Lame Dinner Conversation

Recently, a friend of mine from grad school, now a professor too, came to my university to give a talk. He stayed for a few days, and one evening I had him over to my house for dinner. It was a fun evening.

After the friend had left, my husband said how this visit was just the same as all the other visits by other faculty -- all evening we complain about the quality of students, share grantsmanship woes, talk about papers, conferences, collaborators, department politics... Basically, we always only talk about work.

It had never occurred to me that this was really a bad thing. I enjoy talking about work, all aspects of it. I particularly enjoy talking to people from other universities and from related but different fields. I love talking about grants, students, collaborators...

But my husband brought up a good point: when my faculty brethren come to visit, nobody talks about any movies they saw, or places they traveled, or world events... Just work.

Is it because we, faculty, don't have any interest in anything other than our work? I don't think that's true. But, I realized that I definitely don't feel comfortable discussing non-work things with work acquaintances... And I started to think about why that is. I think that's because wanting to discuss anything but work makes it seem like you are not serious enough about work. Our work is supposed to be all-consuming. I realized this fact during the first year on the tenure track -- after trying to get some people to go out to lunch on a few occasions, I realized that wanting to socialize made me look like a slacker, like I had too much time on my hands. Sure, I was supposed to be friendly and collegial, but at the same time always seem busy and preoccupied by work and slightly inconvenienced by anyone's intrusion into my work time. By now, for better or worse, I think I have adopted this attitude pretty well. Now I really don't want to hang out with anyone and feel inconvenienced by people's intrusion into my work time. I am a grown-up prof now, no more silly ideas like actually going to lunch to relax and - gasp! - socialize.

There is one person at work with whom I go out to lunch every couple of months in a predominantly social capacity, we talk about kids and books and movies and sometimes even our extended families. I do meet with some other faculty for lunch on occasion, but these are always working lunches, and yes, you guessed it, we usually talk about writing a proposal together.

So, normal people, like my husband, think we academics are really lame and make terrible dinner conversation. He's probably right. But here's the deal -- I kind of really don't mind. I actually don't even care that much about what my colleagues do outside of work. I don't know them well enough for their opinion on books or movies to have a lot of weight. I don't know about their families and, at this point, I don't particularly care to learn. Neither do they about mine. So we talk about work, which is something we all care about, the important common thread in our lives. No, I really don't mind talking shop, even if we are lame dinner conversationalists. Although, in all fairness, I should probably make an effort to reduce academic lameness when there are non-professorial folks around...

Repost: Tenure, for Better or for Worse

(The original post and comments can be found here.)

In her Friday post, FSP discussed the issue of tenure. The article that FSP discussed in her post and a number of commenters brought up the usual arguments against tenure -- deadwood faculty drain university resources, no other industry has perfect job security so why should academia.

For a person with my background, there are very good employment opportunities in industry. My PhD students, fresh out of grad school, get higher starting salaries in industry than mine is now. And that's without bonuses and stock options. And I don't see their employers discarding them carelessly, because industry needs good people with specialized skills, and these people are NOT a dime a dozen. Quality PhDs are not easily expendable, at least not in my field. Since professors are paid significantly less than their industry counterparts, yes, to sweeten the deal and actually get people to work in academia, you need to offer job security.

Now, I am in a STEM field at an R1 institution, a big, well-known, public research university. From where I am standing, being a faculty NEVER stops being a rat race. We have annual review and evaluation, based on which salary increases are calculated. You do poorly, you don't get a raise. If you don't bring in research money or publish papers, you must teach more than those who do. Also, every tenured faculty has a big review every 5 years, so there is quality control in place. We have people retiring who still have federal funding, which means they pulled in the dough and advised students actively for good 30+ years. I don't see any deadwood faculty.

One comment over at FSP place was particularly irksome. In a nutshell, the person hates it when a tenured female professor has a baby and then it's all downhill from there. I think the same person follows by saying that not working is like a drug (the less you work, the less you want to work). Huh? So all people are inherently lazy, and only work because someone is forcing them? Did you hear that, ambitious people?

