Bah humbug

Data-Crunching Project is jumping up and down on my nerves again.

Brief backstory: PI and Post-Doc Who Generates Data decided to apply for a grant to fund PDWGD to work on a really neat problem.  They identified a big gap in their programme of work which could be plugged by a method I have experience with, and which needs the kind of data analysis I'm an expert at.  They asked me to join the project as a Co-PI. 

We applied and were successfully funded.  No money ever came to NorthernUni (PI held the grant at SouthernUni, where PDWGD worked), therefore as far as my university is concerned, I am using my 'scholarship time' to work on this, it's not 'proper research'.  However, I did spend a little time in the field early on, some bench work, a LOT of time training PDWGD in the theory and methods, and I had agreed to do a certain amount of data analysis.  For which PDWGD was supposed to supply me with certain kinds of data.

PDWGD and PI had a lovely time at SouthernUni.  They collected masses of data.  They had such fun they decided that it would be much better if they collected more data rather than process the data for me to analyse it.  And of course, why should they send the data to me when they'd said they would?  They were COLLECTING data, that's the hard part, the analysis is easy, right?

About three years ago - no, nearly FOUR years ago - a mass of undigested data arrived.  A HUGE MASS of it.  Not in the agreed formats.  It took weeks of full-time work for me to turn it into moderately useful formats.  And there were problems of the 'oh, no, we didn't record that.  Did you need to know it?' and 'well that wasn't in our strategy, can't you fudge it?' (answer - NO.  I trained PDWGD in my methods so that they could develop an appropriate strategy to generate usable data, right?).

PDWGD gets a great industry job as soon as the grant ends, which keeps them very busy.  So... we process data.  Lots of data.  And we get some preliminary results, which we present at conferences, and we begin to write a SuperDuperEverythingPaper.  Work goes slowly because, well, we all have day jobs.  But I have just about finished the analyses for this paper when... PDWGD announces oh, they found a few typos, here's the revised raw data.  Yeah, I get to start over completely.  Not Happy.

After a lot of toing and froing (and well received conference talks), the meaty bit of the data analysis that I was doing was kicked out of the SDE paper (because redoing the analysis was taking a long time, and because the paper was Far Too Big), leaving only the theory and some simulations for my part (which again took Quite A While owing to Some People changing their minds regularly about the parameters and not realising that that meant starting over multiple times). was submitted to a fairly high ranked journal - not overly ambitious, we just wanted to get it OUT.  And the data analysis, which I had started to redo, was put aside.  I am kind of busy with things like Bequest Project and students and teaching...

Last week SDE paper was rejected.  Turns out PI was relying on it for their REF submission, and is now in a Big Panic.  When will the data analysis paper come out?  OK, OK, I put aside the things I want to work on this week, and I revisit the many-layered folder tree that is any attempt at large scale data analysis.  I find the half-done data preparation, and I start to pull it all together.  I identify two more things I can do with the data (or maybe three) which will make this a stronger paper.  And I realise that I have made a grossly simplifying assumption about some of the field data, so I email PI to see what PI thinks I should do.

And get a STROPPY email back about how come I'm only just noticing this problem, why can't I just write up the analyses I did that we pulled from SDE paper (um, because they were based on the Wrong Data?)?  Sorry collaborator, you may be stressed, but don't send me stroppy emails when I'm trying to fix major data screw-ups caused by your PDWGD, for research I had no funding for and therefore no time allowance for.

I'm going home and not thinking about it any more.  I ought to grade :-(  But maybe I will just go to bed very early and listen to the radio instead.

The ultimate goal

The theme of this quarter's scientiaecarnival is The Ultimate Goal:

Sometimes we lose track of why we got into science. But, at some point, I'm sure we all had grandiose dreams of all the things we were going to accomplish as scientists. Sure, those goals may have changed as we evolved from naive and idealistic undergraduate students to where we are now, but surely there's some big idea that's pushing us, even in the distant background.

So, what is your ultimate career goal? Do you want to win the Nobel Prize? Cure cancer? Build a better mouse trap? What is it that you want to be remembered for career-wise?

I have been thinking about this one and not writing about it, but thought I might as well get something down.

Why did I get into science? There are all sorts of answers. They include:

• "because my school wouldn't let me take history AND further maths together as 'A'level subjects",


• "because I thought that I had a much better chance of retraining in a humanities/social science discipline than a science discipline, that science required a sort of aculturation that happened best when you were young"


• "because I was OK at it"


• "because my Eng Lit teacher was an uncultured person who didn't like me" (I was very annoying, I'm sure)


• "because modern foreign languages are hard"


• "because I loved maths, but realised I wasn't good enough to be a mathematician"


• "because people told me I wasn't clever enough"


• "because I want to know how things work"

But the one that came to mind on reading this prompt was "because I always wanted to be Mr Spock, not Captain Kirk or Dr McCoy." [yes, this is age-revealing. I didn't like next gen's obsession with meetings or the pointlessness of the 'bad guys' - Ferengi = trivial nuisances, Borg/Q = all-powerful, nothing we can do about it, Roms/Klingons = like enough levels of development and strength that their reasons make sense and they are proper antagonists who can actually win sometimes and lose sometimes. It was too touchy-feely-silly, and it clearly needed a Vulcan. Never watched any of the others enough to get a proper feel for them. I rather like the total datedness of ST:classic because it somehow makes the story stand out better. And also, they're just puppets for me to project onto anyway...].

Spock was a scientist who was not mad or bad or evil or unworldly. Spock didn't need sheltering - he sheltered and protected. Spock was calm (and I longed for calm, for self-possession), he didn't have to do the stressful icky people stuff because he was bad at it and it was OK that he was bad at it, he was strong AND brilliantly intelligent AND moral (most scientists get to be just one in fiction, outside of medicine at least), he was heroic and logical and he got to learn cool new stuff every day. Also, he had the best gadgets. Who wouldn't want to be Spock? Teenage me thought that getting the girl/boy (especially when it was always a one night/one week stand) was totally dull compared to finding new life forms! I mean, can you imagine what Mr Spock's publication list would look like?? (Because Spock has the anti-procrastination mojo needed to write up the damn papers already and submit them, right?). Realising that in the canon the calm of a Vulcan is earned and re-earned in daily discipline only made it even cooler.

And yes, I still want to be Mr Spock in many ways. I want the truth to matter more than anything. I want to be a person of integrity, loyal and true and honest. I want to have friends who like me and will be there for me, despite me being completely my own unique self and therefore sometimes irritating or baffling to them. I want to know things, to learn new things and share them again and again. I want to be a protector and an explorer. I want to be disciplined and powerful and valued. I want to leave my department, my field, my discipline, the world of science, maybe even the society and world I live in, a little fairer and more open to all who want to know, a little less clique-y and intolerant and arrogant. I want to pour out a cleanly love of knowledge for its own sake, to share the simple, profound joy when things fall into place and something new is understood, when a puzzle piece clicks home and a long-misread clue makes new, surprising sense.

I do also want to be a good mentor, a teacher, someone who shares. I want to do good work. The sort of work people will still cite occasionally in 50 years time, even if it doesn't hit top of the charts now. Not sexy, hot, 'now' work - useful, meaningful, foundational work. If my science is useful, has impact, that's a bonus. My purpose is more the sharing of the methods, applying myself to the problems that come before me, teaching others how to do the same, and adding my own little pieces of straw and clay to the bricks that build the edifice of knowledge that in the long term, far away, may cure cancer or cancel poverty or save the planet.

I don't really remember if I ever had a single scientific goal. I didn't start this journey meaning to end up in Beach Studies. I may not - indeeed, don't intend to - finish my career in Beach Studies or doing the same sort of work I've done for the past twenty+ years. Maybe that makes me a bit of an imposter, a bit of a waste of a space in the academy, but I have pretty much come to terms with it and with my own un-Spock-ness.

Sometimes, a little puzzle piece falls into place for someone else, and I watch their excitement with great pleasure - almost as great as when it happens to me. I get to be as awed as a little child first realising that the moon is both unbelievably far away AND measurably far away, on a regular basis, and to learn new things. Learning is growth, and growth (and nurturing growth in others) is what I think humans are here to do (I could phrase that in terms of growing in God, growing towards God, seeking to be a little less me and a little more Deity every moment). Science gives me rich soil and many opportunities (Great are the works of the Lord, studied by all who delight in them).

My ultimate goal? To become a better person, help others along the way, and reveal truth. Doesn't that sound pompous? Maybe I should stick to saying 'I wanted to be Mr Spock'.

Summer can be interesting

In summer, academics actually get to go into the labs and do actual data collection, at least, they do in places like mine where funding is relatively low and we don't have technicians/post-docs/RAs to whom one can assign all the little pilot studies, finishing up bits etc. And I share the same lab needs, and therefore the same set of labs, with two other colleagues, one of whom is a Dr Labrador (DrL).

