*Warning: Navel gazing ahead. And pissiness.*
I should really not review other people's papers when I am pissed for some other reason. Because I should probably not write that the paper ought not make it into the journal they submitted to because it's nothing but fashionable wishful thinking. So these authors will have to wait a few more days for the review until I am cooler.
I had a pretty unpleasant altercation with a relatively new student. New to my group, switched from another one. He's been doing great so far and I thought things were going smoothly, except for an occasional tongue-in-cheek smartypants comment about how certain things are done in the group, which I let slide as they were sufficiently couched and there were always other students around so I didn't want to make a big stink.
Now, my group has a number of high performance desktops and a cluster, and the same operating system and compiler for our main programming language on all of them. Desktops also have several standard programs that we use for non-coding parts of work, such as data processing, graphics, text, presentations, etc. Uniformity makes it easier to develop the code and obtain data, as you debug, compile, and run across different machines that share the same platform and have the same compiler. As additional computing power, students can access one another's computers when they (the computers) are otherwise idle, which is also helped by uniformity. And last but not least, uniformity helps me with paying for licenses and getting upgrades for everyone. These constraints hold for group desktops; of course, students use whatever platform and software they want on their own personal computers, I don't interfere there.
A few months ago, I told the student in question to install another operating system (one that he likes very much) on one of the machines, so we could test a specialized program that does not run on our platform. Yesterday I found out he had actually abandoned his original desktop and is instead using the one with a different OS as his primary computer. When I emailed him that this was not the deal and briefly explained why it was important that the platforms be uniform, he responded with a petulant outburst basically indicating that what we are using was stupid, our compiler was stupid, he didn't like the original platform and if I insisted on him switching back then he would just use his own personal computer for all of his work. *pout*
I have been pissed all day about this. One of my biggest issues when dealing with people is that I get really, really upset (more than average for a given magnitude of the "aggravant") and it takes me a very long time to calm down (longer than average). An incident like this one easily derails me for a day, maybe more. I know all the things you are supposed to tell yourself, that it doesn't matter (which it doesn't), that I don't control other people's actions but only my own (I know that too), that I am in control my own reactions (um, doesn't seem so)... None of it helps when I am drowning in adrenaline.
I showed his email to my husband, the world's calmest person who doesn't react to 90% of the things that tick me off, so he would tell me if I was imagining it or if the student was really being a dick. Yes, big-time dickishness has been diagnosed by Hub as well.
There are many students with whom I never have issues like this one. We get along well -- they recognize that they need to talk to me about things that arise and I am usually pretty flexible when I am kept in the loop. I want the group members to be happy and productive. But, I hate being kept in the dark about issues that are important for our work. For instance, in my first year on the tenure track, a student just vanished (with family) nearly a week before the 4th of July, he was completely unreachable. As a result, I could not get a hold of some of his data and we missed a conference deadline. All he needed to tell me was that he would be out of town, I would not have objected, but would have likely asked that he do his part for the abstract before leaving. After this incident, I explicitly tell each student that they need to tell me if they are going to be out of town, so I am not blindsided. Although I am perfectly sure there are many students who would do this anyway, without being prompted.
Most students actually behave professionally and don't cause me headaches or ulcers. Maybe I should write about them more, as they are the one who make this job very enjoyable. Instead, I seem to always write only about those who send me for Advil or Tums... Sucker for punishment, I am.
This is not the first time I have had this difficulty with students, this know-it-all aspect accompanied by a real nasty attitude. Obviously, I can't discuss anything like this with my colleagues because it is a sign of weakness, like I am not in control. So it's between me, Hub, and the www. This inability to share woes openly with peers is probably a topic for a whole other post...
So I talked with my husband today why there are these students with nasty, very disrespectful attitudes. I wondered how it is that I seem to them, because they feel they can talk to me like that -- do they think I am too nice, do they think I am stupid, or what? Hub said that perhaps it's the fact that I am a woman. That they subconsciously think it's OK (or at least not particularly bad) to be disrespectful to a woman in a way they would never be to a male advisor, because that's the behavior they have seen often and that they emulate, and that the fact that I am usually nice and friendly with my students enforces this view of a harmless female (or do they think I am their mother so they can behave like brats?)
I certainly know that I have faced plenty of young guys full of themselves in my years of teaching high school and undergrads, and you would think I would get more immune to their attitude as I get older... And I am, I but when it's within my research group, the sting is particularly painful as it feels like betrayal. I have been trying to decide why I got so upset. I think I am personally hurt, because I think I have been extra nice and helpful during this student's transition to my group, and I was trying to be very supportive and encouraging, and then I get this snide outburst.