I do not know of a single tenured female who turned into deadwood due to childbearing. If research productivity suffers at all, it's for no more than a few months. Most of the time, since tenured academic women have established research programs that run uninterrupted during their absence, you would not even see a glitch in the womens' research records due to childbearing. As for being absent from teaching and advising, many women take no time off. Those who do, work extra beforehand or after they come back, or arrange for colleague coverage which they return later. I hate comments such as those above, because they basically state that academia -- a multi-decade commitment for academics -- should never make any accommodation for anyone’s life challenges. God forbid any academic, male or female, should be allowed to temporarily slow down for a birth, death, or illness in the family.

I have several colleagues who have gotten seriously and irreversibly ill on the tenure track or shortly thereafter, largely because of the stress. We all have colleagues who ended up divorced or have forsaken having kids altogether because of professional demands. No job should deserve this kind of personal sacrifice without something pretty major in return. In the case of academia, that something is tenure. (For a discussion on whether it's worth it, see Odyssey's post).

My understanding is that you only really want to tenure those people who will not slow down significantly or permanently after they receive tenure. I.e., you want to tenure people who have the fire in the belly that drives them to excel irrespective of external stimuli (or lack thereof). People who are truly ambitious and passionate about their work. People who have worked their hardest towards developing their research program and are not just going to drop it and let it waste away.

But, then you don't really need tenure, do you? If these awesome people are the only ones whom you want to tenure, and they will just keep chugging along and never stop, they don't care about or need the protection of tenure, right? Tenure is just for lazy people, right? WRONG! Why? Because 30+ years is a very, very long time. And life happens.

A friend of mine is launching a startup after several years at a major corporation. He's a young and unattached guy with a PhD and a lot of spunk, who can put in all the hours needed into a startup, and that's exactly what he's doing right now. He says he would not be doing this if he had a family, and this may be his last chance to do it, because he plans to have a family in a few years.

Another friend of mine, a lawyer, works for the District Attorney's office in another state. She used to work on cases that were extremely high-profile, stressful, and required long hours; then she got married and had a child and decided to move to a different division, where she can still do her job but with less stress, and she has more control over her schedule.

What I am trying to emphasize is that, in most careers, highly trained people are able to change jobs, or to adjust their work hours and schedule to suit their life's demands. In large companies, there are often opportunities for lateral transfer or going part time. None of these are available for academics. It is very rare for faculty to go part-time because of the stigma of not being "serious enough"; moving laterally within the university is not possible because there are no "less stressful" faculty positions. You can get demoted to a lecturer or an adjunct, but they are so severely underpaid and overall abused that it is hardly a viable option.

In my opinion, tenure track is like dating, while tenure is like a marriage between the university and the faculty: for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, till retirement do us part (most academics will spend the bulk of their independent career at a single institution). While on the tenure track, just like while dating, assistant professors try perhaps a little bit harder to please the object of their affection than they do after receiving tenure. But, ultimately, the relationship is doomed to fail if it's based on incompatibility or pretense, so a long dating period is advisable. Six years (duration of a typical tenure clock) is a pretty long time to pretend to be ambitious, work your butt off, and convince everybody around you (your department, university, and your professional community) that you love your work, are genuinely driven, and have something unique to contribute to science in general and to your university in particular. Bottom line is that a person's real ambition and abilities do come across fairly accurately on the tenure track.

This committed relationship between a faculty member and a university typically lasts for over three decades, during which the professor's children are born, parents get sick and die, and the winds of change in research funding availability blow every which way. If an academic is supposed to put in all these years of work into a university, the university should show comparable commitment during the faculty member's trying personal times. Tenure, like marriage, shows the world that the cute couple -- the academic and the university -- are both in it for the long haul.

Blogging and Procrastination

I have a lot of work to do these days but instead I find myself procrastinating. There are several papers to revise and resubmit, a grant deadline, plus an upcoming conference that I am organizing, so I should really be working at my peak efficiency instead of goofing around...

Since I started blogging nearly 2 years ago, posting and reading other people's blogs have become a habit on which, I am embarrassed to say, I spend way too much time. In recent months it has become painfully obvious that blogging, or more precisely -- blog-surfing -- is a major time drain for me.