Today, I was in the general lab checking and weighing dried samples from the fieldwork we did last month (which, yes, is really PDF's job but we're short of time and it's a nice mindless job to do in an hour here and an hour there in the summer, and if it's done now it doesn't need to be done in teaching term which is always a help as the general lab will be full of project students). And DrL was in there too, sieving and weighing some samples for some pilot data he needs.

Things I thought, but did not say, because it's not good to hint that colleagues are slap-dash:
"Why are you weighing the sample on the high-precision balance and then spilling half of it all over the bench during sieving?"
"Why are you weighing the sieve residue on the high-precision balance... after putting it into an unwashed, clearly dirty beaker?"
"Why aren't you closing the lid on the high-precision balance?"
"Why are there drops of liquid and bits of... stuff... splashed on the glass of the enclosure of the high-precision balance?"
"Why is my notebook wet after I put it down on the weighing bench?"

Sigh.

No wonder some of his students think I'm excessively pernickerty.


P.S. Marmoset - Furball keeps doing the book-case ascent after I've sat on the floor or something, and so far I haven't managed to get to the camera in time! I'll keep trying...

Gender and science interests

Disgruntled Julie has a post up about the Gender Gap, in which she writes about how girls tend to be more drawn to biological subjects rather than the physical sciences, and wonders about the underlying biology as opposed to nuture. Go read it, and read the comments!

My own perspective - well, I was obsessed with tractors at about age 4 (and mechano), and then got into dinosaurs (the starting point for Julie's discussion was a post by LabMom about a lack of girls in a preschool 'dinosaur science camp'), then horses (and NOT stupid pink ones with flowers on and 'brushable hair'. I preferred greys, grey shire horses for perfection, and still have a small stash of Britain Farms plastic models of various breeds of heavy horses in a box somewhere). I found astronomy fascinating. I never wanted to be a princess (I wanted to be an adventurer or an explorer or something like that most of the time) and I didn't and don't like pink. Even my much more girly sister wasn't into princesses or fairies to the extent almost every little girl seems to be now - I wonder if it is a generational thing (i.e. something to do with the social context, consumer items available, media of the last decade) as well as a girl thing? Or something else to blame on Princess Di??

At 16, after some arguing with the school (who, probably because it messed up their timetabling, refused to allow me to take maths and history and two other subjects at A level, and ignored my arguments that a) I would be bored doing only three subjects (which was/is the norm) and b) that I used the same bit of my brain to do maths and history) I did the classic 'hard science' subjects - maths, further maths, chemistry and physics. I'd dropped biology at 13 (being a newly converted vegetarian who did NOT want to cut up mice, and finding all the teachers either dull or patronising). I liked these subjects... I didn't like being one of a small number of girls who did them, because the boys were unpleasant and hostile a lot of the time in and outside class. I noticed the difference most in further maths, because in the first year our class was six students, three boys and three girls, and it was a nice group and a comfortable environment. In the second year they managed to merge us with the other further maths group, making 13 - 3 girls and 10 boys. Made timetabling easier and teaching more cost effective, I'm sure. But the class just stopped being fun, apart from the intrinsic fun of doing maths. Fortunately there was a LOT of fun in the maths!

I went to InternationallyRenownedAncientUniversity intending to take a degree in Physics, but by the end of my three years I was in another branch of science altogether, which is more closely related to high school biology. My PhD involved a move into Beach Studies, an interdisciplinary subject which draws on all the science disciplines, but uses techniques which are biological in origin. And I felt really, really bad about it - as one of the girls who was good at hard sciences, I felt I should stay there (not that I actually liked all the girls who made up our 10% or so gender minority, a lot of them were very boring and earnest and pragmatic). I loved some parts of the subject matter with a clear flame which still isn't gone - astronomy and quantum mechanics are just delightful. But I came to see that actually studying both of those things involved a lot of electronics, a skill area where I was constantly made to feel stupid and unwanted (looking back, I had a pretty crap set of grad student lab demonstrators - but also, I'd NOT been building my own kits of this and that from an early age. I preferred reading. I was way behind the skills development of your typical geeky boy, who in that era at least had often built his own basic computer or robot from a kit...).

So for me, the combination of identifying an area where I was not well prepared for university level work and a hostile and boring classroom environment (yes, it can be both. That's when the social group passively or actively shuts you out, but it looks as if they are having fun, and you feel you want to be a member of the in group, to do what they do. The other... well, they don't seem to want you there, and you don't see anything there that's worth the constant hassle) which made fixing the lack an uphill struggle made me disinclined to stay in the hard sciences, in the area which at school I had found the most exciting. If I'd had a longer, more modular degree programme, I probably would have tested out a few more things and ended up working on similar sorts of problems but using a different skill set and within a classic science department rather than my current very broad-based departmental home. Regardless, things have worked out pretty well.

But in the context of the discussion over at DJ's, I found myself feeling a bit prickly about all the comments on how girls may/are, on average and taken across a population, be more inclined to the soft sciences. And I think it's because that sort of discussion makes girls that DO like maths and hard sciences, and AREN'T all into healing the sick and cuddly animals, 'wierd' even among girls who like science. We need a language that accepts diversity of interests without labelling things by gender AT ALL. My gender/sex/possession of a uterus/choice to have long hair but wear trousers should have NOTHING TO DO with my interests as a child, the subjects I was able to study at school and university, or my experiences in any classroom or other professional environment. About the only gender-related accomodation which I do appreciate is the provision of hygenic facilities for the disposal of sanitary items - well, I like to know that there are sensible parental leave policies and facilities, and access to childcare, but that's not entirely about gender or at least it shouldn't be.

I just like knowing how things work, and I don't see what gender has to do with that. All little kids have a lot of curiosity (which can be annoying when they poke sandwiches into the video slot or unscrew a torch and lose a key little bit of metal or loosen all the handles on all the drawers they can reach), and that makes them open to science. Dorothy Sayers wrote "...a desire to have all the fun is nine-tenths of the law of chivalry" and I have long considered that to be part of the 'anti-gender-balance' elements in science - we women are not welcome because we might spoil some of the fun, we might demand a share of it...

I do agree that making toys and objects that are appealing and attractive to children AND TO THEIR PARENTS and other relatives who buy presents, who I suspect are more influenced by traditional gender labelling. For example, I notice that a supplier of lovely kitchen things who sends regular catalogues full of desirable things has started making kids-sized aprons and basic cooking supplies which come in simple colours, or in pirate or fairy or dinosaur or butterfly designs. Pirate aprons and mixing bowls could definitely help encourage some boyish boys into the kitchen. So, what about fairy princess magician chemistry sets with lots of pink and purple equipment and potion recipes with 'nice' names and imaginary purposes, like luring unicorns? Excavating magic crystals to make jewellary, or an electrical set to build a tiara that lights up, with lots of sparkle and opportunities to make the object look attractive as well as functional? If bug camp is great for boys, but what about flower camp or butterfly camp for girls? Same activities, different slant... And maybe making some science-linked toys and games less aggressive and competitive*?

All this probably means better teacher training, since many early-years teachers are themselves not at all keen on maths and science... so how can they share an enthusiasm they don't have?

*so many engineering type toys seem to be 'build your own car and have races' or 'make a killer robot with lasers' type things. Playing war has never appealed to me and I wasn't that competitive with anyone except myself.... and a lot of girls (and bright and thoughtful little boys, in my experience) aren't into war games and fighting and killing things.

soooooo tiiiiiiirrrreeeeeeeeed

Workshop almost over! Just dinner this evening with those folks who aren't travelling home today, and a couple of meetings tomorrow with people who are here for the workshop and staying on for chats/work.

I never get enough sleep at these things. Commuting to MarketTown doesn't help - I always intend to put Furball in the cattery and get a room at a hotel in town, but forget. It's not far, but adds another hour or so onto the day in total and steals that from my sleep time! And oh I need my sleep.

And there was an Annoying Boy with whom I had the following exchange whilst facilitating discussion:
AnnoyingBoy (who is about my age and father-of-three, but still...): the last point you made is wrong because I think sandcastles don't have crenelations
Me: hmm, isn't there a paper by Bloggs about crenelations on sandcastles?
AB: my theory is that they're actually cake frills, and the way to solve this is to make computer models of cake frills, because then we'd know the TRUTH about the cake frills and could simulate how to best take pictures of the cake frills and they'd be the best pictures and it'd be easy if you used the computer system you just said you don't know how to use. And I've told several Important people about this and they haven't said it's a bad idea so clearly it's a good idea!
me: but crenelations aren't cake frills, are they? And I'm a little confused - perhaps you could explain how this is going to help us develop a method for predicting what the shadows will look like? [which is the whole point of the three-day workshop].
AB: because cake frills are important in making castles look like castles.
me: let's leave aside whether it's a crenelation or a cake frill. How does it help us develop a method we can use this summer?
AB: But I'm Right.
Me: this is a really interesting topic <---lie, but can we talk about methods for this summer, since we only have 30 minutes left?
AB: ::pointed sulk, slumping in seat, staring at the ceiling, then didn't say goodbye to me when he left:: <---enough that other people in the audience noticed and laughed about it

Overall it was a great workshop. Attended by 18 women, out of a total of 25 scientists... so cool!