My biggest challenge after an incident like this one is getting over it. Right now, I don't want to see the student at all (he has sent a couple of very apologetic emails to my "are you freakin' kidding me?" initial response). I will eventually calm down, but it's safe to say that our relationship has soured in my eyes, perhaps for good. Still, I have to go on advising him -- he's smart and thorough and has the potential to do very well, and I am his second advisor (you'd think he would be sensitive to that fact as well) so everyone should tread lightly -- and I have to find a way to be OK with that. I am better about finding a way back to a workable situation than I was before, but it's still not easy.
Friday, August 31, 2012
Friday, August 24, 2012
A Tale of Two Students
I have often written about my brilliant but difficult student, let's call him Stu One. Well, Stu One has recently graduated and gone off to do a postdoc in a good, well-funded group in our field, where he will work for my arch-nemesis. Stu One's plan is to do a couple of years of a postdoc and then try to get a faculty position. We have had several talks in which I tried to emphasize what I see as his strengths and the areas that need improvement. He has so far shown some improvement where necessary, but he is far from where I feel he would need to be if he were to be competitive for a faculty position. I hope his postdoc advisor takes good care of him
Stu One's main strengths are his talent and his technical prowess. He is very smart, pedantic in his work, loves theoretical physics as well as numerics, so he is equally good at both the pen-and-paper and the coding parts of the work, and he thinks extremely deeply about the problems at hand. The work that he has done in my group would not have been doable by almost any other among my current crop of students, except maybe one. So, on purely technical merit, I would rank him somewhere above the 95th percentile when I compare him to all the other graduate students at various institutions whom I know enough to judge their technical prowess.
Now, the areas that need improvement are quite important; they probably weren't nearly as important some 30-40 years ago, but times have changed. Stu One's spoken and written English (grammar, vocabulary) are both very good (he's an international student), but his writing and presentations make me want to pull my hair out. He writes very dry text, with no concern for the reader; whatever is in his head gets on the paper. He may have spent many months distilling a technical insight and he doesn't seem to realize that no one who reads the material or hears the presentation has spent quite as much time on quite the same minutiae and thus cannot trivially understand where certain conclusions come from. People need to be told what it is you are doing, and why, and how. Repeatedly. We have had several papers together and they were all very difficult to edit and he was very resistant to changing the text. Also, it takes him foreeeeever to produce a draft. Taking long would not be an issue in and of itself if the draft were in tip-top shape, but it's not. You can either take a short time for a rough draft or a long time for a polished draft. Not forever for a very, very rough draft.
Similar issues arise when he gives presentations. When I argued that something was unclear and needed to be made clearer, instead of making a correction he would proceed to argue why in fact it was supposed to be clear in the original form. Quite exhausting. His fairly poor time management skills, routinely leaving his work on the slides till the last minute and then giving talks essentially without preparation, do not help the presentation. All my other students would be ready for a dry run a week prior to a conference, he would show with a uselessly rough outline of a presentation, which obviously irritated me and didn't look good in front of the other students. He was under the impression that he gave bad talks and that there was nothing he could do about it; I said bullshit, that giving talks is not an immutable quality, that he simply needed to give himself more time to prepare slides and practice, and that he could become as good at presenting as he wanted to be. I tried different things to get him to manage his time better, such as setting special multiple dry runs for him so I would force him to go through the final product before prime time, and by the end he became better... I think the issue is that he still does not believe writing (well and fast) and presenting (well and engagingly) are as important as I know they are if he is to get a faculty position .
On the other hand, we have Stu Two. Stu Two is a good friend of Stu One and originally wanted to be a faculty member, but has changed his mind because he feels he is not nearly as good as Stu One. He is right to a point -- Stu Two is a very good student, smart, hard-working, and has been working on an interesting project, making good progress. I don't think there is anything wrong with Stu Two's talent or abilities. He is one of the group's top performers. He just seems not to be quite as brilliant as Stu One, but I would rank Stu Two still near the top of the crop, maybe 80th percentile in technical ability, maybe higher. He's pedantic in his work, and good at both math and coding.
Stu Two, however, has wonderful communication skills. He's also an international student (same as Stu One) and his spoken and written English are both very good. But, in contrast to Stu One, Stu Two makes wonderful, visually appealing presentations. Not only are the figures and the overall color-schemes etc very tastefully chosen, he naturally has a knack for organizing the talk so that it flows, the audience is aware of why things were done and how, as well as what is new and important. He clearly spends enough time on his presentations and there is not too much intervention I need to do on his presentations after dry runs.
