Academic Jungle

Grantsmanship Musings

2012-01-29T17:31:00.000-06:00

I am officially throwing in the towel... My submission of a proposal to the NSF within the Jan/Feb submission window will not happen.

My baby is miserable and will have to stay at home for a better part of the coming week. The other two kids are coughing a lot too, so I guess they have RSV as well. The nebulizer at our home has been on this weekend pretty much non-stop.

As a result of the work I missed last week and the impending missed work in the coming week, I don't think there is any chance in hell to wrap up that proposal on time considering its current state and the time I can realistically invest in it, even if I were to piss off every single person in SPO by ignoring all internal requirements and work till the very last minute until the agency submission deadline. So I am officially declaring that this proposal will not get written for this NSF submission window. There. I am admitting defeat.

I am able to do this because I received two co-PI grants late last year and just learned about a new PI grant that will be funded as of April. Therefore, everyone in the group is currently covered in the next 2-3 years (or graduating sooner than that), so missing one submission window is not the end of the world... If these grants hadn't panned out, the situation would not be rosy. I was in serious panic mode at the beginning of last year, but things are starting to look up.

One troubling fact that seems to have become more and more obvious (based on my experience on NSF panels and from my own funded and unfunded NSF proposals) is that funded proposals have a lot of preliminary data and are very detailed in terms of what gets to be done, why, and when. As in, you already had money from elsewhere for several years and did lots of work directly related to this grant, you already have many, many cool figures in the proposal that look like they could totally be published tomorrow, and the research plans are incredibly specific. It is so not about having a nifty idea, having done some preliminary work, and asking for the money to make things happen. You essentially have to have predicted every tiny detail that could go wrong and address it, otherwise you will not get funded. This can really only be done if you are well underway with the project, presumably with money received for a different project.
I find that the work getting funded is not transformative; rather, what gets funded are mature projects from established PI's, generally incremental contributions within their successful multidecade projects. I am not saying such projects should not be funded, but the NSF is all about "transformative" whereas the degree to which funded proposals are transformative, at least the ones I have been seeing recently, is actually fairly small.

There is a fine line between "too speculative = not enough preliminary data" and "every freakin' minuscule detail that will arise in the next 3 years needs to be foreshadowed and addressed in the proposal before it's fundable"; shouldn't we actually trust the PI that s/he will have the capacity to address certain challenges as they arise? That not every single detail can or even should be predicted? Anyway, my most recent funded grant is an NSF grant with a collaborator, so it's not me bitching about sour grapes. But I sure know that some of my more fun, exciting grants did not get funded because they lacked the nitty-gritty details of work that has essentially been completed... And I have seen way too many good grants, where the idea is exciting and plausible, get shot down because a mouthy panelist caught on to a tangential detail and sank a solid proposal because said detail had not been addressed in sufficient detail. Perhaps I am still a romantic, but I do wish we'd fund exciting ideas with reasonable preliminary data, not work that has essentially been completed already...

As the PhD comic strip aptly captures:
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1431

Now, in my neck of the physical science woods, a single-PI NSF grant is essentially 1 student and a bit of summer money for 3 years ($80-100K/yr). Single-PI budgets from other agencies are not much different -- the DOE used to give about $150K/yr but recently I hear recommendations to budget closer to $100K/yr. Many of the DOD agencies I am in contact with tell me to shoot for $100K/yr for new grants. All of these are typically 3-year grants. Basically, I need as many grants as I have peeps in the group, because a grant is generally not enough to cover more than 1 person even if I strip all salary support for myself (in which case I get in trouble because I supposedly show "no effort" on that grant). Clearly, that's a lot of grants one has to have at any given time for a sizable group and, consequently, a lot of grant writing that the PI needs to do as 3 years is really not a very long time...

So yeah... Hence all the guilt I am feeling for missing one proposal window, even though a full-fledged RSV attack on all of my offspring is a really good excuse.

On the upside, my students are quite excited as I told them I was coming out of proposal writing lock-down and getting back to their many, many manuscripts that await resubmission. Maybe that's exactly what I need -- to treat myself to a month of uninterrupted manuscript editing (one of my favorite activities ever) as a prize for having received that latest grant. And I need to take my group out to lunch.

Random (Irit+Observ)Ations

2012-01-28T09:30:00.000-06:00

Aaah, it's good to be back home, here in the Jungle...

I am so busy and so tired that I want to scream. I have a proposal with internal deadline on Tuesday of next week, and I know I won't make it because I spent the better part of this week at home with a fussy baby who has gotten a new virus (seems like RSV, it's been going around the daycare, with wheezing and prodigious snot) plus an ear infection (his ear is leaking yellow goo, courtesy of his new blue ear tubes). He's miserable... My poor baby. :-(

In the light of the goo-and-snot-a-palooza it is totally shallow of me to be worried that the evil Sponsored Programs Office person will shake her index finger at me with words "Bad PI, bad PI! Sit! How dare you submit after the sacred internal deadline? So what if it's a single-PI NSF proposal, the simplest thing under the sun, and I will submit it as usual within 2 hours of you hitting "Allow SPO to view, edit, and submit" button in Fastlane? Naughty, naughty PI! Shame on you!" I don't want to bring up the sick baby excuse, because -- honestly -- I always seem to have that excuse. (Cue those people without kids who really can't stand people with kids: this is where you tell me that it's not anybody else's job to accommodate my personal choice to have kids, and that if I am not able to fulfill my work obligations like any person without a family then I should not have had a family to begin with, and that my job should have been occupied by someone who can -- presumably someone without a family or (a dude) with a partner holding down the home fort... So all the ridiculous internal grant submission deadlines could be met without a glitch).

Which reminds me of a comic strip the Hub just helped me discover -- Cyanide and Happiness
Here's a fitting example:
http://www.explosm.net/comics/2382/

On the upside, I have finished week 3 of my kickboxing regimen and it's been awesome! I credit it for my much improved mood (you wouldn't have guessed based on the previous paragraph, huh?) and more energy than before (have been off coffee yet functional the entire time). I have also lost 7 lbs, but that's almost a bonus. I sooooo love kicking the crap out of that punching bag. And I love that I am reconnecting with my body, I feel like it can do things again. My body and I had become estranged over the years of my descent into couch-potatoedness. But now, I am remembering that I in fact possess muscles and bones, and that I can run, jump, punch, and kick. My abs and arms are already much stronger than when I started (we're doing a lot of sit-up, crunches, and various other ab exercises, as well as lots and lots of push-ups). It's a really awesome program, and seeing the same people every day gives me the feeling like I belong to a team even though it's not a team sport... And have I mentioned how much I loooove punching and kicking the crap out of that bag? Jab, cross punch, hook, uppercut, body shot, front and back kicks... Aaah, that's the stuff.

Oh yeah, I heard a grant of mine will be funded so that's good news. Now everyone in the group is covered in the foreseeable future. I actually have money for one more student, and I have been emailing with a prospective candidate. He's probably too good for this place which means someone else will snatch him... But a prof can dream, can't s/he? I am conservative with money, don't commit to students until I know there will be a grant for them, but often money comes in and then you don't have an adequate student and you end up hiring someone who is not a good fit for the project... One of the professorial curses is that good students never come along right after you received a grant, they come when you are struggling to renew and keep getting rejections. *sigh*

And my favorite of the week: in a federal agency that shall remain nameless, a decision has been made that there will be no more no cost extensions, effective immediately. Just like that -- poof! They supposedly want to reduce the burden on their grants/contracts staff. Huh? What about all those students who can't just miraculously graduate at the drop of a hat, where the PIs were stretching each dollar to last till graduation? Shouldn't some transition time be allowed?

Getting to punch that bag on a daily basis is really, really important these days...

How Much to Take?

2012-01-19T22:05:00.003-06:00

Over at Scientopia, I discuss the following issue: once a student or a postdoc is ready to embark on a tenure track faculty job, how is it decided which project(s) he/she is free to take along to the new job in a way that is fair to everyone involved?

Conflicting Interests

2012-01-18T22:55:00.002-06:00

At Scientopia, I muse on the conflict of interest in scientific peer review -- when is knowing someone a little actually too much from the paper or proposal review standpoint?

Theorist for Hire

2012-01-18T00:12:00.003-06:00

Today at Scientopia I blog about collaboration woes, in particular being perceived as a hired-help theorist.

Tubes

2012-01-15T23:40:00.002-06:00

Still guest blogging at Scientopia. Today's post involves musings about ear tubes in small children as a means of fighting persistent ear infections.

Switch-a-roo

2012-01-13T00:03:00.004-06:00

I will be guest blogging at Scientopia till January 22.
Today's post, Switch-a-roo, discusses students switching research groups from a faculty perspective. See you over there!

Flabby Prof Gets Moving

2012-01-08T15:08:00.005-06:00

In my experience, being a professor is a very fattening activity.

Throughout most of my life, I had a healthy weight, which I managed to maintain alongside varying levels of activity. But then I took a tenure track faculty position (in 2004). At that point, I had one kid, and my husband stayed back at our alma mater trying to finish his PhD, so I was effectively a single mom for the first two years on the tenure track. The first year was absolutely brutal. Lots of teaching duties, all new courses, writing innumerable grants. I was extremely stressed out. During that year alone, I packed on 20 lbs.

Over the following years, slowly but surely, I ended up packing 30 lbs more. I had two more kids, but the physical act of pregnancy is not particularly fattening in my case, as I vomit a lot and lose weight in early pregnancy. After giving birth, I lose weight quickly in the first couple of months, when the universe gives me permission to just feed and care for the baby and nap whenever I want to. But eventually comes the time to resume all my usual duties, including caring for the rest of my family and doing my work, and my weight begins to climb back up. The main reason is that there are not enough hours in the day, and the only place to generate them is to cut back on sleep. Now that I have a baby, I sleep very little (probably no more than 5 hrs per day, and not in a row), and in order to keep functioning I tend to consume too much carbs.
Even without an infant, every time there are additional deadlines or elevated workload, stress levels go up and more sleep is lost, and the intake of food goes up.

So here I am, about 50 lbs over what I had when I came into the tenure track position. I am pretty tall so I don't look horrible and I am quite healthy (great blood pressure, lipids, cholesterol, the works) but lugging all that extra weight around is bad for my mood and my energy levels, and makes me look too matronly for my taste. I have a baby of about 20 lbs and a 4-year-old of about 50 lbs. Picking my kids up gives me a vivid reminded of how large a weight 20 lbs or 50 lbs actually is.

When you are a working parent, finding the time to exercise can be tough. You need to have iron will to squeeze exercise into the schedule, while keeping enough time for kid pick-up/drop-off, cooking dinner, cleaning up house, and perhaps spending some time with your partner. Having a very young child throws you another curveball, because they have erratic sleeping schedules and are often much more demanding on one parent than the other. With multiple kids, both you and your partner are stretched thin just covering extracurriculars, dinner, cleanup, and bedtimes; it's easy to simply plop on the couch and watch TV after the kids are in bed or spend time surfing the web.

A couple of years ago, I finally started exercising at a women-only club in the neighborhood. It was great! They had fun classes that combined aerobics with strength training, and I went there three times a week early in the morning. After several weeks, they announced that they were going out of business. My husband teases me to this day that it was me who jinxed them out of existence.

Meanwhile, I got pregnant, had another baby, and a new fitness franchise moved into the premises occupied by my former club. One of my sabbatical resolutions was to get in shape, but I have been busier than usual with the infant, associate editor duties, and a fairly large conference I am organizing in the spring, in addition to all the things a faculty must usually do -- grant and paper writing, advising students, etc.
Excuses, excuses... right? So when I heard on the radio that the new franchise in my neighborhood was starting a 10-week fitness challenge, I knew it was time to do something.

As of tomorrow, I will be starting a 10-week, 6-days-a-week fitness program. The total cost is roughly $400. It's three days -- MWF-- of kickboxing (I've got some pent-up rage to release) and three days of resistance training; Sunday is off. We had the orientation yesterday, they measured our weight, body fat, pulse after a 4 min step test, time on a mile run, and the number of push-ups and sit-ups in a minute. They repeat the tests after 5 weeks and then again after 10 weeks. The person who improves the most in these stats after 10 weeks receives $1k; the catch is that you must let them take and use a "before" and "after" photo in a two-piece bathing suit. Being a faculty, I am really not comfortable with bathing suit pictures of me available freely on the web; I would not be comfortable even if I were super hot -- I think there are just some things that my students and colleagues should never know out about me, so I won't be going for the handsome monetary prize. But, we all got cool boxing gloves and, surprisingly, my eldest son thinks it's super cool that mom will be doing kickboxing -- who knew?

I will be going to the 9 am session, after all the kids have been sent to their respective schools; thank God for the sabbatical, which is the only way I can pull this time slot off. I know that it's about a lifestyle change and committing to exercising for all eternitiy. When I get back to work, I will likely have to do the early morning (5 am or 6 am) slots, but hopefully by then the baby will be sleeping more predictably so I will be able to manage the early times without compromising everyone's morning routine.

There is a whole class of about 90-100 people starting with me tomorrow (at different times in the day), so we're all in the same boat. One interesting observation -- there are about equal numbers of women and men signed up for the program. Women are overwhelmingly there to lose weight; most men who signed up are quite fit already, and are doing this for additional exercise. There was an occasional overweight man, but most are quite fit, whereas nearly all the women who signed up are overweight. This tells you that men and women seem to want to exercise for different reasons, likely linked to what is expected of them (looks vs strength/stamina). Most people of both genders were young and without wedding rings. There were a few people older than me, but not many.

Anyway, I am quite excited about this program (if a little sore from the testing yesterday), and can't wait to break in by kickboxing gloves!!!

To my readers who are working parents: do you exercise at all? If yes, what do you do, when in the day, and how often? How did you manage to squeeze it into the schedule? Is your partner supportive? Does s/he exercise too?

Versatile

2012-01-05T23:16:00.000-06:00

Cloud of Wandering Scientist nominated me for the Versatile Blogger Award in her recent meme post -- thanks, Cloud!

Here are the rules I'm supposed to follow:

1) Nominate 15 fellow bloggers
2) Inform the Bloggers of their nomination
3) Share 7 random things about yourself
4) Thank the blogger who nominated you
5) Post the award badge.

I feel a bit silly posting the badge, but here goes:

A number of bloggers I would consider versatile have already been tagged -- Clarissa, Cloud, feMOMhist, Alyssa, Grumpies...

Here are some people who I think are great and versatile bloggers but who may not yet common fixtures on people's blogrolls.

*drumroll*

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you (in the order in which they popped into my mind) the following Awesomely Versatile Bloggers:

Thoreau of Unqualified Offerings -- politics, academia, pop culture. Always fun.

Massimo of Exponential Book -- physics, academia, gadgets, Canadian politics. Clairvoyant.

Cath of VWXYNot -- someone said she's one the silliest science bloggers. Truer words have rarely been spoken. She covers a wide variety of topics and is always funny.

Hermitage -- a STEM student, a gamer, fluent in German and lolcatz. Awesomesauce.

Namnezia of Take It to the Bridge -- academia, cooking, astronomy, kids, taxidermy.

Bee of Backreaction -- Bee writes really well about physics and physicists, science in general, philosophy, books... Also adorable twin baby pics.

Dr Sneetch -- a math prof, a snarky academic, a mom. Lots of cool photographs.

The Barefoot Doctoral -- a STEM postdoc, solving a 2+epsilon body problem. She also writes poetry. Nuff said.

Female Computer Scientist -- a new prof, but a CS industry veteran, FCS writes about feminism, CS in general (e.g. internet security) and lots of geek-friendly whimsy.

Cherish the Scientist -- academia, science, engineering, mommyhood. Cherish also writes for Engineering Blogs.

Now for the random things about me...

1) I love, love, loooove driving. I only learned how to drive after I had come to the US, at the age of 26. Driving alone on the open road is one of my greatest pleasures.

2) Way back when, as a high school senior, I represented my home country at the International Physics Olympiad. I was the first girl (from my country) to ever do so.

3) I am 6' tall. I am also the runt of the family -- my baby sister is 6' 3".

4) When I was young I used to play volleyball. I was pretty good. My position was the middle blocker.

5) I also used to be a heavy smoker -- I spent my late teens and a better portion of my 20's (essentially the entire 1990's) going through 2 packs a day. Go ahead, judge -- but be aware that I come from a culture where smoking is not particularly frowned upon. Ironically, some of my heavy smoking years overlapped with my active volleyball playing years. I quit when I got pregnant with Baby #1, in 1999. Started again amidst much stress and turmoil in 2003. Stopped for good in late 2004.

6) I like to drink socially, but I have never been drunk. The idea of losing control and not knowing what I am doing scares me to death.

7) I don't like chips. I hate, hate Doritos because of how they smell. Unfortunately, everyone else in my family loves Doritos. "Gross mom out by blowing in her face with Dorito breath" is a popular game with my older kids.

Beyond Scores

2011-12-30T13:16:00.000-06:00

I have written before about how hard it is to recruit good students (e.g. here and here). My department is ranked in the top 15 or so, therefore it's quite a good place but we don't routinely bring in superstar student candidates. However, I believe that if we are a bit clever in how we recruit, we can find some true gems among students who get passed up by more highly ranked schools because there is something a bit off with their record.

In the physical sciences, American students have multiple fellowship opportunities available to them and they are therefore (on average) easier to fund than international students. This is part of the reason why good American students are very attractive to hire and they routinely get snatched by places more highly ranked than mine. So, in order to find some good talent willing to come here I typically look hard at international student applications. I generally give a lot of weight to the quality of the undergrad institution, grades in math and physics, letters of recommendation, research experience and papers (if the student has any), as well as my previous experiences with students from the same school. As for tests, I look at TOEFL scores for international students and GRE Quantitative but not at Verbal or Analytic. Unfortunately, there are several countries that produce students who have very high Verbal scores, but when they come to the US it turns out they don't speak English fluently at all and have trouble following classes. The Analytic part, since they changed it to "Analytical Writing" is -- in my humble opinion -- completely useless for selection in my field. These are essays scored by humans; being able to write persuasively in essay format in English is not a skill most international students have when they take the GRE test, even if they speak the language well and have decent listening comprehension. The average quality of English instruction and the availability of resources for test preparation vary greatly from nation to nation and should be taken it into account when looking at test scores. Also, in many countries the GRE and TOEFL tests aren't offered very often, may still be paper-based, and taking the tests more than once may be prohibitively costly for the student.

My best two students came in with really mediocre test scores. However, they were from countries with selective admissions processes at the undergraduate levels and had very good grades in math and physics and some research experience. So this year I was going to bring in another student from the same university from which I recruited good students before; even spectacular students from this country tend to do so-so in the GRE. The new candidate has excellent math and physics grades, stellar letters of recommendation, even published a paper in a reputable journal. GRE Quantitative maximal, he even took a GRE Subject test (not necessary for admission to this program, which is in engineering) and received a very good score. We have been in contact and I was sure he would get formally admitted without a problem.

The student contacted me a few days ago, very upset, saying he was rejected. I was stunned. I inquired around a bit with our admissions committee, and apparently the person who looked at the student's file thought his GRE Analytical Writing Score of 3 was too low and that was what got the student nixed. For comparison, my two excellent American-born and -educated undergrad researchers, who both went on to top-5 places for their PhDs, received 4's on their GRE Analytical Writing; I think holding international students to the same standard is pretty ridiculous. The colleague who examined the student's file appeared defensive about the decision, which leads me to believe he hadn't even examined the rest of the student's file carefully.

Anyway, I had to make a stink about it (thank God for tenure that enables me to do this) and the student's file will be reconsidered. But this leaves a bad taste in the mouth -- that a good student can be dismissed based on a pretty irrelevant test score. I know people on admissions committees work hard, there are a number of applications to go through, and it's very time-consuming as far as service roles go. Picking cut-offs to streamline the process seems like a must. But, I have been less than happy with the quality of the average graduate student admitted in my department ever since I started my job here; I feel we admit too many poorly prepared or insufficiently motivated candidates, but most importantly -- too many candidates who don't have the background for the type of research that the faculty in this department do. I generally hand-pick students on my own before the selection is made and then make comments to the committee, but this time I didn't get to the student's file before the formal decision was made. It looks like it's time for me to get more involved in the admissions process at the department and university levels and push for giving admissions criteria at my place a big-picture do-over.

Having formally high and inflexible selection criteria may seem to convey that we are a top-notch, hard-core place. We are, in the sense that there is very good science being done here, but let's not kid ourselves. We are not a top-5 place, we are not a magnet school to which everybody applies and everybody wants to go, so we do not have our pick among the cream of the crop. We need to be smarter than inflexible admissions and test scores, accounting for the fact that the obviously superb students won't come here. We need to be more efficient at identifying and attracting the not-so-obviously superb students who will be interested in coming here. All this seems obvious, but is surprisingly hard to implement, especially at a level higher than a research group (department, college, university) where the different stages of the admission process are decoupled from one another.

How is the graduate admissions process handled at your school? If you are a faculty, are you happy with the process? Do you pick from admitted applicants or pre-select on your own? Please tell us also what your area (broadly) is and how highly ranked the department is, and anything else that you deem pertinent for the successes or failures of graduate admissions at your school.

And Happy New Year everyone!

Gen X Faculty Good News For Academia

2011-12-25T14:03:00.000-06:00

Happy holidays, everyone!

In lieu of a post, here's some good reading I stumbled upon at Engineering Prof's blog :

New Challenges, New Priorities: The Experience of Generation X Faculty: A Study for the Collaborative on Academic Careers in Higher Education by Robin Matross Helms

As the title says, the report focuses on the academic experiences of Generation X-ers (born 1964-1980). A large number of early- to mid-career faculty fall within this range, and it's interesting to note that many of the issues discussed in the blogosphere as personal challenges appear to be generational.

The concluding paragraph sounds quite optimistic about the imprint that Gen X-ers are about to leave on academia:

The Bottom Line: X’ers Are Good News for Academia
It is always nice to be the bearer of good news – and it is safe to say that the findings of this study bode well for the academic profession and for higher education in general. Academia clearly will be in good hands as Generation X faculty inherit the reins from their Baby Boomer predecessors. Overall, X’ers are very committed to their jobs and institutions, and to excelling as teachers, researchers, and administrators. They value interdisciplinarity in all its forms, forge collaborations and mentoring relationships, and work hard to support their colleagues – the essence of collegiality. They are figuring out ways to make work-life balance work for themselves and their families, and perhaps more than anything else, are seeking to build community in all realms of their lives. There can be no doubt that students, institutions, and future generations of faculty will benefit as a result, and that higher education will emerge stronger and all the more effective as Generation X faculty members’ careers unfold over the coming years and decades.

Twelve Months of Academic Jungle (2011)

2011-12-20T13:13:00.001-06:00

DrugMonkey started his annual "a year in review" meme here. The rules are simple -- post the first sentence of the first blog entry of each month.

I decided to play this year and -- TA-DAA! -- instant blog post: not as good as a real post, but quick and microwaveable!

It revealed that I seem to write a lot of proposals. Should include the post in my annual performance review.

January 2011 Familiarity Breeds Contempt
On vacation a few years ago, I was watching "Malcolm in the Middle" reruns on Nickelodeon.

February 2011 Procrastination Medley
In honor of procrastination while writing my fourth grant since the end of December, here's a piecewise coherent post...

March 2011 Giving Up on Giving Advice
Much has been written about junior researchers, students and postdocs, not receiving enough advising about the different career prospects or not enough training in the aspects critical for their desired careers (e.g. teaching, grant writing, or mentoring for the academically inclined).

April 2011 Recruitment Time Blues
'Tis that time of year again. The time when grad students receive offers from multiple universities, and faculty are trying to attract the best possible younglings.

May 2011 Home Is Where the Job Is?
Tonight at dinner, I mentioned to my husband that, even though I have been in GMP Uni City for 7 years now, I don't feel at home.

June 2011 Mush
Heat and hormones have turned my brain into mush, so I fear I don't have a coherent essay in me.

July 2011 Hermitage's Women sans Babies Carnival Is Back with a Vengeance
Hermitage is hosting a second incarnation of her mini-carnival on Academic Women Sans Babies.

August 2011 Ep-Endure-All
In a comment a few posts ago, Alyssa suggested I share the birth story.

September 2011 A Quick-and-Dirty Post on Work-Life Balance
Busy with white papers and Smurfilicious adventures, but couldn't help but notice recent waves around the blogosphere (notable posts by DrugMonkey, Odyssey, and Thoreau) that surrounded this Nature News article.

October 2011 Bizzeeee
'Tis that time of year again -- proposal time!

November 2011 Manuscript Submission Adventures
Since this summer, five manuscripts where I am the lead senior author and my different group members are first author were finally wrapped up and submitted.

December 2011 Random Irritations -- Episode IV
After I have known a person for a while, I usually have a pretty good idea how they think and can predict how they will act, at least in the context in which we typically interact

In Defense of Whining

2011-12-12T00:25:00.009-06:00

I come from a culture of very gloomy, glass-half-empty people. People complain a lot, all the time, about everything. Men and women both complain. Complaining is a mode of interpersonal communication, akin to talking about the weather here in the US. It is a way to bond. Complaining does not mean that a person is incapable of dealing with their own problems, although the power that one has over one's own life is drastically lower there than here in the US. So yeah, there is a lot of bitching and moaning going on everywhere.

I am personally a high-strung and fairly anxious person. Some of it is my upbringing, but some of it is my temperament. I think this trait of mine is also responsible for my drive at work -- I am not one to rest on my laurels, not even for a little bit -- but I can be quite exhausting in my personal life. I worry all the time, constantly trying to predict all the things that could go wrong. I think subconsciously I have this misconception that worrying is somehow supposed to protect against bad luck; it's stupid, I know rationally, but this powerful programming is very hard to get rid of. My mother always used to say "When everything in your life is great, put a pebble in your shoe to bother you." Apparently, I was brought up thinking that the state of contentment and happiness is unnatural and painfully transient; it is bound to end quickly and tragically, so one should be the most worried when everything is fine, because who knows what kind of horror comes next. I think this way of thinking is fairly common in my culture, and definitely marked my upbringing. As a result, I am one tense overachiever who worries all the time, about everything. Every time my baby sneezes, I envisions how two weeks down the road he will have yet another raging ear infection (I really wish I were more wrong about this one). Every time a grant gets rejected, I envision that I will never again in my life get another grant and my research program will die a slow and painful death.

Interestingly, my husband, who is the product of the same culture, is a calm, relaxed person who does not worry about anything. He says "You worry enough for both of us." He obviously did not grow up with my mother.

Now, while I am sure you find this gratuitous insight into my psyche fascinating and/or eyeroll-inducing, that's not where I was going with this post. In the comments to Cloud's post from a few weeks ago, which I somehow missed when it appeared, there was a conversation thread about how people, especially women, bitch and moan all the time and how it is rare for women to say that they themselves are awesome, that their lives, their families, their jobs are all perfect. And, yes, how they complain all the time and don't do anything about their problems.

I cannot say why other people bitch and moan on the internet, but I can certainly say why I do.

1) I don't have the impression, at least in the circles where I move in real life, that complaining is welcome or even tolerated. None of my colleagues complain, I am sure that none would want to listen to me complain, and if I did that would imply a weakness on my part. So in real life I have to have my $hit together at all times. The only people in real life who hear me complain are my poor husband, and on occasion my mother on the phone. My husband is wonderful but I think it's not fair for me to offload all of my many, many worries and paranoias on him. He's not a therapist and he cannot expand all of his energy on calming me down.

One of the reasons I blog to begin with is to offload the things that bother me. Getting used to being in control and calm all the time, as expected in this culture, took me quite a while, and I really miss the ability to vent and shoot shit with people in real life. I miss this ability to talk the ear off of someone, it was highly therapeutic for me. This option no longer exists in real life; I tried therapy for a couple of sessions, but I found it quite off-putting; I might talk about it more some other time. Anyway...

So I whine, rant, bitch, and complain in order to offload fatigue and frustration, and overall feel lighter and better. The negative stuff I write is exaggerated, but these exaggerated negative emotions are exactly what I need. That does not mean my life is bleak, on the contrary. In objective terms, my life is absolutely wonderful. Getting rid of the frustration helps me see more clearly how wonderful it really is. One of these days I may find enough time to exercise, so maybe I'll become more upbeat at that time. Or not.

2) Being a Chicken Little who constantly thinks the sky is falling, I have a deep-seated fear of admitting that everything is perfect. Admitting that my life is great, which it really is, fills me with dread. I knock on wood. I fear some terrible punishment will come upon me. For instance, I was a total nervous wreck my whole last pregnancy, because I couldn't shake the fear that I am asking for more than my fair share of happiness (by going for a 3rd baby) and that as a result something will go very wrong. This whole nervousness was exacerbated or even brought on by the miscarriage that preceded my last pregnancy (for long-term readers, that was the time when I shut the blog down for a while, after which it re-emerged at the new location). So the whole pregnancy was marked by a very uncomfortable fight between reason and my irrational terrors. It was not pleasant.

Bottom line is -- it may be very hard for some people to admit that everything is peachy, even if it is and even they really want to. You don't know what purpose bitching and moaning online serves for someone. If you don't like it, just move on. People's relationships with blogging can be casual or serious, torrid or made in heaven. And never assume that you know anything, not really, about a person from one or even a hundred of their blog posts. In real life, getting to know a person takes a lifetime. What makes anyone think it is possible to accomplish the same feat online in astronomically shorter times?

And, of course -- don't believe everything you read on the internet.

Editorializing

2011-12-06T23:30:00.007-06:00

Recently, I have been editing a special issue of a journal in my field. The special issue focuses on the topics in which I am an expert, so I know virtually all the contributors (at least the group leaders) fairly well. When soliciting reviews, I tried to contact postdocs and junior faculty about as often as I did senior people. This being a special issue means I have had to deal with a large number of papers in a fairly short time span and on a relatively small number of topics, which has helped make some interesting patterns in the review process obvious.