Anyway, must now find stuff, pack bag, drive into town, get lost, find restaurant, find parking within a mile of restaurant, walk to pub near restaurant, meet others, be positive and focused, go to restaurant, eat meal (not booked in until 8-30 pm!), chat nicely, give people lifts to hotel, drive home, feed furball, fall into bed.

Life Is A Journey

This month's Scientiae Carnival is on the theme bumps & humps, and the briefing ran:
What are the current bumps in your road? Have you managed to get over a major hump recently? Are you facing an extremely bumpy road at the moment? Or do you just like to go bump! bump! on a seven hump Wump?

As soon as I read that, all sorts of little little niggles* started jumping up and down in my mind going 'me! write about me!' 'no, I'M more of a bump!' 'no, ME!'. However, most of this blog is about niggles and grumps and snags and troubles (because letting them out onto the page relieves the chorus of disgruntlement and makes space in my mind for important stuff science - and for perspective, it's hard to see any sort of big picture with all these little concerns and issues buzzing around in a cloud), and I like to use Scientiae posts to do a bit of arm-waving or story-telling (in my own particular disjointed way).

Rereading the description, and ignoring the urge to google 'wump', the road metaphor jumped out at me. It's one I like for all parts of life and all occasions. Considering how much I gripe about, and genuinely dislike, most kinds of travelling, and the challenge I'm finding it to walk more each day, that might seem a little ironic...

Humps and Bumps initially sound negative. An uneven road presents a challenge. Humps are uncomfortable to drive over in a wheeled vehicle, the pedestrian experiences the uphills and downslopes more slowly through slogging up and skidding down, knees and thighs pulled and punished by the changes, and the low points might be wet and muddy whilst the high points are exposed to the wind and rain. Yet the high points bring views of the road ahead and behind and the surrounding landscape, and the low points a little shelter from the weather - variety is not innately bad. I find the designered-smooth sweep of a motorway tricky to drive... because it is So. Damn. Boring. Hypnotic, soporific, sweetly and deceptively convenient, the car is swept along, around cities, eased over a simplified, moderated topography. Staying awake can be tricky if you concentrate on the road, and yet taking note of other things is perhaps even more hazardous. I like interesting roads. Roads which take a little skill to negotiate, roads with bends and dips and unexpected views. Roads with gateways where you can stop and get some air, fossick around in a hedgerow, stretch and think and nap. Minor roads, roads which make a journey an adventure full of interest and variety, old roads with complicated, layered palimpsest stories.

Sometimes, it's true, getting to 'the destination' quickly and efficiently seems attractive. Watching the Stars and the Great White Hopes, easily collecting grants and accolades and following the scripted path can be as diminishing and grump-making as watching a beautiful new shiny powerful sports car sail past your sensible, in-need-of-a-wash-but-the-dirt-hides-the-dents runaround. Even if you know you don't WANT a sports-car - environmentally unfriendly, expensive to buy and insure, flash - you can still feel discontent rising when you see your friend in one. There are other options than motorways. Look at a map - you can get to Shangri-La or London on back roads, enjoying the view and making discoveries along the way. Or you can go somewhere else, somewhere the motorways don't lead... and there are so many wonderful places to go.

I can tell a story of my career which looks motorway-like - degree and PhD from InternationallyRenownedAncientUniversity, post-doctoral work at Overseas and NorthernRedBrick and TartanCampusWithLake, a lectureship at NorthernUni, probation completed and promotion to Senior Lecturer achieved by the age of 36. I can tell a story about meanders and road-blocks and pot-holes, about going to university to do one subject and ending up with a degree in something else completely, a PhD full of angst as the definite NotFavourite doing the UninterestingButWorthy topic who Talked Too Much, and the end of a relationship I hung on to for too long, the misery of being lonely and ill in a foreign country and a method going totally wrong meaning a scramble to scrape together a mixture of other ways of looking at the problem, phases of unemployment, a politically-powerful-too-busy-unreasonable-expectations boss and an erratic-unreliable-sarcastic-tempremental-boss, a job where I have had to write new teaching every year for nearly 15 years now, where I have to fight for the bare minimum of lab resources, where I have had no technical support for over a year. Tales of sexism and bullying and the relentless grind of applying for grants that get rejected, of lacking the right contacts and the right gender, of doing other people's jobs as well as my own and being treated like a doormat. Of failing physical and mental health, loneliness, childlessness and partnerlessness, of being forced to go part time with the concomittent pay cut because it was the only way to force my employer to make some minor accomodations for my health and emotional needs, of being patronised and ridiculed.

But I'd rather tell the story where I value my integrity and do the kind of 'old school science' I was trained to do. Where I have worked hard for what I have got - the serious thinking and exploring and praying and seeking of advice involved in changing degree subjects (and the sitting in on extra classes on top of the ones I was registered for, the summer of reading to essentially cram in 5 years of school and 1 year of university's worth of ideas), writing nearly 100 individual job applications and going to interview after interview, then living on apples and pasta until the expenses cheques came back in, the writing of teaching and the spending of time and care on all sorts of students, good and indifferent and confused and time-eating. A story of growth and learning and cats and, yes, struggle and illness - a story about a journey, not about a destination.

Humps and bumps offer views and lessons, and side roads offer so much more choice and freedom than the motorway. They require pauses, and considered negotiation. I have come to actually be very fond of humps and bumps**. Which is a good thing - science is good at humps, bumps and detours, and science careers are full of them. Embracing them makes life so much richer!



* in my mind's eye niggles are roundish, fuzzy things a bit like multi-coloured dust-bunnies or yarn frozzens, with stick-drawing arms and legs, googly eyes and shrill, officious little voices. And they are very bad at sitting still and waiting for attention - they bounce around and wave their arms and all talk at once.

** though I'd like a few less anatomical humps and bumps - sleek curves would fit better under the lab coat than bulges

NOT a nice quiet Friday afternoon

Friday afternoon. Hardly anyone is around.

SeniorStudent and I had just settled down to do a lovely Friday afternoon type job - going through a list she's compiled of possible field sites in the local area and ranking them according to various criteria, before making plans for a couple of driving around looking at them days.

However, it was not to be. Our cold store decided to break down. And the refrigeration company can't come out and look at it until Tuesday. And may well not have the part anyway.
We actually coped quite well - Helfy-Safety man persuaded another department to let us store essential samples in one of their cold rooms and rang round all the people who had stuff in the store (though most of them were missing, it being Friday afternoon before a three day weekend), SeniorStudent and I did some triage and identified all the samples we were sure would be spoiled over the weekend, and another of the technical staff helped us load them all onto a series of trolleys. Then we had a little procession of trolleys over to the other department, and piled all our stuff on the floor in the corner of their cold room. Hopefully next week the repair people will be efficient...

Both DrN and Golden Boy had samples that would be seriously affected by the problem. Both kindly gave me a list of those samples and said 'oh yeah thanks for sorting that out' when I went in to tell them about the problem, rather than actually, you know, helping. Sigh.

Thinking about post-docs - edited

There's quite a bit of discussion around at the moment (as there often is) about post-doctoral positions, and I've a variety of comments/posts sort of fermenting around the topic, but none of them want to really shape up. So, instead, here is a rather mixed brew of thoughts and comments from my perspective.

what is my perspective?
I am a product of the UK system. That means that there was no 4 year undergrad, 2-3 year Masters, 5-7 year PhD. Three years of intense undergrad with minimal formal 'liberal arts/general education' elements but huge 'optional' ones (arguing over new testament Greek in a bible study, singing Handel and having access to a copyright library, not to mention friends taking degrees in a wide variety of subjects who were just as geekily enthused about their new discoveries as I was by science and were happy to share, all count, OK?) and straight into a PhD (since I wanted to go into a field closely related to my undergraduate discipline and had a good grade, no Masters was required), which consisted of three years of research on a general topic that was broadly set by my PI, but with some freedom to determine how it developed - no classes, no TA-ing or RA-ing, no taking part in other projects or doing scut-work, just learning about science and doing science. In this system, a post-doc not only makes sense, it's probably necessary - if you consider post-doc broadly as a fixed-term or rolling contract position undertaken in a university setting between completion of the doctoral degree and obtaining a post with a continuing/indefinite contract, then they have quite a lot of antiquity - I've read of plenty of scientists from the early twentieth century who undertook such positions, indeed probably more who did (whether that post was what we'd consider to be a visiting professor, demonstrator/lecturer/other kind of label for casual teaching, researcher, assistant, whatever) than who didn't.