He is similarly talented when it comes to writing. He writes fluid prose and writes fast, so he produces very good drafts very quickly and doesn't seem as tortured by this predicament as Stu One. As a result, Stu Two will probably have quite a few more papers than Stu One by the time he's done with his PhD, because everything in the writing process moves along just so much faster and with less frustration (for everyone involved) than with Stu One.
In summary, Stu One is technically brilliant, but does not write well or fast, and does not give particularly good presentations, both of which he could potentially rectify with effort, practice, and most importantly -- some attitude adjustment. Stu Two is technically very solid but not quite the caliber of Stu One; however, he is a gifted writer and presenter, doing both fast and very effectively. So Stu One has outstanding technical skills, but poor "soft" skills, which he could work on. Stu Two has very good/excellent technical skills, which he could also improve, and outstanding "soft skills".
Both students are perfectly aware that, in addition to a strong record and pedigree, there is a great deal of luck involved in landing a faculty position, and they are both more than ready and able to go to industry instead. But here are two hypothetical questions for the blogosphere:
Stu One's main strengths are his talent and his technical prowess. He is very smart, pedantic in his work, loves theoretical physics as well as numerics, so he is equally good at both the pen-and-paper and the coding parts of the work, and he thinks extremely deeply about the problems at hand. The work that he has done in my group would not have been doable by almost any other among my current crop of students, except maybe one. So, on purely technical merit, I would rank him somewhere above the 95th percentile when I compare him to all the other graduate students at various institutions whom I know enough to judge their technical prowess.
Now, the areas that need improvement are quite important; they probably weren't nearly as important some 30-40 years ago, but times have changed. Stu One's spoken and written English (grammar, vocabulary) are both very good (he's an international student), but his writing and presentations make me want to pull my hair out. He writes very dry text, with no concern for the reader; whatever is in his head gets on the paper. He may have spent many months distilling a technical insight and he doesn't seem to realize that no one who reads the material or hears the presentation has spent quite as much time on quite the same minutiae and thus cannot trivially understand where certain conclusions come from. People need to be told what it is you are doing, and why, and how. Repeatedly. We have had several papers together and they were all very difficult to edit and he was very resistant to changing the text. Also, it takes him foreeeeever to produce a draft. Taking long would not be an issue in and of itself if the draft were in tip-top shape, but it's not. You can either take a short time for a rough draft or a long time for a polished draft. Not forever for a very, very rough draft.
Similar issues arise when he gives presentations. When I argued that something was unclear and needed to be made clearer, instead of making a correction he would proceed to argue why in fact it was supposed to be clear in the original form. Quite exhausting. His fairly poor time management skills, routinely leaving his work on the slides till the last minute and then giving talks essentially without preparation, do not help the presentation. All my other students would be ready for a dry run a week prior to a conference, he would show with a uselessly rough outline of a presentation, which obviously irritated me and didn't look good in front of the other students. He was under the impression that he gave bad talks and that there was nothing he could do about it; I said bullshit, that giving talks is not an immutable quality, that he simply needed to give himself more time to prepare slides and practice, and that he could become as good at presenting as he wanted to be. I tried different things to get him to manage his time better, such as setting special multiple dry runs for him so I would force him to go through the final product before prime time, and by the end he became better... I think the issue is that he still does not believe writing (well and fast) and presenting (well and engagingly) are as important as I know they are if he is to get a faculty position .
On the other hand, we have Stu Two. Stu Two is a good friend of Stu One and originally wanted to be a faculty member, but has changed his mind because he feels he is not nearly as good as Stu One. He is right to a point -- Stu Two is a very good student, smart, hard-working, and has been working on an interesting project, making good progress. I don't think there is anything wrong with Stu Two's talent or abilities. He is one of the group's top performers. He just seems not to be quite as brilliant as Stu One, but I would rank Stu Two still near the top of the crop, maybe 80th percentile in technical ability, maybe higher. He's pedantic in his work, and good at both math and coding.
Stu Two, however, has wonderful communication skills. He's also an international student (same as Stu One) and his spoken and written English are both very good. But, in contrast to Stu One, Stu Two makes wonderful, visually appealing presentations. Not only are the figures and the overall color-schemes etc very tastefully chosen, he naturally has a knack for organizing the talk so that it flows, the audience is aware of why things were done and how, as well as what is new and important. He clearly spends enough time on his presentations and there is not too much intervention I need to do on his presentations after dry runs.