I don't know how bad I am compared to other people, but I cannot imagine what those people do who have high-traffic blogs, and comment on other people's, and also tweet. Clearly there are people who successfully maintain an active online presence alongside a successful career. It just seems very challenging to me; for instance, I feel that if I started tweeting I would literally do no work whatsoever.

So I took down my entire blogroll, I hope only temporarily. I use(d) the blogroll to access the blogs I often read, and from their blogrolls continue to some other ones more or less frequently. It was just too tempting to constantly go back and check what's new from my favorite bloggers...  So I removed it. I might go to Google Reader later on or bring the blogroll back, perhaps in altered form. For now, the non-existence of a blogroll is serving its purpose -- the barrier to accessing my favorite online writers is high enough that I may or may not do it only once a day.

How do you combat excessive blog-surfing? Do you feel that blogosphere participation has a net positive or negative effect on your productivity? Do you curb or embrace blog-induced procrastination?

Moolah

What would I do if I came into a lot of money? Apparently, that question has been on many a blogger's mind lately (see here, and here, and here). It seems to stem from the whole lotto insanity, and I have obviously been living under a rock...

I used to think that, if I suddenly became rich, I would just keep doing what I am doing and maybe fund my own research. Now I think — sure, eventually... But hells no, not right away.

First, I would graduate all my current students, take a leave of absence from the university, and then focus on learning things again as opposed to managing other people and helping them learn. I want to perfect my German (my 3rd language) and pick up another couple of languages; Chinese and Spanish perhaps. I used to draw really well but haven’t done any drawing in ages. I used to read a lot but haven’t had the patience for anything longer than a blog post or a magazine article in a long time. I never have more than smidgens of time to devote to drawing or reading so I am restless and bored at the same time. So, if I had a shitload of money, I would hire a housekeeper and a cleaner and a live-in nanny for a few years and would try to get reacquainted with me and get some goddamn rest and try to regain the calm necessary for sitting still, and reading, and deep thought.

And I would exercise at least twice a day, amp my kickboxing efforts, and maybe take up a martial art. And I would kiss and hug my beautiful kids all the time and savor the time we have together before they grow up on me, instead of  fretting all the time about travel and grants and deadlines. And I would try to spend more quality time with my husband, maybe finally go somewhere without the kids. And I would finally get to spend some time with my parents overseas, whom I haven't seen in years; I would drag all of my kids with me there for the whole summer,  which I don't do now because the flights are so darn expensive and I cannot afford the tickets or to stay at a nice hotel anyway, and the thought of being out $7.5K for the tickets alone only to be cramped in tiny parental  apartments sans air-conditioning gives nightmares to my spoiled naturalized-American self.

And then, after a few years, when I get good and rested and bored, I would go back to being a faculty member. I would constantly buy out all my courses or become a self-funded permanent research staff instead -- all research, all the time, only working on the problems I care about, perhaps with a few postdocs...

Aaahh... That sounds heavenly.

Repost: Traveling Without Moving

(Originally posted a year ago here.)

If I had to point out one aspect of my career that has been significantly impaired by having small children, it would be my ability to travel. In geek-speak, I am seeing a zeroth-order effect of reduced travel due to years of bearing and raising small kids on my group's well-being and its immediate future.

About a week after I had defended my PhD, I moved to my shiny new tenure-track faculty position at a big state R1 with my then 4-year-old son. We lived apart from dad during my first 2 years on the tenure track, so he could work on his degree; traveling in these two years was extremely difficult for me because there was no one to take care of my son -- dad was 2,000 miles away. Occasionally my husband would come to babysit so I could travel, which meant he was taking time off and I would still barely get to see him. These two years were not fun; they were very stressful on our marriage. I was quite busy and quite miserable, and so was my husband; I worked a lot and everything was new -- teaching, recruiting students, and writing many, many grants.

After 2 years on the tenure track, my husband joined us, and I swear I got pregnant the minute he walked through the door. So due to pregnancy and breastfeeding, my travel was even more restricted in years 3 and 4 of tenure track. I did go to the most important conferences (breast pump and all), but traveling minimally is not the same as traveling as much as possible and leaving no networking stone unturned.