I chose to do a post-doc, and I did not have personal ties that made it problematic
I wanted to do a post-doc. I wanted to go somewhere different whilst I was NOT tied by the many family and personal commitments people cite. I stand firmly by the assertion at, whilst I have no doubt you can stay in one system and indeed one university, one lab, throughout your career and make a success of it, for most people who have the opportunity, getting some breadth of experience is a Very Good Thing. Going abroad - well, it was great. it was awful. I had a major depressive episode, I had constant IBS, I had two tooth abcesses. I learnt a huge amount, I made a couple of great friends, I would do it again if I had a do-over (although I would now go and demand anti-depressants rather than just blaming myself for being feeble).

It worked out for me
I am one of the 'lucky ones' (though so far this month I don't feel lucky at ALL). I got a faculty job, at a respectable but not brilliant university, one where I am able to apply for grants in my own name (and get REJECTED in my own name, again and again and again. Even when I run my ideas past Semi-Deity Professors and get told they are innovative, original, exciting, important - I don't get funded, because there isn't enough funding to go round all the innovative ideas). I have had some graduate students - most of whom, however nice and clever they are and however hard I work to be the sort of fair, open-minded, helpful mentor a supervisor should be, cost me dearly in time, in emotional stress, in lab resources - there is no doubt in my mind that I would get more work done (measured by papers, grants etc. etc.) with a single skilled assistant than with multiple graduate students. I say to them, there is almost no chance of you becoming an academic. I say, yes, it has some good aspects. It is hard work, it is thankless, it is poorly remunerated in comparison with most of your equally-educated peers. It is fun, and exhilarating, and frustrating, and and and. That holding a PhD is often a negative on a c.v., it can make you be seen as over-qualified or likely to be bored or just 'not like us'.

Why do so many scientists, who are supposed to be good at reading the evidence not listening to the hype, seem to believe that PhD + post-doc = Faculty job (in the type of university they choose)?
No-one ever told me I'd be pretty much promised employment in my field at the end of my studies, and I was advised very clearly that the likelihood of getting an academic job was very very small. That was also pretty clear to me, just from the numbers (I'm a scientist, I look at data, OK?). At every stage, I asked myself one question: if at the end of these x years you have to begin again and train as an accountant (or work in a supermarket), will you regret having spent the time studying/doing this/carrying out this research? I had reached the point where the answer was going from 'of course' to 'maybe not'. In my last post-doc, I had set a deadline. I had come up with two alternative plans - a 'going sideways' plan (which used my academic skills in a rather poorly-paid non-academic area coupled with a steady income from a less interesting but minimal-retraining-required part time job) and a 'retrain, refocus' plan, and even attended a couple of seminars on the one and found out about job shadowing and career development loans for the other, although my 'walk away date' was still some time off (I had about 18 months to go when I started this job). This job came up; I didn't need either plan; I don't know what would have happened or how I would feel. But I do feel a mix of irritation-at and pain-for the naivety, the bitterness, of those I run into who believe that the system owes them a job, that they were promised it would work out (and irritation too with the stupid people who told them it would be like that).

Why don't my students believe me when I tell them that?
But I say this, and I say it, yet my own students don't seem to believe me. I regularly tell my students about the challenges, point out the poor job market, show them articles, discuss alternative careers, encourage them to think about options and take opportunities to try things out. Yet KhakiWearingStudent, SeniorStudent and OverseasStudent all seem to believe they will become academics at the moment. KhakiWearingStudent remains convinced that he will be more employable with a PhD because, as he says, "I'll've studied longer and I'm learning so much!" (this might be cute if it wasn't so scary... and if he wasn't older than me). SeniorStudent, who said she was interested in my field's equivalent of a 'Pharma-job' when asked during her studies and at her interview, now says that she 'has to' get a faculty job - which is nonsense, as there are plenty of other options - and seriously, I wouldn't have taken her on as a post-doc if I'd thought she saw it as a means to a faculty job only - because we all know she's probably going to be disappointed (I hope she's just being a little over-happy about having finished the thesis??). TalkyStudent, thank heavens, already has a nice industry job and is very happy with her prospects, and OverseasStudent has better reasons than most for believing she can get a higher ed job in a few years time (in her home country higher education is growing hugely, she speaks the key local languages like a native thanks to a 'mixed' family background, and her near-native fluency in English and two other European languages on top, plus the fact that she'll have published in the English language science media, will make her pretty employable) - and at the moment also has sensible alternative plans if things don't work out or she changes her mind.

Isn't it the same in other professions?
I am in no doubt that there are excellent people, some of them "better than me" for whatever definition of better or more deserving, who did not get a faculty position or who works somewhere where they lack even basic research facilities, have huge teaching loads etc. etc., and others who are "not as good" who have more prestigious ones and easier work lives (one of my colleagues teaches one and a half modules, in one semester, every year, and has 50% of a lab tech all for them all the time at no cost on their grants. That, to me, counts as easier). Getting a job has a large element of luck to it. I absolutely believe that. Even if you know the right people etc. etc. there still has to be an opening! This is the way of the world - how many acorns germinate, become seedlings, saplings, find a canopy gap and become a tree? How many administrators and junior civil servants work long hours in lower management for decades, never making it to the dizzy heights of mega-bonuses and directorships? How many people with law degrees end up making partner in a big company doing criminal work? Leaky pipelines are, it seems to me, far more common than the opposite in this world.

I think a post-doc is usually a Good Thing
A few years, or an independent fellowship - I think that's great. The confidence boost of starting a project knowing what you are doing (so unlike the PhD!), the chance to recover from the stress of writing the PhD and to reflect on what to do whilst being paid (not a lot, but more than a grad student, and usually just about a living wage even in a large city) to do something you know how to do, exposure to different places and ways of working - all of these things make a post-doc worth doing in its own right even if no job comes of it.

Secondly, in my experience, faculty members who didn't do post-docs but came straight from their PhDs tend to struggle with the job - and are far more likely to have at least one of the irritating traits of over-confidence, arrogance (or talkign themselves up all the time), inability to ask for help OR inability to do anything without being told to do it, and really, really irritating on the subject of the One True Way to do something (either the way of their supervisor, or the OPPOSITE of that, depending on their experiences...). Not all of them. But a lot of people, and I include people from systems where they finish their PhDs in their early 30s for whatever reason rather than wierdos like me who submitted aged 24, mellow and mature as scientists most remarkably after a couple of years of just doing science. NOT of trying to learn the new and thankless tasks of PI-ing, but of doing science... and a post-doc is a great place to do that.

I like my field (but I'd rather like to be left alone in it to commune with nature, thanks)
My reading makes me realise that my discipline is really rather pleasant. Most of the PIs I know, have worked with or for, are human, not monsters. Most of them mean well, are good at some things and bad at others, and have genuinely good intentions to do impartial science and be good leaders. Even the people who really, really stress me out have redeeming qualities. Maybe it's the relative lack of funding, linked to a lack of medical relevance. Maybe it's the kind of people who go into it (it attracts people with relatively wide interests, generalists rather than specialists). Yes, there are arrogant clever-clogs super-stars at a few Big Name Universities, yes, there are unhappy post-docs, yes, there are politics. But it's nothing like as bad as the fields in which some bloggers, especially in the 'biosciences', are stuck. I'm glad I followed my passion rather than the sexiest, money-getting-est discipline, and I'm glad I've got a range of interests such that when one area isn't working, I have lots of others to think about.

Does anyone get a permanent, secure job?
Tenure does not offer security. There is no security. People get fired, companies go bust, people get sick of their work or they get ill or become a carer. Lives CHANGE. We have here no abiding city. It's amazing how often people sacrifice so much in their personal lives, take so much emotional abuse trying to survive and fit into a toxic environment, fighting impossible battles... YFS wrote about how little time she has to do science because she spends her time trying to run the lab, teach her juniors, 'help' her PI write grants - it sounds wretched. It sounds a little familiar - I reckon a day a week of my time in my first, North American post-doc was spent doing that sort of thing. I have to admit I rather enjoyed it...* despite the effect it had on my science... but my boss was a disorganised, unfocused and over-worked but essentially decent human being, so our two situations were nothing alike. Why do we keep believing it will all work out?? Why do I do exactly the same thing in my current post, just as a mid-career academic (13 years in, 24 to go if I retire at the 'official' age, I think that counts as mid-career) rather than as a post-doc? Why DO people want to believe the world is different, that it is stable not changing and chancy, fair not blindly stochastic or entropic?

*I like to be needed, to be useful. That is more rewarding - and more long-term comfortable - than being some kind of star expert (there's always pressure to live up to a star billing). I never wanted Captain Kirk's job - all that being-in-charge, public-face-of, responsibility stuff? So. Not. Me.