He is similarly talented when it comes to writing. He writes fluid prose and writes fast, so he produces very good drafts very quickly and doesn't seem as tortured by this predicament as Stu One. As a result, Stu Two will probably have quite a few more papers than Stu One by the time he's done with his PhD, because everything in the writing process moves along just so much faster and with less frustration (for everyone involved) than with Stu One.
In summary, Stu One is technically brilliant, but does not write well or fast, and does not give particularly good presentations, both of which he could potentially rectify with effort, practice, and most importantly -- some attitude adjustment. Stu Two is technically very solid but not quite the caliber of Stu One; however, he is a gifted writer and presenter, doing both fast and very effectively. So Stu One has outstanding technical skills, but poor "soft" skills, which he could work on. Stu Two has very good/excellent technical skills, which he could also improve, and outstanding "soft skills".
Both students are perfectly aware that, in addition to a strong record and pedigree, there is a great deal of luck involved in landing a faculty position, and they are both more than ready and able to go to industry instead. But here are two hypothetical questions for the blogosphere:
Saturday, August 18, 2012
Procreation as a Moral Failing
In case you are new to the blog, I have three kids, whom I adore. Sure, they are work, but so is anything else worth having in life.
People who don't want to have kids are perfectly entitled to their choice. They should not have to justify themselves to me or anybody else. As with any other choice, for some people the appeal of having kids just isn't strong enough to outweigh the potential downsides, regardless of what the appeal or the downsides may specifically be. It's nobody's business why anyone elects not to have kids.
But, I understand that it is a societal expectation that people have kids and I think I understand the pressure and the judgement that people who choose not to have kids face, especially from friends and family. I also understand that childfree people may sometimes (often?) be on the defensive because they feel that people are judging their choice, which many likely are.
What I really hate, however, is when the choice not to have a kid is elevated to the pedestal of moral superiority. Whether some people do this out of extreme defensiveness or because they are simply assholes is not my concern. Nobody has the right to even hint that I am immoral because I have kids whom I am both emotionally and financially able to support.
Spiny Norman (SN) left several comments over at DrugMonkey's (DM's) that really irked me. I am sure that SN is a beautiful person with a shiny soul (to paraphrase the legendary Hermitage), but at this point he happened to echo some of the irritating anti-procreation sentiments that are all too frequent in the blogosphere.
In this comment to DM's post, SN says:
My partner and I knew we were going into demanding, high-risk, poorly-compensated public service careers. We knew that both time and money would be limiting, and saw little point to having kids if they were mostly going to be raised by paid surrogates.
But I digress.
People who don't want to have kids are perfectly entitled to their choice. They should not have to justify themselves to me or anybody else. As with any other choice, for some people the appeal of having kids just isn't strong enough to outweigh the potential downsides, regardless of what the appeal or the downsides may specifically be. It's nobody's business why anyone elects not to have kids.
But, I understand that it is a societal expectation that people have kids and I think I understand the pressure and the judgement that people who choose not to have kids face, especially from friends and family. I also understand that childfree people may sometimes (often?) be on the defensive because they feel that people are judging their choice, which many likely are.
What I really hate, however, is when the choice not to have a kid is elevated to the pedestal of moral superiority. Whether some people do this out of extreme defensiveness or because they are simply assholes is not my concern. Nobody has the right to even hint that I am immoral because I have kids whom I am both emotionally and financially able to support.
Spiny Norman (SN) left several comments over at DrugMonkey's (DM's) that really irked me. I am sure that SN is a beautiful person with a shiny soul (to paraphrase the legendary Hermitage), but at this point he happened to echo some of the irritating anti-procreation sentiments that are all too frequent in the blogosphere.
In this comment to DM's post, SN says:
My partner and I knew we were going into demanding, high-risk, poorly-compensated public service careers. We knew that both time and money would be limiting, and saw little point to having kids if they were mostly going to be raised by paid surrogates.
Do you hear that, working parents everywhere? There is little point to any of you having kids if one parent (*cough* mother *cough*) is not going to stay at home to care for the kids. Having kids in daycare for 40-45 hours a week makes their existence pointless, because we all know that a typical week has only 40-45 hours and there is no time for anything else. And those paid surrogates are horrible creatures. They could not possibly be warm or nurturing people, showing your kids that there are other trustworthy adults besides the parents, effectively offering the modern-day isolated nuclear family some semblance of the proverbial village that is necessary to raise a child. No, it's much better not to have kids at all, or, if you absolutely must have them, one of you (*cough* mother *cough*) better give up your career to properly care for them.