By year 5 on the tenure track, my academic record looked pretty good, except that I felt I did not get enough exposure. That's when I undertook the "tenure tour", a full year of aggressive self-promotion and extensive travel in order to have my work seen and heard and to try to meet all of the potential letter writers whom I hadn't already met. It was a grueling travel schedule, and quite embarrassing in certain ways -- I was shamelessly prodding people to invite me to give seminars, and I was hosting a tremendous number of senior guest speakers whom I didn't know well enough to wrangle an invitation for myself. The self-promotion year was quite stressful on my husband and my children. Whenever I left, someone immediately got sick (with a fever and either pukes or diarrhea, so as to maximally gross out my husband who's quite squeamish). It all worked out, I was approved for tenure smoothly at the very beginning of my 6th year, with what I hear were glowing letters all around.

One significant downside of reduced travel in my field is the reduced potential for funding. Let me explain. NSF and DOE are available sources of funding, but the funding rates are fairly low and there is peer review. I think DOE program officers have a bit more leeway in what they do with the reviews (if a programmatic relevance of a project is high and reviews are decent, you will get funded), whereas at the NSF whatever the panel says pretty much goes. NSF program directors have the ability to somewhat stir the panel, but not by much.

However, most well-funded people in my field are well-funded because they have money from one or more of the DOD agencies (such as the AFOSR, ONR, DARPA, ARO, etc.) Actually, some of my well-funded experimental collaborators have almost completely given up on submitting proposals to the NSF since it's little money and such a crap shoot. Now, the thing with DOD agencies is that one's potential for funding depends largely on one's project's programmatic value to that specific program officer's portfolio. In other words, getting money ultimately depends on how well you know your program officer and how willing he is to work with you and make you part of his portfolio. So traveling and talking to program officers, making an effort to be on their radar, and establishing a personal connection is critical. I have some DOD funds, mostly with collaborators, but I have done nowhere near enough fundraising travel and have been reprimanded by my senior collaborator many times for that. (This senior collaborator is not understanding when I mention having small kids; he considers all these to be stupid excuses and a weakness not worth discussing. So we no longer discuss it.)

I have so far conducted the work of my group so as to minimize travel and maximize research output per dollar. It's worked well, so far, but some of my grants are expiring next year and I must leave no funding stone unturned. However, I am tired, burned out, and going to give birth in a few months. My potential for travel and schmoozing is significantly diminished at the most inopportune of times... I do try to compensate by pestering people via email and phone. Not sure these media enable me to present my most charming self, though.

But it's not all bad. I can compare my career trajectory with that of a colleague from another, closely related department, who started at the same time I did and is also a computational scientist. The colleague is single and took to travel and fundraising immediately, and drew lots of money early on. In contrast, I stayed put and was more successful in recruiting students and advising them early on, so I had papers from my own new group ready for publication early in year 2. The colleague took a significantly longer time than me to successfully recruit students and get output from them, even though their group grew much more rapidly and there was more money around. Overall, my publication rate with a smaller group has been and remains higher than the colleague's and I graduated my first student earlier. However, I think the colleague brought in more dollars to the university that I did. I have another young and single collaborator from another institution -- that dude travels so much, I can't see how it makes sense for him to pay the mortgage. He lives on planes and in hotels and is insanely well funded.

What about my female colleagues with kids? Two have stay-at-home husbands. Many don't travel all that much. Many employ overnight nannies. It's hard. And drains energy. I am not sure how my husband will cope with 3 kids, so I don't think I will be traveling much until the baby is older. What will that do to my funding and my still emerging fame? Probably not too much good. But I choose to believe that I can do a lot of good science and good advising without burning a lot of kerosene. Even if I am deluding myself, I don't really have much choice. I have never regretted having kids and my career/family balance is what it is.

So what's the moral of this story? Travel as much as you can, while you can. Travel for fundraising, travel for networking, travel for exposure. If you don't, be aware that your career will take a hit. It may not be lethal, but it will be damaging. If you have visions of grandeur, efficient fundraising and extensive networking are key, so you better dust off your frequent flier card. If you choose to be earth-bound, or if the choice is made for you at least temporarily, there is still plenty you can do for your career, but be realistic about the inevitable compromises and sacrifices that you will have to make.

Here's the song that inspired the title of this post. Enjoy!