Edited to add a sort of summary, things that came to mind after pressing post:
1) I think my main confusion with 'other systems' is why people need to spend so long in grad school, being students - not being 'adults', paying fees to a university, living on 'student stipends', taking out debt... (it just seems excessive). We get to similar places by say age 35 or 40, agreed - but 6-8 years as a student (undergrad, masters if necessary/wanted, PhD) seem like plenty, if the post-doc is (as I would argue) a maturing, independence-developing phase enabling the person to go on to whatever they choose in a better state than when they finished their PhD.
2) A PhD is an end in itself. For academics, for a 'full faculty job', I think a (relatively short - sub-5 year on average) period of post-doctoral research is good, even necessary, preparation. For those who are researchers at heart, not academics, I wish there were more career opportunities - not least because their search for a regular paycheque sometimes leads them into academia and they make lousy colleagues (although often they're very nice well meaning people).
3) 'employability', general transferable qualifications that attract an employer rather than triggering warnings, probably peaks with a general taught master's degree at the moment. PhD makes you odder, and it's important to be able to dress post-doccing up in ways that make it a fixed-term job (which it often is - most post-doc positions funded by PI's grants are jobs in which someone is hired to carry out certain research tasks, not to do whatever they fancy) when looking for jobs outside. My second (short) and third post-doc stints were definitely of this type, as they involved research tasks with the same sorts of parameters and on the same sorts of questions as the type of non-academic specialist roles I was applying for alongside faculty jobs - so I could (and did) argue that the fact that I did them in a university and published academic papers was not what was important - the nature of the work, the reports to the funders, the working to deadlines and in teams, were all what I would do in industry, it just so happened that my workplace was a university.

Quote of the day:
[frustrated Dr Labrador, bewailing inability of students to complete simple task the simple way]: there's no point making the instructions idiot-proof, because they just keep inventing better idiots!

How many papers is enough?

An anonymous commentator wrote:

Hi Jane, a few of your posts mention papers you are publishing (yay!)- seems to be quite a few?. I'm interested in how many published papers you feel might be respectable as an annual accomplishment for a junior faculty/postdoc in the UK at a good institution - this is very hard to figure out in my field (ecology/evolution) where I live. I'd like to work in the UK for a while. . . Many thanks if you feel like answering.
January 2010 20:42

I have quite a few papers on the go at any one time, partly because the longer you work in any field the more unfinished bits accumulate, partly because of different collaborations, partly because that's the way I tend to work (lots of things ongoing at any one time). One of tomorrow's jobs is to fill out the StupidStandardisedResearchReview form for 2009, so I might post then on what I've actually done publishing-wise over the last few years.

But what is a respectable number of papers? That's a 'how long is a piece of string' question and no mistake! In the UK context, the RAE (and its replacement the REF) remains a key driver, especially for those seeking faculty jobs (or indeed post-doc positions which run into the census period which is probably sometime in 2012/2013 - given how often the details changed last time, only vague dates make sense at this stage). As best as we know at this point in time, the REF will require submission of four papers per academic for the period 2008-2012 (rumour has it this MAY be reduced to three), therefore your key goal is to produce four excellent papers in the best peer-reviewed outlets you can manage. Metrics, such as h-index, journal citation index and number of times a paper has been cited, are all likely to be looked at by your university if not by the panel, and it appears that the panels will also have expert reviewers read the papers so a cool paper in a non-CNS journal which is sub-field-relevant will not be judged just on its placement.

It would definitely be a Good Thing to be able to name a set of four REF-able papers which are accepted/in press/out by mid-2010 at the latest, although of course you'll continue writing and publishing and aiming to improve your set (remember, papers must be OUT, at least online, by the census date to count in the REF so papers for a December 2012 census date probably have to be submitted by mid-2011, unless your bit of ecology/evolution is faster at processing papers than beach studies! A department will typically want to have a choice of 6 or so REF-able papers from each person, to allow for some strategic selection of papers to support particular narratives about research strengths etc. (and so that co-authored papers aren't submitted twice by the same department - it's OK for both authors to submit them if they're in different departments, but seems to be considered a bit weak if they're both in the same one).

Bearing all this in mind, the minimum goal I work to over a 3-year rolling average is two papers per year in mid-rank or better peer-reviewed journals, one as lead author and one as co-author. Papers in low-rank journals and book chapters are extra to this goal, however research-appropriate and profile-building they are. I also aim to publish in at least 3 different journals over the 3-year period, but my work is quite interdisciplinary so there is no one clear 'best' outlet. I have just about managed that since my second post-doctoral year (in the UK it's rare to publish papers before you've submitted your PhD, so I only really started publishing when I started my post-doc). To biochem and biomed people this is probably horrifically low, and I know friends in some branches of chemistry/materials regard this as very feeble, whilst for some humanities areas it's ambitious. For the muddier, field intensive sciences like beach studies - ecology/geosciences in the broadest sense - this seems to be a realistic target.

What does eveyone else think?

being the change we want to be

Over at Professor in Training's blog, a discussion has started about the difference between the 'I'll do it differently!' dreams of the grad-student/post-doc imagining the future of their own lab, and the realities of being a tenure-track junior PI whose

"immediate priority is to watch our own backs and make sure we stay on track ... otherwise EVERYONE is out of a job."

I have lots of things I want to say so rather than hog her comment space, I've come over here. It's nice to start the new year with some proper science blogging, rather than whinging or making lists!

First off, it is a painful reality that I didn't/don't want to accept that, as junior or not-so-junior faculty, in the vast majority of situations no-one has your best interests at heart. Even if you are lucky enough to have a protective and supportive Head of Department, Dean or other mentor, there is an underlying agenda; if you're lucky it's one which aligns with your own interests such as 'create a brilliant new research focus and grant generation centre in my department' or 'develop the next generation of leaders in this university'. Some of the 'I'll be different' agenda might be that the new PI will buck this trend - they will have their trainees' interests 100% in mind, not their own. They tell themselves that it IS in their interests to nuture brilliance, to create the environment they wanted themselves as a trainee, to give someone else what they didn't have. However:

• the junior PI has 'their own lab' - but they don't have much power. They are as trapped in the system as the post-doc, imho. The people who COULD make these changes are those designing funding programmes - distribute grants without tying them to specific outcomes or plans, create more opportunities for post-docs to secure independent funding which allows them to work on their own ideas, essentially moving the 'starting to do my own science' stage back from the junior TT lab to a one-person-stage as a post-doc (though there is the question of the amount of work/costs involved in supporting that one-person-lab unit...) - or running research centres or institutes. These people are 20-30 years away from the lab and that much more worn down by 'the system'; it's hard (BUT NOT IMPOSSIBLE) for them to retain their idealism.
• the nature of a post-doctoral position. I mainly write to the UK system, but also worked for 2 years in Canada so have some idea about the North American system with it's longer, broader graduate training and older newly-minted doctoral graduates with more years under their belts. Sometimes when I read the sort of blogs PiT was commenting on, I think the post-doc has a very warped idea of their entitlements, their rights. There are many different KINDS of post-doctoral position, even if they are all all clustered on one pay scale (which may be miserly but, in the UK at least, is pegged to the academics' payscale which is also not boundless wealth - to avoid another diversion in a long post, let's just set aside the 'market worth' of a scientist), and it's really important to be clear about what the actual nature of the position is, from both sides.
• the technician. This is a mislabelled post-doc, a position where the tasks are specified and the majority of the work is routine or trouble-shooting. It needs specific lab skills rather than a PhD. It is better paid than a technician position, and more likely to merit authorship on papers than a technician, but otherwise is the same role. This really annoys post-docs, especially if they have a very demanding/controlling boss. But it's a job.
• the training post. A position whose main purpose from the PD's perspective is to learn or develop new techniques. This is a short-term proposition - it's stupid on everyone's parts to see this as anything more than a stepping stone, or the person quickly turns into the technician and gets grumpy. The trade-off for not coming in as an expert in the techniques is usually either to contribute their existing skills to the lab (i.e. be a sort of super-technician, exchanging knowledge on their way through the lab) or to learn the technique by doing something pretty well circumscribed within a defined project using the techniques.
• the research assistant/associate. The PD is hired and paid by the PI under a research programme. This may be a tightly constrained set of activities (e.g. an externally funded research council grant) or a slightly more open programme (e.g. a start-up grant, something like the bequest project starting on Monday in my lab). Either way, they are hired to contribute to the achieving of someone elses broad vision/agenda. They may be treated as purely an extra pair of hands for the PI - which is crap and a waste for everyone - or as a partner in the enterprise. But the vision is NOT ENTIRELY THEIRS. They may, at the associate end of the system, have helped write the grant and been a partner from day 1 in the whole process: they may have been hired for the last year of the funding as a replacement for someone who's moved on. They still do not have rights to do whatever they like. I think, personally, that a decent PI will try and accomodate their ambitions, if they want to set up side projects, write up work from previous posts etc., but all these things HAVE to be secondary to achieving the original project, because that's what they're being paid to do. In a good position, they will have intellectual input into HOW the goals are achieved, but the goals are set for them by the limitations of the funding that pays their salary.
• the fellowship. The pinnacle of the post-doctoral tree - salary won on the basis of an independent application, to work on specific science goals set out by the post-doc. Here they are a partner of the lab - hopefully their work is complementary to the PI's agenda. A decent fellowship holder will aim to be involved in other lab acitivities as well as their own work (if only for the extra papers!), but their priority is the work they are being paid to do, again. An unethical or hard-pressed PI may well try to exploit such a person... but this PD has the most mobility, so should be able to avoid the situation. Sometimes this 'exploiting' can be mutually beneficial - during my fellowship in Canada I was de facto the lab manager when needed, learnt one hell of a lot of the nitty-gritty details I needed when starting up on my own which I hadn't needed to learn as a post-grad in a big well-run group, got to direct the work of RAs and junior staff and supervise undergrad and masters research projects, all of which really boosted my CV and helped me build skills in a safe environment, with my PI there as a backup for the students as well as for me. Plus, it meant that the PI saw me as 'on his side', which led in turn to opportunities like trips to conferences (when he didn't want to give a talk - but hey, it was paid-for travel to different parts of the country or the US and networking chances...).
• It's also worth saying AGAIN - there are many things to do with a PhD. Not everyone wants to be a PI. Not everyone is suited to be a PI. People have different needs and ambitions. A key nthing we can do is to act as if non-academic careers are just as valid and valuable as academic careers, to enforce constantly to our lab members that they have many choices, and the choice of academia is not the most attractive one for many (the money/social status (lack of), the relocations, the competition for resources, the multiplicity of the demands and tasks, the lack of promotion prospects). A PhD or post-doc need not be part of the journey to PI, and we need to make sure that everyone is aware of that.
• And there's the personality factor - one person's freedom is another person's apathetic, neglectful PI. Not everyone WANTS to be given total autonomy from day one and left to get on with it! Nor should they... the PhD is a journeyman-piece, but completion of it does not necessarily prepare the holder to go off and run an independent shop immediately.