We also looked around, and concluded that the planet was/is *not* suffering from a shortage of fat, happy, high-carbon-footprint first world babies.
Ah, the carbon footprint. One of the popular strawman arguments -- the first world folks should all stop procreating to save the planet. This goes hand-in-hand with the argument that someone else recently made on DM's blog that bearing children is selfish, whereas adoption is divine.
This is apparently the logic: affluent westerners, who have the resources to raise children, should not have biological children. Instead, only people who cannot afford to raise their biological offspring or don't want to have them (such as impoverished people in the third world and penniless pregnant teenagers everywhere) should bear kids, so that affluent westerners can adopt and save them, thereby presumably elevating themselves to superior moral grounds.
Nobody has the right to tell the people who want to become parents what the right way is to become parents. Especially not the people who have no intention of becoming parents.
When DJMH says:
We don't discuss lowering the birthrate any further because, hello, Japan. Turns out it is a bad idea for your country's health, even if it's a good idea for your planet's.
SN retorts along the typical lines that Americans don't have to reproduce, because the US population is not in danger, as there will always be immigrants:
DJMH: Japan doesn't have a lot of immigration. The United States does. Big difference.
These "save the planet, don't procreate, adopt (from abroad) instead" and "we don't have to procreate, people will always want to immigrate here" sentiments reveal a strongly patronizing attitude towards the rest of the world. As I wrote in what SN calls my "rage-gasm":
This annoying holier-than-thou attitude, supposedly caring about the carbon footprint more than other people by not reproducing and instead recommending reliance on immigration, also happens to be imperialistic bullshit, with a hefty helping of laziness and chauvinism:
"Let's just let those poor fuckers from the third world continue to over-reproduce in ignorance and/or poverty, then their best, brightest, and most resilient will come here anyway at their prime and help benefit this great country, and we didn't even have to invest in raising or educating them!!! How clever is that?! Who cares if our schools aren't any good? Others' are better anyway, so let's just import educated people from abroad! "
If anyone wants to reduce the world's population, studies have shown a strong correlation between the increasing educational level of women and the standard of living on one hand and the decreasing natality on the other. So people who are serious about wanting to curb population growth should go work on educating those poor women around the world who have dozens of children, instead of hypocritically expecting to benefit from those children when they eventually come, fully grown and ready to contribute.
I love the US and have benefited greatly from living here, it's a great country. But you know what? Being a highly-educated Caucasian heterosexual married immigrant, and therefore having it probably as easy as any immigrant possibly can, I can still tell you that people would usually be much happier if they didn't have to emigrate and could instead make a good living in their home country. I am happy to see the standard of living in China and India rising, and many smart people, who would have otherwise come to the US to stay and enhance its workforce, now either never come or go back home right after receiving their degrees. My colleagues are complaining that they cannot recruit good students from these countries as easily as before; well, tough toenails. A colleague from India says that, if current opportunities had existed when she was in school, she would have never left; I think this is awesome and I am happy for all those kids who won't have to leave their countries in order to make a good living or do kick-ass science. Progress is a good thing; it also reduces population growth. I wish the US would get its shit together and think about properly educating its future workforce rather than relying on importing educated people from abroad..."Let's just let those poor fuckers from the third world continue to over-reproduce in ignorance and/or poverty, then their best, brightest, and most resilient will come here anyway at their prime and help benefit this great country, and we didn't even have to invest in raising or educating them!!! How clever is that?! Who cares if our schools aren't any good? Others' are better anyway, so let's just import educated people from abroad! "
If anyone wants to reduce the world's population, studies have shown a strong correlation between the increasing educational level of women and the standard of living on one hand and the decreasing natality on the other. So people who are serious about wanting to curb population growth should go work on educating those poor women around the world who have dozens of children, instead of hypocritically expecting to benefit from those children when they eventually come, fully grown and ready to contribute.
But I digress.
Bottom line -- don't want to have kids? Sure, OK. I don't need to know your reasons, you don't have to justify yourself to anyone. If anyone asks you "Why won't you have kids?" or says "Oh, that's what you think now, wait until you are older/established/meet the right person/married," tell them to fuck off. Tell them they are nosy and rude. Tell them that they are a judgmental, insufferable prick.
I am sorry if you have to be on the defensive all the time. But, even if you are feeling extremely defensive and pissy, tired of being judged, obey the Golden Rule and spare everyone the anti-procreation rhetoric. You are not morally inferior for your choice, but neither are the people who choose to have kids.