My initial guess was that younger people, postdocs and junior faculty, would be less busy and would be more likely to accept to review, would accept/decline to review more promptly (this journal provides an accept/decline option), and would overall be submitting their reports faster than the ultrabusy senior folks. Here's what I found:

Bar none, the fastest review (and a very detailed, to-the-point one) was received from a well-known, well-respected, and presumably very busy senior person in the field. In fact, several of the very busy, well-known people, whom I was reluctant to even ask for review because they likely have multiple review requests from different journals on their desk at any point in time, were very prompt in accepting to review, and were either on time or just a tiny bit late with their reports. These reports were always professional, detailed, and very useful.

So we can conclude "When you want something done, get a busy person to do it," right? Hold on, not so fast. Unfortunately, among the people who took the longest to even respond that they would indeed review, senior faculty are also the most numerous. Clearly, when it comes to plotting the distribution of referee responsiveness, the senior-folks distribution is tail-heavy.

Overall, I am quite puzzled by how many people take forever to accept/decline to review. I have never understood that. You read the abstract, and then decide whether or not to review, and click on a link. How hard is that?

I don't mind people declining to review, but I really appreciate it if they do it promptly. Unfortunately, postdocs and junior faculty have actually been much less likely to accept a referral for papers clearly within their expertise than I had hoped. I know that junior people are not idle, quite the contrary. My guess is that they don't want to review because they feel there is no immediate benefit to their careers from review, but I think that is short-sighted. Becoming a well-regarded reviewer improves your standing in the field and it keeps you at the forefront of your specialty. (FSP wrote about it. ) Junior people should have a light review load, but I think it's important that they review. It's part of training and part of being a good member of the scientific community. Being a sloppy or disinterested reviewer, while presumably expecting others to pull their weight on your behalf, is certainly not going to enhance your standing in the editor's eyes.

There is one person who submitted two papers to the special issue. Yet, I have not been able to get a single report out of him after multiple reminders. First he took forever to accept, and now now he's again taking forever to submit that one review. I would think that it's only fair that, if you want others to review your papers (note the plural), you should pitch in yourself, shouldn't you?

Another interesting issue, which was also discussed by FSP here, is whether to indicate that the paper you are reviewing is missing citations to your own work. In the case of a special issue, we are dealing with a focused set of topics, so this issue came up several times. I have found that most people have no qualms about requiring that their papers be cited (and generally rightly so), even though when the list of papers to cite contains only those from a single group it becomes quite obvious who the reviewer is (perhaps up to the uncertainty coming from a multiperson author list).

We all want our papers reviewed promptly and thoroughly -- I cannot imagine anyone wanting their paper reviewed slowly or sloppily -- but many people provide exceedingly terse reviews or are so late that the referral has to be withdrawn. It's an interesting feature of the human psyche -- we fail to treat others the way we would like to be treated ourselves.

Random Irritations -- Episode IV

2011-12-05T22:50:00.009-06:00

After I have known a person for a while, I usually have a pretty good idea how they think and can predict how they will act, at least in the context in which we typically interact. With most of my long-term collaborators, for example, I have a pretty good idea of how they think (as scientists), what their priorities are, how they feel about certain aspects of our job or our field, and so on. We don't have to be close personal friends, but the knowledge of what is important to the people with whom you interact on a regular basis is really critical in long-term relationships.

However, there have been a few people in my life whose modi operandi remain a mystery to me, even though we have known each other for quite some time. These people are so guarded, at least towards me, that they may well be black holes -- no matter how I try to connect with them, I receive absolutely no information on what they genuinely think or feel. This is not a priori bad in professional relationships, one could say it helps maintain a professional distance. I could just take whatever they say at face value and act accordingly, right? That would be awesome. Except that, for a few such people, some of their intermittent actions make no sense to me and really make me wonder WTF is going on in their heads.

Here is an example. There is a Collaborator of mine who has been a topic of several of my posts, because this person completely baffles me. I have no freakin' clue what they think or feel in earnest. They present a perfect, impenetrable facade of sugarcoated niceness. One thing I have gathered about Collaborator is that control is very important to them -- it oozes from their appearance, demeanor, the way they schedule meetings and handle email correspondence, the way they advise students and edit papers. Collaborator is a good, well-regarded scientist, and overall a reasonable person.

But every so often, something bizarre happens. The other day, Collaborator and I were supposed to meet with a Third Collaborator (TC) in TC's office. I came straight from home, hauling my purse, breast pump and related paraphernalia, as well as a large coffee and a bottle of water. I went straight to TC's office in order not to be late; Collaborator was not there yet, and TC said he had to finish a couple of emails and to sit down at his conference table. The table was oval, with one end completely covered in papers. I went to the other, clear end (I suppose it would be the head of the table), placed my coffee and water bottle on the table right in front of the seat, and told TC that since he needed a few minutes and Collaborator wasn't there yet, I would just run to my office and drop my stuff off.

My absence lasted about 5 minutes. When I went back, I found Collaborator sitting in my spot! The spot which was clearly taken by virtue of having a huge coffee and bottled water in front of it. Collaborator was just sitting there, smiling, like nothing happened. I had to pick another seat, then lean over towards Collaborator to drag my drinks over to my new seat, so I don't think there could have been any ambiguity about where the drinks were supposed to be.

I didn't say anything because I was really taken aback. Shortly thereafter, Collaborator whipped out an apple and started crunching away. Not important for the story, but I found it extra noisy and annoying in my irritated state.

What do you even say when someone sits in your spot and pretends nothing happened? Why would someone do that? Do they absolutely must sit at the head of the table? Why? Weird.

Smurfaciousness

2011-11-26T23:02:00.008-06:00

Smurf is 5 months old.

We've started daycare a few hours a day. Smurf enjoys it, but I am not as thrilled with their care as I was with my middle son. The baby room is a bit cold and all the kids are constantly crawling/toddling around with green boogers. Smurf is consequently suffering through a cold right now, with oodles of snot to make the Thanksgiving extra festive.

Smurf weighs a little over 20 lbs. He can roll from his back to his tummy like a champ and happily stays on the tummy for a while, playing with toys.

But then he gets really mad because he can't roll the other way, onto his back (at least not every time). He can also sit very well with support, and can even sit unsupported for a few seconds (then topples over on one side). As you can see, he has a bib perpetually attached to him since he drools and slobbers and spits incessantly.

As evidenced by orange stains on the bib, we have started feeding him solids. He eats dinner with us and is very excited about it. We've given him the "usual suspect" vegetables (sweet potatoes, carrots, squash, green beans) and some baby cereal. It's interesting how the recommended wisdom changes, and with each recommendation the pediatricians swear that it's the only way to go. With my first two kids, they said fortified cereal at 4-6 months (primarily to learn how to swallow and for iron and zinc, which the breastmilk is low on), other baby food after 6 months. Now they recommend vegetables and meat at 4 months, because meat has more iron and zinc (duh!) and cereal much later, if at all. When I was a first-time mom, I was too terrified to even consider deviating from the prescribed wisdom. Now I simply give Smurf whatever I see fit, which happens to be jar baby food (bad busy mommy) as well as cereal.

The older brothers adore Smurf beyond expectations -- they are constantly trying to engage him and get him to smile. My oldest handles (holds, carries) the baby pretty well and even watches him for short periods of time. The middle boy is loving but occasionally a bit rough with the little guy, who valiantly endures it all until he can't, so their "playtime" typically ends with some crying of both parties.

Smurf is a people person and very cuddly. He gives wonderful, slobbery, open-mouth kisses that melt my heart. He's made everything better.

Salaried

2011-11-23T18:46:00.013-06:00

A friend of mine from another institution and I recently played a game of "Show me yours, I'll show you mine." No, not that kind. ;)
Namely, both my friend and I are at large public research universities, but in different physical science fields. The salaries of everyone at public universities should be publicly available, even though in many cases actually digging these numbers up may be a bit nontrivial (e.g may perhaps be done only on campus etc.)
In the cases of our two universities, there are conveniently accessible websites where you can look up everyone's salaries, so we exchanged the URLs. It was fun and educational to see what my colleagues at a peer institution make. To all of you who are looking at tenure-track positions, looking up salaries at the public universities where you interview is a very good idea, so you would know what to expect, whether you are being low-balled, and how much you can negotiate.

But, in addition to looking up peers, it is interesting to see how much people in different fields make at different institutions. I am giving you the listing of the highest paid university personnel at my friend's institution. The names and other identifying information have been removed to protect the innocent, but there is still plenty of number goodness to ponder; the third column is simply the fraction of a full time appointment. You can click to enlarge.

The athletic department salaries are very high, which I believe surprises no one. Still, it rubs me in a particularly wrong way in the light of the Penn State scandal.

Note how much less a women's basketball coach makes than a men's -- hey, the poor dude/dudette they may well be a professor, that's how little they make! Then see the relative proportion of administration versus faculty among the highest earners. Also, among the highest earning faculty, those from law are the most numerous.

On this list is a person who I know to be a Nobel laureate in physics; there may be others on this list, in disciplines far removed from mine, but no time to look them up. It's interesting to note that one football head coach equals 6 Nobel-prize-winning physicists...

Excuse My Excuse

2011-11-17T23:22:00.010-06:00

Yesterday's post brought about the usual accusations that I was Crazy Advisor from Hell, Spawn of Satan, and Meddler Superior into the Lives of Students. But let me put away my pitchfork for a second and step away from the fire on which I am slowly roasting an unsuspecting grad student in order to focus on an interesting question that resurfaced in the comment thread.

There are posts of mine (e.g. here) where a student wants to do something for reasons I may not approve of or understand, or I want to do something for reasons someone else doesn't approve of (e.g. this post). Massimo has commented several times on several of my posts, very consistently, that the problem is always overexplaining. When you offer people a reason why you cannot do something, be ready to have it judged and/or dismissed. So it's best to just say "Sorry, I cannot make/do it" or something to that effect, and leave it at that. There are several other commenters who endorse this approach.

I think Massimo has a valid point, but in my opinion "Sorry, can't do it" is not universally acceptable. Its appropriateness depends strongly on the relationship that the people involved have. Sometimes, "Sorry, can't do it -- period" can do more harm than good as it may seem inappropriately dismissive.

For instance, if a relationship is that of equals, such as between two faculty colleagues, not disclosing details about why you can't meet is fine. But, when the two people have very different positions in a hierarchy and/or one has some power over the other or one is doing the other a favor, then it may not be a good idea for the person lower on the totem pole to appear dismissive, which saying "Sorry, can't do it" without giving a reason does.
Giving a reason indirectly shows that you are considering the proposal seriously and would not really dismiss it without something valid, and as a token of good will you share what it is that you consider important enough to turn down the proposal.

For instance, as in this post, I do not feel it is acceptable to blow off (i.e. stay at a required meeting less than ideal while offering no more than "Sorry, can't do") my program manager, a person I would like to continue to fund my work, without an explanation. I find it less acceptable and more disrespectful than offering an explanation and taking the risk of having its validity judged.

Similarly, I find it more disrespectful/ less acceptable if the student just says "Sorry, can't do" without an explanation to an advisor he'd pestered for months when said extremely-pressed-for-time advisor attempts to schedule a meeting, than it is to offer even a strange excuse.

So what do you say, blogosphere? Is "Sorry, can't do it - period" always acceptable, and, if not, when is it not?

Must Have Lunch

2011-11-16T19:27:00.011-06:00

There is this student who has been emailing me for months, wanting to meet with me and asking to join my research group. He has been very pushy and persistent, which are not necessarily bad qualities. But, I told him time and time again that I didn't plan on taking new students this year and that I was on leave. Never mind, he kept saying, he just wanted a chance to work with me, I didn't even have to pay him right away, his parents would do it the first year. I told him I could not guarantee him funding even next year, but he just repeated that he just wanted a chance to prove himself.

It has been months of back-and-forth via email. This student has been extremely insistent to meet and I have been blowing him off. But then he came up in a conversation with a close, trusted colleague, and the colleague said the student was in his class and seemed to be very interested, asking good questions, and overall to have a good background in our field. So I decided to give the student a shot and we met. I told him I could give him a desk and a computer but that I guaranteed no funding and we'd see how it went from there. This was on Monday. We got him a desk and a key to the lab and discussed briefly his course load, and he seemed most eager to get going on a research project. I had another meeting so we only had about 20 min to talk and I had to leave.

Now, these days I spend very few hours in the office because I am on leave and much more efficient working from home. (I am insanely busy on the grant and paper writing front, it's not like I am eating chocolates on my sofa all day, although that's really all I want to do some days. And sleep). Tomorrow I am supposed to have three meetings so I decided to make the whole day a meeting day. I told the student that I needed to meet with him tomorrow and gave him a 4-hour window between my early-day and late-day meetings to pick a time so we can get him started with a small research project. He responded that he had classes at the beginning and the end of the interval, and that he must go and have lunch between his classes (nearly hour and a half), so he will not be able to meet with me.

Huh? This is from a student who had been pestering me for some of my time for months.
He is not a baby. He will not starve if for once he has to actually postpone his lunch till after the second class. The horror! Not eating exactly at noon! During the work day I eat when I get a chance to eat, it's no big deal. I was under the impression that most busy adults are the same.

This is the second most ridiculous excuse I have ever received from a student for not being able to meet. The most ridiculous one, bar none, is still held by a former student (who eventually left after a MS) telling me he couldn't make the 1-on-1 meeting because he had made a date with some friends to go shop for vegetables! This was in the middle of a work day, e.g. 1 or 2 pm, and was not even an impromptu meeting but rather a scheduled weekly meeting.

Apparently, food acquisition and scheduled consumption are considered to be of top importance by some students. These two students happen to both be international students and from the same country, so perhaps there is a cultural component to all this, who knows... I find these excuses weird and unacceptable. None of my other students from different parts on the globe (including the country these two are from) needed to be told that meeting to discuss research is high priority, so unless they have a class, are sick, or out of town, they should make the time to meet.

The "vegetable shopper" ended up being an extreme disappointment all over, and among other things was caught cheating on one of my exams. We had to redo everything he did for research in the two years with me because I could no longer trust him. I just hope this new student doesn't turn out to be similar. Sometimes a stupid excuse is just that, a stupid excuse... But, if you are a grad student, it's probably not ideal if on day 3 of being with a new advisor you remind said advisor of the worst student they ever had.

Video Silliness

2011-11-13T11:36:00.002-06:00

I have been extremely busy, so no time to post serious stuff. Will be back soon.

In the meantime, here are two goofy videos, recommended by my 11-year-old son.

Manuscript Submission Adventures

2011-11-03T00:52:00.011-05:00

Since this summer, five manuscripts where I am the lead senior author and my different group members are first author were finally wrapped up and submitted. Most of these papers were supposed to go in before the arrival of Smurf, but I felt really ill for a long time, so they didn't. Now I am just happy for my very patient students and postdocs, who were really great sports about the delay. Among these manuscripts, the earliest submission has been accepted and is about to appear online any day now, and four are still in review. These are all comprehensive manuscripts (i.e. quite long) and on considerably different topics from one another.

One of them has been in active review (as in -- with different referees) for several months now and no report has been produced yet. Overall, the paper has been sent to N referees (N is approximately three times the number of needed reports), of whom N-1 have so far declined to review, having sat on the paper between a few days and several weeks before eventually deciding they couldn't do it. I am quite surprised by this development, because the paper is not very complicated; I have had manuscripts that were considerably more technically difficult, with lots of math to go through and therefore not the most scintillating read, and all such manuscripts reviewed just fine. This manuscript is not excessively long or difficult (mathematically), it's well-written (of course I am biased), it is on a topic in a very active area of research, and it has a solid connection to experiment. This is a reputable society journal, and they do ask that you provide a list of potential reviewers, which we did. Why it would be so hard to find some people willing and able to review it is really puzzling. I have to think that this is a failure on the editorial end, which would be uncharacteristic of this journal, probably combined with a very busy time of year for everyone (October submission window at the NSF). Other theories?

On another submission, we received the first report only 3 days after the review was solicited (the online system enables you to track when individual reviews come in). This is the fastest review I have ever received, and its speed is even more remarkable because the paper is long. Now, it's going to be another 3-4 weeks (if the other reviewers are conscientious) before all the reports are in, but in the meantime we can play the guessing game: is the super-speedy review positive or negative?

I invite you to share your own adventures from the manuscript submission and review process.

Random Irritations -- Episode III

2011-10-24T16:45:00.006-05:00

Baby Smurf was born in late June. If I absolutely had my way, I would keep him at home till January, i.e. have him start daycare at 6 months. At 6 months, several significant milestones will have been met, but perhaps most importantly he'll be able to get a flu shot before starting daycare. I have had many bad 1st-year experiences with my older kids; the arrival of every winter fills me with dread and foreshadowing of ear infections to come. However, the daycare only had an opening in October, so I've been paying for childcare (through the nose, btw) since Oct 1.

Then came a notice that there is a grant program review in November. I missed a similar event in the spring because I was hugely pregnant, so I figured I had to go to this one. It's withing driving distance (about 300 miles away), so the plan is to drive in and out on the same day (I love driving, it's no big deal). My husband dreads staying at home with the baby all alone all day; we compromised by having the baby start daycare on November 1st.** I would say this is a pretty major detour from my ideal childcare plan to make my granting agency happy. (As an aside, since Smurf will start daycare in November, I have then planned to submit a proposal in early December and do a whole bunch of other work.)

I asked that my talk at this grant review be scheduled neither too early nor too late in the day, so I'd be able to drive in and out on the same day (the whole meeting lasts two days) on account of a small baby. But, I just received an email from the program manager reprimanding me for just dropping in, because the point of these meetings is for us all to be aware of what the other grantees are doing and to meet other program managers and national lab folks (all of which I am aware of).

My blood pressure went through the roof. I hate it that I have to ask for special accommodation and list personal reasons to do so. I hate it even more that I have to do so in several emails, the last one stating that it's really complicated to be away from a breastfed small baby (I didn't go into details, but all the pumping ahead of time and during the meetings is a major PITA). I hate it that I am the only woman PI (again) at this meeting. I would love it if my reproductive status were never a topic of discussion in my professional life, but it's simply not possible. I cannot not ask for accommodation, and I hate it that I feel quite crappy (humiliated? like a fraud? like I'm stealing something? can't really decide) every time I do ask. And since we are talking about a program manager with whom I'd like to stay on friendly terms, I cannot really speak my mind.

My group has done a hell of a job with the funds we received, we've been doing great in terms of publications, I will show up at the meeting and will have lots of new science to present. So I really think I am fulfilling my duty here. Yet, still feeling like crap and failing to fully understand, let alone articulate, what exactly it is that has ticked me off so about this little incident.

---
** This is not an invitation to bash my husband. We have three kids and being alone with all of them is a challenge. My husband spends a lot of time caring for the older two, even more so since we had the baby, and he does a wonderful job. I understand that he's not comfortable taking care of the baby for a very long time; just wishing he were doesn't make it so. Babies are unpredictable creatures. I can always whip out a boob if all else fails.

Calling Native English Speakers

2011-10-20T16:23:00.009-05:00

My dear readers, I have a bit of a grammatical conundrum. A grammandrum, if you will.

We all know the difference between "between" and "among": use "between" when it's, well, a choice between two options, and "among" when you are talking about three or more. For instance:

I cannot choose between tiramisu and cheese cake. (This is a complete lie. I totally go for tiramisu every time.)

Among the deserts available at Fancy Restaurant, the best one is their tiramisu.

However, there's a bit of a caveat, as Grammar Girl taught me some time ago. When your choice is among three or more specific things, then the use of "between" is appropriate. For instance:

Mary is choosing among several top schools.

but

Mary is choosing between Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. (Note the use of "between" when the different options are specific.)

Now, why are we doing this little grammar exercise? Because I just received a proof for a paper of mine. This journal lets you see the copy-edited version as well as the proof. In the copy-edited version, I noticed that this sentence had been edited:

"... there is a connection between Math Concept A, Math Concept B, and Math Concept C".

The concepts are very specific, therefore, according to Grammar Girl, "between" is appropriate. However, the copy editor changed it to "among".

Dear reader, do you think the copy editor was right? (Which would make Grammar Girl's advice wrong.) Clearly, we must have a poll:

If you think the copy editor was wrong, would you request that they change it back or would you just leave it alone because, really, who cares?

----

Cath brought up another interesting issue, so on to another poll:

Random Irritations -- Episode II

2011-10-17T23:00:00.008-05:00

In which GMP feels like the maid.
I have been working on a manuscript that is supposed to be the crowning achievement of my former PhD student's graduate work. He was with me for 5 years, published well (7 papers out, of which several very well cited), gave numerous conference talks. He also received the department's Best Dissertation Award. So this is not a student who can't write papers, and this one was supposed to be THE paper from his thesis.

It is really disappointing how much he no longer gave a fuck about writing this paper. I have been sitting on this draft since March (yes, March, I know; bad, bad professor). The version from March had three revisions in it already; I knew the back-and-forths were not getting us anywhere and that I would have to revise it thoroughly (this certainly contributed to the delay). So I have been working on it for the past 10 days pretty much the entire time I have been able to devote to work (still at home with baby, so I am working about 4-5 hours per day). This paper has me alternating between irritated and sad. I have essentially had to throw out completely and write virtually from scratch more than 80% of the paper (and it's a long paper). I have had to do a thorough literature search anew because I know there are a number of developments in the past 2 years that we need to cite but that for some reason the student didn't see fit to include. Also, the PACS numbers he had were from 4 manuscripts ago, he never bothered to look up appropriate ones.

When I edit papers, I know it's my job to make sure that nothing is missing, that everything looks polished, because my name goes on that paper as the lead author so it's ultimately my butt and my reputation on the line. But, really, there are some brainless bits that really don't require a PhD, just someone to give a fuck: for instance, why do I have to correct typographical issues like "Sec.", "Sect.", and "Section" all in the same paragraph, or abbreviating equation as "Eqn." whereas the journal requires "Eq."? What happened to reading the submission instructions carefully? My PhD advisor never explicitly told me to do that, I just did, it seemed like a reasonable thing to do. The extraordinary amount of time going into these details of editing make me feel like the maid, cleaning up sloppy messes after unruly grad student writers.

In which GMP desperately tries to get a hold of a funding agency's financial person.
I have a grant under a special solicitation that was supposed to start in the fall of 2008. Instead, due to combined delays in the processing at both the agency's and my university's side, it didn't start till late in the spring of 2009. The end date however is now late fall 2011, which would make the grant's duration less than 3 years, and this solicitation is very specific about the 3-year duration. My program manager says no problem, they will issue a change of end date, talks to the agency's financial department, they say OK, he sends an email to me and them and everyone seems happy. That was two months ago. Since then I have tried to get ahold of anyone on their financial side, and my PM too, all unsuccessfully. Leaving messages and emails. Nothing. I really, really need them to extend that grant till the spring. Very frustrating.

Not irritating, just kinda funny.
A very nice and very competent department financial specialist felt he needed to do some basic arithmetic for us on a grant expiring this month. The emails were literally "You have this much, of which this much in direct costs. How do you want to spend them?" My postdoc and I sent him "We'll charge this, that, and the other." He followed with an email in which he literally subtracted the costs and gave us the total (highlighted in yellow, I kid you not) with the words "This is how much you will have left after everything you sent me is spent." I couldn't help but giggle -- apparently, us folks with PhDs in a highly technical discipline cannot be trusted to add 3 expenses together and subtract the sum from the available budget.

How Much Is Enough for Tenure?

2011-10-07T13:13:00.014-05:00

A little while I ago I had an email exchange with a colleague from a different university and a related but different field. He is new to the tenure track and is facing the common and aggravating vagueness in people's responses when trying to find out what the tenure criteria at his place actually are. Of course, he knows he needs to bring in grant money, publish, teach, and do service. He also knows that, since he's at a major research university (MRU), at least initially teaching has to be decent but needn't necessarily be earthshattering, and service needs to be adequate.

Research is the key to succeeding or failing on the TT at MRUs (a.k.a. R1's). But what about some concrete metrics? How much money is enough? How many papers (per year or perhaps cumulatively on the TT) are enough for tenure?

These criteria depend on the type of place you are, the field, and how your department ranks overall. I can speak of the criteria at my place, which is a large state MRU. In the physical sciences and engineering, we have several top-10 departments and I think all others are in the top 20. (I don't follow the ranking of the biomed fields, but we have a medical school and my understanding is that the biomed sciences at my place are very good. But I don't know enough about what their criteria for promotion are in terms of money brought in or publications.) So what follows holds in the physical sciences.

The number of papers obviously depends on the number of group members you have, but I would say the dependence is somewhat complex. Some people say that it's as many papers per year as you have group members -- presumably, the new ones don't publish, but the more senior ones publish more than one per year, so it roughly comes out right. I have actually found that the number of papers I typically publish (these are comprehensive papers in archival journals, I don't count conference proceedings) is roughly 5-7 per year. It has been that number for me since my 2nd or 3rd year on the TT, when I had 4 grad students, as well as right after tenure, with 1 postdoc and 8 students. When the group is smaller, I have more time to work on my own, and spend less time chasing money, so some of these publications are single-author or me actually doing the technical work for a collaborator (as opposed to delegating to a student). When my group is on the large side, I have to raise much more money to maintain it, meaning I spend much more time writing grants. Also, I spend much more time advising all these students (weekly 1-on-1 meetings take more time). Overall, I have found that at some point more students stops meaning more papers; the number of papers per year as a function of increasing group size flattens out or perhaps eventually even starts to drop (you don't want to be in that regime!). I have a very successful senior collaborator whose group always has 20-something people, of which probably 5 postdocs at any point in time. He churns out 10 papers per year, but they are all very high impact. For me, after some students graduated and left, I am now at 2 postdocs and 4 students and they are all very, very good (ranging from solid to brilliant). My postdocs truly rock. I can say I am quite happy with the size and composition of the group -- large enough for a diversity of projects and for group meetings to be meaningful, staggered well to maintain continuity, but small enough (especially in terms of how many newbies I have at any point) to be manageable and more resilient to funding fluctuations.

Which brings me to: how much money do you need to raise? It depends on how money-hungry the powers that be are. My dean loves good fundraisers, especially if you have large requirements in terms of space and equipment. I am a theorist, so my needs are very modest, but I have been a decent fundraiser. Perhaps the best advice I received was "You need to raise enough money to sustain a viable research group." I have seen people go after money for money's sake and their group swelled to more than they could manage and then eventually imploded quite spectacularly. You don't want to go from a 25-people lab to a 3-person lab over the course of one semester (true story), firing multiple techs and postdocs because all fountains dried up at the same time. It's important to realize what is it that you want to be doing, how many people you need (this may take a little while to find out) and then get the money to do it. Under the assumption that you have an idea how large the group should be to do what you envision, it's the financial support for all the group members + summer salary for yourself + equipment + materials, supplies, travel (say, 2 conferences per year per group member other than yourself). All with fringe benefits, overhead, and tuition where applicable. Perhaps a bit more, but once you have enough you should be able to allow yourself to exit the grant-writing mode for a semester or perhaps even a year, and simply do the work you promised to do.

So, to wrap this up, how much is enough?
In terms of money, you can track people's NSF funding (search awards) and I think DOE awards of late, but the DoD funding is more convoluted to find and so is most industry funding. The best way to estimate how much money someone has is by their group size. Again, I have heard the numbers of about $1M-$2M at tenure time to be considered respectable (a sign you know how to write proposals) in my and related fields (intersection of physics and engineering). Obviously, experimentalists have to raise more than theorists, and of course this number scales with the group size, but it seems these numbers are universally thought of as "nothing to sneeze at" (from CS to physics to electrical or mechanical engineering).

In terms of papers, go look at the records of recently tenured faculty in your field at comparable or better places, and see how many they have per year. At my place, the number 20+ from your group at tenure time keeps coming up. I think that's a good estimate. Papers with former advisor's group don't count for much in my experience, and I was strongly advised to sever ties with former group ASAP after starting on the TT.

Ultimately, the external letters of evaluation will put your standing in the context of your field and your career stage, so you want to be among the better ones of your cohort. You don't want the letters to say "Candidate is worse than A, B, and C, who all got tenure at comparable places." You want them to say "Candidate is on par with (or better than!) A, B, and C who got tenure at comparable places." Or better yet "Candidate walks on water, then turns said water into wine, and has left A, B, and C from comparable institutions so far in the dust that they are all still recovering from a coughing fit."

Bizzeeee

2011-10-01T22:07:00.003-05:00

'Tis that time of year again -- proposal time! There are hard and soft deadlines in October and November at multiple agencies of interest to my research program.

I am crazy busy. Smurf is not in daycare yet -- he should start soon, but I am not ready! Since this is going to be our last child, I want to enjoy him as much as I can, and, being on hard-earned leave, I don't have to teach, so I have lots of flexibility and, yes, I can be at home with him. Bottom line -- we will be paying for daycare but he won't be going for a little while longer. I know, my working-in-academia-and-being-on-sabbatical privilege is showing. But I am almost not feeling guilty about keeping him at home, because I (desperately !) want to reduce the chances of him getting incessant ear infections and ending up with tubes like both his brothers... It's so heartbreaking when babies get sick, cry inconsolably with pain and fever, and they are so little... :(

I am extremely happy with the group composition I have now (knock on wood). Everyone in the group is very, very good. My postdoc is awesome, I feel bad he didn't get any interviews this round, but he landed a very good fellowship that will enable him to stay here and work on his record for a couple of years more. He's improved his writing and presentation skills so much, and has diversified his portfolio, merrily interfacing with collaborating groups, that that it's been a joy seeing him mature. He's really going to be an amazing faculty. All the students I have now range from solid to brilliant, and are all working very hard, producing good work, and progressing steadily. I received two new grants as co-PI, so, together with the existing ones, everyone is taken care of till they are done. However, I need to raise more money to bring in a few new students and a new postdoc in order to have continuity. I have several grants expiring in the coming year and have been working non-stop on white papers to multiple agencies, and on staggering full proposal submissions so as to maximize my chances. It's fuckin' exhausting, especially since I work 9 pm - 1 am, and then whatever hours I can squeeze in during the day (usually 2 more, or 4 more total on a good day). Obviously, I am working much less than full time. While my workload is somewhat reduced (no teaching), I have been writing many more white papers and proposals than usual, so it's almost a wash...