If resources were unlimited and unrestricted, it would be great - we could hire 'the best', those most deserving of a free rein, and let them do what the hell they liked (or even more fun, buy ourselves out of some of our other duties and do some cool science that way!). But resources are finite for the vast majority of us, and we have to make choices about priorities and about how to get the most 'bang per buck'. Resources are generally tied to outcomes - for example, a grant application brings in funds to do something specific, as we laboriously explained over a stupid number of pages and forms when we bid for them. Sulking about this, blaming this situation, doesn't help. Constantly competing for more resources can be soul-destroying - not everyone can win, those holding the resources can set all manner of obstacle courses... This is true IN ALL WALKS OF LIFE. The big responsibility of the PI, it seems to me, is to set an example - of transparency in decision making, of fairness, of setting and sticking to priorities and longer-term plans and visions, of ingenuity (there are so many ways to stretch funding - applying for odd little funds, piggybacking work, making our own reagents or loggers, talking to the experts in manufacture in the light engineering workshops or chemistry department at our campus, pooling effort, care in designing our experiments, looking at alternative methods...). Resources are not infinitely elastic, but making the most of what we have, working as a community rather than competing within our own group, makes a difference. And the PI has to make the decisions... some small examples of what I mean:

• Student wants 10 expensive gadgets from the catalogue. I can afford 2. We buy one, and take it around the technicians. Student works with technician to identify the key characters of the gadget for their project, whilst doing pilot runs with the one they have. For the cost of a second gadget, technician makes 8 gidgets, which don't have all the functionality of the gadget, but do everything the student absolutely needs. Student tests gidgets against pilot data from gadget, and now has 9 setups rather than the 2 I could afford, in return for a few weeks investment of time and cultivation of contacts.
• An example where penny-pinching didn't help - there was a constant low-level of jostling and complaining over the state of communal glasswear for one of our standard proceedures. Because it was communal, it's condition was always someone else's fault, and as I only had access to a shared technician, I wanted to use her skills rather than have her be lab mum and washer upper. Here, buying one set of glasswear for each person plus a fancy labelling pen to identify each set, and allocating them each a drawer to keep their own set in improved the atmosphere substantially. It was instantly clear if someone HAD 'borrowed' another person's supplies without permission, the state of the glasswear was entirely down to how each individual had left it, and people felt more in control. Interestingly, my breakage bill also went down and glasswear lasted longer...

As faculty outside the 'charmed circle' of the Russell Group (i.e. not at an 'R1'), resources have always been limiting, and yes, I resent it at times, especially as it keeps my group smaller than I'd like and slows my research down substantially. My start-up budget let me buy a microscope, and that was it, literally (there was already a lab with a suitable fume cupboard etc., it was 20 years old but it did). Resenting it doesn't help anyone, it just perpetuates a hierachical, hyper-competitive, work-all-hours-never-let-your-guard-down model of science where some people 'succeed' and most fail - this isn't healthy or sustainable, and it doesn't foster the best, most creative science.

Not only are resources limited, there are all sorts of time-dependent pressures which also make it really hard to just let people get on with stuff at their own speed, especially less experienced people. Depending on your context, the time-constrained pressures on PIs include annual appraisals, the tenure process, grant reporting deadlines, commercial contract reporting deadlines, the REF, Periodic Key Performance Indicators, the length of graduate student programmes and salaries (many post-grads have funding for a fixed term, not for 'as long as it takes to do something cool' - which, when you think about it, is appropriate since that's how most non-academic jobs work (except perhaps in government? :-P)). I think myself that it's part of being a good PI to make sure people know about and work to these external deadlines, as well as internal ones. We're doing 'trainees' no favours by shielding them from the world they're entering. AND at the same time, we can constantly work within our own context to keep deadlines reasonable, to keep expectations for the PhD managable within the time available, to keep bars set at a minimum level and avoid goal creep. There's definitely things that can be done between totally ignoring outside factors and throwing up our hands in despair and letting everyone be run over by them.

Pit wrote:

Sure, you could try to buck the system as an assistant professor. Take on a couple of promising peeps in the lab, pay them what they are really worth and let them mature as scientists at their own pace. It’s what we would ALL like to do. It just isn’t practical or possible in the current system and at the assistant professor level, you have neither the time nor the money to do this.Does this make me part of the problem? Undoubtedly, yes.Is there anything I can do in my current position to remedy this situation? No. Not really. Not if I want to keep my job. And if I’m out of a job, everyone in my lab will be on the street.Is there anything I could do if/when I am able to become an established PI and gain tenure? Maybe. But probably not.

I would take issue with the (possibly unintended?) implication that the assistant professor can be assumed to have matured as a scientist - it's a continual process of development. Someone I much respected once said "once you think you know it all, you have to retire, because you can't be a decent scientist without recognising your own ignorance".


I've been doing this longer than PiT, and I am maybe a bit less pessimistic about the chances of doing 'something'. I don't think that individually we can change the system, and even together it will be a long hard work. But we CAN remedy many of the small things, and we can also keep our humility and remember what it's like to be in the early stages so that if any of us DO end up in the sorts of positions of power - running grad programmes, research centres, funding scientific programmes - where change CAN be made in the local and even national structures of the system, we are still aware of its flaws. Blogging is a valuable tool there, I think.


