Bad habits

PP is right, the tendency to talk about one lab member to another is a terrible habit. And I've been mulling over the whats and wherefores and how-to-fixes since I added that to the end of my last post. PropterDoc's comment, that her supervisor treated all lab members as junior colleagues, helped me see where the conflict lies, and perhaps some of the origins of my bad habits... so, a rather self-indulgent reflective post to record some of these musings.

My PhD supervisor was absolutely adamant that we were junior colleagues, responsible for ourselves, not students or employees of his. Mostly this was very positive, although he did tend to use it as a reason to avoid responsibility at times. He was also a very taciturn, private person, a very focused, clever, intellectually incisive person who didn't believe in unnecessary praise and had real trouble phrasing a question in a positive way... plus he had favourites. People whom he DID talk to, help immediately, praise to the skies to visitors. This is, of course, partly my perception as a needy, insecure student - but it's a widely acknowledged fact in the field, other people get the same impression.

some basic principles
I want to treat all researchers, from the project student to the professor, as colleagues, but I also want to be human, and I want my lab members to know ALL about the profession, not just about their little bit.

I try to stick to the simple rule of not saying (or blogging, or emailing) anything I wouldn't say to someone's face. I also know that I don't stick to it because I am a coward. I am not willing, in most cases, to face DrN's vitriol or Golden Boy's shouting and agression and telling tales to the head of research (who then Has Words, because I am the over-dramatic mentally ill person who is Clearly At Fault since Golden Boy is Golden therefore Right), so I don't bring up issues with them directly if I can possibly avoid it unless the timing is perfect, things I would happily take up with most colleagues. It's sort of bullying, but I avoid situations where it comes up, and mostly nothing reportable happens and I get on with them OK. Sometimes I even get on with them well. Which, yes, is characteristic of abusive situations... sigh. Life is Complicated!

The conflict comes because, to me, colleagues are people you talk to about problems, and part of a researcher's training is to see how all the little things work, to get some insight into the 'fuzzy stuff' and the various aspects of an academic's life. Whilst I wouldn’t share a huge problem (‘my grant failed!’) with a first year student – too big for them, and too easily giving the impression I’m not to be respected as a scientist – I do see part of my role towards my lab members as mentoring them into running their own research – and their own group, if they so wish.

examples and excuses
For example, typically I will encourage and help a student in the early stages to write little grant applications – e.g. a one-page request for funds for analyses or field costs from the department or a grad-student competition. In the later stages, depending on their career plans, I’ll offer them the chance to work with me on a national large grant application or a tender for commercial work – if at all possible, on one where they would personally benefit from our success. I think most people agree that this is good practice.

The situation gets muddier when thinking about other aspects of professional life. I don’t KNOW where the boundary lies, and I’m not good at judging on my feet. I'm also, like many academics, a bit weak on the old EQ - my social skills are adequate but hardly impressive. I mean, I'm a scientist and an academic, my idea of a great weekend might involve seeing a small number of other people for a couple of hours, maybe a phone call and a bit of blogging, and at least 40 hours of blissful, book-riddled solitude, you know?

I try to be upfront about my strengths and weaknesses, about how I design my work to make the most of my strengths and work on my weaknesses, about how students can best get results from me (e.g. reminders, making appointments, emailing questions so I can think about them first). And similarly I discuss other people’s strengths and weaknesses both with them directly, and to other students, as tactfully as possible (e.g. "NewStudent, please don’t follow Joe’s lab method for X, he is still learning to do X and might accidentally mislead you. If you need help and I’m not around or you don’t want to ask me, ask Sue – she gets consistently great results with that method"). I try to be absolutely clear that they are very different people and all have strengths as well as weaknesses (even KhakiWearingStudent, whose academic skills I have worried about here, is both the best person at the most physically demanding aspects of our fieldwork and has the most positive way of dealing with setbacks of anyone in the lab).

To look at a couple of recent examples of talking about one to t'other:
in the last post I mentioned asking SeniorStudent if she had suggestions about KhakiWearingStudent’s lab work, and asking her when he isn’t there. Why did I ask her? Several reasons –

• she has good problem solving skills
• she spends far more time in the lab than I do and probably has a much better idea if there are any simply resolvable issues (like, say, a queuing problem which means that some people’s samples are ‘past their best’ when they get to a key stage, or a bad habit creeping in, or two concentrations of one chemical being stored next to each other and needing better labels)
• I want her to develop her ability to think about other people and other work in the lab rather than just her own
• I am stuck and want her input

. Why not in front of KhakiWearingStudent?

• In case she or I says something which might be misunderstood – she and I share a rather dark sense of humour which confuses the more straightforward at times
• Because KWS needs clear instruction at this point, not to be part of a discussion of options (I’ve tried that. His ability to misunderstand and follow up the least likely solution, or to do random combinations of things rather than logical ones, has to be seen to be believed – I think it’s partly that he struggles to plan or see a larger picture, partly his natural scatter-gun approach to life, partly maybe that he has some undiagnosed learning problem such as ADHD which makes it hard for him to be organised… AT THIS STAGE, he needs clear step by step instructions for lab work, with no ‘if…then’ or ‘either…or’. Over the next year or two, I will work with him with the goal of getting him to be able to write his OWN set of rules. He can already handle complexity and multiple explanations when reading the literature, it just all goes to pot when he gets into the lab. Maybe it’s all the waiting and need to be systematic in lab?)
• Because KWS is, like me, very chatty, and conversations which involve both of us tend to take a while to get to the point
• because I am better at one to one conversations when there’s a problem to be solved
• Because SeniorStudent is disinclined to speak up in group meetings
• because I am stuck and he's at a point where he needs me to be upbeat and confident that he CAN do this, he needs encouagement

All good reasons - but I'm still not sure it's the right action.