Writing all the white papers and proposals has been kind of invigorating, because (1) it forces me to read up on the material I am not terribly familiar with but it's hot and novel and people want to fund it and it is in my very broad area, (2) I have to do so in a typically very short amount of time, and (3) on top of it I have to come up with a nontrivial idea (did I mention said field is outside of my comfort/immediate expertise zone? Yeah..)
It's hard, but real fun. Torturous and thrilling in equal measures.

So yes, busy. My blogging will likely suffer even more than usual in the coming weeks, but it's for a good cause. Crazy busy is the best kind of crazy.

Theory/Computation Carnival is Here!!!

2011-09-26T20:13:00.002-05:00

A few weeks ago, with his post "What do theoretical physicsts actually do?", Thoreau inspired me to write a post about what my work entails. But, theory and computation are certainly not the province of physics, and an idea for this carnival was born. I am very excited to share with you a wonderful set of entries from scientists at different stages in their career, from academia and industry, and spanning a number of different fields.

Thoreau at Unqualified Offerings describes his career trajectory, from becoming a theorist in a somewhat unconventional way to being a physics professor. He discusses the multiple facets of his work and shares the joys and excitement that come from cracking a really important longstanding problem.

HFM left a comment, which I reposted as a guest post for easier reading. HFM is a graduate student who considers themselves a "semi-theorist" in that they interface closely with experimentalists but can speak the pure theorists' language well, too. HFM considers making sense of complex data their strength, and writes about the likes (variety) and dislikes (not belonging anywhere, hard to find a postdoc) of their daily work.

Bee who blogs at Backreaction is a theoretical physicist who works on the phenomenology (a part of theory that makes connection to experiment) of quantum gravity. She writes about her field in accessible terms and discusses what it takes to make a successful model, one that addresses certain experimental features while maintaining mathematical consistency. She also shares that, when working on a paper, she will frequently communicate with others in the same field, travel to conferences or organize a workshop.

Miss MSE over at Periodic Boundary Conditions tells us about her work employing the molecular dynamics technique. She studies interfaces between polymer and nonpolymer systems, systems where "there's no good way to study them experimentally without fundamentally changing the structure, and therefore the properties, of the interface." She loves how broadly applicable the technique is, talks about here code-development experiences, and emphasizes that everything she does is informed by experiments.

Anonymous Mad Scientist in a Strange Land writes about his work on first-principles quantum-mechanical calculations used to look at interfaces of materials in systems previously computationally inaccessible due to their complexity. He also shares how he's always wanted to be a theorist, and how his career progressed so far, leading him to his current position as a postdoc in France.

Dr. Sneetch of The Sneetch Blog is a mathematician who enjoys crossing the boundary between pure and applied math seamlessly, following her work. She feels that, with mathematicians, you cannot separate the person from the work, that "Mathematics sustains and nourishes us as much as we sustain and nourish it. There is no distinction between the person and the mathematician and perspectives matters." Dr. Sneetch also talks about the singular focus necessary to do research in mathematics.

Pika from Academic International writes about her work in a pseudonymous field of Beachinformatics. She says that she's always been interested in applied mathematics and discusses several aspects of her work, such as data mining and visualization, that are inherent in dealing with complex data systems.

In her daily work, Rebecca from Adventures in Applied Math helps scientists of different specialties with their computational woes. Rebecca wrote an interesting post that emphasizes how computational techniques cross the boundaries between fields very well: scientists in many different specialties all need to solve partial differential equations, eigenvalue problems, or simply need their codes to run faster or parallelize better.

ScienceGirl from Curiosity Killed the Cat writes how being a computer scientist focused on scientific computing enables her to satisfy her great curiosity in all fields of science, as she says "Performing computation in a smart way to do unprecedented science. I don't really care what science - physics, climate, medical research, all are important and all fascinating. So I know I've chosen my trade well - as a computer scientist, I get to have my fingers in any of them!"

Cloud from Wandering Scientist brings the perspective of "a scientist and a techie" with a career in the biotech industry. For example, she likes the variety of her work, the intellectual challenges, and when wearing a project manager's hat, "figuring out how to bring all the pieces together to get a project to complete successfully- it is like a big logic problem." She is not too keen on some of the corporate politics and the industry's volatility.

Nauromath contributed a guest post. His field is theoretical neuroscience, and in his work he tries to understand how the brain works by studying in detail the environment we live in. He also discusses how his work addresses some of the limitations of experiments and reveals a great passion for his work, because, as he says "brains are very cool," and there are many open problems where the theoretical approaches he develops are the best bet for a solution.

A related guest post was contributed by Dr. Cow, who is interested in "human cognition, specifically developmental cognitive neuroscience." Dr. Cow discusses why computation is useful in this line of research, and cites reasons such as inability to run experiments directly "either because of a gap in methodology or due to ethical considerations" and the ability of computational methods to "define the complex and dynamic relationship between the neural structures and behavioral outcomes."

Gasstationwithoutpumps contributed a post on his work as a bioinformatician. In contrast to, for instance, computational physics where typically one uses a computer to solve a mathematical model, his work is not model-driven but data-driven. He says "It is rare in bioinformatics that we get to build models that explain how things work. Instead we rely on measuring the predictive accuracy of “black-box” predictors, where we can control the inputs and look at the outputs, but the workings inside are not accessible." He also talks about the research path he took to his current field.

Thanks to all the wonderful bloggers who took the time to contribute to this carnival and share what it is that makes us, theorists and computational scientist, enjoy our work so much. There is a great deal of passion for their craft that radiates from each one of these posts and I trust you will find it contagious. Enjoy!

Guestpost by Dr. Cow

2011-09-25T23:24:00.000-05:00

Computational Brain and Cognitive Sciences

by Dr. Cow

To put what I do in a sentence: I use simulations to attempt to figure out some of the complex and dynamic interactions between the biology (your brain) and behavior (cognition). Brain and Cognition covers a vast research area full of many different types of questions, different methodologies, many interesting results, and open questions. The levels of analysis range from the molecular to the behavior of large groups. I myself am interested in human cognition, specifically developmental cognitive neuroscience.

So, why use computational methods?

-There is a lot of potentially interesting experiments that we can't run directly. Either because of a gap in methodology or due to ethical considerations. Computational methods can use known constraints from related data and fill in the gaps. We can even make novel predictions about behavior or the biological systems.

-If you're going to pain a picture of how the biology and behavior interact with each other then you're going to need a way to draw that picture. Computational methods have the precision necessary to define the complex and dynamic relationship between the neural structures and behavioral outcomes.

My research involves reading papers ranging from systems neuroscience to cognitive psychology. My lab produces both computational data and matching behavioral data from human participants. I also sometimes collaborate with brain imaging researchers.

Overall I think it's a very fun (I like math) exciting and useful area of research.

Guest post by neuromath

2011-09-25T23:23:00.002-05:00

While our computers are getting better and better all the time, one of the persistent mantras in science and engineering is that our machines still fall far short of the performance of human brains in their ability to understand the world around them. This is, in fact, the basis of things like CAPTCHAs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captcha) which rely on varying abilities to decipher deformed letters to distinguish humans from machines. What's even more maddening is the that brains perform these types of computations with relentless efficiency (less power than required to light a lightbulb).

Unfortunately, our detailed understanding of how the brain converts raw sensory data into complex perceptions and judgements is still very primitive. Most people think of neuroscience as an experimental discipline. Indeed most of our understanding of how brains work comes from the (sometimes heroic) efforts of experimentalists to lift the hood and get a glimpse of what's going on. But, due to the extreme technical challenges of conducting these experiments, there are two persistent problems: 1) we only ever get to observe a miniscule fraction of the system operating at a time, and 2) most of our data comes from the system when it's operating in a very non-natural state.

Experimental work has given us a lot of information about how brains (and the basic building blocks of brains) work. But, given the two issues mentioned above, it is nearly impossible to think that we will be able to understand how this large, complex and nonlinear system actually works from simply stitching together these experimental snapshots. It has been said that neuroscience is a field that is data-rich and theory-poor. In other words, there is a deluge of data coming from experimental labs (and sometimes very good models accompany this data), but very little overarching understanding of how all of these pieces fit together to give brains their amazing computational abilities. This situation is basically exactly the opposite of modern physics, which has theory coming out its collective ears but very little data to test its ideas.

The area I work in is theoretical neuroscience, which attempts to fill in some of these gaps. The approach of my lab is essentially to try and understand how the brain works by studying in detail the environment we live in. To be specific, consider our visual system. If the brain is efficient at taking raw visual data and using it to make judgements about how to understand the world, then that brain must be highly adapted to the specific visual structures that exist in the world. In other words, that brain should be much more efficient at handling a natural image (i.e., anything you would imagine taking a photo of) than any old random pattern of light (e.g., static on an old TV). It turns out that there is a lot of structure in things like natural images, and the language of statistics is a very natural way to describe it. It also turns out that fields like engineering and applied mathematics have developed many approaches to optimally exploit this type of structure.

The main approach of our lab is something like this: 1) build a statistical model of the signals of interest, 2) look to engineering/math to determine the optimal ways to deal with that structure, 3) given what we know from experiments and other theories, look for a way to port these mathematical ideas to a hypothesized neural processing strategy, and 4) look to see if this hypothesized system can explain any significant aspect of experimental data. While this does have an element of "guess and check" to it, the hypotheses are based on a significant prior knowledge and are not out of the clear blue sky.

The main hope of this type of approach is that given a small amount of data (relative to the system complexity), it is much easier to check a specific theory than to divine the inner workings of an unknown black box. This is not a replacement for experiment, but a complementary direction that can help to guide future experiments and can tie together our previous findings. While this is a fairly young field, there have been several surprising successes where some aspect (developmental features, response properties, etc.) have been shown to emerge from the statistics of the world combined with simple hypotheses about the system. We've also learned some things from this approach that can be taken back to the engineering world to improve the systems we build.

I chose this area, and continue to be fascinated by it, because I love the combination of pure insight that comes from the mathematical theory and the curiosity about a complex and fascinating system that is described in the experimental literature. The bottom line is: 1) brains are very cool, 2) I think this type of theoretical work is honestly some of our best hope for really understanding what's going on in them, and 3) right now this type of approach is a relatively untapped area. It's hard for me to imagine another area where we know so little and the tools of mathematics have been so rarely applied. Consequently, it's hard for me to imagine an area that has such a high potential payoff, and I'm excited by the opportunity to try and make a really fundamental contribution to our understanding.

Guesf post by HFM

2011-09-25T23:22:00.001-05:00

I'm a new grad student in "Quantitative Stuff", where Stuff is an established science field without much of a quantitative tradition. So I'm at least a semi-theorist.

How I chose it: When I was choosing my undergrad, I knew I wanted to work on Stuff. I also knew that Stuff was reaching the point where engineering approaches were feasible, and I wanted to do that - I'm a hacker/tinkerer at heart. So I got a BS in engineering.

What I do: I've been hiring myself out to old-school Stuff labs, with the promise of solving problems with my bag of engineer-tricks. This can be almost anything - modeling, data analysis, data extraction, automation, assay development, etc. Also, lots of "can you fix it"...anything from "I superglued this expensive object to my desk" to "the department's server died [no backups, no password, obscure OS, grad students whose entire theses were on there crying in the background]". (Yes, I fixed both - acetone for the first, Google and calling in favors for the second.)

What I want to do: Something I've been thinking about! I do want an independent career of some kind - working on other people's problems is okay, but I've got my own opinions on what is interesting and feasible, and I'd like the chance to set an agenda and defend my own work.

One challenge is figuring out a niche. I realize it's in my best interest to have a non-trivial solution for "world expert in X", but research ADD and an interest in methods makes this harder. I've seen Stuff labs that do tools, but they tend to get stuck on milking the old tool for all it's worth - especially in this funding climate, it's hard to give up the safe paper and go build the next big thing.

For me, I think I'll choose a corner of Stuff to work in, and choose the subset of those stories that could use a technical nudge. I'm okay with using non-cutting-edge engineering to do this - given the early state of Quantitative Stuff, there are real contributions to be made this way.

I'm not a gifted mathematician; I can muddle through the stuff you need for engineering, but there are heaps of people you'd want before me. And I can't theorem-proof my way out of a wet paper bag, though I'm also not trained to. What I am awesome at, however, is finding structure in ugly data. Then I can build the tools and analytics to bring that structure out, or if I can't, I can at least explain the problem to a hardcore theorist in language they understand.

So for this very interdisciplinary semi-theorist, here are my likes and dislikes:

Likes: Variety. A brand new field, one I'm sincerely excited about, with enough useful low-hanging fruit to keep a hundred of me busy. Doing stuff no one else is, so you're not fighting it out with a bunch of labs chasing the same result.

(And if I'm being honest...cookies and beer from grateful Stuff students when you can "fix it". Also, the option to bail into Quantitative Better-Paying Things. I'd rather not, but if I fail, the Stuff option is an eternal postdoc or worse.)

Dislikes: You don't quite belong anywhere. Finding jobs is hard, whether industry or academia - nobody's quite sure what to make of you. (On the grad school trail, I got interviews at two departments in the same school; both rejected me, on the grounds that I really belonged in the other one. Hmph.) Nobody's going to get all of what you do; intro sections of grants/papers/etc get much more interesting to write. You'd better hunt down multiple mentors if you're in training. I worked in a pure Stuff department; having nobody to talk to on the tech end was hard.

A Gentle Reminder: Entries for Carnival on Theoretical/Computational Sciences Due Sunday, Sept 25

2011-09-23T11:58:00.001-05:00

If you do theoretical/computational work in the sciences, please consider writing a post that tells us a little bit about what your work entails, what you enjoy/dislike, what types of problems you tackle, what made you chose your specialization, etc. You don't have to be too specific, but you certainly can if you want. Send a link (a comment here or drop me an email) so I can aggregate the posts. Even if you don't blog, consider either writing a lengthier comment here and I will link to that as your post (please don't post as Anonymous, give yourself some nickname for the occasion) or, alternatively, email me the text and I will put it up as a guest post.
It's perfectly fine to recycle some of your old favorite posts.

Why this carnival? Yes, we use math and computers. A lot. But I would like everyone else to learn a little bit about what makes us tick, what makes us successful, what types of problems we encounter, and why what we do is so darn awesome!

Deadline: Sunday, September 25.

Please leave a comment here or drop me a line if you are participating (geekmommyprof at gmail.com) so I can be on the lookout.

Ideally, I would like to put the carnival summary post up on Monday, September 26.

Thanks in advance for participating!

Random Irritations -- Episode I

2011-09-16T15:42:00.001-05:00

I really, really hate it when people suck at their jobs and I have to depend on them.

I am organizing a conference in my specialty in the spring. It's not a huge one, 250 people or so, but enough to require some serious planning. So I started well ahead, early last spring, and among other things contacted the campus business center and was connected with a person who was supposed to help everything run smoothly. However, I should have guessed it would be a rough ride when she stood me up at our first meeting, where I was supposed to tour the beautiful, newly-built facility with lots of meeting rooms. No one is more pissed than an uncomfortable hugely pregnant woman who is wet, cold, and has been stood up. We rescheduled and I eventually toured the facilities.

Then I gave her a detailed schedule (this conference has a well-defined layout and duration) sometime last spring and discussed options for online registration, different catering options, how to most easily have prepaid lunches for participants etc., where to have the banquet, poster session etc. She said she'd get back to me shortly with a break-even budget, so I can go and start looking for support from different agencies and professional societies. That was last spring. Over the course of the summer, I contacted the woman via email several times to ask when I could expect the budget. She completely ignored me. It's been months since I last heard from her. I know she's busy with other conferences in the meantime, but WTF? Can't she write "I will get back to you in [however many weeks]?" So I decided to give up on her and will be working with my department's staff person instead, who has a lot of experience with organizing these events and is very sharp. We already talked about different ways to keep the costs down and different venues that we could use to organize parts of the event inexpensively.

Then all of a sudden I hear from a completely new person who supposedly is to provide the budget. She drafted the most ridiculous piece of information I have ever seen. She pulled up registration fees from the last conference incarnation which was in Europe; all the prices are in euros, and she didn't bother converting (we all know that 500 euros is totally the same as 500 US dollars). Btw, this was completely unnecessary because I plan on setting the conference registration fees after I know how much the event will approximately cost. She looked at the conference itinerary but didn't price it, instead sent me a generic "pricing" which is not even an order of magnitude correct. It's a mixture of per-person costs (such as food per day per participant), quantities that don't scale with the number of people (such as the fee for using a room), as well as some ridiculous cumulative numbers such as rentals of 800 poster boards (where the hell did that number come from?). Am I now supposed to be thrilled that they graced me with their attention after the whole summer of ignoring me, and offered such a half-assed effort on pricing out a very specific itinerary?

Let's just say I am thoroughly unimpressed.

Call for Entries: Carnival on Theoretical/Computational Sciences Due Sunday, September 25

2011-09-14T23:45:00.001-05:00

If you do theoretical/computational work in the sciences, please consider writing a post that tells us a little bit about what your work entails, what you enjoy/dislike, what types of problems you tackle, what made you chose your specialization, etc. You don't have to be too specific, but you certainly can if you want. Send a link (a comment here or drop me an email) so I can aggregate the posts. Even if you don't blog, consider either writing a lengthier comment here and I will link to that as your post (please don't post as Anonymous, give yourself some nickname for the occasion) or, alternatively, email me the text and I will put it up as a guest post.
It's perfectly fine to recycle some of your old favorite posts.

Why this carnival? Yes, we use math and computers. A lot. But I would like everyone else to learn a little bit about what makes us tick, what makes us successful, what types of problems we encounter, and why what we do is so darn awesome!

Deadline: Sunday, September 25.

Please leave a comment here or drop me a line if you are participating (geekmommyprof at gmail.com) so I can be on the lookout.

I would like to put the carnival summary post up on Monday, September 26.

Thanks in advance for participating!

I Heart Theory

2011-09-07T23:25:00.007-05:00

Fellow theorist Thoreau just had a cool post "What do theoretical physicists actually do?". In the post, he answers the question by looking at some of his papers and analyzing what the work entailed and how it differed from what students are taught to consider as theory based on their lecture courses.

The purpose of this post is twofold. First, I would like to tell you a little bit about some of the work I do, in a fashion similar to what Thoreau did. I have formal training in theoretical physics as well as an engineering discipline, and I my work is theoretical/computational* in the field of condensed matter physics. I work on problems ranging from very basic (firmly in the physics realm) to very applied (firmly in the engineering realm). Most of my work is published in Physical Review B, Applied Physics Letters, Journal of Applied Physics, and ACS Nano (reputable society level journals). Higher impact papers are published in the prestigious Physical Review Letters (often lovingly called Physical Review Lottery) and certain GlamourMagz (Nature, Nature Materials/Physics/Photonics/Nanotechnology).

My most cited paper is a GlamourMag paper with experimental colleagues. They came to me with some excellent experimental data, but that alone was not enough for a high profile paper, because it was not clear what was going on. We talked a few times about the details of experiments, and we came up with a qualitative picture that we all felt corresponded with the experiment. Then it took me a few days to set up the theoretical model -- in this case, an ordinary differential equation with appropriate boundary conditions; the novelty was in recognizing how the boundary conditions need to be set up in order to have a well-posed problem that corresponds to experiment. The derivations took a few days and another couple of days to code it up, and we had a quantitative model that corresponded with the data well and was intuitively plausible. Ultimately, we published a nice high impact paper, and I often joke that this is the easiest paper I have ever done, yet it brings the best rewards. The code, which is not very complicated or long, is still being used and fiddled with by many of my collaborators' experimental students.

I do a lot of theory connected to experiment (Massimo would call me an "experimentalist without a screwdriver"). My students enjoy such projects, as it means they get to collaborate with experimental students a lot, so the more the merrier. Also, this work helps my students get to know other professors really well (great for when you need those recommendation letters). I also have projects as part of larger theory/experiment collaborations, where the theory is virtually independent. For instance, on one such project, the question we asked was a very broad, general question, which at the time had neither a theoretical nor an experimental answer. So the experimental folks did some serious equipment building, while a theory collaborator and I, with a joint student, did some serious code development. This was a type of problem where you generally know what types of partial differential equations you need to write down to describe the system, but solving them together is extremely complicated. So the challenge for us in this case was to develop a computational tool that could solve all these equations in realistic systems and self-consistently (e.g. output from the solution to one set of equations is input for the second set, output from the second one is input for the first; you need a set of outputs that simultaneously satisfies both sets of equations; this is usually achieved using iterative procedures). It took a full three years with a very talented and independent student (so it would have taken significantly longer with an average one), and we now have a series of papers that promise to become very influential as they open completely new computational vistas.

My own personal inclination and most of my formal training was towards the "pen and paper" theory. However, once I came to the US and started working in a more applied field in grad school, I have come to really enjoy numerical computation, as it really enables you to get much closer to reality (especially in condensed matter physics) than you ever could with just a pen and paper. Some of my best cited "theory only" work deals with careful calculations of properties of systems that have become very "hot" in the last several years. We offered a rigorous analysis of their properties, with many important details, and predicted that the properties were much more modest than some initial flashy experiements suggested. Indeed, several years later, careful experiments showed exactly what we had predicted (quantitatively). Often, I feel my group's job is to deliver bad news -- that things are not as fast, cool, or otherwise shiny as one would hope. That's your fate when you work in the so-called "dirty limit" (means systems with lots of disorder, strain, and various imperfections; realistic systems are nearly always "dirty").

And then there are the super fun theory projects, where perhaps you get to dip into some math that you don't use every day, such as differential geometry or group theory in my work, and you get to derive a completely new and beautiful theoretical model (i.e. a new set of equations) that is capable of describing a whole class of heretofore un- or underexplored systems. I loooove this type of work; my PhD was like that and I published this type of work alone for the first several years on the TT. Now, I find this type of work is very rewarding (intellectually), but it is not for everyone. Most of my students are interested in more applied work, with ties to experiment, where the model (underlying equations) is known at least in principle, and where the bulk of the work is computational. Those who thrive on the more math-heavy project are harder to find; it's even more rare to find a student who is really into these mathematically challenging problems but can also write code well. I am lucky to have one excellent student who is like this (yes, that's the one who gives me the most headaches; but he's super talented. *sigh*), and it seems that one of my newbie students will be like that too. Otherwise, these projects would have to wait for me, and that would unfortunately be a very long wait, considering how busy the rest of my job keeps me.

All in all, I enjoy a diverse research portfolio, even if it makes me "a jack of all trades, a master of none" (and is likely not the best way to quickly achieve upper echelons in your chosen subfield). As doing theory costs much less than experiment, it is much easier to change fields or research directions -- you don't have to raise lots of funds to do the transition, which is a major perk (I wrote previously about the relative benefits of doing experiment vs theory.)

This brings me to the second purpose of this post: to start a carnival of sorts, with people who do theory/computation in the sciences contributing with a post on what their experiences in their daily work are. I have no idea how successful this call would be, but let's say within the next week or so:

If you do theoretical/computational work in the sciences, please consider writing a post that tells us a little bit about what your work entails, what you enjoy/dislike, what types of problems you tackle, what made you chose your specialization, etc. You don't have to be too specific, but you certainly can if you want. Send a link (a comment here or drop me an email) so I can aggregate the posts. Even if you don't blog, consider either writing a lengthier comment here and I will link to that as your post (please don't post as Anonymous, give yourself some nickname for the occasion) or, alternatively, email me the text and I will put it up as a guest post.

Finally, this post would not be complete without a link to the (fairly new) APS Division of Computational Physics news blog.

Happy calculations, and may all your iterations converge!

------
* See, for instance, this post by Massimo on why computational physics is not a special third branch of physics, but means you are a theorist who does calculations primarily on a computer.

Public Service Announcement

2011-09-06T09:51:00.002-05:00

Gossip rule No 1:

If you want to maintain the (clearly false) appearance of a kind and thoughtful online persona in front of certain people, then I recommend that you mock those people behind their backs only where they truly won't be able to see it. So, yeah, you may want to avoid Twitter.

A Quick-and-Dirty Post on Work-Life Balance

2011-09-01T23:04:00.007-05:00

Busy with white papers and Smurfilicious adventures, but couldn't help but notice recent waves around the blogosphere (notable posts by DrugMonkey, Odyssey, and Thoreau) that surrounded this Nature News article.

Here is a bit of a medley post from the comments I left a few places. From the comment at DM's place:

Odyssey said: "Dumb and lazy will kill your career. Having children will not."

I will agree with Odyssey here, but with a qualifier. Having children will not destroy your career, but it will likely alter it -- temporarily or permanently -- unless you have someone to completely shoulder the burden at home. But do you really want to have a family and never be around to enjoy it?

Anyway, regarding altering one's career: I have kids and am at an R1 public school, the state's flagship, and according to all metrics I am doing pretty well. If I hadn't had children, would I have been at MIT or Stanford (top places in my field)? Maybe, but maybe not. There is nothing that guarantees reaching the upper echelons of academia; for every laser-focused workaholic who got there by forgoing all else, there are hordes of people who sacrificed just as much or more and didn't get there. All I know for sure is that I wasn't going to have a family and not be there to raise them.

To me, and I dare say to most scientists with families, family is what brings sanity and balance back into one's life. For me, it was never a question of either-or; I would not be anywhere near happy without my family or without my career. They are both great passions, if you will, and the only way for me to feel successful is to combine and enjoy both of them. Anything else -- even the highest imaginable professional standing without the personal life -- would feel like a failure.

(This is NOT a judgement of people without kids. This is my view of my own personal choices.)

It is fine if you are willing to sacrifice everything for your career, but just be aware that career is a harsh and fickle mistress and your everything may still not be enough. Odyssey nicely points out that luck is a factor in reaching awesome professional heights. There are never guarantees, no matter how smart, ambitious, driven, focused, and ready to jump under the bus for your science you are. If you make it, don't delude yourself that it's all just your merit and awesome planning. You also lucked out, so go buy some lottery tickets already. (Some of us would say: your career is like a highly nonlinear classical system -- change initial conditions just a little bit, the system's evolution changes dramatically.) I know several very sad people who are middle-aged and lonely, who worked like maniacs during their youth and completely let their personal life fall by the wayside, are divorced and without children, which they say wish they had had. And their science is still mediocre.

Thoreau discusses the Slave-Driver Superstar (works 24/7 and expect the same from underlings) with the Perfect Balancer Superstar (PBS for short) -- you know, those people who are nauseatingly perfect at everything they do and they do 3x more of everything than a mere mortal. He makes a very astute observation: I privately suspect that these people have far more in common with Quinones-Hinojosa [the 24/7 guy] than the folks constantly talking about “balance” realize. In other words, he believes that PBSs are actually much closer to the slave drivers than us slightly (or not so slightly) unbalanced mortals, and it's not just that they both occupy the tails (albeit different ones) of the normal distribution. I completely agree, based on my experience working with one closely (from my comment):

I actually know a couple of “perfectly balanced” colleagues. One of them a frequent collaborator. I can tell you that in the case of this person the balance is just a manifestation of extreme control-freakishness and perfectionism. Their schedule is perfectly partitioned and there is absolutely no room for deviation. Yes, the schedule is 8 or 9 hours of work, however many hours of activities with kids, church, whatever, but the point is that they are in control of every single minute. I think they get high on control, it’s very very important to them. (This extends to this person's relationship with food, I find.) This does not make for very good collaborators, I will tell you that — it takes me several weeks to be graced with 10 min of this person’s time (because their schedule is so jam-packed for weeks and no changes are allowed). And don’t get me started with turnaround time for returning comments on joint papers.

The thing with work-life balance (for the commonly unbalanced specimens among us) is this: how often do you feel happy? I mean, we are all stressed out, grants get rejected, students and colleagues annoy us, our spouses and kids can sure make our blood boil, but how often do you stop and feel the warm breeze of pure unadulterated joy? If it never happens, your choices suck for you. My family and my work both bring me headaches but also tremendous joy (kids are awesome in the joy-bringing department), and I wouldn't have it any other way. Although I would not object to higher funding rates and a bit more sleep...

Two Months: a Smurfilicious Update

2011-08-29T00:04:00.011-05:00

Smurf is just over 2 months old now and weighs over 15 lbs.

Fig. 1. The double chin.

Fig. 2. Hand dimples, the cutest thing in the world.

He sleeps one longish stretch at night (9 pm - 2:30 am) and after that wakes up every couple of hours to eat. He also takes 2-3 naps per day, sometimes quite long ones. I was a bit worried about all the sleepiness, but it's not every day and the doctor says that's perfectly fine, some big babies just eat and sleep till about 2-3 months of age.

He makes good eye contact and has been smiling since about 6 weeks. He's recently started blowing bubbles (it's a milestone -- who knew?) He loves the older boys, especially the eldest one. Unfortunately, he seems to ignore my husband and my husband is upset about it, thinks the baby hates him. I think it simply has to do with the fact that my husband is around in the evenings when Smurf is grumpy and ready to hit the hay. Or may be some weird thing with Smurf and my husband wearing glasses. Either way, Hub and Smurf bonding has yet to take place.

Tummy time -- a difficult optimization problem. For those who aren't parents, babies are supposed to sleep on their backs to reduce the risk of SIDS, and you are supposed to have them on their tummies for "tummy time" to strengthen their neck and back muscles, which is necessary for crawling, sitting, walking. The problem is -- many babies hate it (see Fig. 3). All of mine did.

