museums and rooftop bars, together at last

As you know, my cash and my time budgets are pretty limited these days. Occasionally, my bosses and the last heaves of my dissertation drive me so nuts, I actually leave my dissertation behind and enjoy a few hours out. I try to make those hours count, because, well they and my dollars are few and far between.

This past week I made those hours and bucks count by visiting the rooftop bar on the top of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Yup, the museum has a bar...on the roof. It has been there for many, many years and attracts a fair crowd. I was pleasantly surprised, however, to find it was not crowded - just happily full.

As you might expect, the drinks are pricey ($8.50 a beer - hardly a bargain), if you aren't a member you need to donate some amount of the recommended donation to enter. I happen to be a member, but if I wasn't I think I could justify $1 towards entry. The Met, after all, holds huge galas and gets big pay cheques for them...so..I'd be okay with letting Hearst publications and the like pay my remaining $13 donation.

So the drinks are a little pricey, but the view is amazing - Park-wide, 5th avenue - and because the hours are 5:30 pm to 8:00 pm, beautiful sunset views to boot. The Met frequently features an outdoor sculpture exhibit on the roof as well.

Tasty drinks and views

I don't know why I expected the patrons to have attitude or be of the beer pong, blue shirt, black backpack, young trader ilk - but I was pleasantly surprised to find a really friendly and sweet mix of people. No shots, or giggling girls re-enacting Sex in the City, just groups of friends, all ages enjoying the sunset on their way to some other location. The bar had a really nice vibe.

Here how is how you get there. Pay your donation at the main entrance of the Met. Ask a security guard to guide you to the elevators to the bar (hang a left in the main lobby, walk behind the security desk and take an immediate left through two or three galleries and you will reach the elevator bank in about 2 minutes). The bar is open from about April to October, depending on the year - so the Summer offers the longest sunsets, and the Fall offers sparkly city views.

Be forewarned - it is a simple set up. The bar is set up like a backyard wedding bar. There is no food, and it's a $11.50 for a glass of basic red wine. My advice is to sip that wine slowly and wander the perimeter of the roof and wait for the sun to set.

In anycase, it's a lovely location for anyone craving a low key rooftop on which to spend a sunset. You get the same sunset as someone living on 5th avenue, for $1 + the price of a drink, if you are so inclined. It's a lovely way to grab a little piece of fancy schmancy NYC while on a budget.

Awwww shine on little sun. I'll see you tomorrow

Today's low cost distraction: Google's Search Page Pic

....is a television playing Lucille Ball clips - a few classics and few I haven't seen before. It is adorable. You can flip channels and turn the sound on and off. Click the channel dial enough times and the animation leads you to a page dedicated to events celebrating Lucy's 100th birthday.

It isn't a night out, but it's a super cute five minute break from Saturday morning chores. Drop by the Google page before midnight tomorrow to check it out.

Market volatility: holy s$^% snacks

I'm trying to figure out of this was a joke. Above is a screen shot of two weeks of Dow data taken after market close today. Note how the blue line dives so far after July 29th, it actually dives off the chart.

Obviously this pic isn't accurate, because the market wasn't that volatile on July 29th. Since August 2nd, a lot of panic has generated. I guess it's a combination of things - the Euro debt (Italy in particular has experienced some insane market shaping happenings in the last 24 hours, including elected officials busting into rating agency offices and tossing the places around), the U.S. debt ceiling fight, the growth report have each triggered panic.....and panic, triggers more panic which leads to these extreme up and downs. It might be market contraction. It might be insanity. One thing is for sure, volatlity like this is not good for you or me.


I'm trying to find some deeper lesson in this insanity. I'm trying to remember how last July and August felt. The market dove back then, and people panicked. H's firm reduced hour allowances and started laying people off. I know things are worse now. I'm deciding how much of me I'm willing to give up to worry. I guess there is just something about gettin a lip split by the worst market crash in 70 years that makes this current contraction 3 years later seem like a slap across the face and drunken joke at the same time.

I'll be on the job market in a few months. H and I are down to one income now. All I can do is try to stick to our budget, reduce our debt, keep an eye on our stock holdings and wait this out. I'm pretty confident that the companies I've put money in will be okay in the end. That said, in the market can stay volatile longer than any company can stay liquid.

August - how did that happen?