I posted fairly recently about the problems in the three-way relationship of DrN (lead supervisor), TalkyStudent (research student) and me (Secondary supervisor), here. Helping TalkyStudent with these issues inevitably involves acknowledging that her lead supervisor is not perfect. So… yeah, we probably bitch a little. I think venting is sometimes useful. I also think it’s essential that

• these conversations go beyond the griping to being positive – “TS, DrN is hard to work with at times, especially when she’s feeling stressed, but she is an international expert at Y. You need to remember that you can learn a huge amount from her, and she doesn’t deliberately set out to upset you. So, let’s think about how you can get what you need…”
and end up with some sort of strategy – “OK, we think that part of the problem is that she thinks you’re not doing enough reading around your lab work, perhaps because you’re reading at home not in the office. Perhaps you could make a point of noting some key questions from the reading, so that you can ask her questions like “I noticed that Jones (2007) and Bloggs (2008) both cite Smith (2005) but interpret it differently. When I read that paper, I thought the data were irrelevant to Bloggs’ argument – what did you think?” – or send her a weekly email summarising your reading for the week – or ask her how she thinks you should be showing that you are reading”.

some colleagues would say I was definitely out of order, but I find it really hard not to try and help a crying student, especially when I have had the same problems myself with the academic in question – if I feel inadequate and silenced sometimes, how will a grad student feel?

I ideally would have other colleagues around to talk about this stuff with, but I rarely manage it. I can identify three reasons right off:

• some unpleasantly competitive, ‘hah you can’t even run your own lab’ attitudes from some colleagues (who also would then almost certainly tell THEIR lab members that I was asking them for help because they know more than I do, and even telling MY lab members to come to them in future rather than me due to their [mostly imaginary] expertise in my subject area)
the busyness of most of the people I get on with - and difficulty of actually making time to talk
a simple lack of colleagues with sufficiently overlapping areas of expertise – even with lab-sharing DrN to my area, we emphasise different methods in different systems, just use the same equipment to measure our prepared samples.
A sense of disloyalty in talking to colleagues in other universities (about things like the second example, at least.)

possible remedies
Maybe some of these issues would be best dealt with by bringing them up professionally and calmly and non-confrontationally in a lab meeting. I may not be everyone's overall boss in some hierachical sense, or have the same 'tools' available to management in commercial contexts, but I lead this lab - I am in charge, and the buck stops with me. And I need to lead it, both to keep morale up, and for my own career - I've worked with gloomy, going-with-the-flow types and they make everything harder. But we rarely have lab meetings, and have no regular formal scheduled event. Here are some reasons:

• Our physical space is mostly shared - we work in four main 'messy' areas, only one of which is essentially 'ours' (the others are shared with teaching, other groups etc.), and spend most of our time in a 'clean' microscope area shared with some of DrN's people and some others. DrN and I are jointly 'academically responsible' for this area. DrN refuses to come to lab meetings, to allow her people to attend lab meetings, to take any note of anything discussed at lab meetings. They are a waste of time. So that makes the group feel powerless - we can agree ground rules, but we can't enforce them - and is particularly tricky when some of the research students are jointly supervised by us - it puts them in a nasty position. When I've tried in the past to have lab meetings, DrN has made a point of coming into the lab area five minutes before and telling her people and our joint students NOT to go, and I have to hold the meetings outside the lab space because of this
• pathetic, eh? But... management if anything backs DrN. It is apparently patronising and inappropriate to have meetings of seperate lab users, all issues should be dealt with at a departmental level through the Departmental Laboratory Committee (guess who represents our section on that Committee? DrN! And no, it's not elected, it's a selected role). Yeah, those in charge at present are not laboratory scientists.
• seeing everyone individually about their progress every 1-2 weeks is already in place, so an extra meeting can seem superfluous
• Working schedules. TalkyStudent is part-time, and works a professional job, so is only in lab for one weekday (she also does at least one weekend day). OverseasStudent has a pre-school child and a part-time job, so her hours vary widely from week to week. I have an erratic teaching schedule and am not full-time, and both SeniorStudent and KhakiWearingStudent TA at times, again on a schedule which varies week to week. So setting up a habit is problematic

Next semester, I plan to kick-start our journal-club again (we are supposed to go to a 'super-group' journal club, because most groups are small (mean about 3 persons), and it's considered good to encourage a very broad view on our research area - in principle I really like this. In practice, it rarely happens, and most colleagues stay away unless it's one of 'their' papers, and so the students don't see the point as they have other seminars to attend too...) but I have successfully run a journal-club/masterclass/work-in-progress discussion series for my lot, and having DrVisit and DrSabb around will hopefully help get good discussions going - and use the last 5-10 minutes for general lab management stuff.

Blogging has really really helped - I am much more prone to think 'how can I write about this? What's the lesson, what's the humour, how can I pseudonymise this situation? than to blab at the nearest someone.

I need a better social life outside of work, a LOCAL network. It's bloomin' hard work trying to find one, never mind the sort which includes people you can worry about stuff like this with!

I would like a mentor. I don't have one, have failed to find one, am not eligible for the university programme (you need to be 'new' or fast-track/'aspiring to leadership' i.e. admin. track. I am old and slow-track). At least you lot make useful comments and write helpful stuff on your blogs sometimes - but 'my mentor, the internet' is just... not perfect, you know?

At least I am aware of it, and working on it.

But it is a terrible habit.

And I wish I didn't do it.