Fig. 3. Tummy time = torture time.

Now, since babies hate it, you are not supposed to do it when they are sleepy or hungry. So you may want to do it after they wake up and eat, only then their tummy is full and they spit up. So there's a small window when they are no longer sleepy, hungry, or puking and also not getting tired and hungry for the next round. Only in this small window you may actually want to enjoy your happy cooing baby, and not turn him on his tummy where he will start screaming... So far, I have had the most luck with just putting him on my chest instead of the floor. He doesn't mind it that much, but after a bit starts sniffing for the boob! :-) He can also roll over, or more accurately -- roll down -- from my chest and onto his back.

And to wrap up, a couple of gratuitous happy baby pics.

Fig. 4. Happy Smurf on his play mat.

Academic Women sans Babies 2.0

2011-08-22T10:40:00.005-05:00

Here are the answers to the questions submitted to Hermitage's panel on Wimminz in Academia Q&A, now with 100% Fewer Babies. This time around she has two different professorial panels and a postdoc panel, go check them all out.

1. Are there any suggestions about how to look professorial as a young (and young looking and smallish) TT faculty?

2. For those of us who like things like pink, skirts, baking, sewing, knitting, heels, makeup, and other things girlie, how important is it to not do / wear / talk about these things lest we be seen as fluffy girls who can't do Science?

I am going to combine these two into one, since they are indeed two facets of a question "I look and act too much like a young woman, how do I make sure it does't hurt me professionally?"

"Looking like a professor" means being a white dude with glasses and crazy hair, so that's really hard to pull off for any woman without gender reassignment surgery. So don't worry about looking like a stereotypical professor. Just look like you and kick ass. I know a number of women, especially from Italy, France, and Spain, who are petite, very feminine, and dress really well. They are also phenomenal scientists and I don't think anyone is taking their looks as a signature of a feeble mind. I am sure you can talk about baking or knitting if you want to, although I don't think I have heard any of them discuss any particular hobbies in a professional setting.

Once your science (papers, citations, funding, awards) starts speaking for itself, it is absolutely irrelevant how you look. I know an American-born female professor who's probably no taller than 5' 1" and looks about 12 years old (although she's probably in her late 30's or early 40's), dresses very goofily and wears no makeup: however, her list of papers, grants, and awards is so impressive, she certainly does't have to prove anything to anyone through the way she looks.

Now, what to do until you establish a track record? Fake it till you make it. Wear whatever you want and don't worry what anyone else thinks. Or at least tell yourself that you don't care and tell anyone who asks or comments about your appearance that you don't care and that he/she shouldn't either. Young women overwhelmingly suffer from insecurities -- that's why faking it is key. Pretend you are confident so doors would open for you; once you have a track record, confidence will naturally come so you won't have to fake so much.

As for women professors: I would say wear whatever makes you comfortable. Being uncomfortable shows and you don't want that. One thing I recommend is to make sure your clothes fit well. That's especially important for women who don't have an ideal physique (most of us no longer do as we age, even if we once did). Also, whatever your clothing style, once you are a professor you can afford higher-end clothes, so go shopping. Get the more expensive of whatever items you like to wear (this also helps with making sure they fit well). Well-fitting good quality clothes, irrespective of style, will make you feel and look like you are comfortable with yourself and in control.

3. What can we do when other women deny there are problems being a woman in science?

When I read this question, I asked myself when was the last time anyone in real life (except my husband and perhaps a close personal friend or relative) actually took my concern to heart when I complained that I suspected someone had slighted me professionally because I'm a woman. The answer is -- I cannot remember. It's been a really long time since I complained to anyone from my professional circle in this fashion, not because slights don't happen, but because I have found that colleagues (male and female) really don't want to engage in this type of "what if".

The problem with discrimination against women is that any one incident happening to any one woman can have an alternative explanation. That's enough you make you really doubt your qualities and your sanity. Your paper or grant got trashed while the reviewer reveled in writing "she" and "her"? Well, maybe the paper/grant was just really crappy. You are requested to do way more service than your male counterparts? Well, I am sure that's because they really appreciate your contribution to the department since you are so good at it. You got passed up for a fellowship/scholarship/promotion? Well, maybe that other (white, male) candidate was really better qualified.

Since any one incident can have an alternative explanation, if you suspect gender bias and go to a colleague (male or female) for support, don't be surprised if they don't jump to agree with you or comfort you. Many of them will think (even if they are not saying it) that you are not good enough, that you are simply not passing muster. Don't be surprised by such thinking -- academic science is extremely competitive and people have huge egos. Showing doubt and insecurity, in my experience, usually does not fall on receptive ears. Pats on the back are very hard to come by, better get used to living without them.

However, bias against women is well-documented and real because many, many women have the exact same ambiguous unpleasant experiences happening to them. That is why it doesn't matter what any one naysayer says in response to any one or a host of your anecdotes. It is a fact that over the course of your career you will most likely get some (or quite a bit of?) friction under your professional wheels because you are a woman. Life is definitely too short to try to convert naysayers. If you suspect that someone is biased against you professionally, don't waste time going around looking for validation; assume they are indeed biased and try to minimize their influence on your career (I am talking about unconscious bias and the virtually imperceptible inequalities it creates; egregious violations of your rights to a safe work environment or sexual harassment should always be reported). Focus on surrounding yourself with supportive people of both genders and keep looking and going ahead. (See more survival tips here.)

4. It seems to me that often women don't have as strong professional networks as men - the kind that gets built over shared interests (sports or drinking). People seem to gravitate towards others like them. What specific advice do you have for establishing and maintaining network with men as well as other women?

I am in a very macho field so my network consists almost exclusively of men. Now, I will eat and drink anything and don't mind going to a sports bar or any other bar or restaurant. I don't follow sports and barely follow politics, so I don't partake in these types of conversations, but usually even in an all-men professional group there will be talks of other conferences, people we all know, developments in the field, travel, university or company politics, families, so there are plenty of topics where I can take part socially. Most men in my field are moderate drinkers and family men and really aren't all that wild or all that scintillating as dinner conversationalists. I also stir the conversation towards talking shop when I need to, and it is usually well received. I guess I am old enough that networking is easier as we are all getting old and boring -- dinner, one drink, then back to the room to sleep or work.

When I was a grad student, my male grad student brethren were a bit more wild in terms of drinking and ogling women, but I can hold my liquor and have a fairly high threshold for comments about the racks of random women passing by, so it wasn't a big deal. Even then, most conversations were about sports, current politics, movies, travel, our advisors. I guess we were pretty boring then too.

I would say just go out with people you meet at conferences, don't think about it too much. You can nurse your Coke or a vodka-tonic all night, most people don't care. Take part in the conversation when you can, otherwise listen or chill and people-watch. If you are comfortable, people will be comfortable around you. I routinely go out to dinner with groups of men and no other women; long ago I was very uncomfortable, now I don't even notice. I remember a recent grant program review (it's like a workshop), where I ended up I renting a minivan at the airport because the rental car company was out of compacts and midsize sedans; it turned out well, as I could drive a whole bunch of us (me and 7 middle-aged men) out of town to a steak house for dinner at the end of the day, so we didn't have to take multiple cars. And none of them even complained that a woman was driving! ;-)

Appropriated

2011-08-19T12:38:00.005-05:00

I just found out that "the Federal appropriation is ending" at the end of September and I can no longer use the funds on a grant of mine that is supposed to expire in April 2012 (we're in the no-cost extension year) and has some $30 K left. Why did this happen? Apparently, the SPO (Sponsored Programs Office) gets a list of grants for which the appropriation lapses and that's it; your grant is done and there is nothing the agency or the SPO can do about it. Usually it does not happen until the grant actually expires...

The SPO person told me that I had already been informed about all this in late June; for all I know I might have been, but the arrival of Smurf makes my recollection of this period foggy at best and I certainly cannot find the email.

This is all very inconvenient, as I planned on seeing a student all the way to graduation with this money. Now I have to find a way to spend $30 K in the next month or lose it; ideally, much of it can be done with salary transfers so I don't actually have to spend the money, but there are also some constraints there (e.g. I don't want too much money transferred to another eligible grant as it may negatively influence its no-cost extension which I plan on requesting in the next few months), plus transfer requests for any expenses more than 90 days old require a ton of paperwork so are best avoided... If all else fails, I guess my computer cluster will be getting new nodes, stat.

No, this ordeal does not help with the tension. It is, however, very typical for a faculty job at an R1: whenever I start to think I have some control over my work schedule and my funds, there is some fire like this that needs extinguishing yesterday. Maternity leave, my a$$.

Interesting Posts at "Unqualified Offerings"

2011-08-18T23:46:00.003-05:00

Over at Unqualified Offerings, Thoreau has two interesting new posts:

Things I can only teach you in research

The problem with summer research programs

I encourage you to check out Unqualified Offerings for a variety of content. Thoreau is opinionated, insightful, and funny on any topic he discusses.

Less Than Full Disclosure

2011-08-17T23:29:00.006-05:00

After weeks of playing phone tag, I have finally connected with a program manager at a DoD agency. I don't know him and his program is new to me, but it looks like it may be a very good fit. It was one of the most pleasant and productive conversations I have had of this kind in a long time. The spin of the work may have to be a bit different than what I commonly write for his agency, but I am actually excited because he's much more interested in the theory and numerics than the usual suspects I correspond with. We agreed that I would follow up with a white paper (a white paper is a 2-3 page long mini-proposal, where you pitch your idea in all its glory) in a few weeks, and we'll take it from there; if he likes it, I will make a trip to DC to make a presentation in person.

It turns out, however, that I am swamped with work already. Several manuscripts long overdue for submission, plus three white papers with collaborators and one proposal resubmission, all of which actually have hard deadlines in the next couple of weeks. I can postpone the manuscripts further (apologies to my poor, very patient students) but not the white papers or the proposal. Considering that I can only work the odd hour here and there around the baby, bottom line is that the white paper with the new manager will likely take me significantly longer to complete. Probably mid to late September, and this is the best case scenario. However, if I leave the new program manager just hanging there for many weeks, it's really bad form. It's bad enough that I will have to delay submission, but it would be worse yet if I delayed it without telling him about it. So an email is certainly in order.

The real reason for the impending delay with white paper submission is, of course, that I am swamped with pressing deadlines (that's something I can disclose), but the essence of not making the agreed time frame is that I am on maternity leave (not formally, but for all intents and purposes -- I am taking time off and there's a baby to take care of). I most certainly don't want to seem like a flake or like someone not interested in his program. However, I am very reluctant to mention maternity leave; it brings up the personal whereas our relationship should be all professional; it makes me look like I am asking for special treatment up front, showing a weakness.

Would you or would you not mention that you are in fact on maternity leave, so working really drastically reduced hours, when telling the program manager that you
will be sending him promised materials several weeks past the agreed date?

Collaboration Dilemma

2011-08-15T12:15:00.001-05:00

I am an expert in computational Technique A. A Colleague in a different field, one that usually has little overlap with mine, is an expert in
computational Technique B. Together, we developed a pretty cool and powerful
technique that combines A and B self-consistently, let's call it technique AB.

I teach a graduate course that trains students in Technique A, Colleague teaches a course that trains students in Technique B. All my students take both my course and Colleague's course, so all my students are at least proficient in Technique B. Colleague's students don't take my course.

Colleague and I are not friends, just friendly colleagues. I admire Colleague but we have never been able to get past superficial pleasantries. I suspect Colleague doesn't like me very much personally and that is OK, I am not sure I like Colleague either; our lifestyles and personal priorities are just very different. Regardless, we have done some nice work together and have similar work ethics, even if I am annoyed by Colleague's need to have the last word on everything (so do I, hence the annoyance) and Colleague's general unavailability. Overall, the relationship is somewhat complicated (more on it below).

Now the dilemma:

Another colleague from a different department -- let's call this colleague BigWig -- who's in a field much closer to mine, is working on a white paper for a large proposal. BigWig is aware of my work on combined Technique AB and asked if I would be interested in participating. The work I should do would essentially require me to employ Technique B, the full Technique AB is likely not necessary (I don't think BigWig is aware of this technical detail).

Now, I am competent in Technique B and can do the work, but the real expert in Technique B is Colleague. So I can do the work needed, but Colleague would probably be faster; however, I have no idea if Colleague would even be interested, or if BigWig would even be comfortable working with Colleague (I am not sure they know each other directly).

So, what do I do? Here seem to be the options:

(1) Just say I would love to do it and participate in the writing of the white paper alone. If invited to submit the full proposal, then:

Option (1a) Participate in proposal writing without Colleague and plan to do the work alone if proposal gets funded. If it is necessary to solicit Colleague's help, include Colleague as coauthor on papers, but supplant Colleague in the proposal writing stage.

Option (1b) Lobby to include Colleague (with funding) in the full proposal, provided Colleague is interested. Then do the work together.

(2) Say that I would love to do it, but that I am not the real expert and refer BigWig to Colleague instead. As I said, there is no guarantee that Colleague is interested or that BigWig wants to work with Colleague.

The problem with (1a) is that I feel like I am stealing Colleague's expertise, even though my group is competent to do the work. However, in the past Colleague has proceeded to take part alone in a proposal where we originally were supposed to be together, so Colleague is no bleeding heart. Also, I have suggested multiple topics to Colleague where we could employ Technique AB on interesting problems and go for new funding, Colleague says they're interested and most definitely want to participate, but then are unavailable for months to even discuss it over the phone; essentially, Colleague is not interested in furthering our work with Technique AB but sure as hell won't give me the green light to go do it myself.
On the other hand, I fear (1b) and (2) make me look naive, especially in the light of past history with Colleague, while (2) may even damage BigWig's proposal if Colleague dawdles with responding or just won't do it.

Dear readers, what would you do?

Relax

2011-08-14T15:34:00.002-05:00

Around this time last year I wrote about my inability to disconnect from work while on vacation. This year was no different, even though I have a new baby to keep me occupied pretty much 24/7.

In contrast, my husband spent lots of time playing with the older kids (in the pool and at various fun parks and fairs) and he was also able to finish one of books from
"A Song of Ice and Fire" series (the book series behind the awesome "Game of Thrones" HBO show; btw, he says the books are fantastic!). My husband actually had a vacation.

I planned on reading as well and not checking email (or blogs for that matter) but was utterly unsuccessful in my plans. Even though I am on maternity leave (well, sort of; it just happens to be summer so I don't have to teach; he nonexistence of maternity leave for faculty at my university is a topic for another post), and quite busy with the new baby, I constantly think about work. (Part of it is that, as you nurse around the clock, you have a lot of time to think and not do much else.) I think about the proposal submission schedule (which one to the NSF in the Sept/Oct submission window and which one to DOE in October and when will I finish the white papers that I need to send to the DoD program managers I have spoken with this summer, and how do I get a hold of that one manager with whom I have been playing phone tag due to poor cell phone reception at vacation site...)

And my students and postdocs have been traveling and giving talks, and that one student who doesn't listen squat has sent me a presentation to look over 3 hours before his talk, and I know he won't practice because he never does and he sucks at presenting the big picture, and yes of course he had no questions afterwards because no one can follow what he says, and my blood pressure boils again, and the paper we are about to submit is 20 double-column pages and I want to cry just thinking about going through it yet again because he has made nontrivial changes and made it 4 pages longer than what I insisted was the final version... And the large multi-PI grant will be funded, but not at 100%, so what do we cut, or better yet whom do we cut, and another grant was supposed to start in July but the agency administrative person is on vacation so collaborators and I have to keep paying students off of other grants while the darn agency person sunbathes...

My husband criticizes me how I do nothing but sit at the computer (that's when I am not nursing around the clock or trying to get some shut-eye), why don't I read or relax. Why don't I pick up one of the books from his series? I honestly don't think that I can relax enough to commit to reading such a large amount of fiction any more; long gone are the days of me effortlessly devouring the volumetric kin of "War and Peace". Even blog posts that are too long make me twitchy.

I have some sort of ADD in which work thoughts permeate every waking hour, every coherent thought. The worries about funding are real and imminent, the pull from students and collaborators never ending. The field is moving fast and it is easy to become irrelevant.

How do you detach, how do you relax? How do you prevent work from infiltrating your every pore and taking over your life?

This is, of course, what Frankie Goes to Hollywood has to say on the topic:

Serves You Right

2011-08-04T23:16:00.002-05:00

This is a repost of a column I wrote last year for Inside Higher Ed; the original appeared here. The comments are worth checking out, as they are quite different from the type of feedback one gets in the scientific blogosphere. The column was also posted on this blog a few days later, and this posting with comments can be found here. While I tried to make the advice as general as possible, it is aimed primarily at people from research institutions, simply because that's what I know best.
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Serves You Right

Research, teaching, and service are the defining trinity of a university professor's job. Their relative importance depends quite strongly on the type of academic institution and one’s career stage. Understanding how to strike a balance between institutional requirements and one’s own career interests can sometimes be tricky, and young faculty are often in danger of overcommitting to activities that do not benefit their long-term career prospects.

Most tenure and promotion criteria at universities state something like "In order to receive tenure, a candidate must demonstrate excellence in research, teaching, and service." In reality, this means that excellence in research is absolutely mandatory for promotion and the level of excellence you achieve is in direct correlation with how easily you will get tenure. Provided your research record is spotless (i.e., you received a lot of external funding if you are in a science discipline or another where that’s the norm, published many papers in top journals or books with respected publishers), graduated some Ph.D. students, and gave many invited talks), the university will be fine with good teaching and adequate service. It doesn’t work the other way: excellent teaching or service do not get you promoted in the absence of a stellar research program. Bad teaching may result in tenure denial, though.

But can't you have an outstanding research record, as well as outstanding teaching and outstanding service? The answer is "Yes, in principle," but nobody will believe you. The problem is that, if you are devoting too much time and showing too much zeal toward either teaching or service at a large research university, your colleagues will wonder what it is that you are not doing instead (i.e., why you are not spending all this time on research). Unfortunately, in order to be considered a serious enough scholar in many departments in large research universities, you have to manifest a slight level of disdain for teaching and service. (How this bodes for the quality of undergraduate education is a topic for another column, or perhaps a few.)

While the quality of research and teaching can in principle be measured, through the number of papers or amount of grant money or teaching evaluations, service is a vaguely defined category that has the potential to drain a junior faculty’s energy with poor return.

So what is service and how much service is enough?

Service is a set of faculty duties that demonstrate good citizenship in the department, university, and the broader scientific community. Therefore, we can roughly divide service into service to your institution and professional service to your scholarly community.*

Service to the institution can be further divided into departmental service and service outside the department. Departmental service requires a fair bit of time, and it includes serving on various committees (e.g., undergraduate and graduate student admissions, facilities, curriculum, student advising), serving on students’ master’s and Ph.D. defense committees, or serving in an administrative capacity (e.g., being chair). Service to the university outside the department also involves being elected to serve on various committees, but these are often open to tenured faculty only. On tenure track, it is reasonable to assume that most of your service to the university will be in fact service to your department; which makes sense as the department is your champion in the tenure process.

Professional service to the broader scholarly community comprises activities such as reviewing research papers, serving on the editorial board of a journal, serving on organizing and program committees of conferences, mail-in and panel reviews of grant proposals, as well as serving on the board of a professional society or a federal funding agency.

The level of department and university service for a junior faculty member should be fairly light. I recommend that most service activities be skewed toward professional activities in your broader disciplinary community, which, besides being service, have the additional benefit of enhancing your research program and your visibility in the community. For instance, reviewing papers enables you to stay abreast of latest developments in the broader field, being part of technical program committees for conferences gives you visibility and enhances your network, serving on grant panel reviews strengthens your ties with the program managers and helps you feel where the field is moving.

Find out what the absolute minimum of service is that the department requires and stick with that. Often, this means you will serve on one committee, and try to pick one that you either feel passionate about (e.g., facilities or curriculum planning) or one that does not require a lot of time. If you are really passionate about serving your institution, I advise that you somewhat curb the passion until after tenure. Try not to commit to more than one additional committee in excess to the required minimum. Serving on the master’s and Ph.D. defense committees for your colleagues’ students is extra, and these will help strengthen your bonds to the faculty in your sub-area; however, these activities should also be practiced in moderation.

Sometimes junior faculty feel that they owe it to someone to put in excessive amounts of service. The reasons for this are different: for instance, women are sometimes pushed into extra committee roles because committees need gender diversity or it is perceived that all women like service because they are stereotypically nurturing and caring. If you are a female, and even if you love service and happen to be nurturing, I recommend you fight tooth and nail to not perform any more service than your male counterparts. This will not only free up your time, but will also establish that you are not a pushover, which is important for your future standing in the department.

Another example is when a junior faculty member feels vulnerable, such as when he or she is the trailing spouse in a spousal hire, or when the hire is a member of a minority group and thinks people will perceive him or her as a beneficiary of affirmative action. In these situations, some tenured faculty feel the new hire is not really meritorious and the new hire often feels that he or she needs to perform extra service in order to get into the colleagues’ good graces and demonstrate good will. If you are in this situation, the worst thing you can do is pile on all the extra service tasks; not only will this course of action detract from your research and result in confirming naysayers’ doubts, but it also makes you seem insecure and hungry for approval and will only exacerbate any ill will the colleagues may harbor towards you. I know this is hard, but you have to keep telling yourself that you have as much right to have your faculty position as anybody else and that you do not owe anybody anything above and beyond what every other tenure track faculty does. Be friendly and civil and do your share, but be firm and protect your boundaries.

In general, while on tenure track at a university, it is a good idea to be a little selfish. Your goal it to get tenure, and that means the primary focus is on developing your research program and the secondary one on honing your teaching skills. Regarding service on tenure track, find out the minimal requirements for an assistant professor in your department. Stay close to that minimum for the duration of tenure track, even if you burn with desire to serve more. Instead, devote more time to professional service that brings visibility to your work, and enhances your research program and funding prospects. If any free time opens up after trimming unnecessary commitments, spend it with your family and recharge. Once you have secured tenure, you will have plenty of opportunities to take on additional service roles and engage more deeply in faculty governance at your institution.

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* Outreach to the broader community is sometimes cited as a separate category from research, teaching, or service. For instance, in tenure guidelines at some universities, outreach is scored separately for candidates who have a significant outreach component in their portfolio. On the other hand, for most scientists and engineers outreach to the broader community is an inherent part of the research and education activities, and is even mandated by some funding agencies such as the National Science Foundation. Therefore, while outreach to the broader community is very important, I would say that it is not universally considered to be a part of service.

Ep-Endure-All

2011-08-01T13:34:00.006-05:00

In a comment a few posts ago, Alyssa suggested I share the birth story. I immediately felt a bit defensive: on the one hand, I tend not to be able to remember all the details as other women seem to; on the other hand, and perhaps more importantly, because I had an epidural. See, in 2 out of 3 of my deliveries I had an epidural (the 1st and the 3rd) and there is a bit of shame associated with having painkillers when delivering -- it's one of the many ways we women judge and put down each other and ultimately judge and put down ourselves. You are supposed to go drug-free, that's the only route approved by the "I'm a woman hear me roar" movement. Anything other than having a completely natural birth is not womanly enough. So I was embarrassed for months after my first delivery because I had the epidural, even though I had a very good reason (it ultimately helped me avoid a C-section). It's amazing that it's the second thing several of my female friends asked me -- the first was about the baby specs, the second was -- did you get any painkillers. Before the last delivery, even my mother gave me a condescending speech on all these wussy young women who take the epidural... (But then again my mother is never short of ways to not so subtly put me down. I am a dad's girl, in case you haven't noticed.)

With my last delivery, I had an epidural because I wanted to. As my husband would rationally put it (paraphrasing) "Why would you endure so much pain if you don't have to? There is pain management available, just use it." But I must admit I sometimes wish I hadn't because there is a part of me that feels like a failure because I did, especially because the labor was fairly short. Yes, I am apparently as shallow and judgmental as the next person. I openly admit (well, as openly as you do under a pseudonym) that I feel quite conflicted about my own pain management choice.

So here's a brief overview of my three deliveries, they all felt different to me, but all resulted in 9+ lb healthy babies. For the uninitiated, I promise to go light on the gross. But, just in case... *hands out virtual barf bags*

Baby No 1: Year 2000, baby weight 9 lbs 1 oz, labor duration 21+ hrs

Contractions started at 8 am, admitted to the hospital at 3 pm, at only 3 cm dilated. (N.B. The purpose of contractions is to dilate and thin out the cervix; also, once the cervix is 10 cm dilated, to push the baby out and subsequently the placenta.) Doctor started advocating for pitocin (N.B. pitocin is synthetic oxytocin, to strengthen the contractions; after delivery oxytocin promotes mom-baby bonding, nursing, uterus shrinking) but I wouldn't budge. At 9 pm I was only at 4 cm dilated and said OK to pitocin, but, at midnight, after 3 hours of extremely painful back-to-back contractions on pitocin, I was failing to progress -- still at 4 cm and the baby was showing signs of distress. At this point it looked like I would be having a C-section unless I manage to progress (N.B. failing to progress -- cervix not dilating fast enough). I had the epidural administered at midnight, had a nap, and by 5 am I was at 10 cm dilated and delivered vaginally after pushing for maybe 10-15 min. So, in my experience, when you are in too much pain, it can hinder labor. Epidural enabled me to relax and labor finally progressed. I am certain that I would have ended up with a C-section if I hadn't taken it.

A few random bits:

-- The doctor who delivered (whom I had never seen before) was an asshole. Not only did he push pitocin too enthusiastically for my taste, he did so by proxy (I didn't see him at all till it was time to push the baby out). Also, as I was delivering, he told me not to make faces (i.e. grimace while pushing). WTF?!

-- I spent the entire time hooked to monitors of different sorts. Having had any birth plan would have been completely laughable. No one ever asked what I wanted.

-- My first delivery was the only delivery my husband witnessed. One "perk" of being a foreigner with no family or close friends nearby is that you have no one but your husband to watch your older kids when you deliver Baby 2 and onward.

Baby No 2: Year 2007, baby weight 9 lbs 2 oz, labor duration 11+ hrs

Came home around 6 pm, started making dinner, my water broke. Walked around to induce contractions (nope, did not finish dinner). At the hospital with regular contractions at 9 pm. Hubby and older son went home for the night. I delivered without drugs a bit after 5 am. Hell, it did hurt. But I totally know now what it means when people say "you will feel an unbelievable urge to push." I only pushed for about 10 minutes, some 5-6 contractions, so that wasn't too bad. I also found out that episiotomies (an episiotomy is a cut in the pelvic floor meant to ease the passage of the baby and prevent irregular tearing) are out of fashion now (no longer done routinely, as they were at the time of my first delivery); now I had a huge irregular tear which, even though stitched up, prevented me from sitting without pain for more than a month; understandably, any pleasurable activities involving the pelvic region took way longer to resume.

Random bits:

-- The best thing about delivering without an epidural is instant mobility. I was able to hop into the shower shortly after the delivery; with the epidural, you don't fully feel your legs until it wears off. None of my babies were groggy after the epidural, so in that sense I felt no difference. They all nursed well right away.

-- While I know my husband is sorry he missed this delivery and the next, there is something to be said for laboring without family in the room and being able to focus solely on yourself while you are in pain. While I would have hated being alone during the first delivery, where everything was new and scary, I was OK on my own with this one and the next.

Baby No 3: Year 2011, baby weight 9 lbs 9 oz, labor duration 6+ hrs

(Obviously I remember this one best).
At 4 am my second son started yelling for a glass of water. By the time I got to him, he'd gone back to sleep, but now I was having contractions; had he not woken me up I probably would have gotten another hour or so of sleep. By 5 am, the contractions were 4 min apart, I called the doctor's office and agreed to meet the on-call doctor from my OB's practice at the hospital around 6 am, then took a shower and went to the hospital. At admission, I was already at 5 cm, the doctor said "So you are going without epidural?", I said "No, I actually want one." There was definitely a hint of disapproval with the doctor, but she went and ordered one. My husband went back home at 7ish to be there when the kids woke up (it was a Saturday).

Getting the epidural was an adventure in its own right. An anesthesiology resident (a guy) was going to administer it, but they needed to round up an attending. They were pretty slow finding one, but eventually two came in, also both guys. These three anesthesiologists were the only male hospital staff I saw during the entire hospital stay -- I am sure in there somewhere is a post about how anesthesiology is much more macho than say OB? Hmm, I have a nagging feeling I may have read something about this recently...

Anyhoo, the resident starts fishing round my spine, sending electric shocks down my left leg. Not good, perhaps I should have called the whole thing off then and there. Then at the instruction of one of the attendings switches the inter-vertebrae spacing and manages to administer it. Still, the numbness ends up being uneven, with my left side numb and my right side barely so. So you could say I had a semi-epidural. A "semidural"?

About 10:20 am I was ready to push, and, in a single push, Smurf the Ginormous was out. Yey semidural!

Random bits from delivery No 3:

-- A scary bit: The nurse who took care of me kept reporting that I had a fever even before the peak of labor, and that the baby had a fever after birth. It turns out the thermometer was not calibrated -- when she finally suspected something was off after I was cold to the touch and still read a 100 fever. With a new thermometer I read normal. The dangerous downside is that she disrobed my just born baby to cool him down and he didn't need cooling; he could have gone completely hypothermic because of the stupid thermometer! This still infuriates me when I think of it. Good science practices -- such as calibrating one's goddamn instruments -- are good science practices, not sure why they don't routinely spill over into applications.

-- If you consider having an epidural, consider getting a temporary "No Fishing" tattoo on the small of your back.

Getaway

2011-07-30T21:28:00.002-05:00

I have been on vacation with family since Thursday. We drove up to a nice resort on a lake, a few hours away from where we live. This is our third year here, we rent a two-bedroom apartment and do our own cooking. The kids and hub are enjoying the indoor and outdoor pools, and I am doing what I would do at home: nurse around the clock, and in the meantime try to get some sleep, eat, maintain personal hygiene, and spend some time with the older kids.