So what might these small changes look like? here are a few ideas:

• talking about the system. YFS and her readers comment that no-one ever told them that less than 10% of PhDs end up with their own labs. I believe them - but why the HELL did no-one ever tell them the facts? (I was told - I didn't believe what I was told, not really, but I was told). This sort of thing we CAN and MUST fix.
• don't underestimate the value of the small stuff. Of asking people what THEY want to do, which aspects of the system they want to learn more about, of treating everyone you work with as human beings and partners in the process of science. Supporting people's career goals, whatever they are, and encouraging them to think widely and creatively about what they might do.
• NOT shouting at people or being sarcastic (until they know you well, at least!), but being assertive. Thanking people when they do something well, even if it's part of their job.
• don't grow your group too fast or try to do everything at once. Accept that you're human and have a finite capacity.
• Model work-life balance, don't just talk about it. Encourage your people to take their holiday entitlement and spend at least one day a week out of the lab, whilst working efficiently when they're there.
• Don't perpetuate presenteeism - make it absolutely clear that you measure merit, achievement etc. in terms of work done not hours done. Also show understanding when the data are crap - it happened to us, it will happen. Encourage people to think, though, rather than just doing things again and again in an ever-more-desperate panic. Plan realistically.
• Be open to sharing resources and ideas, and encourage initiative
• All the choices you make are based on lots of inputs. Share some of the inputs with those affected by the choices. You're in charge, but that doesn't mean you need to make pronouncements from on high. Saying 'no' to someone is much less hard for them to take if you can say something like 'I know you're disappointed, but we could only send one person to InternationalConference this year and we need to showcase project A plus George is on the market this year so needs the exposure most'. And of course turn it into a teachable moment by asking them to research funds they can apply to, or asking what help they need to do that, or encouraging them to identify a suitable local meeting in the next 18 months which you can help them attend...
• stand back from the game sometimes - and remember that it IS a game. Don't get drawn into the posturing and general silliness, if you possibly can. After attending any conference, decide whether the energy, the experience, was positive and encouraging or competitive and spiky - and make your decisions about whether to go again or not. Noone can attend all conferences, so why not go to the ones that make you feel good about your career choices and your subject?
• look after yourself in order to have the energy and internal resources to look after others. As an intravert, I struggle with being in the office, 'on stage' and around people for 5 or 6 days a week - a day working at home might inconvenience those who want to see me IMMEDIATELY but my peeps have my mobile number/email address - and the sanity boost from a day of just-me-and-the-mog makes a big difference to my ability to juggle and to be an adult and a professional even when something goes arse over tit.
• it's not a 'ladder', it's a rotten climbing net - act like a team player, both up and down the hierachy. If you want support and encouragement, give it out - upwards, downwards, sideways...
• define success for yourself and your group, and KEEP defining it, in terms of metrics and externals AND in terms of other values and standards.
• Celebrate successes, even little ones. Tell people when they're doing fine as well as when there's a problem.
• always be clear about where your lab is going (even if your goal is kind of open ended) - and about the nature of positions.

And last, some comments on doing science without large, continuous streams of funding (each of these could be a post in it's own right - with the slightest encouragement, I'll expand on them!):

• balance and articulate a long term vision against the short-term demands. If there is ONE characteristic that I believe a successful PI needs, it is the ability to see both wood and trees, both horizon and the next step, to switch constantly between the two, and to align them when they appear to conflict. This is NOT necessary to be a good scientist, per se, but is essential for leading/managing a group.
• Expect and plan for turnover of people. Expect your grad students to complete in the minimum time and move on, from day one talk to your post-doc about where they will go next and how they will manage their own career. Assume that the current tranche of money might not be renewed, and plan accordingly.
• remember that having successfully completed a PhD, one or more post-docs as appropriate to the field and acquired a faculty post makes us the exception to the norm. We are both unusual and lucky. The point of our group is NOT to make mini-mes - it's to do hot science and support the growth of its members, who will then go on to influence the field very broadly. A lab member who becomes a teacher or a civil servant or a big-pharma-sales-person or a museum worker is still part of the broader science conversation and community, and what they learnt in your lab will influence their thinking, indirectly if not directly. A faculty career might last 30 years - we only need to 'replace ourselves', i.e. create a new faculty member, once or twice, to keep the system running.
• Always remember that there are multiple routes to the same goal - there are ways to contribute to an interesting conversation/line of inquiry with megafunding, with mesofunding and with microfunding - just because we WANT the megafunding doesn't mean that not getting it totally closes off our thinking.
• Have multiple themes in your vision, and work towards getting funding for them all - you're more likely to be able to come up with great applications for different schemes, it's less discouraging to be able to switch around and work on different things than constantly bnaging your head on the same wall, it helps with being a better teacher and mentor.
• collaborate - not just with the big guys either. One of my colleagues, whose science interests are both expensive and time consuming, formed a coterie when he began his first faculty job; four people in similar positions, decent faculty positions with limited start up at universities without large groups in their research topic, who drew up a joint research plan for their first couple of years. Where each might have produced 1-2 papers' worth of work in that time, by pooling their time and plans they were able to produce 8 papers between them, each being first author on two - they'd planned so that each could write a narrative showing how their research direction was different to the others. It helped them get through that difficult first patch, and now they're all ten years or so into faculty positions and building groups continues to benefit them and their trainees.

The most important thing that a PI can do is to think about what a realistic 'better science' would look like, at the local level, and act as if that's how things ARE. Treat people equally and fairly. Communicate, about priorities and realities and needs. Praise and support. Encourage and reward efficient working and work-life balance. Model and respond positively to independent thinking and discussion.

Given finite resources, the existing university system and the needs of undergraduate programmes, and the fact that science is done by flawed humans not perfect saints, what would you change? If you're a grad student or post-doc, what could a PI do that would make your lot better?

It's a truism that we can only change ourselves - but by changing ourselves we can at least not perpetuate the worst of the flaws of the system. Two of these which frequently come up in blogs, and which we CAN address, are the false expectations many programmes seem to instil in their graduates, and the mistaken perceptions of the power/resources available to the PI (and the way that PI behaviour looms so large in the trainee's life). We can be open, we can communicate, we can listen, we can talk to our trainees.

A problem when reviewing: being fair to different kinds of science

I have been doing quite a bit of reviewing, refereeing and chapter/paper draft reading lately, and I find myself struggling to be equal-handed in my commenting and evaluating. This isn't about the time of day or month when I read, the presentation or lack thereof, or even whether they cite my work admiringly or ignore it disgracefully. It's about different kinds of science. There are all sorts of taxonomies of science, and my field like many younger areas sprawls messily across the lot. I like Ball's three-stage model, where knowledge in an area moves from descriptive to narrative to analytical, and I admit a personal preference for the two ends of the spectrum: "wow look what we saw it's totally new!" or some really beautifully argued and designed experimental testing of formal hypotheses. Which may have something to do with the fact that I spend most of my science time poking away in the assumption-undergrowth of my sub-sub-field, muttering about why no-one ever tidied up in here before they started building pretty looking castles on top and are they aware of just how wobbly these foundations are and kicking the trusses holding it all together and picking away at the places that have been rather hastily painted over...

The kind of science that I find it really hard to treat equally is the shiny-machine kind. The sort of project where someone got money to buy a Gadget, or maybe spent their PhD being trained on ExpensivePieceOfKit, and now they are running around grabbing any kind of sample they can find to put into Gadget, or claiming that ExpensivePieceOfKit will solve All the Outstanding Issues in Major Sexy Topic Area, if only they are allowed to spend several years putting samples through it. Yeah. technology-driven, yeah, Shiny Machines, yeah... where's the question? Especially, being in a subject with a strong field dimension, where's the understanding of the system, the organism, the processes? Just because Gadget has options for putting in Hot Springs, Mangoes, Kangaroos, and Space Dust, it doesn't necessarily that measuring the amount of unicorn gumdrops in those different samples will MEAN anything. This sort of science is usually, to my cynical gaze, either neat technology looking for a purpose or a PI jumping on a bandwagon which is shiny and impressive (here there is usually a PI with expertise in Some Big Issue and a post-doc (or buddy of PI newly appointed to post) with the ShinyMachine Experience) even if totally irrelevant to the actual problem. And it's very boring to read, since the papers usually consist of a small number of measurements and a large amount of arm-waving speculation about how the Field Will Be Revolutionised Once Everyone Sends Us Their Samples. Sigh.

eta: anyone who thinks that I might be reviewing THEIR work, or is thinking 'so that's why my last grant failed, all referees are biased ignoramus luddites' - I write this stuff to get it off my chest and enable me to go back to my reviewing in a fairer frame of mind. i probably if anything am a little over-generous to work which strikes me as tedious because I over-compensate...

out of office

I'm off to a conference with SeniorStudent, DrSabb and DrVisit. The posters are all printed, the talks are written (well, DrSabb is still tweaking hers but she is that kind of person, she will tweak until forcibly made to load her powerpoint onto the computer in the presenting room), the venue is in a nearby town (but we are going to stay overnight anyway), and a good mix of friends, acquaintances and interesting scientists will be there. WierdBugMan and I are launching our teaching software in a Saturday session, so hopefully some people will want to get a copy! (we're not-selling evaluation copies - charging £10 for a nice 2Gig memory stick with the university logo on it which has a copy of the evaluation copy, but not really SELLING. WierdBugMan says that's important).

SeniorStudent is very concerned that we get there in time for the Book Launch With Free Drinkies that starts the evening, and indeed the whole conference, so I am just packing up now.

Hopefully I will stay awake! I am really tired - a good 7 hours deep sleep in my Own Bed seems to have just made me want mmmmooooooooooooooooooooorrrrrrrrreeeeeeeee slllllllleeeeeeeeeeepppppppppp....

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.

Lab Management 101: comment

CPP has a post up about lab management, in response to a post by Janus Professor about her problems controlling her own behaviour around her lab group. I started to reply on their posts, then my reply grew, so it came over here as a post....