Sunday, August 12, 2012
Academental Health
I have been reading "A Guide to Rational Living" by Albert Ellis and Robert A. Harper, which I understand to be THE book on Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy (REBT). I picked it up after my husband had started reading it (yes, we sometimes read the same book in parallel, two bookmarks, whoever gets to it reads it) on the recommendation of my husband's brother, whose high-strung, neurotic personality resembles mine in many aspects. If I were to sum up the REBT philosophy about 2/3 of my way into the book, it would be that prolonged negative feelings (e.g. rage, anxiety, depression) stem from one's so-called Irrational Beliefs, which we unknowingly keep re-enforcing but which need to be dispensed with. REBT advocates challenging these deep-seated "awfulizing" beliefs that make everything seem much worse than it is and which are often quite ridiculous when you start to pick them apart, in order to take the power away from them so you can stop feeling stuck or miserable over essentially nonexistent woes. I think most of us could use a bit more positive outlook in our lives, I certainly could. [By the way, I understand Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and REBT are closely related. This CBT book was recommended to me.]
The book I am reading and the patient cases described therein made me think of all the people whom I have met through the years, mostly in academia, who have had mental or behavioral health issues. I don't know if academia is rife with mental health problems or whether it is better or worse than any other industry, but I know I have met quite a few people who might have or actually have benefited from some form of therapy.
After my BS, I taught physics part-time at a high school for the kids gifted in math and science. It was an elite school in my home country and the kids were unbelievably bright. It was a pressure cooker, and every year several students would have breakdowns and have to leave school. I had one such student in one of my classes, it was really heartbreaking...
Shortly after I had begun grad school in the US, I witnessed a professor undergo a breakdown following separation from spouse. This was the first manic episode of this professor, who was subsequently diagnosed with bipolar disorder and has been controlling the condition with medication reasonably well ever since.
My best friend from grad school, whose cubicle was next to mine, was treated for anxiety and depression during grad school. I often wanted to tell him that maybe his body was trying to tell him that this program was not for him, which I really thought at the time. He had come from being very successful in a career where structure and hierarchy and orders were sacrosanct, into graduate school, where he worked for the world's most hands-off advisor on a project that was very open-ended and quite complicated... He did persevere and eventually graduated, currently doing great in industry.
Very recently, a former visiting scientist sent several cryptic, incoherent emails. Upon exchanging a few emails with his former advisors, it appeared that similar emails were sent to all the scientist's acquaintances. He had a breakdown brought on by too much stress and too little sleep for too long, and he became manic. I don't know what the future will hold for him.
A dear colleague from another department left his tenure track position after only two years. Having spiraled into deep depression, he finally sought and received help, left the job for which he had felt poorly suited and found one that seems to make him much happier.
Academics move a lot and are usually very far from a strong support network of close friends and family. The job is stressful, replete with rejection and with few affirmations. In many fields, job prospects are mediocre to bleak, yet personal sacrifices are often great. So people suffer.
Do academics go to therapy? I am sure someone somewhere has studied this phenomenon seriously, but that does not mean we cannot do a poll. If you are in academia (e.g. graduate student, postdoc, professor, research scientist, instructor/lecturer) or were in the past (in which case answer for the time when you were in academia):
The book I am reading and the patient cases described therein made me think of all the people whom I have met through the years, mostly in academia, who have had mental or behavioral health issues. I don't know if academia is rife with mental health problems or whether it is better or worse than any other industry, but I know I have met quite a few people who might have or actually have benefited from some form of therapy.
After my BS, I taught physics part-time at a high school for the kids gifted in math and science. It was an elite school in my home country and the kids were unbelievably bright. It was a pressure cooker, and every year several students would have breakdowns and have to leave school. I had one such student in one of my classes, it was really heartbreaking...
Shortly after I had begun grad school in the US, I witnessed a professor undergo a breakdown following separation from spouse. This was the first manic episode of this professor, who was subsequently diagnosed with bipolar disorder and has been controlling the condition with medication reasonably well ever since.
My best friend from grad school, whose cubicle was next to mine, was treated for anxiety and depression during grad school. I often wanted to tell him that maybe his body was trying to tell him that this program was not for him, which I really thought at the time. He had come from being very successful in a career where structure and hierarchy and orders were sacrosanct, into graduate school, where he worked for the world's most hands-off advisor on a project that was very open-ended and quite complicated... He did persevere and eventually graduated, currently doing great in industry.