A striking thing has been the amount of attention that Smurf has been getting. I know people love babies, but I don't remember everybody commenting quite as much as they do on Smurf. Perhaps because he's really smaller than what people are used to seeing in public... I kid you not, every day at least 3 or 4 people (mostly women) come and ask how old he is -- he's 5 weeks old today! -- and when I tell them, they congratulate me on being brave to go on vacation with a 5-week-old. I have actually started justifying myself, saying that I have the older boys who really need to go on vacation, so that's why we do it...

There are other interesting comments I receive. From flattering (that I look great for 5 weeks postpartum) to those I can't decide what to do with. For instance, at home as well as on vacation, since I have 3 kids, whenever people see me with all of them (even if it's not during business hours, but say on a Saturday morning), everyone automatically assumes I am a stay-at-home mom and related comments come up. There is no shame in being a SAHM, but I must admit that it upsets me a bit that I am referred to as one, although I understand that there is no way anyone would guess what I do when I go shopping all bleary-eyed, messy-haired, struggling to round up all these kids.

We rented a minivan to go on this vacation. We don't own one, we own a small sedan and a small SUV that we bought after baby #2 (so almost paid off). Our cars can fit 5 people in principle, but not with the amount of luggage we have to carry and not comfortably enough for long trips, especially with two car seats in the back. But we (nearly) own both of them, and they are fine for driving around the city. So while we are enjoying the minivan, it's really roomy and the kids love it, both hub and I are reluctant to take the plunge and buy it -- it would be another loan that we are not sure we need.

And last but not least, Smurf, in his 5-week awesomeness. He holds his head quite well and does really well on his tummy. He is interacting more: makes good eye contact, sticks tongue out, holds my fingers when he nurses, and plays well with (as in, tries to grab) the colorful chains hanging off of his car seat. I am a bit ashamed to say that, even with the third kid, I still have to go and look up when each milestone happens. I only remember the really big ones (e.g. teeth and sitting up start about 6 months), but when they start to smile or roll over, I repeatedly have to look up. But Smurf is awesome and quite cool. Big bros are all over him.

I promise some academic-focused posts in the near future. I have been a busy bee talking to program managers, so a few white papers are in the works. But with only 1-1.5 hours of work per day, things are slow... I promised myself not to worry too much and actually try to relax and not think about work while on this little vacation with my family. And so far so good.

Now I'm off to get some shut-eye before it's time for the night shift at the dairy factory.

Bullshit Meter

2011-07-24T14:19:00.005-05:00

I am totally stealing this from Bee of Backreaction.
It is too awesome to pass up.

A gentleman named Bernd Wurm developed a software, the "Blablameter," which checks text for superfluous/filler/bullshit words (such as those that ads and press releases are full of) as well as awkward constructions. If you run a piece of text through the Blablameter, you will get a result between 0 and 1; the higher the result, the more bullshit. Bee ran abstracts of several papers in her field and got a range or results, from very light to very heavy on bullshit.

The German version of the Blablameter,
http://www.blablameter.de, has interesting Questions and Answers (Fragen und Antworten), where it explains what the software does (e.g. can't check for accuracy of the content, just certain linguistic features).

If you just want to run a piece of your scientific writing through it, here's the English link.

http://www.blablameter.com/

I ran the abstract of a paper I am going to submit in the next few days, and the result is

Understandably, I am feeling very smug. :)

Smurfy News

2011-07-20T17:36:00.017-05:00

In Casa GMP, the following has transpired:

Smurf is 3.5 weeks old. Sleeping one big chunk (4-ish hours) during the night, and the rest of the night grunting and panting trying to produce a BM. And sort of sleeping. All this wakes up mom who jumps at the slightest whimper, thinking that Smurf is in excruciating pain.

Smurf eats like a champ and weighs over 11 pounds (N.B. for those who don't have kids, babies lose a fair amount of weight in the 3 days or so until the milk comes in; generally they are supposed to be back to their birth weight by 2 weeks of age). Fat babies are cute. I am working on making mine as cute as I can, helped by the fact that my eyes no longer pop out of their sockets with pain every time Smurf latches on to nurse.

I love my husband more than ever. He has valiantly taken over all the work with the other two kids so I am having the best vacation of my whole life! When they are all away (hub at work, older kids at camp), I try to nap with the baby, and don't have to cook or do the dishes! It's awesome! All I do is snack, nap, and maintain the dairy factory. And snuggle with Smurf as much as I can. The downside is that the kids don't eat home-cooked meals, but I am hoping for a teachable moment -- could they in fact get sick of pizza?

I have become a germophobic nutcase, shielding the baby from the older kids who, after having been completely healthy for months, both got sick in recent weeks. My oldest, who hadn't been sick in probably 2 years, got a strep throat and an ear infection on day 2 postpartum! The boys are crazy excited about the baby, but nutcase mom is hogging him and growls at anyone who dares even look like they are about to sneeze or cough within a 5 meter radius of the baby.

Feeling rested, I decided to skip naps for one day and made hub take the day off, so we stayed at home and watched movies. Lo and behold, the following night and the next day Smurf kicked my butt -- would not sleep at all and I was completely exhausted. The moral of the story is that you can never, never count on your baby's good graces/predictable behavior. Even a little bit of counting on it will come back to bite you. Take it only one day at a time.

I have been able to work a teensy bit. Half an hour here and there, answering emails, correcting papers, planning fall proposals. I am editing a special issue of a journal in the fall and organizing a fairly major conference next spring, so there's stuff to do there but it's mostly busy work, which is easy enough even with my foggy postpartum brain. And then there are manuscripts that still need to be submitted... Those take me a while.

After having Smurf, I somehow became acutely aware of my own mortality and panicked about what would happen if I, making 2/3 of the household income, were to just drop dead (not sure why this didn't bother me so much with 2 kids). So I went and got myself a hefty term life insurance policy, and realized that I am close weight-wise to a cutoff to make a low premium rate. I have been very poorly motivated over the past several years to lose weight, but it seems that being a cheapskate is the right motivator for me: saving $20 per month over the next 20 years is apparently enough of an incentive to get me to lose weight, because I have been successfully watching my diet for the past few weeks (no worries, I am having lots of protein and lots of water, so my milk production is in good shape). I am calling it "The Life Insurance Diet." I made the target weight, but will hopefully continue on the new diet, as my husband is enthusiastically praising the newly emergent physique.

Hermitage's Women sans Babies Carnival Is Back with a Vengeance

2011-07-11T09:33:00.004-05:00

Hermitage is hosting a second incarnation of her mini-carnival on Academic Women Sans Babies. This time around she assembled an even larger and more impressive panel to answer readers' questions, so please head over to Hermitage's place and submit questions for panelists! Take advantage of this virtual discussion circle with women ranging from postdocs to senior faculty -- any and all questions related to careers in science and engineering are welcome, except those addressing babies/motherhood. Hermitage will chose four, and each panelist will answer these four in a post about a month after Q&A closes.

Here's the link to the Q&A hub of last time, here's the list of all previous readers' questions, and below is a repost of my response to the four questions chosen for the last panel (also here's the original post, there were some good comments there).

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1. How do you command the attention, and respect, of men in academic settings (e.g. classroom, conferences, faculty meetings)?

I am going to assume here that the question means "I am technically very competent but do not feel I command adequate respect. How do I remedy that?" You have to take cues from the guys. Even as young students, when guys think they know the answer to a question they just blurt it out (I sometimes wish they wouldn't). This extends into their professional years. You have to get over the fear of being wrong and simply speak up. The fear does eventually go away. A good exercise is to give yourself the following task: you have to come up with one nontrivial question for each talk you hear at a conference. And then go ahead and ask it. Pretty soon you will be one of the most feared and revered members of any audience!

I am in one of the fields with the most dramatic underrepresentation of women, so the rules of the game are entirely masculine. One of the important differences between men and women (on average, of course) is that women often feel they need external validation, someone to pat them on the back and say "good job" when they are feeling down. I used to be quite unhappy because these were not forthcoming as often as my ego needed them, so I thought I was no good. That was not true -- while everyone likes praise, I have found that external affirmation is much less important for an average guy's sense of self-worth than a woman's so men simply don't volutneer praise easily. So recalibrate: I have learned not to expect pats on the back and to simply rely on what I think is best. And pats on the back do come, but infrequently and indirectly and quite unexpectedly. Sort of like hugs between manly men.

Moreover, use all the nonverbal tricks in the book to communicate that you have gravitas. Wear heels if you need to feel taller, wear clothes that make you feel strong and confident (anything in black makes me feel awesome), stand up tall and speak loudly, make eye contact. If you happen to be tall and/or have a strong voice, be grateful and use these qualities!

2. How should women dealing with a two-body problem handle assumptions that their career is secondary to their partner’s?

If stupid questions like these are asked in an inconsequential context (e.g. a random person chatting you up at a party) try to be matter-of-fact and set them straight ("Actually, my significant other is flexible in career choice and will follow me to my chosen position"). The person will usually be embarrassed enough even if you don't go on to tear them a new one for assuming that your gender automatically makes you inferior in ambition or employability.

But, if it's the issue of hunting for jobs, make sure everyone who is important (e.g. all your letter writers and close senior colleagues) know exactly how serious your career plans are. There must be no ambiguity there.

3. What would you like to see from tenure-track and not-yet-tenure-track menfolk? How can they pitch in?

When we complain of sexist treatment, shut up and listen with an open mind. Don't be on the defensive -- most of us actually don't hate men, quite the contrary. We are just exhausted.

Try to view us as you would your male colleagues and competitors. Try to be honest to yourself about how often, unwillingly, you may think "She got this because she is a woman" out of pure jealousy. If you catch yourself thinking that a woman is not deserving, ask yourself if you would think the same of a guy with the same record. I am a woman and I have caught myself valuing a paper less when I found out that the main author was a woman -- it was quite a sobering experience. So try to be honest about your biases and work to counteract them.

Speak up for your female lab mates and colleagues. Try to learn what career building is like for us, but really keep an open mind, and you will see a path akin to death by a thousand paper cuts. Listen and be empathetic. And then help us fight by putting in good words for us wherever you can. Workplaces that are friendly to women are friendly to all people who strive to have a balance between professional and personal lives.

4. How do you deal with insinuations that you were only chosen for a position/award/etc because of affirmative action?

As in 2: stupid and/or malicious questions are best deflected with matter-of-fact calmness. "My record is very strong, so I have no doubt I would be selected even if I was a guy." I think everyone deserves the benefit of a good deflection and a chance to blush and change topic; if they don't take it, i.e. if the person keeps at it, by all means bite their head off. Call them out for being a jealous insecure schmuck.

Then there are situations in which your gender may have really played a positive role. My recommendation is to say "Thanks!" and really be grateful for the break. The fact is, these breaks are so few and far between that you should not be ashamed or guilty that one happened to fall in your lap. Among a group of equally meritorious, people will take any advantage to get ahead -- pedigree, network, charm. If for once your gender gets you ahead, great!

Interrupted

2011-06-30T22:04:00.007-05:00

In a comment to my previous post, Alex expressed doubts about the validity of the main finding reported in the post and requested hard data, in a visually easy-to-grasp form, to support it.

I am nothing if not a scientist, so here it is:

Fig. 1. Main finding.

Fig. S1. (Supplemental material) Main finding's siblings, visiting at the hospital. The book is a "coloring book for siblings".

Not sure about sharing the birth story here, but I might in some form later.
Still, there is plenty of material from my 48-hour hospital stay and the issues surrounding it for several posts, even if you have no interest whatsoever in people's birth stories.

Vignette 1:

The hospital stay was really exhausting overall, and I am not blaming the baby one bit.

The reason is that too many different people kept interrupting the rest of me and my baby. The endless stream of people kept coming in to check my blood pressure and temperature, check the status of my uterus shrinking, check the baby's weight, temperature, oxygen level in blood, screen for metabolic disorders, give his first shoot, administer hearing test (twice)...
Especially checking the vitals was brutal: various nurses and nurse's assistants would come in at all hours and wake me and/or the baby. I remember this being an extremely annoying aspect of my previous hospital stays, but this time it really struck me as overkill. I could not get more than 20 min of uninterrupted sleep even though the baby was (N.B. On day 1 after birth, you really should get some shut-eye, because baby will, too, due to exhaustion from the labor. Starting day 2, incessant suckling ensues in order to get the milk supply going, so you will have zero chance for sleep in the coming days.) And yes, every time a shift changed, new staff would come to introduce themselves even if I never saw them again.

Anyway, I know all the staff have checklists of how often things need to be recorded, but there has to be a better way. I fail to see how it's good for anyone if I cannot get any sleep for days. I don't know if this is how seriously ill, on long-term hospital care patients are also handled, but there should be some balance between getting all your checkmarks and letting the person actually rest...

The Stork Has Landed...

2011-06-27T15:33:00.006-05:00

... and delivered a 9 lb 9 oz bundle of boy. I mean... joy! :-)
All is well. He's huge and very hungry.

Late

2011-06-23T03:22:00.005-05:00

It's my real-life birthday today, I am turning 38 -- a nice number, divisible by 19. I am also 39 weeks preggers, so we're in the home stretch.

While I was doing the dishes around 1 am (since I can't sleep due to the heat, a huge tummy, and a terrible disagreement between my mattress and my back), I received an email from my dad (he's overseas, in my home country). He was congratulating me on my birthday, some awards I had received (he seems to check my faculty site often) and impeding baby news.

And I got very sad.
My husband (who also stayed up late, we're pretty bad that way) asked if it was because I had turned a year older. It's totally not that. I actually care very little for birthdays, my own in particular. In part probably because I am still in my 30s, so still (sort of) young. We'll see how I feel when I turn 40... Largely because I am generally happy with how things look in my life -- I am where I hoped I would be at this age, I have a great family and the job I always wanted, so nothing major to lament. Life is good. (Knocking on wood!)

Seeing my dad's email made me feel quite nostalgic.
You see, I don't really get to see my parents very much at all, and yes it is expensive to travel, for me or for them, but mostly I just don't want to. I am not a very good daughter. They were good parents, so it's not like I have a reason to avoid them. But the longer I stay away the more difficult it becomes to reconnect.

I call my parents on the phone, but rarely, especially my dad, who's hard to pin down. I think they have moved on from me too, pouring their love and attention on my younger sibling who is there. That's OK with me. I had a good childhood. I am grateful to my dad for the good genes he passed on: the talent for math, whatever little gift I have for writing, the perfect eyesight, and the hair which won't start getting grey for many years still.

I generally severed ties with my home country, I don't follow current affairs there. I have a tendency to burn bridges, that's the way I know how to move forward; lingering is hard. I grew up in a large city, a multimillion-people cosmopolitan area; I had a very urban upbringing and still have fairly urban tastes. I loved my city growing up, and especially loved the college years. I hadn't visited the city in more than 5 years, and I may never do it again. There were some awesome bands (I am partial to the garage rock sound) I enjoyed as a teenager and young adult. So, I turned on some music that I listened to when I was growing up (which I never do, it makes me too emotional) and finished the dishes. It was my small nod to my youth which is far both in space and in time. And to my parents who are very far away, and thankfully doing very well without me.

My boys and I will probably go out to eat to celebrate my birthday. There will be lots of chocolate involved.

Does Anyone Care about Your Work-Life Balance?

2011-06-20T00:50:00.007-05:00

In real life, that is.
Based on my experience, the answer is -- no. No one but you (and hopefully your significant other) cares about your work-life balance.

There is never a scarcity of conversation about work-life balance in the blogosphere, especially for working mothers. There is no shortage of opinion regarding whether it is ethical enough or feminist enough for highly educated women to work part time or drop careers altogether -- people believe that educated women owe it to the society or other women or future generations of boys and girls to keep working; other people believe that women owe nothing to anyone except themselves and their families, and are perfectly within their rights to SAHM their kids and thereby find fulfillment. Whatever your take is on these issues, this post is NOT about them.

I am fairly exhausted by the recent flurry of blogosphere activity on work-life balance that was sparked by a New York Times article written by Dr Karen Sibert. Several bloggers I know have taken a stab at the article (Historiann, Isis, Cloud, and others), and it seems that Dr S does not have many supporters for her "suck it up and keep working full time, you owe it to the patients/society" message. Instead, there is an overwhelming outrage at the thought that doctors should sacrifice personal life for the profession and there are numerous calls for making work hours more humane and general practice more appealing, so the shortage of primary care doctors would not be blamed on female doctors who work part-time.

One reason for my exhaustion (besides obviously reading too many comments on too many blogs) is the fact that all these calls for balance are, when you think of it and with all due respect, painfully redundant, futile, and ultimately irrelevant. All the well-meaning commenters are preaching to the choir; in reality, the whopping 12 weeks of unpaid maternity leave and nonexistent tax-breaks for exorbitant childcare expenses are all you need to know about how much this society really values working mothers. In societies where working parents are considered worthwhile humans and workers, there are accommodations for work-life balance, especially parents caring for small children. Here, it's not the case, and we can all blog our hearts out, it means nothing.

In my experience, the only people who seem to be concerned (or at least say that they are) with anyone's work-life balance but their own can be found in the blogosphere. Certainly no one with whom I am in regular contact in real life gives a rat's ass about my work-life balance: whether I have any, whether I would like to have a different one, whether I face any hardship in achieving any semblance thereof. Everyone in this glorious society is too busy, and presumably too exhausted and overstretched, to think about anyone but themselves.

I am in a medium-size department (~40 faculty) in a discipline that is considered extremely macho. In my department, there are 5 women faculty. Of the 5 women, 4 are tenured: two women are senior to me (full profs), one is roughly my contemporary (we are both associate profs), and one is a few years junior, up for tenure soon (assistant prof). All the women are married. The two full professor women had kids after they had received tenure. I came to the TT with one kid in tow, and I had another one midway through the tenure track. The other two women are childfree.

I remain the only female faculty who has ever had a kid on the tenure track.
I remember mentioning this fact in the presence of the assistant professor woman; there were other people around. She rushed to point out that a male colleague of ours (who has a stay-at-home wife), also had a kid (also No 2 for him) on the tenure track. While new fathers do suffer some sleep deprivation in the baby's first year, it is NOT the same as for a new mother, especially one who breastfeeds. This male colleague had no problem working 12-hour days starting the week his kid was born (perhaps hiding from the baby at work?) I was a complete zombie for many months after birth, definitely not 100% -- physically or mentally. What truly pissed me off was that the first reaction of my female colleague (who btw says she wants to have kids, but is waiting for tenure) was to trivialize my experience. I didn't want to continue the conversation and regurgitate the tired (but true) spiel of how women have it harder than men when the child is born -- whoever does not see that does not want to see it. But I remember this situation as one of many in which I have found the female camaraderie to be completely nonexistent.

My collaborators are overwhelmingly male (95% of them). A number of them are close to my age, having 2 or 3 kids. They all have stay-at-home wives, or wives working only part-time (e.g. giving a few piano lessons per week). My husband works full time.
Over the years, the subject of work-life balance came up a few times with my male collaborators, and after a few sentences I see they no longer want to talk about it. They consider my job and my obligations to be exactly like those they have and when there emerges a hint that they may not exactly be the same, I suppose they want to avoid yet another crazy woman rant/vent/whine-a-palooza and rush to change the subject.

I wish that I could tell my male colleagues that, in addition to all the work at the actual job that I have to do, which is the same as theirs, I am still mommy and do all the non-negotiable-mommy duties that their wives do and a significant load of chores. I don't know how much my male colleagues with stay-at-home or part-time working wives do at home in terms of chores, but I imagine they probably don't do more than my husband who also works full time: my husband mows the lawn/takes care of the yard in the summer and cleans the snow in the winter; he took over a lion's share of vacuuming/cleaning clutter and laundry about a year or two ago, when I simply gave up. He also takes our older son swimming twice a week and packs his lunch. I am the primary breadwinner in the family. I also do 100% of the cooking, washing dishes, and grocery shopping. I also do nearly 100% of playdate organization, immunizations, summer camp tracking, any forms that need to be filled, and communication with the daycare/schools or other parents. I do a vast majority of childcare, especially sick-child care: 90% of the time if someone has to stay at home from work for a sick kid or take him to a doctor it's me because I don't have a boss. I do 100% of middle-of-the night calls for a drink of water, needing to pee, vomiting, or getting another dose of ibuprofen for a feverish kid. Also, I am always on the poopy-underwear and cleaning-the-potty duty because I tolerate bodily excrements better. Only mommy is allowed to get my younger son ready in the morning or give him a bath and put him to sleep, every single day. And my biggest peeve -- I never get to sleep in on the weekends. :-(

That's what I would like to tell my male colleagues if they cared to hear. However, they likely know all this, but simply don't care. Many times I have had to cancel a meeting when a kid is sick; I do not recall any of my male colleagues with kids having ever done that. I have yet to see any of them, whose kids are of similar ages to mine, cut down on the number of trips or meetings because of their kids; they don't have to, because there is always their wife to pick up the slack. But that doesn't matter -- since I have the same job as them, if I cannot cut it, it's my weakness; I should make it work and not whine about hardship or ask for special consideration. Right?

I know people have their own problems. But this society operates with so much stress and fear about the future placed on everyone's shoulders that, instead of listening to one another and hoping to help, what I overwhelmingly see in real life is that any obstacle that a person overcomes becomes a badge of honor and enables said person to look down on all others with "Look what I had to go through to meet these criteria of excellence. You too have to rise to them or go to hell." I admit I am frequently guilty of this attitude myself. We'd all nominally like more of a balance in our own lives, but don't wish for others to have a balance, because then they may drop more work in our lap. This is what I hear or read way too often in regards to maternity leave from both men and women who are childfree or have kids but also stay-at-home spouses: us breeding women should be removed from the workforce because we are such a burden on everyone else when we take a leave to have kids. It is oh so very very unfair that all the righteous workers who don't harbor uterine squatters end up picking up the slack after our lazy postpartum asses.

It's been a while since I stopped discussing work-life balance with most colleagues in real life. And I have stopped justifying why I am missing meetings or trips. But then my current pregnancy became obvious. As my belly grows, my perceived IQ and competence drop -- I become ever less a scientist, and ever more a lower being: just another procreating woman. Who apparently dumps work on others.

So, yes, while it's nice to read all these calls for work-life balance on the internet, when it comes to real life, I fear most of us only care that we ourselves get the balance. If balance for all means sometimes shouldering a bit more because someone else temporarily cannot, and especially if they cannot because of personal choices that we ourselves would not make, then the concept of balance becomes unacceptable; instead, rigid rules must be followed and complete sacrifice at the altar of work is expected. What I see in real life is nothing more than every man and woman for themselves. Until that changes, we're all screwed. But I am totally not holding my breath for it to change in my lifetime. I'd sooner expect to see a real live unicorn.

Cleaning Up

2011-06-14T23:29:00.007-05:00

The most common reason that makes me delay returning nearly finalized manuscript drafts to students is the missing/inadequate big picture coupled with painful underciting. I edit the text mercilessly and extensively; generally, on the technical parts of the manuscripts, edits do not take me too long. What does take long is to create a proper and compelling introduction with adequate coverage of literature and the exact positioning of our contribution within the context of the state of the art.

Ideally, the big picture -- why we do what we do and what it is that we did that was novel and why anyone should really care -- gets visited repeatedly during the course of the project, well before there are publication-worthy data. The student reads many, many papers, we talk extensively, investigate different approaches, weigh the pros and cons, take detours and go on tangents, revisit the issues many times... The big picture should never be lost in the advising process and I think that faculty, regardless of discipline, will agree with me on this issue. I think we would all like to think that we try to instill in our students the birds view of the research along with the ability to look into the nitty-gritty details. One without the other is not good training.

But then comes the manuscript drafting part. And this is what baffles me -- even my best students, who are technically stellar and I know have read lots of relevant literature -- give me initial drafts with a measly single paragraph "background", in which barely 10 references have been thrown together to supposedly introduce the work, and with generic sweeping statements that beg for a reference but nothing is cited (we're talking comprehensive papers here, so the number of citations is not constrained). As though it is too tedious to position oneself, and the student can't wait to get to the fun stuff, i.e. their own technical contribution. We have a really big problem when the student really does not understand what the big picture is, even though they might have executed a technical task; this is indeed an advising fail. But I see this sloppy underciting and lackluster introductions even from very good students and often postdocs.

That's where I feel like I am picking up dirty socks and generally cleaning up after my kids. I am the maid whose duty is to tidy up, and I go and do a thorough literature survey to make sure we didn't miss anything among the new developments, that we have paid dues to the important contributions of yore, and to actually explain why we bothered with the work.

Now, I have weekly group meetings and we ofen talk about strategies for writing better papers. I am sure I am totally annoying as I constantly repeat my spiel on the importance of citing and proper motivation. We also often talk about efficient strategies for quickly mapping out the state of the art in a field, through identifying key papers and then following their citation branches, while weighing the outcomes with the offspring papers' age, citations count, prestige of the journal, quality of the group, relevance to our own work, etc. Generally, before a student ever sits down to create the first draft, we talk about the outline -- what's the paper about, what is its message, why is it important? Yet, this particular part -- write thy introduction well and with ample citations -- does not seem to stick. Why, I wonder? Is it because they don't care as they know I will pick up the slack anyway?

I don't remember any formal mentoring from my PhD advisor on how a paper is supposed to be structured, or what it means to write a good paper. As I student, I always thought you just read lots and lots of papers and patterns start to emerge -- the good papers give you a feel for the state of the art and open problems, and then tell you which open problem they solved and how. A good introduction is like a vortex: it starts from a broad view of the field, then narrows it down seamlessly to important and open problems, so that by the time the reader is hit on the head with the "In this paper, we..." hammer, there is no doubt in the reader's mind that what is being presented is new and extremely important.

So yes, even after multiple back-and-forths editing a manuscript with a student and major rewrites of the whole text, in order for the process to ever converge I still end up doing a lot of time-consuming clean-up: a full literature check and multiple overhauls of the intro and abstract in the final version. Because, as the lead PI, if the paper sucks,it's my reputation on the line, not that of the student.

Are there any good tips on training one's students to (a) not be too lazy to look up references, (b) not be careless about putting in the references that they are actually aware of and have read and used in research, (c) try to appreciate the importance of a good introduction, (d) try to actually write a good introduction themselves as opposed to fiddle with it pro forma through multiple revisions and essentially wait for the advisor to do it?

More on Manuscript Writing with Junior Coauthors

2011-06-10T02:37:00.009-05:00

Thursday was a long but generally good day. Among other things, we got the referee report back on one of our manuscripts. Here's an excerpt:

RECOMMENDATION: Minor Revision
Sufficient New [Science]: Yes
Well Organized and Clearly Written: Yes
Good Title: Yes
Good Abstract: Yes
...
TECHNICAL QUALITY RATING: Outstanding
PRESENTATION RATING: Outstanding

[The authors] employ a set of well-know numerical techniques, and also some new approaches... but their combined use is very novel and creative.

The analysis is very carefully performed and presented, with a detailed explanation about how the authors have solved notoriously troublesome problems such as ...

Overall this is an outstanding contribution which pushes forward the state-of-the art.

This is a report from a reputable society journal (the full report is much more detailed, with specific requests for minor revisions). The paper is quite long, it will be close to 20 double-column pages in print (including appendices though), yet the actual peer review took only 3 weeks. That means the referees (a) were not horribly discouraged at the though of reviewing it, which is remarkable for very long papers, and (b) once they got around to reviewing it, they did not drop it, pissed, after page 3, because it was poorly written. Which is totally what I do with poorly written papers and that's why it takes me forever to review them -- I keep going back and getting annoyed and dropping them and picking them up again...

I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to write clear, fluid prose and polish, polish, polish before submission. Because the time you invest in polishing your paper translates into time/hassle saved in the review process and probably saves some health units of your reviewers. Now, if you are in the business of GlamourMag chasing, there are obviously no guarantees even if you write on par with Mario Vargas Llosa (or insert another writer you like). But, in my experience, for society level-journals, there is a high correlation between the tender loving care with which you massaged your manuscript prior to submission and its smooth acceptance. TLC also means that you do not publish before you feel you have a compelling story, and you have dotted all the i's and crossed all the t's. The paper above was about 4-5 months from first draft to submission-ready.

Now, why am I talking about manuscript writing -- again? I am currently working on 3 manuscripts in parallel, trying to get as much done and submitted as possible before I deliver (3 weeks left). These are all very comprehensive manuscripts, so there's a lot of material and it's going slowly.

Today I met with one of my students on whose manuscript I am currently working. We have gone through multiple revisions already and it's nearing completion, but there are still places that were significantly changed from the last revision and, since they are newly drafted, look pretty bad. We were going over the manuscript and I said something like "I completely don't understand what you are trying to say here" and he responded along the lines of "I know you don't understand what I am doing and you don't like my writing."

Then it dawned on me: he thinks I don't know what he is doing technically, which is absolutely NOT true, and that's why I dislike how something is written. Instead, what I have been trying to convey -- apparently quite unsuccessfully -- is "When a person reads this part of your text, it is impossible to understand what you are trying to say and why. I know exactly what you are doing and why, and you still threw me for a loop with what is written -- how do you think someone who is doing only a cursory read of the text will react?"

There is a tangent here on why this student thinks I don't know what I am doing; it may be his ego (he is very smart) and there may be an undercurrent of sexism there. But I can't afford to worry about it now, I just want the goddamn paper done and submitted. So I told him, in my most empathetic voice, that he should not worry. That I know what I am doing and will not ruin his paper by rewriting it, and that I promise that clarifying these points will make the paper easier to read and people will like it and cite it more. That certain subsections ought to be moved to appendices as they restrict the flow of the paper, but that they also ought to be expanded for completeness, so that someone who wants to reproduce his work has all the needed information at hand. So he should go and expand the sections I requested while I work on the remainder of the text.