Photo credit: Reuters

It is August in New York. August is a tough time here. The heat 90+ for most of the month and the humidity is a slap across the face every morning. The streets are crammed with tourists - great for the local economy and nice the the tourists, but a little rough for those of us who need to get from point A to point B without being stepped on, pushed, interrupted or crowded. Anyone of any means leaves. The upside is that restaurant reservations are easy to get. The downside is, people like me are constantly reminded that they can't afford to get away. August tends to be the one month of the year when I become really bored with the city. Most of my friends leave town for extended periods and I stay. Almost everyone in academia is unreachable, so publications and projects sit or crawl despite my best efforts.

Yet this is possibly my last Summer here....and I'm trying my best to make the most of it.

To that end, I willingly sacrificed the more populated and less humid months of June and July in an effort to finish my dissertation draft. I gain at least 5 pounds while strapped to this computer in that effort....so really, I don't want to travel to a beach anyway. I should be thrilled that I sat down and worked over the last 6 weeks or so because I have achieved/received

1) 3/4 of a full draft of the dissertation

2) a full draft of the publication which my advisors are still revising

3) two accusations of not working from people who do not know better

4) half the papers I am owed for a project I am overseeing

5) all but 2 of those papers out for review

6) last term's tuition is fully paid

7) one of student loans reduced to half of what it was at the beginning of June.

8) one class taught

With the exception of the weight gain and the non-sensical complaints, this should be great progress. Two things are really keeping me from feeling good about it

i) I have to see my boss two days in a row, which is always demoralizing

ii) my boss is starting to call ad hoc meetings and make undefined demands of my time (i.e. Boss "you should be here"

me: "doing what?"

Boss: "you should have something to do here"

me: "can you be more specific? I have things I would like to do"

Boss: "well, you can't work on my projects"

me:"can I work on my projects?"

Boss: "someone else has some ideas for you"

me:"can you be more specific"

Boss: "well I can't make you do them"

me: "what are they?"

Boss: "I don't know"

The suggestion is not bad. I would like to be gathering more data. The problem is these conversations have previously always built to these explosions of unadulterated anxiety with no practical suggestions from my boss. Very basic practical measures are never taken (i.e. your products will be billed to these accounts, or "sit down. Let's talk about next steps so that I can alert the staff of what invoices will be coming in") and as a result, I spend weeks spinning my wheels producing proposals and outlines that are never used while the remainder of the staff refuses to accept invoices or suggests that I pay for the project out of my independent salary. In the end, I'm always accused of not being a promising academic. These exchanges lead to a lot of back and forthing and directionless online research that stalls my dissertation.

This time might be different, but my boss is suitably distracted that I would rather sit down and finish the dissertation draft and then chase them for the required information/accounts to proceed.

iii) these two factors have left me dreading the inevitable - rather than wander the abandoned August streets of NYC for the first time in years, making paper revisions and actually getting a week off of work, I will spend it rushing back in forth, under great pressure, to an office with no particular purpose...and have to write the dissertation in the spare minutes of the day.

I've spent all day trying to think of a strategy to handle this problem of work disrupted by other people's anxieties. I think what I need to do is take a work vacation - like hole up in a hotel someplace really cool and just sit down to write and plan my next steps.

So...I'll be back here with suggestions

Motivation is drained by bad bossmanship

Five years ago my friend was struggling to remain motivated enough to finish a course paper.

Today, I'm struggling to stay motivated enough to not blow my entire career in a single "this-is-where-you-can-stick-your-paper-draft-and-crap-attitude" phone blast to my bosses.

..so it seems particularly apt that I ran across the email I sent that friend so many years ago.

Reproduced here for your reading enjoyment

" Here's how you hold on to Motivation. I start typing random thoughts related to the topic until motivation creeps by and looks over my shoulder. That's when I grab the sack I've hidden between my legs and whip it up over my shoulder and bag motivation. Once bagged, I give it a few punches to the stomach and few kicks to the ribs. Then I lean over motivation and loudly whisper "you ain't never gonna f*(&^% with me again, are you??? Are you???? I didn't think so. I'll see you here at work tomorrow, on time. I will won't I? Did Creativity tell you what I did to his mother? It was pretty f$&&*)(@ ugly. Ask Imagination how he drives to work in the morning with no f$&%^* legs!!!!"

Then open the bag...and lo' and behold motivation shows up on time next work day.

Seriously, those first five minutes are hyper important".

I feel so much better for having pasted it here.