Very recently, a former visiting scientist sent several cryptic, incoherent emails. Upon exchanging a few emails with his former advisors, it appeared that similar emails were sent to all the scientist's acquaintances. He had a breakdown brought on by too much stress and too little sleep for too long, and he became manic. I don't know what the future will hold for him.
A dear colleague from another department left his tenure track position after only two years. Having spiraled into deep depression, he finally sought and received help, left the job for which he had felt poorly suited and found one that seems to make him much happier.
Academics move a lot and are usually very far from a strong support network of close friends and family. The job is stressful, replete with rejection and with few affirmations. In many fields, job prospects are mediocre to bleak, yet personal sacrifices are often great. So people suffer.
Do academics go to therapy? I am sure someone somewhere has studied this phenomenon seriously, but that does not mean we cannot do a poll. If you are in academia (e.g. graduate student, postdoc, professor, research scientist, instructor/lecturer) or were in the past (in which case answer for the time when you were in academia):
Friday, August 10, 2012
Working Mom Haiku
I suck to work with.
Meetings canceled last minute
because of sick kid
Even in summer
seeing doctor biweekly
like fuckin' clockwork
***
Talk invitations
fill me with dread, for ahead
incessant pumping
Husband gets frazzled
Kids fall sick, violently
Show that mom is missed
***
To quit breastfeeding
was my plan. Looking forward
to caffeine, oh joy!
Silly, making plans...
Baby can't have milk or soy
Will breastfeed till death
***
Vacation, three kids
Mom and dad totally pooped
Back to work can't wait
Meetings canceled last minute
because of sick kid
Even in summer
seeing doctor biweekly
like fuckin' clockwork
***
Talk invitations
fill me with dread, for ahead
incessant pumping
Husband gets frazzled
Kids fall sick, violently
Show that mom is missed
***
To quit breastfeeding
was my plan. Looking forward
to caffeine, oh joy!
Silly, making plans...
Baby can't have milk or soy
Will breastfeed till death
***
Vacation, three kids
Mom and dad totally pooped
Back to work can't wait
Friday, August 3, 2012
Musings on Student Motivation
A former student of mine graduated a little while ago and landed an excellent industrial job, which was his intention all along. Getting a PhD and then moving to industry is a common path envisioned by many students in my field, especially international ones. Of course, there is absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to get an advanced degree and get a well-paid, highly specialized industrial job. But, in hindsight, this particular student only wanted to put in the time, be told what to do, and at the end of the day receive his degree and move on. I wish he were alone in this attitude, but I find it's fairly common.
One colleague of mine, with whose advising style I really disagree, brings armies of grad students from his home country, has them work very long hours and gather lots of data, and has them graduate in fewer years than the average. I don't think they get much, if any, training in writing papers or presenting. But, they receive training in a few advanced lab techniques and easily get jobs in industry.
I spend a lot of time teaching each student how to write papers, listening to their practice talks as I send them to present their work at international conferences... And you know what? There are some, like the former student, on whom all that appears to be wasted. He has probably given about 15 talks while in my group, and, despite multiple dry runs before every appearance, his talks are still below average. He has published several journal papers (I think about 5-6) and writing each one of them with him was like pulling teeth, down to the very last one.
What was the point of giving this student what I consider proper PhD training? I invested a lot of energy in it, it didn't take. I trained him as I would have someone who actually wanted to learn how to do and present science, which I believe is what we should do for all our students. But, he just wanted to put in the time and get a degree, so he could get a job. He could have gotten what he wanted while working for my colleague above or someone similar, it would have taken him less time overall.
We all want students who are intrinsically motivated. I have been fortunate to have worked (still do) with students who were curious, focused, who took pride in their work and were eager to write papers and go to conferences, and who did creative, cutting-edge work for their PhDs. Most of them went on to get industrial jobs, so that in and of itself doesn't preclude a proper attitude towards a PhD.
But with this former student, he mentally checked out about 2 years before he graduated. I had a hard time getting him to do much of anything properly. We were ahead of the pack on a really interesting project, but he dragged his feet and did who knows what, and several groups scooped us. I have recently been working on the last paper from his thesis, and it was extremely frustrating how many details were missing or were sloppily derived or coded and ended up plainly incorrect.
As I wrote before, since I am in a field without rotations for incoming students and my department has few TA-ships available to them, new students commonly join a group sight unseen; sometimes things work out, sometimes they don't. However, my policy is that if I am going to let a student go, I usually tell them it's not working out as soon as I am sure, but I keep them on until they get their Master's so they have something to show for the time with my group. But if the student stays on past the MS, then I am committed to getting them to graduate with a PhD.