I should probably delegate more paper reviewing to this student, so he can learn the differences between good and crappy writing. And he should go talk to the student who is first author on the paper mentioned early in this post about how much hammering that manuscript received before submission in order to get the glowing reviews and smooth acceptance.

Are You Your Advisor?

2011-06-06T10:44:00.003-05:00

I write a lot about advising students and postdocs. But, whenever I write about a topic that touches mentoring, I invariably get some comments in which I am perceived as some sort of tyrannical monster who despises her underlings.
I don't think this is true in the least. I care deeply about the success of my students and postdocs. However, I write most about the mentorship aspects that I find puzzling or irritating -- blogging is conducive to venting, and I for one loooove complaining and ranting, so I write disproportionately more about the negatives than the positives. I also don't delude myself that I have all the answers; I am a much better advisor now than when I first started and am presumably significantly less effective than I will be 20 years from now. Most people, me included, try to do their best at the given point in time and with the experience and resources they have. One of the many similarities between advising and parenting is that the harshest critics are those people who are not parents themselves -- many (most?) of us who have kids thought we'd do everything so much better once it's our turn, only to find out that things are so much harder than we anticipated and many of other people's parenting choices that we so vehemently criticized start to completely make sense. The same with advising -- things look much different once you actually have to do it yourself.

I am sure much of what we do as advisors reflects how we ourselves were advised. But, I am also sure there are many differences, as we perhaps try to correct the things we didn't like when we were students or postdocs. Sometimes -- perhaps often? -- things that made us furious as trainees start to make a lot of sense once we are on the other side. Sort of how you develop newfound appreciation for your own parents once you become a parent yourself. And then there are undeniable differences in style we bring with respect to our advisors, simply because we are indeed different people or we may be at drastically different stages in our careers or at different types of institutions or we simply envision a different work-life balance for ourselves. So here are a few vignettes from my grad school life, which I think influenced how I advise students now.

1) I got a faculty position right after grad school, so my PhD advisor is the advisor who had the greatest influence on my career in every aspect. (In other fields, perhaps a postdoc advisor had a dominant influence.) My advisor was very well known and awe-inspiring. He also had a reputation for having a really bad temper and being extremely bellicose with colleagues, which hurt his recognition in the long run and did not help his advisees. He did not like being wrong or challenged in an environment where he perceived he would lose face; you could see his blood boiling and him becoming increasingly agitated and very unpleasant when it was becoming clear that he was losing an argument. I learned that the best way to go about is to drop the issue that we argued about and let him cool down, and then follow up with an email exchange. He was at the end of the day always in the pursuit of the truth and would always acknowledge when I was right in the end; the key was to finalize the exchange so that everyone has had the time to process it. I think this little bit of workaround around his temper was key in the two of us getting along very well for many years, and much better than he got along with many other students.But, it is also important that every single time the original idea or argument was always much improved after having talked/emailed with him -- just the process of hashing it out was extremely stimulating and useful.
-- What's the moral of this story? One is that advisors are people, with all that entails: they are not infallible or stoic; they get tired and pissed and defensive and everything else that other people get, so consider this aspect in your interactions. Second, when I have a disagreement with a student/postdoc, this experience taught me not to get defensive or aggressive (I am not 100% successful in this aspect, I admit) but to persevere in the discussion for everyone's benefit. Even when you as an advisor are wrong, you typically have a lot to bring to the discussion because you have much more experience in various aspects of the scientific process, so the idea is always much better and cleaner after the discussion than before it.

2) My advisor had a number of non-negotiable rules. For instance, I was trying for years to convince him to use Latex for text processing, and he would never budge. It was MS Word exclusively for all text, Power Point for all presentations, and one specific programming language and one image processing software for all programming and image processing needs. Nobody was allowed to use anything else for anything research-related. At the time, I honestly thought he was just a petty tyrant for insisting on such uniformity and failing to see the benefits of Latex; now I see the benefit of uniformity within the group to streamline everything from training new members, to software licence renewal, debugging and trouble shooting, sharing codes and other files. As soon as I was on my own, I went back to using Latex for most text processing; when he heard of it, my advisor told me somewhat sadly that I had switched over to the dark side. Now my group uses Latex for research papers and theses while we use MS Word for shorter texts and because virtually all our collaborators use only MS Word. We all use PPT for presentations and one programming language and one image processing software, as uniformly so as my old group did.
-- This story teaches us a couple of things too: (1) While you work in someone's group, it's going to be their way, whether you like it or not. Once you are on your own and lead your own group, you can do things any way you like. (2) Some rules are there for a good reason, which may not be obvious until you are in your advisor's shoes. Try to give them the benefit of the doubt that they actually may know what they are doing.

3) On the other hand, my advisor was very hands off in other aspects of mentoring students. For instance, we had weekly group meetings, but not during my entire time in grad school. He would rarely seek a student out and would generally expect you to come to him if you had problems; when you asked to see him, he'd accommodate you pretty promptly within a day or two, even though he was very busy. I was happy with this style and I think it works well for people who are independent. But I knew there were my group mates who really would just do nothing for weeks or would go off on unproductive tangents for way too long, and then once they got together with the advisor after a long time and presented what was, shall we say -- suboptimal output -- unbelievable wrath was unleashed upon them. Which only made them even less likely to seek meetings in the future and the vicious cycle continued. In my own group, we have weekly group meetings as well as weekly 1-on-1 meetings: my best students would likely be fine to be left alone, but for most students, especially when they are new, weekly 1-on-1 meetings keep them out of trouble/away from being stuck for long and the feedback offers them reassurance.
-- What's the moral of this story? Don't assume independence in all your students. Actually, assume that most will not be as driven or as independent as you may like them to be, at least initially, and ensure they have enough structure (or, if you will, hand holding or micromanaging) to maximize their own potential and make good progress in good time. This is critical especially in the initial stages of a research project. Brilliant students do well almost irrespective of the advisor. I think a successful advisor is one who can get a decent quality research output from a student who is not entirely independent or obviously brilliant from the start -- for many such students picking out a good topic and seeing them through their initial struggles can actually reveal a great hidden potential once they gain some confidence, and that's where structure and regular feedback is key.

4) When I was a grad student I was quite productive, wrote many papers and went to a lot of conferences. My advisor even threw a couple of his invited talks my way. I traveled more than his average student, to probably 5-6 conferences per year in my last few years. When I became faculty, I thought that's what I needed to do -- send my students to as many conferences as possible and have them present all the work.
But there was one significant difference between my advisor and me. When I was a graduate student, he was in his 60's, well known and well funded. He needed neither exposure nor funding, and could send me wherever and whenever. I, on the other hand, was a newbie faculty -- I neither had his funding resources, nor the name recognition or clout that he commanded. I had to balance sending students to conferences against ensuring that I myself got enough exposure, and doing it all on what were initially
relatively modest funds. I only realized this after several senior faculty colleagues kept insisting that I myself needed to travel and get exposure in order to get tenure, and that delegating everything to students at the beginning of my career would be devastating. So my students initially went to 2, occasionally 3 conferences per year. I also did not start delegating my invited talks (which were initially quite few and far between) to group members until I was near the end of my tenure track; invited talks mean a lot on the CV in my discipline, and count for a lot at tenure review time. Was this selfish? Perhaps. But had I not received tenure, I would not have ended up being of much use to anyone, including my students in their subsequent careers.

5) When I was a graduate student, I subbed for my advisor a lot. A LOT. One semester, I actually ended up teaching more classes than him (it's not like I was a TA or anything like that. He would just tell me that he'd be going out of town for 2 weeks and that I needed to cover these chapters from the book in class). I don't know why he did it -- initially it looked like he distributed the subbing load among students, but at some point it became only me. My guess is that he knew I wanted to be faculty and figured I could use some practice. I think I ended up subbing for him in about 5 different courses during my grad school. I actually enjoyed it but it was often a lot of time to prep.
-- What I do differently is that I ask my students if anyone wants to substitute. I think that for some of them it would be a good idea considering that they either want to teach or simply need practice talking in front of an audience, and I try to nudge them to do it and explain my reasons for thinking they should do it, but if nobody wants to (which is usually the case), I don't make them do it. I consider teaching classes to be my obligation; it is a situation in which the learning outcomes of the class, especially with undergrads, do depend strongly on the quality of teaching, and if I have to twist arms to get someone to cover, it's not going to be a fun experience for anyone. So then I ultimately reschedule.

If you are a faculty/PI or a scientist out of academia, do you think your professional self resembles your advisor? What are the differences and similarities? If you are a student/postdoc, what are your advisor's characteristic that you might like to emulate in your career and which ones would you hate displaying yourself?

On Presenting Research Data

2011-06-04T23:10:00.007-05:00

When I was a graduate student, I remember lovingly poring over every single figure in every single paper or presentation of mine. When I was making power-point presentations, each presentation would have a really clever title page with a unique picture that was a pun or some sort of twist on the talk title. Colors and animations were abound, and I spent a lot of time adjusting the timing and sequence on every one of them, aiming for the perfect pitch. I constantly changed the color scheme, the font type and size, and as needed even redid the figures to accompany my grand vision. In hindsight, I was wasting way too much time tending to the presentation aspects that did not really enhance them; my advisor was pretty hands off so his input was minimal.

But once you become faculty, the sheer volume of stuff you need to present per unit time goes up dramatically. You give many, many more talks, of varying duration (depending on the conference, you can have 2-5 min poster teaser presentations, 10-30 min long contributed talks, 30-45 minute invited or plenary talks and seminars, as well as variable duration presentations to funding agency representatives). Collaborations become the norm, and often you present not only your own group's work but that of your colleagues. Sometimes, those colleagues don't send you their materials till the night before the presentation.

So doing things as quickly and efficiently as possible becomes very important. That's why it's important to simplify and streamline, typically at the expense of visual awesomeness. I now have clear and simple guidelines for making figures and presentations so that I can quickly take bits and pieces from different papers and different presentations and still throw together a decent-looking conference abstract or a presentation in virtually no time.

When it comes to presentations, I use variants of a simple, neutral template (there are still some frills on the title page but not much) and a simple, widely available sans serif font (Arial) for all presentations. All the text is in black; if something needs to be highlighted, it's either in red or in blue. I keep animations to a minimum as presentations often need to be printed as handouts (such as for grant reviews) or I may have to end up using someone else's computer -- I had a really bad PC-->Mac animation experience, and have yet to recover from it. By the way, my pet presentation peeve is the use of any serif font on PPT's. While serif fonts are great for printed matter -- the serifs help you to visualize and follow a line -- they make my eyes hurt on screen. Also, I am very much not a fan of bright letters on a dark background. Blogs with this layout are also very hard to read.

I also have clear and simple guidelines for making publication-quality figures and I request that my students follow them. Everyone in my group uses the same software to plot figures, so tried-and-true best practices are highly transferable:
this is how large your axis labels, tick labels, and legend font need to be, and these are the preferred line colors and thicknesses. We discuss the layout of figures in group meetings and brainstorm on how data should be best presented. When it comes to 2D plots, I insist on a simple color palette -- black, red, and blue -- it works well for most 2D plots. The work we do is such that there are also lots of 3D plots involved; the software we use has awesome 3D features and makes wonderful colorful plots.

Students often start by disregarding these guidelines because they feel they know better how to make their data look all purty. That's not necessarily bad, but with new students we invariably have to go through the territory of having a figure with, for instance, red and magenta curves (*shrugs in horror at the color clash*), or the very common issue of microscopic and completely illegible lettering on the figures once they are shrunk down to size they are in print (society journals we publish in most frequently all have a 2-column format with figures no wider than ~3 in). I understand that the students feel ownership of the data and feel they can do better then some st00pid template, but it is exhausting having to hash it out with each one of them that a simple color scale with appropriately scaled lettering goes very very far and that they do not have to reinvent the wheel. Getting them to accept best practices is part of mentoring, but certainly among its more tedious aspects.

There are also challenges associated with different formats. For instance, we use Latex for all our papers, but do presentations in PPT and nearly all of my collaborators use only MS Office. So we need good quality eps figures for Latex documents (vector graphics is also ideal for any type of printing, such as large posters), while in PPTs and Word documents bitmaps (such as high resolution tiff) work best. And then if you want to showcase your figures on the web, jpegs are the norm. So the next best thing to me actually plotting everything myself is receiving a desirable figure in multiple formats right off the bat. It drastically reduces the poor student's chances that their insane advisor will ask for a better quality/different format figure the night before a conference talk or before a proposal is due.

One additonal thing I have recently implemented is heavier use of the group's web repository. Each student has a folder and all the final-version codes, presentations, and source files for papers and figures should be uploaded there. It has been taking a while to get people in the habit of putting everything online, but it's becoming an excellent repository of material that can be accessed remotely whenever needed.

I invite you to share your presentation pet peeves and best practices. Please also state your field, I am curious how much variation there is among different disciplines.

Mush

2011-06-03T00:32:00.007-05:00

-- Heat and hormones have turned my brain into mush, so I fear I don't have a coherent essay in me. What I do have is a pair of totally epic cankles that scream "36 weeks pregnant!!" and a wedding ring that I can no longer take off; a friend called me a Rolie Polie today, for realz. Also, people keep telling me that I look very cute -- I am 6 ft tall, so cute is not exactly an epithet that people usually apply to me (at least not since the 2nd grade). But I guess I will take a cute Rolie Polie over a waddling peach-colored elephant, which accurately captures my appearance.

-- I had a very bad mommy moment yesterday. I completely lost my temper with my eldest son (age 11) and swore at him, CPP style. He was completely flabbergasted. Not that anything justifies my outburst, but a bit of background information may be warranted. My son is an extremely picky eater. He calls himself a junkivore: essentially, he does not eat without protest anything that's not pizza or hotdogs or just plain carbs. We have been battling over food ever since he was little, and while he always ends up eating what I cook, it is never without constant eyerolling and protesting. Ne-ver. He does not like anything I make and it drives me up the wall. Yesterday, he took one look at my roasted potatoes and chicken, accompanied by stir-fried vegetables, and proclaimed that he would rather just eat apples than "that stuff." I totally lost it and haven't spoken with him until tonight. While I am a champion grudge holder, I cannot stay mad for very long at any of my kids. He looked so sad, moping around as I ignored him all afternoon. We made peace at bedtime, as I didn't want him going to bed so blue. But he didn't make a peep about dinner tonight. Aaaaah. Maybe I will have some peace at dinnertime in the next few days.

-- I performed a little experiment. I have two papers in the final pre-submission stage, which means that the back-and-forths between the students and me have resulted in steady-state manuscript forms, however they are still not totally acceptable so I simply have to completely rewrite some parts (OK, a lot of the text). I have told myself that I don't get to work on the papers until I have completely cleared up all of my pending service obligations. (OK, so maybe I am procrastinating a little.) I was wondering how long it would take me to plow through my to-do list of doom.

It took me nearly two weeks. Two weeks (!) to go through all the stuff that I mostly don't even get paid for. Numerous paper and proposal reviews -- when did I agree to do this many, I was under the impression that I rejected requests a lot? I am organizing a fairly major conference in my specialty next year, so there is a lot of logistical planning that needs to be done early, as in now. And the department is going through some sort of accreditation process that requires enormous amounts of book keeping and sifting through papers. I am apparently a sucker for punishment by service -- it's so very easy to let it totally get out of hand.

I remember a post by Cath@VWXYNot? where she saw on a guy's board something like "Review papers and book chapters are for people who don't have data! Never say yes!" I have to come up with a similar cautionary yet catchy phrase pertinent to academic service. We totally need an appropriate demotivational poster.

Musings on Grading, Course Criteria, and the Importance of Challenge

2011-05-23T15:08:00.012-05:00

Gotta love the day after the final grades have been posted. The grade-grubbing emails are nothing short of awesome. Here's one recent gem:

Professor GMP:
I just checked my final grade for YYY 123 [course number] and it's an AB. I just want to know if this is a right grade for me. I did a hard work for this class during the semester, I did all homework assignments, and the three exams were not bad. I'm sorry to bother you with this, it's just, I'm a freshman here and I'm planning to transfer to another college so GPA matters a lot to me. So, I just want to make sure everything's correct. Have a nice Summer!
Thanks,
Stu

Why thank you, Stu, for your concern. Yes, everything is correct. I love your assumption that the three exams are not bad without having actually inquired about how you did on the final. And I love it how the fact that you *need* a high GPA to transfer to presumably an awesome school should be brought to my attention as a reason to give you an A, because clearly this particular need trumps every other possible type of need to get an A. By the way, you ended up being in the middle of the AB range.

Sometimes (all the time, really) when I grade I fall into the deep depths of despair.
My exams are "fair" and "not too hard" -- so say the comments on my RateMyProf profile. Yet, when I see that a whole bunch of people don't do even 50% with the help of all the materials -- lecture notes, exam prep questions, review sessions in which I go over the exam prep questions -- I ask myself "WTF"?

Where I went to undergrad, to get the top grade (equivalent of an A in the US) you had to get 90% or more, no ends, ifs, or buts. Tough exam? Tough luck. You needed 50% to merely pass. This semester, I gave essentially the same exams as the year before. Only 2 people had a total score over 90% this semester; last semester I had more than 10 people in this range. So naturally I had to curve the hell out of the grades.

One thing I often wonder though is how fair all this curving and chewing material into bite-size pieces is to really talented students. They probably never get their asses kicked by really challenging material until they go to grad school; unfortunately, for many it may be too late as they won't ever go to grad school. I have seen several students like that who sail through coursework essentially bored and never develop a real passion for anything, because everything comes so easy to them. One such kid was totally jaded and kept saying how everything bored him; you should have seen his statement of purpose for application to grad school -- it was a mixture of "everything bores me because I am so awesome", "I am awesome and some subfields are totally boring and I would never bother working in them", and "I have no idea what I really want to do because everything is so effing boring." I had him come to do a research project with me over the summer and then I showed him some serious butt kicking by a research problem. He was completely flabbergasted, and after the initial shock dove into the problem with great zeal. It was also news to him that I expected him to calculate everything all the way, not just sketch a solution and know how to do it "in principle" (don't get me started on the evils of partial credit in STEM courses.; that's a whole ranty post right there). Last year the student graduated with a BS and went to a top private school; he chose an advisor in a specialty similar to mine, with words that this subfield is the only one that he has ever found challenging enough. I am glad he'll stay in my subfield, but there are plenty of other challenging subfields: it's just that no one in any other subfield has ever had a chance -- since chances are largely limited to coursework -- to really challenge him to the point of discomfort that helps people grow.

I think it's important that someone show you where your limits may be and force you to push them. The earlier that happens, the better -- you will have more time to get over your huge ego and actually realize there is a whole world of interesting problems and unbelievably smart people working on them out there. That's why I think challenging coursework is important at the undergraduate level -- if we rely on summer research projects or going to grad school to provide for the first time adequate challenge to smart students, that's too late. We will have lost many of them to sheer boredom. Unfortunately, unless the classes are very small, it's hard to tailor the coursework to student abilities -- especially at R1 institutions, this type of approach would simply require the time no research-active instructor would want to invest.

For the record, I think that graduate school education in the US is the best in the world. However, undergraduate education leaves much to be desired. I understand that this comes primarily because undergraduate education serves a different purpose in the US than many other places -- a rite of passage for the middle class, a chance to explore and become independent, as well as a chance to broaden if not deepen one's education. The latter, I feel, is honestly only needed because the public K-12 education (as I see now with my kids) is painfully nonuniform across the country (even within a single state!) and also leaves a great deal to be desired. But my feelings about K-12 in the US are also a topic for a whole different ranty post...

For comparison, however, let me just tell you what the system was where I did my undergrad (it was in a small country in Europe and before the Bologna convention). I think I received a very good and very broad education, but all the breadth was thanks to my butt having being kicked in grades 5-12. For example, in high school, I had courses in world literature, two mandatory foreign languages, plenty of math, physics, chemistry, biology, geography, history, social sciences, music, art, and gym. I even had one year of Latin in high school. (I still have nightmares involving my high-school history and biology oral exams.)

College was free, which is another major difference with respect to the US. Once I started college, majoring in physics, the education was extremely technically focused. Apart from the courses in physics, the only other courses were math (4 semesters), chemistry (2 semesters), and English (2 semesters). There was no homework and no midterms, just the final. You had to go to discussions and work on problems on your own, if you didn't it's your funeral. You could take the final in one of the exam periods (June, September, or January). If there were N courses in a given academic year, you needed to pass no less than N-2 by the start of the next academic year (October) to be able to advance into the next year. If you didn't, you would fail the year and would not be allowed to take any of the next year's exams. (You could still take the remaining exams from the year you flunked.)

A number of courses were 2-semester long (fall+spring), so you could first take the final after the two semesters were over (some major were much worse -- my friend with a degree in literature had 4-semester courses and a 6-semester course in aesthetics -- yes, you go to lectures for 3 years and only then get to take the exam; it often took people several years to prep for it and pass it). If you wanted to "clear the year" (pass all the exams before the new academic year starts) taking exams required a bit of strategizing: you take the exams for single-semester fall courses in January, the exams for single-semester spring courses exams in June, and then spend most of the summer preparing to take the finals for the two-semester courses in September. Each final consisted of a written and an oral part: if you pass the 4-hour written exam (passing means scoring 50% or higher) you get to go to the oral. The orals could be very long: you draw typically 3 questions, write a long and detailed answer (derivations, proofs, etc) for each, and that's the beginning of a discussion between you and the professor, typically with you in front of the board. Your own oral easily lasts an hour or more, and that doesn't include waiting for your turn which can take all day. (Addition: If you failed an exam, you could take it again in the upcoming exam periods, but after failing 3 times I think you had to start paying to take that exam again. And if in the meantime the instructor changes, that's your problem.)

First and second year math courses were among the early gate-keeping courses: a number of students kept taking math exams repeatedly but unsuccessfully; these students eventually never finished their studies. Getting a degree was never a guarantee, getting it in 4 years was very rare (show-off alert: yours truly did). I remember my first-year math exam; it was a two-semester course containing linear algebra, single variable calculus, vector calculus, ordinary differential equations (ODEs) and systems of ODEs (also Fourier and Laplace transforms). I had studied for it all summer and had passed the written part in early September with flying colors. The oral part was in a room on the top floor; it was still very hot outside and everyone was roasting. I drew my three questions and wrote the necessary proofs, and spent the vast portion of the day sitting, waiting for my turn, and listening to other people's orals. The prof looked over my proofs and asked me questions about details, and then whipped out his list of questions -- more like a booklet with some 200 questions, and started quizzing me on them, flipping through the booklet . The whole thing lasted for an hour. One classmate of mine looked really queasy and almost passed out near the end of his hour-long roast (he's a very smart guy but never had much stamina and I think it eventually limited his career reach).

When I mentioned this to my postdoc, he got all defensive and said how at his BS school (a very good US school btw) there were all these mystery kids who never showed up for any classes but had all A's. My comment was that it's because the criteria for an A were not made for them -- and that it would have been better for them if the criteria were higher and they actually had to strain a few dendrites along the way. Perhaps there are only a handful of schools that can afford to uphold superhigh undergraduate standards in the US, but most places don't -- I know my present place of employment doesn't -- because we are all about enticing people to enroll, enticing people to pick our major, and making sure they get out in the time allotted. If we don't, our department becomes unpopular, and it all translates into low enrollments and we all know what low enrollments mean -- reduced funding or even nixing of programs and departments.

I do my best to tailor the material, whatever I teach, to the class that is in front of me. Often, that means some or a lot of remedial work so we'd get to a point where we can intelligently start discussing the material. I never think students are stupid but I often wish they had more structure and more strict criteria in their education leading to college. Once in college, I wish we as instructors were in a position to establish firm non-negotiable criteria for what must be learned at all cost, and I wish we had the ability to fail students who do not meet them instead of just letting them pass on with marginal grades. There is a strong disincentive to be a hardliner teacher -- apparently, you can only get away with it at certain schools. Where I am, it would be teaching and career suicide. If all your other colleagues who teach the same course just dumb the material down and grade on a curve, you do it too.

I teach at the level at which the students need me to, but boy do I wish we had the freedom to make the courses more challenging and the students a little (or a lot!) more uncomfortable, without negative consequences to our own careers or the financial standing of our departments... Because I think many students would surprise themselves with how much they can really do if pushed really hard.

Odd or Not?

2011-05-19T22:35:00.011-05:00

My oldest son, about to start middle school, has a very good friend with whom he's inseparable. The friend is a very smart and well-behaved boy, and we love having him around, which is pretty much all the time (the two have sleepovers almost every weekend and shorter playdates even on weekdays).

The friend's parents have been divorced for a number of years and the mom is getting remarried. We've known about the wedding for a few months and I usually ask her how the preparations are going, because it's a good topic for small talk at pick-up/drop-off, and she seems really excited and always eager to chat about it.

The wedding is this weekend and there will be about 150 people (that strikes me as fairly large, but maybe not according to American standards). We were not invited to the wedding. Today, as we were doing kid pick up/drop off, the bride-to-be told my husband that they (the bride, groom, and the bride's kids) would come over to our place before the wedding, at 11-ish am on Saturday, all dressed up and in the limo, to say 'hi' and have some pictures taken with us.

That struck me as really odd and, in all honesty, ticked me off a bit. Why exactly are they coming over to our place to take pictures? If they wanted to share the wedding day with us, they should have invited us to the wedding, it's not like it's a small intimate affair. This way, they are honestly just disturbing our Saturday routine (which pretty much involves the kids lazily lying about watching TV, me talking on the phone while trying to wake up with coffee before preparing brunch, and my husband sleeping late after playing World of Warcraft till wee hours the night before). Are we now supposed to get all dressed up or what?

I suppose they want to show off their fancy limo, dress, and tuxedos, but still -- I think the whole thing is a bit rude, assuming we'd be available and interested in the showing off. We are not part of the event and they can show us pictures after the fact.

Am I the only one whom this strikes as weird or inconsiderate? Or maybe it is acceptable as a cultural peculiarity that I am not familiar with? Whaddaya think, Intertube friends: odd or not?

Happy Bloggiversary!

2011-05-17T23:57:00.003-05:00

Today is Academic Jungle's 1st anniversary. It opened with Delayed Gratification at the old URL (geekmommyprof.blogpost.com); today's post is my 86th. I moved to http://academic-jungle.blogspot.com/ on August 7 with Jungle Juggle.

I am proud to have acquired 45 followers and 282 readers who follow the blog on Google Reader. Google Analytics gives me the following numbers (these are only from August 12, 2010 till today, i.e. just since I moved to the new URL)

Total pageviews: 106,265
Unique pageviews: 86,966

I think these are all very cool numbers for a 1-year-old small independent blog.

Another cool piece of statistics is the map of visitors -- they came from 107 countries!

What have I learned about blogging in the past year? Like many other human activities, blogging can be aggravating or boring; on the other hand, it can be fun, therapeutic, or enlightening. The positives overall outweigh the negatives, which is why I am still around.

Negative aspects first: I have had several kerfuffles in my first year, most of which I don't particularly care to remember. The first one transpired before I completed a full month of blogging, it was completely surprising and largely disillusioning. It mainly had a censoring effect on my subsequent writing. I freely admit that I now avoid writing about certain topics altogether and significantly tone down my writing on many others because I don't have the time or the energy to fight off the potential onslaught of vitriolic comments. Hats off to those who have no such issues, as it looks like there are plenty of bloggers who thrive on these little explosions; honestly, I find them (the kerfuffles) nothing but draining. I don't find them amusing even when they happen to other people. But, I also found that censoring your writing is apparently no guarantee that someone somewhere won't get ticked off by whatever you write: no matter how personal or benign a post, there is always the potential to aggravate people. Oh well. I suppose that's just blogging imitating life.

But, all this negativity is hardly appropriate for a birthday, so off to positive things. What are my favorite aspects of blogging? Bloggy friends and acquaintances, bar none. There are a number of bloggers whose writing I really enjoy for various reasons -- some are serious, some goofy, some focused on the science/academia, some more on the personal aspects, but all are invariably whip-smart and insightful. With some I have connected off-blog. I really cherish the connections to these interesting people whom I would have never met otherwise.

I also appreciate blogging as a means of venting (I am sure Mr GMP also appreciates that I don't offload all -- only most -- of my many frustrations on him!) I enjoy other people's ranty posts and do feel better after writing mine. Moreover, I really enjoy blogging as a creative outlet of sorts. I know blogging does not constitute creative writing, or at least not very high-quality creative writing the way I do it, but the posts I enjoyed writing the most essentially read like essays.

Overall, it's been an interesting year, and in hindsight it does seem kind of long really. I started blogging at the end of my 6th year as a faculty (several months after I learned that I had been approved for tenure) and now is the end of my 7th. I am off to a sabbatical leave, which I am really looking forward to. In the past year, I have graduated four students, two with an MS and two with a PhD, received a couple of teaching awards, written many, many grants, and many, many papers. At the end of June I am expecting a baby on whose name Mr GMP and I have yet to agree. One option for the name would have our three boys' first initials be NMR, which greatly pleases the geek in me. Another option results in NML, the inverse alphabetical order of these letters, also high on the geek-o-meter. A third would yield NMA (enema -- LOL). Perhaps we'll just name him Spawn 3.

Dear reader, I have two orders of business where I need your input. One is a very important issue that has been bugging me for quite some time: what is, in your opinion, the proper name for a blogging anniversary? (You can enter multiple answers.)

My other request is a bit more serious: if you are a regular reader, and especially if you haven't commented much or at all, tell us a little bit about who you are, what you like/dislike about Academic Jungle, and what I can do to encourage you to comment more. Do you read for the academic (research/teaching/funding) content, for the more personal (family/mommy/immigrant) content, or is mixing it all up exactly your cup of tea?

Thanks everyone for reading!

Sabba-sabba...