Janus Professor wrote:

I have been getting frustrated with my group members lately, and since I have no internal filter, my frustration is narrated to them in real time. Some of the things I say are potentially destructive to our research and to my members’ morale. Even as these words pour out of my mouth, I realize that what I am saying is bad, and I feel guilt. The next time I see the student, I totally reverse course and shower them with praise as I try to put out my flaming guilt. From the students’ point of view, I probably appear to have wild mood swings. Actually, my emotions are pretty constant: CONSTANT FRUSTRATION.

and CPP's response included

you absolutely cannot display uncontrollable frustration to your trainees. That is the kiss of death for your entire laboratory.

You need to always maintain a calm and confident demeanor, even when people are fucking up egregiously and you want to wring their necks. You can express dissatisfaction with your trainees, but it must always be in a calm and confident way.

The moment that your trainees begin to think that you are not calm and confident in your expertise and in your ability to make your lab a success, they will lose trust in you as a mentor. And once they lose trust in you, you are completely fucked.

Everyone has their own style of managing a lab, and I don't believe we should all do it the same way. The best supervisor I had, for MY needs, was very over-emotional... (and male) - he threw things when his experiments didn't work (at the wall, not at people!), he stamped his foot and banged on the table in meetings, he shouted and bounced and hugged and praised and waved his arms around. He was also really considerate - he went way beyond the call of duty (from turning up with groceries when you called in sick to taking a single parent's kids out to the park when they were at breaking point to occasionally declaring spontaneous 'mental health afternoons' (usually the first day of spring-like weather, the first snowfall) and shooing us all out of lab to have fun). I couldn't run a lab like that, but it worked, for most people - and those it didn't suit (e.g. an ex-military mature student who felt the place was anarchic) moved on quite quickly - there was no slow period of discovering what the place was really like, you knoew within a week (maybe two if he was travelling).

I agree with PP that it is vital that lab members (the tech with 20 years more bench experience than me is NOT a trainee!!) don't sense that the PI is totally confused, afraid, flailing around... they need to have respect for the PI, believe that the PI believes in them, and believe that the PI trusts them, will be there for them and back them up when needed. Whether this requires that the PI appear to be confident and calm, I don't know.

Obviously, as a PI, I don't know what my lab team think about me! But we are a reasonably happy group, we churn out the data and papers, and I have low turnover of trainees (they tend to arrive and stay, and I even get transfers from other supervisors into my group because of problems with the other supervisor), so I am going to assume I'm getting some of it right.

I am a passionate, emotional person, and I am also not a very good 'team player' in the management books sense. These things are part of what makes me a good scientist. I am also very good at making mistages - clumsy, a bit prone to rush in over-enthusiastically without thinking things through - and at NOT making the same mistake twice (it is quite amazing how many mistakes there ARE to make, even in the most routine of proceedures). Acting calm and confident at all times is totally out of character, and I'm not good at pretending to be other than I am - I'm crap at 'wearing a mask', and have gotten worse with age and as health problems developed (acting contrary to your basic nature just uses more spoons).

I bring this out into the open early. When a new member joins the lab, we have the usual induction (hang your coat here, this is the booking sheet for Item Z, when you take the second-to-last box of doobries tell Person Y who orders new ones), and I include a quick chat about my style - the detail depends on their position. Let's assume we're talking about new grads/post-docs. I explain briefly that my job involves a lot of different roles, and whilst they're important, they have to expect me to not always be totally up on the details and focused on their work. I explain how I prefer them to stay in touch with me (e.g. if my office door is shut and you don't have an appointment, assume I'm not there and send email. If my door is open, pop in with any short question, but if it'll take longer than 5 minutes, pop in and make an appointment for later. I aim to reply to email within 48 hours - and would very much appreciate it if you have NOT had a reply by then if you resend me the email, as in term time my email box fills up very fast). I loan them a copy of "How to Get a PhD" and ask them to read the chapter on "how to manage your supervisor", then return a week later with some notes on how they best work - would they like to have a fixed weekly or fortnightly meeting time or to send me regular progress report notes, or to meet formally once a month and catch up informally in between as and when? (We try their method for a semester, then we review - I reserve the right if I'm not happy with progress to require them to try something different). I am also very clear, especially with post-docs (who in my experience are the worst at this), that I have a particular 'thing' about needing to know what's going on. I do not want to steal their ideas or data, I am sympathetic about slow progress and problems, I am not a particularly critical boss - as long as they TELL me what's going on. I like to see all data, wierd or dull or for-the-bin - I am a data junkie. I have no problems with them working 7am-3pm or 11am - 8pm, or taking a 3-hour lunch to fit in their sport training or to have lunch with their kids, as long as I KNOW.

I do have progress targets for a period of a month to six weeks for everyone (me included), and I try to restrict my complaints to when we review those.

What I do to calm down at the time, is not go to the loos for five minutes - I go to my office, and I write 'it' down, whatever it is I am mad about. By the time of the review, I can look at the page of notes and prepare: 'I was frustrated with Joey on 8 occasions for not having read those basic papers. So I need to bring that up today. But I was only upset once about him leaving the sink messy, so that is probably an anomoly not worth mentioning... oh yes, and I will remember to tell him that Technician said he was the only person who ALWAYS left the communal supplies cabinet properly restocked, when she was complaining about Sue and George'. If I have snapped, or criticised, or been annoying, I make a point of apologising and moving on. Saying "I was out of line yesterday", often accompanying that with a very very brief, me-focused explanation (I'd just come out of a four-hour meeting, I didn't get much sleep last night, I'm a bit distracted because my friend is having problems) which emphasises that it's not about them (I ALWAYS thought EVERYTHING was about me as a grad student, and my supervisor never told us anything about his day or schedule so it was easy to think that I was the only problem!), then moving on ('I signed the order for those supplies you need', 'I saw a cool paper in this journal, I'll email it to you', 'I love your shoes' - whatever).

I try never to say 'you're doing that wrong, do it my way' but to say 'can I show you something? If you hold it like THIS you don't have to put that down to do the other and you get done quicker! Isn't that neat? why don't you try it?' (except about health and safety things. Then I am always, consistently, hardassed about sticking to the rules).

If I had one golden rule, though, it is to always, always, ALWAYS make it clear that you believe 100% that the person can do their job superbly. The student who is messing up, is making a choice - although I may well write here and whinge to my friends about how so-and-so is not fit to be a PhD, will never do it etc., unless I mean that 100% for every day of a month or so, I don't let an inkling of that get to the person. I sometimes have hard conversations about them needing to step up their act, shift gears, whatever - but I always make it clear that I know they can do it - and I do genuinely believe in my gumdrop-unicorm world view that everyone is capable of doing much, much better than they believe, if they seriously want it. So I aim to present them with choices: 'Joe, we have a bit of a problem - I notice that whilst you're making a lot of progress in the lab, you're not getting to grips with the literature behind your project. I know it can be tricky to juggle different activities, but it's an important skill both to help with doing better lab work and with getting your thesis done on time. You need to learn the skills to read literature quickly and critically, to keep useful notes, to integrate those ideas into your work and discussion, and to do that whilst keeping up with this experiment series. And I get the impression that this isn't a skill set that comes naturally to you, so it might take some time and effort on your part to acquire it, but I know you can. Here are some suggestions of ways you could develop this skill (a course, a book, a habit) - you need to go away and make a plan that suits you, because carrying on as you are isn't getting you where you need to be, is it? Let's talk about it next time we meet - let me know then what I can do to help you.' (Obviously this tends to be a conversation not a monologue). (Yes, this is like toddler training - asking "red coat or blue coat?" rather than saying "put on your coat!").

I think that my group has pretty quickly learnt that I am short-tempered but that it blows over quickly, that I have crap days, that when I'm busy on something teaching-related I sometimes am short and brusk about lab questions, that I genuinely want them to do the best they can and to achieve their ambitions, whatever they are, that they can talk to me.

MY worst habit as a PI is talking about problems with one lab member to another - e.g. I might say "aargh, JewellaryStudent left the radio on again! She is so inconsiderate, she never turns anything off, was she born in a barn?" in a room where a couple of others are working or "SeniorStudent, KhakiWearingStudent made a complete dog's breakfast of his lab work again. It is driving me nuts! Do you have any idea what it is he doesn't understand? Would it help if I made a more detailed check list for the process he's doing?" during a general meeting with SeniorStudent. She's not my colleague, she's a PhD student - a senior one, and one who I'm involving in things like grant writing as appropriate, but I'm not very good at drawing the line!

I think my lab members, like my class-students, fairly quickly realise that I am a bit volatile. I'm trying to fix it by working on myself - but I'm also trying to be open, to make sure that students see thinking about how to best relate to people is a skill that needs developing, to treat each student as an individual with their own needs, with whom I have a unique relationship and who has unique strengths and 'areas of development' and ambitions and goals. I hope the latter makes up for the former!