So what do you do if the student totally checks out mentally in year 4 on the PhD?We have had talks and talks, but to no avail. I could not get through to him. I wasn't going to fire him, and reducing salary is pretty cruel considering graduate students are not exactly rich. Still, those student stipends are not charity. That's federal money and it comes with strings attached. Science is supposed to be done in exchange for it. Doing shoddy work hurts the project and can result in real damage to the future funding prospects of the whole research group with the funding agency and/or manager.
Regardless of what a student plans on doing after they graduate, they should have a good attitude while on the PhD. This means that they should be ready to do science and behave as scientists in training for a few years, even if they have no intentions of being scientists later on. For the students who come in just wanting to plow through to an advanced degree without straining a dendrite along the way, realistically the right thing to do would be to get the course option for a Master's degree. A PhD, however, is a research degree, and requires the mindset needed to do research, at least temporarily.
As PhD advisors as well as research project PIs, we have the sometimes competing obligations to the student and the project/own group. So what means do we have to motivate the students who are not intrinsically motivated? Especially if the motivation drops considerably after the student has put in several years already and you are committed to getting them through?
One colleague of mine, with whose advising style I really disagree, brings armies of grad students from his home country, has them work very long hours and gather lots of data, and has them graduate in fewer years than the average. I don't think they get much, if any, training in writing papers or presenting. But, they receive training in a few advanced lab techniques and easily get jobs in industry.
I spend a lot of time teaching each student how to write papers, listening to their practice talks as I send them to present their work at international conferences... And you know what? There are some, like the former student, on whom all that appears to be wasted. He has probably given about 15 talks while in my group, and, despite multiple dry runs before every appearance, his talks are still below average. He has published several journal papers (I think about 5-6) and writing each one of them with him was like pulling teeth, down to the very last one.
What was the point of giving this student what I consider proper PhD training? I invested a lot of energy in it, it didn't take. I trained him as I would have someone who actually wanted to learn how to do and present science, which I believe is what we should do for all our students. But, he just wanted to put in the time and get a degree, so he could get a job. He could have gotten what he wanted while working for my colleague above or someone similar, it would have taken him less time overall.
We all want students who are intrinsically motivated. I have been fortunate to have worked (still do) with students who were curious, focused, who took pride in their work and were eager to write papers and go to conferences, and who did creative, cutting-edge work for their PhDs. Most of them went on to get industrial jobs, so that in and of itself doesn't preclude a proper attitude towards a PhD.
But with this former student, he mentally checked out about 2 years before he graduated. I had a hard time getting him to do much of anything properly. We were ahead of the pack on a really interesting project, but he dragged his feet and did who knows what, and several groups scooped us. I have recently been working on the last paper from his thesis, and it was extremely frustrating how many details were missing or were sloppily derived or coded and ended up plainly incorrect.
As I wrote before, since I am in a field without rotations for incoming students and my department has few TA-ships available to them, new students commonly join a group sight unseen; sometimes things work out, sometimes they don't. However, my policy is that if I am going to let a student go, I usually tell them it's not working out as soon as I am sure, but I keep them on until they get their Master's so they have something to show for the time with my group. But if the student stays on past the MS, then I am committed to getting them to graduate with a PhD.
So what do you do if the student totally checks out mentally in year 4 on the PhD?We have had talks and talks, but to no avail. I could not get through to him. I wasn't going to fire him, and reducing salary is pretty cruel considering graduate students are not exactly rich. Still, those student stipends are not charity. That's federal money and it comes with strings attached. Science is supposed to be done in exchange for it. Doing shoddy work hurts the project and can result in real damage to the future funding prospects of the whole research group with the funding agency and/or manager.
Regardless of what a student plans on doing after they graduate, they should have a good attitude while on the PhD. This means that they should be ready to do science and behave as scientists in training for a few years, even if they have no intentions of being scientists later on. For the students who come in just wanting to plow through to an advanced degree without straining a dendrite along the way, realistically the right thing to do would be to get the course option for a Master's degree. A PhD, however, is a research degree, and requires the mindset needed to do research, at least temporarily.
As PhD advisors as well as research project PIs, we have the sometimes competing obligations to the student and the project/own group. So what means do we have to motivate the students who are not intrinsically motivated? Especially if the motivation drops considerably after the student has put in several years already and you are committed to getting them through?
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