2011-05-14T23:56:00.001-05:00

Wikipedia tells me "In over thirty languages other than English, the common name for Saturday is a cognate of "Sabbath"," and the same root is that of a sabbatical leave. So what day could be better than a Saturday (usually a slow day in the blogosphere) for writing about my upcoming sabbatical?

Whenever I think of a sabbatical, I think of the chorus in this 1983 song by Culture Club (what can I say? I was an impressionable preteen):

Sabba-sabba-sabba-sabba-sabba-sabbaticaaaaal,
you come and goooooo,
you come and goooo-o-o-oh...

Once I am done grading my final, I will have 15 teaching-free months.
Technically, I am on sabbatical just in the spring (every 7 years, we get 1 semester off at full pay or 2 semesters at 60% pay) but I managed to get the fall off as well through a teaching overload last fall and some course buyout. Next year will be my eighth year as a professor and my first sabbatical. People ask me where I am going; nowhere, as I am about to have a baby. I really cannot leave my poor husband alone with three kids for a significant amount of time, even after the baby is a few months old. Plus, there's the issue of nursing, and the boobs come with me. I suppose I could go somewhere with just the baby, and leave hub with the other two kids, but even that is really pushing it. I think this sabbatical leave is simply going to have to be of a staycation kind.

But this whole sabbatical business got me thinking about how long and how short 7 years actually are. When the time comes for my next sabbatical, my oldest son will start college; my middle son, who's 4 now, will be starting 6th grade; the baby, who hasn't been born yet, will start second grade! Yet, in the grand scheme of one's career, 7 years is really not all that long: we work for 35+ years; 7 years is about two back-to-back 3-year grants, so easily less than the duration of a long-term research project. In some fields, 7 years may be a not-so-uncommon duration of a PhD. It has been 7 years since I received mine.

My sabbatical plans include 3-4 months home with baby while managing research group via email, Skype (loved Namnezia's post "The Portal"), and occasional group meetings before going back to work full time in October or November (depending on when exactly the daycare has an opening for us); writing a gazillion grants and papers; editing a special issue of a journal in my subdiscipline; organizing a fairly major conference in my field in the spring 2012. I may sneak in a few shorer trips with my trusty breast pump in the spring, but otherwise it's business as usual sans teaching.

What I have been looking forward to the most in regards to this leave is trying to reignite the fire between me and my research. As I have written several times before, I am going through a bit of an existential crisis in research, in that I spend a lot of time chasing money to support students and, more often than I'd like, end up doing what's fundable and/or trendy regardless of what I find interesting. The money chasing also leaves me exhausted as I am constantly trying to scratch the surface of ever new problems where the funding is, and seldom have the time to sit down and dive into a difficult, long-term problem with gusto, as I used to be able to as a grad student and an idealistic/naive n00b assistant professor. Somewhere on the tenure track I developed a serious case of research ADD and now it's hard to really focus in depth, which is the type of work that used to give me the greatest pleasure, back in the day when my group was small and I had ample time to work on my own.

So I am looking forward to having some time to learn and grow again, read for real some new technical books, and perhaps even pick up a new technique or two. But maybe I'm just deluded and will end up eating bonbons and watching TV in my PJ's all day.

If you are a faculty and had a stay-at-home sabbatical, what did you do? Did you do all that you planned? Did you end up procrastinating/spending days in your PJ's/watching TV and eating bonbons or was it largely a professionally enriching experience? Was it always better when you went elsewhere for a sabbatical? Do you find it that you are more productive when you come back from a sabbatical, because the structure of teaching and meetings helps you maintain productivity? Even if you aren't a faculty, how would you spend a sabbatical year?

None and We're Done

2011-05-09T22:56:00.008-05:00

I know this issue has been tackled a number of times in the academic blogosphere, but it's a classic and deserves to be revisited (again and again).

I was on a PhD defense committee today. The student is one I know from a couple of my courses, a very nice and personable guy and an average student. His advisor is a colleague and a collaborator; we are together on the grant that this student has been supported on for the past 3 years or so. The student and his advisor (the PI on said grant) have been working on the experimental part of the project, another colleague and I with our joint student on the theory/simulation part.

This student's work focused on the development/assembly of a novel experimental setup. The work was slow and undoubtedly tedious for a long time; much of the time was initially devoted to contacting different vendors and companies for specialized pieces of equipment. When the student presented his research prospectus less than a year ago, the setup was nearly complete but not yet working; it is now finally up and running. I honestly did not think the student would be defending this soon.

The student presented quite nicely (even if a bit longwindedly). My problem? He is graduating without a single journal paper (with a few conference presentations). Criteria for graduation are field specific, so let me make it clear: I am in a physical science field where journal publications are the most important, and many (many!) faculty have the criterion of 3 journal publications, preferably from the dissertation work, as necessary for graduation. I was quite peeved when I realized that this student would graduate with zero papers (btw, I only got to see the dissertation on Friday and it wasn't clear till today what the publication count was). This also means that, after 3 years on the project where my colleague the advisor has been the PI, there are no experimental papers, only theory ones. That cannot bode well for the project's funding continuation.

Now, I understand that the student's project was difficult and with a very long ramp up time, and I understand that perhaps expecting 3 papers may be overkill. But I really wanted to see at least one accepted peer-reviewed journal paper. Heck, I would have perhaps even been OK with a single submitted paper.

I asked the student if there was a reason that he was graduating without a single journal paper; if there was a reason that he must be graduating now and not in, say, a year? Because he finally has the nice setup running, it's time to get some data (he showed some very preliminary data). He said it's because his wife and he had been living apart for some months and he also happened to find a job there. I almost blew my top off -- those are not criteria for graduation. But instead I just said "Well, you have a very nice and understanding advisor."

I am quite pissed with my colleague, the student's advisor, for allowing this. It is his responsibility to be the gate keeper of when the student is ready. I understand that the student wants to join his wife, but he's hardly the only person living temporarily away from a significant other. And he found a job, that's a criterion? At this time, he should not have been looking for a job in the first place. I felt pissed on behalf of all those students who endure separation from their significant others and even kids for much longer than a few months in order to do a proper job and finish. Many people decide the separation is not worth it and abandon their programs close to completion (a person very, very close to me did that) -- they are not handed PhD diplomas just because they miss their families.

How much can we speak of universal graduation criteria in a department versus the discretion of the advisor? In my and related disciplines throughout the world peer-reviewed publications are required in order to get a PhD. A student with a poor quality PhD drags down the value of everyone else's degree from the same institution.

When does a committee member have the right to fail another faculty's student and call the colleague on the bullshit? People don't object to this shit in order to keep the peace with colleagues, because collegial relationships in academia easily span several decades. Heck, faculty often don't object even when there are severe cases of poor advising and neglect of students, how can we expect them to object when the advisor lets one pass with a decidedly subpar record? I should have raised more hell at the defense, but of course it's easy to be bold and eloquent in hindsight. Instead, I wussed out like most people do for the sake of peace. Shame on me.

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Due to Blogger's demise yesterday afternoon (May 12) it looks like about 10-15 comments posted at various times of the day vanished. If they ever looked like they were successfully posted, then a copy went through to my email and I can rescue/repost them, but the time stamp will be May 13.

Almost Amusing Adventures of the Sleeping Fatty

2011-05-08T10:11:00.002-05:00

I have always liked to sleep, it's one of my favorite activities in the whole world. However, since I became a mom for the first time 11 years ago, I have never had sufficient time to engage in this wonderful passtime. At 32 weeks of pregnancy (so 8 weeks to go), I can no longer resist the unbelievable urge to sleep non-stop. Since I stopped vomiting, I have been drinking decaf coffee, but that's apparently not enough to wake me up or get my blood pressure above 100ish/60ish. Today, after 8 hours of sleep at night, I got up and barely got dressed, and then spent the entire day till 3 pm just napping in my home office (my office chair is the most heavenly butt-and-back support object known to mankind), with my feet propped on my husband's chair. At 3 pm I finally felt I was ready to wake up. So, yeah, in case it's not obvious, I am one Sleeping Fatty.

Yesterday, I had an ultrasound to check the baby's growth, because 3 weeks ago, at 29 weeks, my fundal height was 33 cm (fundal height -- the distance from the pelvic bone to the tip of the uterus -- should measure, after week 20ish of pregnancy, the same in centimeters as the gestational age in weeks, +/- 2 cm. So, at 29 weeks of pregnancy, I should have measured 29+/-2 cm, so 33 cm was too much). The scientist in me had two concerns: my regular nurse wasn't there and the other nurse who measured me looked like she had a problem locating the tip of my uterus; there was a single measurement (reproducibility anyone?) But I didn't say anything and didn't want to downplay the potential for something wrong, so I didn't object when my OB recommended I get a growth ultrasound. Lo and behold, the ultrasound showed I have a big but not gargantuan baby (over 5 lbs, 85th percentile), who will likely be 9+ lbs at birth, but I already knew that (my first two were 9 lb 1oz and 9 lb 2 oz); the amniotic fluid amount is perfectly normal. So nothing weird there. Btw, my regular nurse also measured my fundal height after the ultrasound, I was at 34 cm at 32 weeks -- so only 2 cm ahead as I had been the entire time except at that apparently off measurement at 29 weeks, and perfectly consistent with just a bigger baby. This all means much ado and an expensive ultrasound about nothing. I bet this all could have been avoided with a repeated measurement of the fundal height at 29 weeks, but it's cool I got to see the baby again. He's already head down, and I now know that all the kicks into my diaphragm were the feet on the left and apparently him shaking his little butt on the right.

My low levels of energy and perpetual sleepiness are of course interfering with my work big time. I wanted to draft 2 proposals to be submitted in September/October. There are 4 papers from my group alone that I planned on sending out before delivering (3 of them comprehensive regular articles for a reputable society-level journal and the fourth a 4-pager rapid communication). All of the papers are at the 3rd or 4th draft stage, which would normally mean I would go through 2 or 3 more educational back-and-forths with students, before taking over and cleaning the manuscripts up into submission-ready versions. Now, since I have only 8 weeks left, I have to take over sooner so they'd get submitted while I still have my faculties intact. I do tend to get kind of stupid in the first few months postpartum (sleep deprivation plus hormones) and I really wanted a little break from work. But my motivation has been zero. And I don't even feel guilty enough about it. Clearly, a killer combination...

Since I got pregnant, I have been avoiding taking on responsibilities that I knew I would not be able to fulfill efficiently. I was pregnant before, so I knew that I would be miserable vomiting for a long time, and then near the end of the pregnancy I would be sleepy and big and won't be able to travel. As a result, at the beginning of my pregnancy, I removed myself as the PI from several collaborative proposals and became a co-PI since I knew I could not herd the cats as needed. I also took part in a center grant (many PI's) but refused the role of a co-leader because I knew I could not do it efficiently at this time (and, as it turns out, I would have to fly to DC in month 9 of pregnancy, which is totally not happening).

I am still doing my share in collaborations -- doing stuff when asked and promptly -- I am just not presently able to go above and beyond my share (such as partake in leadership activities). I do feel guilty that someone else might have to do the heavy lifting on some collaborative papers or grants for the time being. One could ask: why should anyone else have to accommodate my personal choice to be pregnant? Prodigal Academic nicely put it in her comment to a recent post that you help out one another because everyone has some sort of family and needs accommodation at one time or another. Unfortunately, I have several colleagues who do not agree with this assessment -- they have stay at home spouses who take care of the children or are childless, and have unequivocally expressed that they resent the fact that some of us may need a bit of slowing down at times, because it's unfair to those who don't need to slow down.

You know, if people never need or want to slow down for personal reasons, I don't see anyone stopping them. I am quite happy to applaud and send them flowers when they get their NAS/NAE memberships, MacArthur Fellowships, or Nobel Prizes. If they are resentful of me for having to slow down temporarily, they can go ahead and find a replacement (only I suppose that's not exactly easy, because I am awesome and irreplaceable... On top of being modest. :-)

My most hard-to-get-a-hold-of colleagues are men with grown children. I am way more responsive to the demands of a collaboration than them even in the most pukey, sleepy, heartburny, or postpartum stupid state, so WTF? But no one ever has anything to say against a perpetually unavailable Prof. BigWig while he's globetrotting, whereas any hint of anything but complete and utter devotion to work (such as utilization of one's uterus or mammary glands) is often greeted with near disgust. Sadly, some of the most terrible comments about having children while in academia that I have ever heard in real life came from a recently married, childless-by-choice female colleague from another department, who started at the same time I did; she took over the co-leadership position on the multi-PI grant after I had turned it down. You'd think she'd know better than to bash childbearing in front of me. We women are truly amazing: we judge each other so harshly and so bitchily that we certainly need no man to make us look like crap or feel like crap about our life choices.

Home Is Where the Job Is?

2011-05-06T00:17:00.007-05:00

Tonight at dinner, I mentioned to my husband that, even though I have been in GMP Uni City for 7 years now, I don't feel at home. I felt much more at home in the city where we went to grad school, even thought I spent only 4.5 years there. My husband just said "That's because we had friends there. Here, we have no one."

Of course, he's right. It's not that Grad School City was particularly welcoming to foreigners of all stripes (I'd say, quite the contrary), but just the fact that we went to grad school, and were surrounded by other grad students from all around the world, made the barriers to forging friendships fairly low. There were also some people from our home country that we hung out with, but we made a number of American friends and a number of friends from different parts of Asia, Latin America, and Europe. We were quite broke (raising a kid on grad school stipends) but overall it was fun.

The part of the country where we moved is populated by very nice people. They are actually a bit too nice for my taste. I find that all the nicety makes an impenetrable front to honest human communication -- if you are going to have a relationship with someone that goes beyond chitchat and pleasantries, the guard has to come down at some point and you need to show your true colors.

I was actually fairly surprised by some aspects of life in Uni City and State. There are a number of faculty who are from the state or the general area (neighboring states), and came back here to be close to family. Also, from the experiences with the parents of my son's friends, a great number of them too are from the city or its close vicinity, and have the support system of extended family close by. This pattern is common in Europe (people not moving far away from their ancestral homes) and I was surprised to find it in Uni City and State. For outsiders like my husband and me, these close knit circles are quite hard to penetrate; certainly, not helped by the fact that we are actually foreigners, so we must seem, well, foreign to people whose families have lived here for generations.

In terms of making friends at work, this hasn't really worked out all that well. I have two colleagues from the department whom I would perhaps call friends, one is from Northern Europe and the other from East Asia. With my friend from East Asia, we've invited him and his family over a couple of times, and they do come and we have a great time, but it's never reciprocated. It is my impression that their real friends, those with whom they do visit regularly, are all from their home country, so my family does not qualify. My Northern European friend and his family have been quite nice, but his significant other (from a different country) has been pulling to get back to Europe and we've also had some friction as described here, so we have cooled down a bit.

I have close collaborators and a couple of mentors. One of them tells me that you should never have friends from the university -- it's not safe. I agree that on the tenure track you should keep your anxieties and doubts to yourself, because your colleagues do end up evaluating you, but after tenure? Is it still not safe? Perhaps by then it's just too late and the relationships are set in stone. I hung out with some junior faculty who started in other departments at the same time I did, but most were single or married but childless by choice (so different lifestyles) plus everyone was so laser-focused on work and busy that I always ended up looking like a major slacker for actually wanting to get lunch together.

I have some good close collaborators, but we've never crossed the line of actually going to each other's homes. I suppose that's where we will stay. I have a couple of other collaborators with whom all nontechnical communication is so superficial and coated in so much sugar that I am afraid I'll end up with diabetes. I have tried several times to penetrate the sugary barrier of nicety and actually connect with them as real people, but my efforts have always been greeted with additional layers of aloofness, so eventually I gave up.

My husband has an academic staff position and works with a very small group of people, so his pool of acquaintances is not particularly large to draw from (plus, he's not a very social person; he only talks to me because he must and because his tongue will atrophy if he doesn't use it :-). So neither one of us meets anyone outside of work. Perhaps it's true for most people. The people we do meet are our kids' friends' parents, but they never seem interested in hanging out with us.

But, I see that American faculty who are not from here seem much more integrated with their neighborhoods and communities. Part of it is perhaps their church attendance (another thing I did not expect -- a very large percentage of faculty are regular church goers), which is yet another aspect that makes my family ever more foreign. We are not religious at all. Likely, there are other aspects, and it does probably boil down to being foreigners -- I am sure there are many pan-American aspects of the culture that we are simply not familar with, secret handshakes or something..? If there's "Fitting in for Dummies," someone send me a link stat!

I have a friend who's a faculty in a CS department some 5 hours drive from here, at a great school. He also recently complained to me that "there is no one here who ever asks you how your day is going." He says he's contemplating leaving for this reason alone, to get to some place where he and his family wouldn't be so isolated. Someone said that we should hang out with people from my home country. There are three problems with this suggestion: there aren't any around (mine is a small country); if I wanted to hang out with people from my own country, I would have never left it to begin with; just because someone is from my country certainly does not mean we can automatically be friends.

I am not sure what the solution is. I have a good job, we have a nice comfortable life, and the kids are happy and well-adjusted. For my older son, this is home, and he's always very much against moving whenever I mention that we might. Perhaps, as immigrants, this is simply how it has to be: we have to suck it up with no support system so our kids would be comfortable and feel they belong. But it sure would be nice to have someone in real life to vent to.

Of Dogs and Kids and Judgment Abound

2011-04-23T23:06:00.021-05:00

There have been several great posts about being a scientist and a parent (e.g. Gerty-Z's and PlS's), also a couple of great posts on being a scientist and choosing not to be a mom (Jade's and Dr. G's). I will probably follow up with my own #scimom story at a later date (an epic tale of challenges and perseverance :-), but I have something different planned for today.

I have kids, and I love them. I even like other people's kids, which admittedly only came about after I had my own. Obviously, people who want kids should have them. It is really heartbreaking when people desire to have kids, but are unable to... It is also quite tragic, on a completely different level, when people wish to have kids but believe that their career is completely incompatible with having a family -- this is a failure of our society, and we need to tirelessly keep working to enable every person a chance to find fulfillment on both fronts without having to choose.

I also think that there is absolutely nothing wrong with being childless by choice.
Only, whenever I read a statement like this one, whether it's written by me or someone else, I cannot help but feel that it's indeed a very patronizing statement, especially when it comes from someone who has kids. It sounds like I am giving my blessing to people who are childless by choice, whereas, in reality, they should not be expected to give a rat's ass what I or any other random person thinks about their choices.

The people who are childless by choice are often expected to justify themselves, and then they fall into the trap of other people feeling it's their duty to pick apart each reason and offer counter-examples or counter-arguments to show how parenting is actually feasible in spite of said reason. That is totally beside the point -- all problems are relative: I am sure that many of mine would appear completely self-indulgent and trivial to someone else.

Dear childless-by-choice people, please accept my apologies in the name of all us patronizing people with kids. You really, really should not care what any of us think. We really should never get to pass judgment on you. It goes without saying that your choice to not have kids -- or any other of your choices -- is a priori perfectly valid, simply because you are an adult.

But, can a person who has kids really, truly ever understand and respect another person's wishes not to have them? Will there always be a hint of self-righteousness and judgment in there? I think the best way may be to try and draw parallels: for instance, not wanting to have kids would, in my case, probably be analogous in many ways to not wanting to own dogs. (Yes, I know that having kids and having dogs are, in fact, not the same. And neither are the societal pressures to have them.)

I do not want to own a dog. Ever. I do not hate dogs -- I would never wish for anything bad to happen to any dog and I find some of them very cute. I will pet other people's dogs, but I am ultimately always relieved when they leave.

There are many, many dogs in my neighborhood; seemingly everyone has not one but multiple dogs. So whenever I go for a walk, it's impossible to avoid people walking their dogs. I usually just want to be left alone and enjoy the walk, but a lot of people will stop -- especially when I'm with one of my kids -- and offer us to pet the dog, then start talking about the dog's name and how she is nice and gentle and how kids love her, and won't my kid pet her some more, whereas all I am thinking is that my kid now has dog slobber on his hands and where am I going to get something to clean him up. And then there are the questions why I don't have a dog; I say that my eldest son is allergic to pet dander (which he is), but in reality, even if he wasn't, I would never ever own a dog. To me, dogs appear to be an unnecessary hassle and an unnecessary expense. You have to make sure someone's there to pet sit when you leave town, and I don't think I can put a dog on on my health insurance plan. And don't even get me started with having to take them out in all kinds of weather and having to pick up all that poop.

I have a friend from grad school who has four dogs and calls them his babies. He spams me incessantly with pictures of his dogs (and his extravagant holidays). I would not have a big problem with his doggy pics and doggy stories if he ever, even once, showed any interest in my kids, such as asked how they were or whatever. Since he doesn't care about my kids, I am considerate enough not to bring them up in conversation and I certainly don't send him their pictures. I wish he would extend the same courtesy to me.

If I somehow ended up owning a dog (and were for some reason unable to put it up for adoption) I am sure I would eventually get emotionally attached to it, because I am not made out of stone. I am sure owning a dog is great and rewarding for many people, but I really don't care to try. I just don't want to own a dog, period. And I really don't think it's anyone's place to tell me that I should want to own one because it's so awesome (and because if I don't want to, I must be somehow broken), and it's also no one's place to tell me that I am overestimating how much work or money or poop collection they require. And it's certainly no dog owner's place to pat me on the head and tell me, patronizingly, that it's perfectly OK to choose not to have a dog. Duh.

Evaluating Competition

2011-04-19T15:12:00.013-05:00

An interesting ethical dilemma has emerged again today.

I received a request from a European funding agency to review a proposal (it's a 5-pager with a pretty big budget requested, which made me want to pack up and move back to Europe stat, but that's perhaps material for a different post). The proposal is from a PI I know superficially; the group does very good work and is quite large.

Here's the issue: they are getting into the subfield I work in and the proposal is exactly on the same type of stuff that I am currently working on with my postdoc, a couple of students, and a few collaborators. On some of the problems they propose to explore we already have paper drafts. But, the group is large and I am sure they can move pretty quickly into whichever direction they choose, which does make them serious competition.

So the obvious question is: how does one -- if at all -- evaluate such a proposal?

Option 1: Recuse myself as I have a conflict of interest. A downside is that I am probably one of the most qualified persons around to evaluate this proposal for technical merit precisely because I currently do closely related work.

Option 2: Simply evaluate the proposal as objectively as possible, focusing on the technical merit, originality, novelty, etc., and try really, really hard to put aside all consideration of competition/scooping. Keep repeating "They do good science, I will evaluate the science. I will be objective, I will be objective..."

Option 3: Kill the proposal and never think about it again. It's nice to be able to eliminate competition by cutting their lifeline! *mwahahahaha*

Whenever something like this happens, I always do either 1 (if I really feel I would be negatively predisposed to a paper or a proposal simply because I think the person is a jerk or I do feel we are in too direct a competition) or 2 (when I feel that I am able to be objective and do not have strong negative feelings about the proposer). I think 1 and 2 are the only ethical things to do.

But, sometimes you receive these irrationally hostile and largely unfounded proposal or paper reviews. I know several people in my field who are notorious as someone who will kill your work just because they can, and they seem not to have any qualms about doing so regardless of the proposal's or paper's merit. I am pretty sure I can identify one proposal reviewer on my recent declined NSF grant who has always gone out of his way to be an ass to me, and is universally known as quite dangerous. So perhaps I am being a dumb and naive Goody Two-Shoes and it really is eat or be eaten, so I should start wielding the bloody sword of rejection at anything or anyone that even remotely steps on my turf?

Have you ever killed a proposal or a paper just because you could? All of these actions can be justified based on a lack of technical merit -- there is no such thing as a perfect proposal or paper -- but, if you are being honest, have you ever really, truly done it primarily in order to derail someone, because, underneath it all, you felt threatened and protected your turf? Even if you have never done so, how often have you wondered, at least in the back of your mind, whether perhaps you should do it?

Of course, this post begs for a poll:

Please be honest. I know enough people in science who are complete and utter selfish assholes that I will be deeply disappointed if all I get are hypocritical responses such as "I would never EVER dream of doing such an unethical thing!" Even good people dream of doing horrible things, but luckily most people don't act on their worst impulses.

Musings on co-authorship, co-PI-ship, job-seeking etiquette, and career/mommyhood

2011-04-16T16:10:00.014-05:00

Another combo post, from the long comments I have a tendency to leave on other people's blogs.

1) In response to DrugMonkey's post on the proper assignment of credit (co-authorship) on scientific papers. More specifically, on when and how to sever ties with a previous advisor/group.

About 6 months into my tenure track, I had a heart-to-heart with my PhD advisor (I didn't do a postdoc) and told him that I had been told by the folks at my new university that it would look bad for my tenure case if I continued to have papers with him for too long. We decided we'd wrap up one more paper with his name on it and that would be the end. No one was upset or disrespected. Well-meaning advisors realize you need to sever the umbilical cord (both in reality and on paper), and the person whose tenure is on the line needs to make sure (sooner rather than later) that everyone understands what must be done and why.

I did a similar thing regarding severing co-authorship with collaborators: a student came to me from a friendly group, with an MS and a piece of code developed there. Over the next three years we did a lot of new work that somewhat relied on the code he had brought with him and his previous advisors were on all the new publications. After their involvement had become purely that of looking over the final manuscript and catching typos (worth an acknowledgement, not a co-authorship) and stayed that way for nearly two years, I decided it was high time to address the issue head-on; I exchanged a couple of emails with them, saying that perhaps it's time to part ways as we have moved too far from the topic where their original contribution lied. They were both OK with it, one even acknowledged that for a while he had been uncomfortable with the essentially courtesy co-authorship.

A case in point for the PI being the corresponding author on a paper: the first author (student or postdoc) simply won't be at the current email address permanently, whereas the lead PI (last author in my field) typically will. Sometimes students/postdocs feel robbed of their ownership of the paper if they are not listed as the corresponding author. In those cases, whenever possible (which is often in my field) I request that both the student/postdoc and I, the PI, be listed as corresponding authors.

2) Dr. Sneetch (awesome and on the tenure track) wondered how to deal with a belligerent co-PI who would love nothing more than to take his/her share of money on an awarded grant and do something barely related to the work described in the grant, leaving the PI to justify the detour to the program officer.

Sneetch, I don't have first-hand experience (PI on a grant where someone just takes the money and does something totally unrelated) but I have had the experience of being a co-PI on a multi-investigator grant where another co-PI has either gone off and done the same (blown money on whatever), and then either severed all communication with the rest of the team or tried to argue that he is of course doing stuff related to the main project. Such a renegade co-PI indeed endangers the whole project and chances of renewal (especially in DOD agencies, where you better do what you promised and not aggravate your program officer).

I understand your frustration. You are unfortunately not tenured, so you have to tread lightly around asshole senior colleagues. Rule No 1 -- never again engage in additional collaborative proposals with a person who would not honor the project. It's not worth it, find someone else to do the same work even if at another university. As for the grant(s) you currently have where a colleague has gone over to do his own thing, how is the money managed? Is it a common account, or do you make small subaccounts for each co-PI? If the latter, you are kind of screwed. If the former, I think nominally all expenses would have to go through you and you have veto power.

Anyhoo, if you are the PI and one co-PI is asking to do something unrelated to the main project and you really think it's too far out and are uncomfortable supporting this change of direction, I would employ the good old "it's not me, it's the program officer" routine: tell him that you think you have no problem with it, but that you talked to the program officer (even if you didn't) and the PO doesn't agree it's within the scope of the program, so your hands are tied even though you would really really like to help/comply. *bat eyelashes here*

If you are actually OK with changing the scope and it's NSF, you can fill out the "change of scope" or similar forms when you submit annual report, and you should consult with the PO as soon as possible to get the formal OK from him/her. (Many PO's at the NSF don't care about a reasonable change of scope as long as you crank out good papers.) Other agencies have similar mechanisms to change scope -- but only if you as the PI are OK with the change. If you are not, as I said, play powerless and blame it on the program officer that your hands are tied -- this until you get tenure; once you are tenured, just say "Sorry, no."

3) Massimo muses on the appropriate etiquette for academic job seekers with multiple offers.

After I had interviewed (has it been 7 years already?), the first offer I received was from my first choice (among the places I interviewed), let’s call it Uni A, and they gave me something like 4 weeks to respond; the second offer came a week later, from Uni B. After hearing that I had received an offer already, Uni B gave me a week to decide. Actually, Uni B had been the first to interview me, more than a month before any other; I liked them a lot, and if they had been prompt about making me an offer, I would have likely taken it. Instead, they waited more than 2 months to give me an offer, during which I had two more interviews and fell in love with my current place (Uni A). I ended up deciding about 10 days after receiving the 1st offer (from Uni A), and 2-3 days after receiving the offer from Uni B. At that time, I also withdrew my application from Uni C, the third place where I had interviewed only a couple of days before the first offer came in; I knew I would never consider Uni C's offer as competitive to those of Uni A or B (too high of a teaching load and part of the country I would really not want to live in if I could help it -- bad public schools, a very red state); a couple of people actually suggested I should wait to see if I could get an offer from Uni C too, just to see if I could get 3 out of 3, but I thought that would be totally unethical and douchebaggy of me.

Anyway, I think it’s important to assess whether the candidate genuinely seems like he/she would want to work at your university. Sometimes we get these excellent candidates, but they don’t click, there is a marked lack of interest on their part, yet we still give them offers and waste a lot of time waiting and they of course don’t accept. For instance, we interviewed a woman a few years back, she had 6 or 7 interviews that year. She gave a great talk and had a stellar record, but you could tell she didn’t particularly care about the impression she left on us; she had her sights set on greener pastures. That’s quite alright, but we ended up giving her an offer anyway, which she of course declined, and we ended up wasting a lot of time on her that year and ended up hiring no one.

I am contrasting this with another excellent candidate where there was an instant chemistry with everyone in the department and he was genuinely excited about the city and the potential collaborators. You could tell he would be a great fit, and he really is! My interview was a bit like that — love at first sight, both with the city and the potential collaborations. I never regretted my decision.

4) Dr. Sneetch wonders how much her career suffers when she temporarily slows down due to childcare obligation.

One piece of advice is not to overshare with people at work what your absences mean. I learned this from a senior female colleague who is a master of maintaining the aura of aloofness that makes everyone think she's some kind of deity. You are covering your teaching and non-negotiable service, and that's great. How you organize your time beyond that -- well, it's (almost) nobody's business. You could be going to a string of conferences or review panels, right? You are simply not available -- that's what most people need to know. What it is that you are doing in that time -- most people need not know.

That colleague I mentioned -- she only says "This week does not work for me." No explanation. If you want her time, you have to propose another date and time. Whether she is doing aerobics all week, or is at a conference, or her kid is sick -- no one knows.

Anecdotally, when men are away, people assume they are away on business. When women are away, people assume it's family. Don't give them more ammunition to further stereotype you.

And don't worry about putting research on the back burner temporarily. The work-family balance is never a balance; more like a seesaw. When a kid is sick, of course research is a lower priority. In my experience kids really seem not to get sick very often past a year or two in a childcare setting.

No Funding Stone Unturned

2011-04-12T00:45:00.013-05:00

For several weeks now, I have been trying to give birth to a white paper.* I do not use the term "giving birth" lightly -- cobbling up this puny three-pager has been a surprisingly painful process. This is from someone who (a) had children, and (b) really enjoys writing.

It's one of those things that we, the fishnet-stocking-wearing scientists (as my dear PhD advisor used to say) have to do: we apply for funding to do certain projects because someone else is interested in them, that someone potentially has the money to fund the work, and we happen to be able to do it. It sounds like a match made in heaven, if it weren't for the fact that the party proposing the work (that would be mois) is really not all that enthusiastic about doing it.

It's work in a field that I occasionally dabble in (I have some on-again, off-again experimental collaborators in the field), and it's never really struck my fancy... I don't know why, I guess it's a bit too applied for my taste. The field has a tremendous technological potential and there are some important open issues that I am perfectly capable of addressing theoretically; there is actually a veritable shortage of people with my background attacking problems in this field, and some of the techniques I have developed for a different class of problems in a different field would translate well here. My previous dabblings into the same field resulted in some well-cited papers, precisely because I brought something new and addressed a few outstanding problems that were there, untouched but ripe for the pickings. This sounds like a potential for a breakthrough, right?

The issue is that I cannot get excited about these problems. It's not that they are simple or unimportant; it's that the level at which I am interested in these problems (more basic, general outlook) is not the level that interests most people or funding bodies (very applied, milestone-oriented, structure-specific outlook).

So I have been gnawing at this little white paper, trying to present what I would like to do (address a large class of problems via kick-ass advances in theory/simulation) within the context that would not put a more application-oriented reader (e.g. the program manager or my experimental collaborator) to sleep or in a state of shock. I have been reading a lot (A LOT) of papers to be able to present that I am really abreast of the latest application developments, and I am pulling my hair at how bored I am while reading. So yes, the three-page white paper has been sucking the life out of me.

Why do I do it, you ask? I am trying to tap the funding potential of an agency I haven't dealt with before. First, I sent emails to all program managers in my general area, and I suggested 5-6 topics that I could potentially work on, with a paragraph-long writeup for each. One manager invited a white paper on one of the proposed topics, and the rest is history. It's inevitable: in order to keep going, you have to mold yourself to how the funding winds blow. I suppose the key to keeping sanity is having at least one project of passion to balance out those that don't make the heart flutter. I am hoping that the funding decisions on my pending proposals enable me to maintain my passion projects. But, they may or may not. In the meantime, here I am, making sure I leave no funding stone unturned.

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* A white paper is a 2-3 page document in which you pitch your proposal idea to a program manager at a funding agency. Based on the white paper, the program manager will encourage or discourage submission of a full proposal, or may suggest sending it to another person at the same agency. In my physical sciences field, white papers are a standard informal prelude to full proposals in all DoD agencies and DOE. They are also a good idea with the NSF if you are not familiar with the program director or are unsure which program to send to.

Preggie Bits

2011-04-07T10:06:00.013-05:00

I am rapidly acquiring a perfectly spherically-symmetric physique. While I am particularly fond of the idea that my symmetries are being captured by the SO(3) group and I generally love all objects of high symmetry, becoming one is a pain. Literally. I am totally disgusting: my back hurts, my tail bone hurts (?!) I waddle like an oversize duck and, being quite tall, cause atmospheric disturbances due to my huge waddling amplitudes. I am uncomfortable in many ways, including clogged nasal passages, overactive digestive tract, and having to sit in faculty meetings. Alright, you caught me, not all my discomforts are pregnancy-related.

Pregnancy is for young people, no doubt about that; but, Gap apparently thinks all pregnant women are cute (and rich) teenagers: I bought a pair of preggie "distressed" jeans at Gap online, thinking of the usual distress features on the waist, pockets, and hems. I got a pair with a huge hole in the middle of a thigh. WTF? That does not look cute on anyone past the age of 19. I had to angrily waddle all the way to the mall to return them.

I have told my group members about the pregnancy. I was going to have them figure it out eventually, but they kept asking why I would be out of commission past a certain date and why they all have to turn in papers promptly and whether I would be available at all past the magical date, so I eventually told them. It's weird, announcing pregnancy to a room full of 20-something guys. Should have sent an email.

I also told my department chair and a few close collaborators (mostly men), and they have all been surprisingly sweet about it. One of them commented (via email) "You need to figure out how not to have babies. There are ways, you know." Perhaps it sounds like I should be upset about this comment, but I chose to take it with humor because the colleague (a) has 3 kids himself, (b) is a goofball, (c) has generally been a wonderful and supportive mentor to me, and I responded that I really really like my husband so it cannot be helped. The colleague then followed up by sharing that he himself had gotten snipped (TMI?) and how it's not a big deal -- I wonder if I should send my husband to him for a pep talk? ;)

It is becoming clear to other people too (I am in week 29) that I may not be simply giving in to my lust for chocolate, but that there may be an alternative explanation for my "broadening." One of the most amusing parts of being pregnant is watching people squirm as they figure out something's going on around the middle, but are unsure if it's pregnancy or overeating and are too embarrassed to ask! The last time around, there were people reluctant to say anything even as I was getting ready to pop, and I thought to myself "Come on, dude, I am not that fat!!! I think it's safe to assume I'm pregnant now. Can't you see I am about to topple over?"

The pregnancy also reminds me of how fast flies. A full academic year can easily go by without me running into some dear colleagues from nearby departments. You can tell that getting together for lunch has been long overdue when you ask "So what's new with you?" and the other person responds "Oh, I had a new baby 6 months ago." I am also reminded of a most ridiculous display of administrative inefficiency: before my last pregnancy, a university account was supposed to be opened with me as the PI. The paperwork was filed, I got pregnant, carried the child to term, and only after I delivered was the account opened. There should be something like the Law of Maximal Reasonable Processing Times: No intra-university paperwork should take longer than it takes to gestate a child.

Recruitment Time Blues

2011-04-02T02:35:00.022-05:00

'Tis that time of year again. The time when grad students receive offers from multiple universities, and faculty are trying to attract the best possible younglings.

Mine is a large public R1 university, the state's flagship, with several top-10 ranked STEM departments and many in the top 20 in their respective fields (mine is ranked 14 or 15). So it's a very good school, but still not a FancyPants Private U. We almost invariably lose good candidates to private schools. I am in a department that does not offer many fellowships or teaching assistantships, so most financial offers to incoming graduate students have to be research assistantship offers, made by individual faculty. (For biomed readers: we don't do rotations.) At best, you meet some applicants at the open house (only those from a few neighboring states are invited in the case of my department), but I rarely find any students I like at these events, and those I do like typically have other attractive options.

The work I do requires a very strong math and physics background, which is often found in international candidates, so my group has a number of international students. With international students, it's really hard to recruit. You go by the BS school's reputation, letters of reference, test scores, talk to them on the phone, exchange emails. It's still hit or miss. For instance, from the same excellent international school I have had one stellar student and one complete dud, who both came in with very strong and very similar records. With international students you have less ability to do a thorough pre-screen because they are remote, so there is a greater chance for an advisor/advisee mismatch. On the other hand, the commitment to fund an international student is quite serious: if without funding, international students cannot pick up a McJob to support themselves or pay the tuition, they cannot always qualify for TA-ships because of language skills, and their dropping out of good standing as a student endangers their ability to stay in the country. If a student -- domestic or international -- doesn't work out, you have to suck it up and pay them until they find another advisor, but this aspect has added importance for international students who usually have absolutely no financial safety net.

I have also been trying to grow my own grad students, i.e., recruit them in my undergraduate courses and have them do research with my group for a summer or two, or at a lower pace over the semester. The good ones usually do it for the letters of recommendation and the fact that they got research experience, and then go on to greener pastures. And that's quite alright. Sometimes, though, you invest considerably more time in some students and they aren't very forthcoming about their plans: my most recent disappointment is a kid, an undergrad who was with the group for two summers and three semesters, coauthored a couple of papers (was one of the middle authors, did small, specific calculations in a large team). He sent a couple of grad school applications to private schools, but was saying the entire time that he planned on staying here for grad school because of family. I helped him write 3 fellowship applications (based on ideas in my larger grant proposals) to federal agencies to help support his studies here. Now he got admitted, with a lucrative first-year fellowship, to a FancyPants Private U, and has jumped on the offer like a kid into a pool of ice cream. I know that pedigree of the PhD institution matters, and that for his career the move is the right one. Still, I am disappointed as I spent a lot of time and energy on him, and some other place gets to cash in on a well-trained student, experienced in research, who may also end up getting a fellowship based on my grant proposal ideas. It's a great deal for the FancyPants Private U. (Ironically, their department is not more highly ranked than mine, but the overall name recognition trumps everything.)

The part that I hate the most is "the recruitment courtship." To stellar candidates, someone in a school like mine is never first choice; I know that very well and ask each potential candidate to tell me honestly what their first choices are, and that if they don't work out we can talk. But, many good candidates feel they need to pretend that my group is their first choice, so we go through this elaborate dance where they swear they are dead serious about coming here, make me issue RA offer letter and everything, only to yet again reveal that they were waiting for an offer from a more prestigious place the entire time. What I hate the most are the patronizing email apologies for not coming here, which come from feeling very smug because multiple places want them. *eyeroll* Whatevs, kid, happy trails.

I don't think there is a magic formula for recruiting good students while not at a FancyPants Private U (perhaps even if you are). When recruiting, I mostly go by the BS school's reputation and look for candidates with excellent undergraduate records and some research experience, but those who may be passed up by FancyPants Private U's because the record has a blemish (e.g., perhaps less than stellar GRE scores). My most recently hired student, who looks like he will be awesome, fits this recruitment pattern. Another way is going by recommendations: my best student so far looked nothing special on paper, but I hired him based on a recommendation from a trusted colleague, and it worked out great.

What is your recruitment strategy for graduate students -- especially if you have no benefit of testing the student out through rotations, but rather have to take him/her on, with pay, essentially sight unseen?

Pushing Out Papers While a Pushover

2011-03-29T11:07:00.014-05:00

Because I am trying to get as many papers out as possible before I deliver about 3 months from now, I have been in intense writing mode and getting increasingly angry with myself for making the same mistake I have seen many of my colleagues make:

Letting the student graduate before all the papers that we have agreed on are written up and submitted.

It's always the same -- there is a job opportunity, or some other time-sensitive extraneous impetus, so the student must graduate sooner rather than later. The student pleads and swears to high heaven that they will wrap up all the still-looming papers afterwards, if only you let them finish. And then they graduate and the papers never happen.

My colleague across the hall has lost a number of papers like that: the student leaves, stops keeping contact, and the papers are never even drafted. With a close collaborator a similar situation happened recently: a student received a nice job offer from a big company, with one half-written paper still in the works. The student graduated and left months ago, and has since been completely incommunicado. We have dropped the project altogether, as the collaborator and the new student haven't been able to make sense of the data left behind (what was measured and what not, what exact conditions etc.) A lot of work is simply lost because the collaborator does not have the time or the money to repeat everything with the new student; the experimental data is quite interesting and somewhat counterintuitive. My postdoc and I have been working on the theory, which we will also drop since there now isn't sufficient experimental data to confirm that the counterintuitive phenomenon is indeed happening and is not an artifact.

Although I promised myself I would never do that to myself -- let the student graduate before all his/her obligations to the group have been fulfilled (the papers we have agreed on are written up and submitted), it turns out I am as much of a pushover as the next faculty, if not more. I am facing a similar situation with two of my group members, one former student but still here, postdoc(k)ing temporarily, one still a student.

I let the temp postdoc graduate at the end of 2010 because we figured a couple of months would not mean much, and graduating in 2010 (sooner) looks better on his CV than 2011 (later). He was going to stay as a temporary and part-time postdoc while interviewing for jobs and wrapping up two more papers. Instead, in the 3 months he's been here after the PhD, all he's been doing is cramming for his interviews, going on interviews, and he started training to do experiments with some of my experimental collaborators. I have been paying him this entire time. He only just gave me a pathetic draft -- unworthy of a second-year grad student, let alone someone experienced in writing papers -- of what's supposed to be the crown jewel paper from his thesis, which clearly demonstrates he doesn't give a rat's ass about it any more. Thank you, GMP, for having been my advisor and paying me as an RA for 5 years; now that I have the PhD, even though you are still paying me, I thought this might be a good time to spit in your face.

The other, current graduate student just came back from the APS March Meeting last week, where he spoke with his desired future postdoc advisor, who said he'd take the student but they should make it ASAP as he's got some flex funds expiring in the fall two years from now. So now the student, who has been taking lots of classes, more than what he needed and for longer than he needed to in order to get an MS in a "purer" discipline along the way, all of a sudden wants to crank out 3 papers by the end of the year (yeah, like that's gonna happen with his writing speed) and go do the postdoc. I am completely furious. I am sorry, but I am under the impression that if I pay you as an RA for years, the least you can do is have some time after you are done with classses to do the goddamn research and produce some science that the nice funding agency paying you can show for all the money it expended on you. But that's just me being deluded, right? The only way all these papers are going to happen is if I write them from scratch and he's permitted to work on loose ends at his new position. What's the likelihood of the latter happening?

I know there is an overwhelming sentiment in the blogosphere that faculty are universally bad to students, selfish, unyielding, providing insufficient guidance and oversight, alternatively providing too much oversight/micromanaging/stifling students, or being unaccommodating of the students desires to do this, that, or the other.

But the longer I am faculty, the more cynical I am forced to become. Graduate students can be really quite selfish, too: they are there to forward their own career goals, often willfully ignorant of who actually pays their stipend, that those stipends are not prizes for their awesomeness, but rather money from the federal government for which the advisor's group has to do a certain amount of work. They ignore what goes into acquiring said money, that it's not anybody's God-given right, and that a failure to produce papers damages their group's prospects for doing science in the future.

When the advisor is unyielding about graduation and holds it contingent on certain papers being ready, the advisor is perceived to be a selfish tyrant. Well, when the student leaves all the work behind and never look back after having promised to complete it, I fear the student is a selfish liar.

The PhD advising relationship is a symbiotic one: it's supposed to benefit both the advisor's group and the student's career goals, and it assumes everyone involved is an adult. It's not a parent-child relationship, where the child (student) can count on unconditional love and support no matter how self-centered they are. Failure to produce papers -- and I assure you I am not a GlamourMag-obsessed maniac -- is indeed a grave one, for everyone involved. The work does not, in fact, exist until it has been published in a peer-reviewed journal.

Dear faculty colleagues, yes, you can indeed be too much of a pushover: you want to do the right thing and be fair and accommodating of the students' future, but then they end up screwing you over. I, for once, am now considerably less likely to accommodate future requests for great flexibility in graduation dates. I cannot afford falling out of grace with program officers because I am not delivering on promised papers. And I will not keep letting other people down, whose CV's and/or future job prospects may also depend heavily on the work that never gets published. Feel free to call me a tyrant. I consider it a case of "Once bitten, twice shy."

Industry Job after a PhD

2011-03-25T00:07:00.004-05:00

Once your PhD students graduate, how much assistance do you, as their PhD advisor, owe them in terms of finding employment? I am in a physical science field and most of my students go into industry (others go to postdocs; I have one who spent a couple of years in a company and is now at a national lab). Usually, it takes an industry-bound student a couple of interviews and they find a job.

There is no doubt that you owe your students the best possible recommendations that you can honestly give them. And you owe it to them to send the recommendations to as many places as they need, as often as they need, pretty much for the duration of their career and yours. You owe it to them to talk to whomever is interested in them or their work, and you owe it to them to remain their mentor and supporter for as long as they need your mentoring and support.

Now, I have a student who has been with me for 5 years, did a lot of really nice work and published a lot of papers, some of them already highly cited. He graduated in December and has stayed for a short-term postdoc to wrap up some additional papers and interview. He was dead-set on finding an industry job, but after 6 interviews (mostly over the phone) he has no offers. Apparently, his resume looks good, but he cannot sell himself, not even to the point of landing an on-site interview.

I am not sure how to help him at this point. He has been well-connected to the university community, participated in numerous career fairs and workshops. I have pulled the industry contacts I have, and he got a couple of interviews this way, but they didn't work out. He tells me that feels he does not have the skills they need and that his training has somehow failed him. He might have a point, but to what degree can I personally ensure his future employability in an arbitrary company? It's not like a company pays me to train their future staff. A PhD is a degree demonstrating that you have done a cutting-edge, long-term project with (ideally minimal) supervision from beginning to end, that you have expertise in a certain general area and deep expertise in a certain subarea. A PhD degree means you can do quality science, that you have the brainpower and skills for analytical thinking, and that you can pick up new things quickly.

There appears to be a dissonance between academic training and industry requirements. In academia, you need to be very good at what you have chosen to do: you are judged based on how deep your expertise in your chosen field is and how original your contributions within it are. In all the interviews for industry jobs that my student had (and this holds for other students, who were successful in landing similar jobs), the interviewers didn't seem to care about what he did for his PhD, or how original or complicated his contribution was; they cared about the different tools he could use and quizzed him on the course-level knowledge about a lot of different systems in his general expertise area. They cared about specific things that they wanted him to know right now; the ability to pick up new things efficiently apparently didn't come to play.

It's tough finding a job. I personally never desired to work in industry (I have deep aversion to people telling me what to do). When I was looking for a job in my last year on the PhD, I knew what I wanted -- faculty position or bust -- and didn't ask my advisor for anything beyond the letters of recommendation. I didn't think it was his job to find me a job. I was under the impression that most students are of the same mindset (looking out for themselves).

I can't help but feel that I have failed this student in that all his training didn't actually prepare him for what he wants to do. It doesn't help that he's not the world's best communicator and can come off as a bit of a jerk (we've been working on this) by virtue of downlplaying everything about himself, his work, and everyone involved. In his case it all comes from modesty, but does not look too good. He would make a great research scientist, however. He is technically great and loves dabbling in different projects, and is thus well-liked and respected by my experimental collaborators and their numerous students. He's actually very happy here and now, disappointed by the interview cycle, plans on staying a bit longer as a postdoc and learning to do experiments with some of my collaborators, so he should be set at least temporarily...

What do you think, my dear readers, how much of a responsibility does or should a PhD advisor really have in helping a student land his/her first after-PhD job versus how much of this responsibility lies with the student? How well do we, as advisors, prepare our PhD's for nonacademic jobs? Are we, being career scientists and academics, at all qualified to prepare students to be anything but scientists and academics?

Traveling without Moving

2011-03-23T00:48:00.013-05:00

If I had to point out one aspect of my career that having small children has significantly impaired, 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 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 were living 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 my 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!

Optimist/Pessimist

2011-03-17T01:05:00.013-05:00

Today, my postdoc and I went to grab some lunch. This is my postdoc's second year with the group and he has been doing very well. He has grown tremendously in all professional aspects, from writing papers and giving talks, to preparing grants and mentoring other group members. He has been traveling a lot, to many, many conferences. I have sent him to give invited talks in my stead on several occasions (sometimes on projects quite unrelated to his) and he has risen to each occasion beautifully. He has been taking criticism and advice seriously, and took advantage of every chance to better himself through professional workshops and participation in collaborations with other groups. I am quite proud to see the growth my postdoc has shown in the time he's been here. He appears confident and bursting with good ideas, and I can certainly see him leading his own group at this point.

Over lunch, we chatted about his future prospects. He has sent out his tenure track applications (I think around 25) and has been waiting for responses. His record looks very good and we know he has been shortlisted at a couple of very good places, but still no interviews. He has also applied for a couple of postdoc fellowships. I have a number of grants pending and several more in the works, and I promised him that, if the tenure track search doesn't work out for some reason this year, that I will do everything in my power to provide continued support for him so he can stay here and keep trying for TT for another year or two.

His response surprised me a bit: he said that something is bound to work out, it's just the question of what. Either he'll get a TT position, or will get one of the fellowships he applied for, or I will get some of the grants currently in review. But something will certainly work out, as we have our tentacles in enough places that by virtue of statistics something must...

What took me aback is how positive his outlook was. My attitude tends to be that it can easily happen that nothing works out... That there is noting certain about any aspect of funding, that the fact he sent out all those applications doesn't mean much as there are plenty of smart people who never make it, that all my grant applications and all of his fellowship applications mean squat. He can easily end up unemployed... Don't worry, I didn't shatter his dreams, I kept my mouth shut. But I honestly don't know if I was always this gloomy, or if being a faculty has brought it out rather than simply amplified it.

I guess I qualify as a pessimist. My husband certainly says so. I consider it one of my major flaws: nobody wants to be around a grouch; sunny, upbeat people are much more fun to live with and to be around. My husband is an optimist and I envy him -- life seems so much more enjoyable for him. He seems so carefree. I wonder how I can get on whatever drug it is that he's on, but alas, no drugs are involved (unless you count playing World of Warcraft for several hours every day). Maybe his mother cuddled with him more when he was a kid or something, because my hub is just one happy person.

I feel bad about being a pessimist because in all honesty I have a pretty good life; I really should not complain. Yet I always do. It's an inherent tendency to amplify the negative and downplay the positive. Here's an example: a couple of weeks ago, I heard that an NSF grant of mine would not be funded (I still have other 4 grants pending, some at the NSF and some at other places). It took me 10 days to calm down -- I was in disbelief, then angry, then started maniacally looking for alternative sources of funding, talking to program managers in multiple agencies, and am now in the white-paper-writing stage and hoping to submit several new grant applications based on the carcass of the rejected one.

In contrast, today I found out that I had received a pretty cool teaching award. It's a fairly big deal, a nice named award that is pretty competitive, comes with a plaque and a bit of money and an award ceremony. I am particularly pleased because it emphasizes excellence in teaching undergraduates and requires letters from students. I love teaching undergrads (even if I often despair at their poor command of calculus), they are adorably bewildered and so very fun to watch as they work on grasping difficult concepts. Anyway, the award is a nice recognition and a nice bullet on my CV. I should be very happy, right? Well, the elation lasted for a total of 7.32 minutes. Shortly thereafter I was back to "meh."

Dear reader, are you an optimist or a pessimist? Are you different in your personal and professional lives? How do you keep your spirits up in the face of professional woes?

Technical Writing Pet Peeves Cont'd

2011-03-15T12:24:00.016-05:00

I had a lot of fun reading about everyone's technical writing pet peeves in the comments to last week's post Written Off.
I have also realized that I am a petty, petty person: I get upset about more than 80% of all the peeves that different people have cumulatively listed! And I must have been separated at birth from at least two of my anonymous commenters..!

I wanted to follow up on a couple of specific comments. Anon on March 10 wrote:

I'm curious: do you have a couple of examples of particularly well-written papers? I'd like to see what you consider the pinnacle of scientific writing.

Well, I like my own technical writing, but perhaps I am a little biased there. :) I have a few favorite writers, one of them my frequent collaborator, but I am afraid that revealing their names would convey a bit too much about what I do. So I will refer you to Editor's Choice articles in Physical Review Letters (PRL for short). All PRL articles should be accessible to an audience broader than just the narrow specialists, and those papers marked as Editor's Choice should be particularly successful in this regard and promote reading across disciplines. Here are two papers that are fairly far removed from my research field, but I was able to enjoy and appreciate them, and that says something. One is
a single-author PRL by Sabine Hossenfelder, who also happens to blog on Backreaction (thanks Alex for recommending it!)
Bounds on an Energy-Dependent and Observer-Independent Speed of Light from Violations of Locality.
Another one I remember from longer ago is Andread Karch and Lisa Randall's
Relaxing to Three Dimensions. Lisa Randall is well known for writing popular science books.

A comment that struck a chord was that of Anon on March 15:

Pet-peeve: when a professor (who is a non-native English speaker) attempts to correct my English.

News flash to the professor: you may have a PhD and know more about science, but your English is not your forte.

When it comes to writing technical manuscripts, it's not just about one's command of English: it's about the proper structure of the manuscript, using the proper jargon, and most importantly conveying the message clearly. I find that students who are native English speakers can sometimes be particularly difficult to educate in this regard, because no matter what the comment is, they automatically assume they know better.

I am a faculty and a non-native speaker of English. I think that most faculty who are not native English speakers are aware of the fact that their English may not be perfect. However, most often what the student may view as an issue of language is actually something much different and much more critical: either something is wrong with the paper structure (e.g., you must actually motivate why you are doing what you are doing, you must also state clearly what is new in your paper and why), the style is inappropriate (e.g., adjective diarrhea has no place in technical writing), or perhaps the paper is simply unclear or bursting with redundancies. Often it can be a matter of the student not really understanding what it is that it new and important, or missing the big picture of how our work fits in the grand scheme of things; this issue comes up equally often with native and non-native English speaker students, and this is where the advisor's technical expertise is key.

If you are a native English speaker being advised by a non-native English speaker faculty, next time when your advisor tries to correct your manuscript, please ask yourself honestly whether he/she has a point. I bet you dollars to donuts that, more often than not, the advisor is primarily trying to correct the structural faults of the manuscript, improve the presentation (make it clearer or more succinct), and explain better what the motivation is or what your results mean. I suppose it is possible the advisor simply has control/micromanagement issues or is overestimating the quality of his/her English... However, if you dismiss your advisor's comments a priori because you consider yourself infallible by virtue of being a native English speaker, you are (a) coming across as disrespectful and needlessly irritating your advisor, and (b) most likely passing up a very good opportunity to improve your technical writing.

Written Off

2011-03-10T00:12:00.021-06:00

In an attempt to get as much work done as possible before the inevitable decline in cognitive abilities due to infant-induced insomnia, I am now working maniacally to finish multiple white papers, start drafting grants for the May through Sept deadlines, and prepare all nearly-ready journal manuscripts for submission.

The latter activity has of late been the bane of my existence.

1) When I spend many, many hours editing your excruciatingly comprehensive paper in equally excruciating detail, and you give me the next version in which large chunks of text have been untouched so I have to fuckin' do it all over again, I will bite your head off. Do not bat your eyelashes in dismay at my wrath: ENTER THE GODDAMN CHANGES WHEN I REQUEST THEM.

2) If I tell you that the introduction sucks so badly that nobody can tell what the hell we did that was new or why we bothered with the work to begin with or where our work falls in the grand scheme of things, that means you HAVE TO COMPLETELY REDO IT.
When all I write in big, screaming letters is REVISE THOROUGHLY, and then talk to you to give you pointers along which it needs to be revised, that does NOT mean that the writeup is perfect. In fact, it means that it stinks so bad that the only way to save humanity from such a pathetic attempt at scientific writing is to burn it, and no amount of ink would have been enough to specifically mark all that is wrong with it. REVISE COMPLETELY.

3) Have mercy towards the reader. Do not bestow on him/her artificial, painfully cumbersome compound adjectives that no one in their right mind would use in speech. When techniques Awesome, Breathtaking, and Crucial are combined into an über-technique for a measurement, please, please don't say "Awesome-Breathtaking-Crucial-measured quantity". Saying "quantity measured by the combined Awesome-Breathtaking-Crucial (A-B-C) technique" is fine.

4) Do not keep your paper at arm's length, like it's a poisonous reptile that will hurt you if you get too close. Don't write in a detached, (cumbersome adjective alert!) passive-voice-heavy style. If you hate your paper, it will hate you back, and the reviewers will hate both of you even more. Clear, fluid, and engaging writing is absolutely critical. I cannot emphasize enough how strongly the good quality of writing correlates with short review times and overall better review outcomes.

5) Just because you found a specific analytical derivation or a computational intricacy or an experimental protocol particularly daunting and were proud of yourself for surmounting this obstacle, that does not necessarily qualify said obstacle for a central position in your paper. The paper must present a story with the technical details necessary to describe the work and support your message without obscuring it. For the 20 pages of details that are only likely to be read by a poor grad student soul entrusted with reproducing your data, there are appendices and online supplementary documents.

6) Don't be lazy with references. One of the most common complaints I have regarding the writing of my students, even those who write compelling technical prose, is underciting. I am looking at a manuscript written by a recent PhD grad of mine, who is sticking around for a short-term postdoc while interviewing for jobs: there is a large amount of text in the introduction, ironed out through multiple conference abstracts and his own PhD dissertation writing process; in the text, there are statements we know to be true, but they are not trivially obvious and should therefore be accompanied by appropriate references. He did not cite anyone.

7) Random pet peeves: I hate "impact" used as a verb. Not sure why, I just do. I hate reading about stuff being "negatively impacted" by the leprechaun turd production. I have a collaborator who savors it (in contrast to "to influence" or "to affect," for instance) and it's driving me crazy. Then again, I also used to feel passionately against "thus," but have since developed a tolerance to it. And I hate it when people take liberties with abbreviating journal titles as they see fit (and not as they are standardly abbreviated). I am religious about the serial comma.

I invite you to share your own technical writing pet peeves.

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