Management, leadership or wallpapering over the cracks?

Yesterday, Head of Department has a quick word with me (while I'm still a bit shell-shocked from the Health and Safety training. Everyone else said it was boring. Why did my brain find it really, really anxiety-provoking? Stupid brain!). He's added up the module part of the teaching load (it's made up of three elements, teaching on modules, supervising undergraduate project students and extended essay/independent studies students, and tutoring which involves taking small groups for skills development work). He's a little unnerved to note that my total for this element is the highest in the Department... despite me being part time. I say, well, I'd be very happy to drop AnnoyingFreeElective (politically-mandated GenEd course, open to any student in the university, not part of a series but must be taught at 'year-appropriate level' - challenging and unpopular and unappreciated by colleagues, such fun!). We designed AFE so that it is taught as four units dropped into a wrapper (let's say the course is on Beach Furniture. Someone teaches a few general 'studying beach furniture, what is beach furniture' classes, then there are four units supposedly on specific items of beach furniture which, in any given year, just reflect the interests of the staff who got roped in - one year it will be deck-chairs, wind-breaks, groynes, towels; another year it might be deck-chairs, folding chairs, umbrellas and plastic-toys-from-supermarkets; another year towels, decorations for castles, sofas-that-wash-up-on-beaches and furniture-made-out-of-sand. We keep the definition of beach furniture kinda flexible...). Next year I'm scheduled to do the wrapper and one unit, units 2 and 3 are assigned to DrA and DrB, and the fourth to that much-over-worked colleague 'TBA'*. I don't want to.

Ah, he says. I remind him that the module was explicitly designed to allow people to be moved in and out depending on their load in other modules, and this is exactly the right sort of circumstance to move someone out.

You probably haven't heard yet, he said. But DrB is leaving us. Probably at the end of the summer. Oh dear, says I, hoping to sound sincere***. And, he adds, DrA refuses to do the wrapper for AnnoyingFreeElective. In my head, I say "I fail to see how that is my problem". In practice, I try to look politely enquiring. We might be allowed a replacement, he says, but... Yeah, I say. I know what that means. Even if we do get permission to replace instantly, what with advertising, interviewing etc., the person would not be in post before January at the earliest. PLUS given the policy of advertising with an open-ended post descriptor (with a stated preference for a broad area) and then appointing the 'best research person' (in the terms of the REF, which itself is a joke as the government haven't TOLD us what the terms of the REF will be, so we are all guessing at the moment), we have no idea what area that person will be in. And will be expected to shuffle around the teaching for the lower year groups to accomodate this person, to 'help them settle in'... So, yeah, we can't plan in any way for them being involved in teaching next year - even if they start in January, they will probably be assigned a final-year option module On A Topic Of Their Choice and added onto the staff of an overseas field week, and that'll be it. Another crack (TBA) has appeared in next year's jury-rigged curriculum.

However... he says. He has that Look, the Look which says 'you aren't going to like this but you probably will give in if I am firm. Please'. There are just too many staff hours involved on the module with the trip to FavouriteIslands. You do research in FavouriteIslands. Why don't we count that trip as part of your research? Well, says I, because I'm doing the intro lectures, booking visits, planning the trip, writing the reading lists, doing all the liasing with locals, and GoldenBoy is planning that I'll teach ThisFieldSkill and ThatFieldSkill, and supervise student project data collection using ThatFieldSkill and teach some evening sessions. Plus my postdoc has organised and made all the bookings for accomodation, ferries, travel etc., so it's already effectively cost me her research time. I'm not QUITE sure when I'd do research, or what I would do... I have no research funding to analyse any samples I might collect if I DID do some kind of research. The most useful thing I could do this year is travel around visiting possible new sites and talking to lots of people. But I can only do that if I leave the students to their own devices, which wouldn't be a good learning experience for them.

Oh, he says, but you keep saying you want to go. I do, I say, I've wanted to take students to FavouriteIslands for years, but it is going to be WORK. Not enough students are signed up to make it cost-effective, he says. I say, isn't it a little late to say that? And, also, GoldenBoy capped the number early on because he said that you said that this was partly reconnaisance for a future larger trip. No, he says, I didn't say that. Anyway, he says, GoldenBoy has done lots of work on the module (he HAZ???) so it will go ahead. But I think we'll allocate most of the days to your research workload allocation.

Then he says kindly 'we can probably let you off some of your second semester teaching next year'. I say 'but... I'm doing very little then anyway. Mostly AnnoyingFreeElective, and the statistics unit no-one else ever wants to do which I've been angling after for years'**** I'll think about it, he says.

So now I am waiting for the thinking to happen. Or perhaps he is just hoping for a miracle?


*To Be Arranged. This appears on timetables a lot some years, especially when we have a weak head of department and some people get stubborn about not teaching things... some grad students once mocked up a lovely door name label for this colleague and slotted it into the name-plate outside the office of one of our, um, 'floating towards retirement like a very happy piece of driftwood'** colleagues so that it looked exactly as if they were office mates...

**Deadwood implies a certain dried-out-ness to me, a sort of disengagement. This colleague was very engaged... with lunching and gossiping and LeavingEarlyForTheWeekend (often on a Thursday)

***DrB is a nice person. Some of the girl-students a-dore him. DrB is also disengaged from the department in two ways: his research does not fit with the department, he spends a LOT of time away doing research with his former post-doc group, plus he hates to teach anything other than his speciality - he's managed to be under-loaded every year he's worked here - and because of the away-doing-research and because he's 'highly regarded' in research (does not generate much money but works on high-profile projects with his post-doc mentor) he seems to get away with it. DrB's going will make scarcely a ripple in the department's life, apart from those poor bereft girl-students who won't have anyone to stare at raptly - and a few small teaching gaps.

****I want to do it because a) it's a fun challenge, b) I quite like stats, c) I already have to reteach stats to my project students each year, so why not do the lot of them and get credit for it? and d) (most importantly) it was agreed that if I do this unit I won't have to go on a field teaching week in the Mediterranean at Easter with 30-odd students and DrN. I really really really really do not want to go on that week.



Hi Karita! ::waves:: always happy to hear from my readers!

4607 words and a reply to a comment

4607 words down and two and a bit conceptual diagrams sketched out (the 'bit' is one modified to show an alternate option). The house is still a tip and the parents are still coming on Friday and I'm still totally wigging out about how much I have to do in the next days/weeks/month, but I Did Something.

Mind you, these are easy words - conference follow-up chattiness rather than paper-worthy. But they are the nucleus of a paper, and once there's something down, however chatty, getting started on reworking it tends to be easier.

I am wearing a shirt with a little thread of glitter woven through the fabric today - I like how it looks (and it was clean and easily accessible this morning), but combined with having large boobs, I have discovered that it is not a good choice for typing... the little thread of glitter is stiffer than the rest of the weave, and rubs against my forearm when I'm typing, and now my left arm is actually sore...

Anyway. This post isn't just 'yay I did something other than spill used cat litter on the floor!', Anonymous (signing themselves as 'a bemused postdoc') commented on my list post:

what amazes (and worries) me is that I always thought study leave would be
less stressful than teaching, with more time to think and gather thoughts and
chill out a bit, but what I see from your writing here, and watching a couple of
others in our dept, is that the pressure never leaves. Personally I'd love to
know a few strategies for keeping the boil down to a simmer without heading out
the backdoor of unproductivity. . .-a bemused postdoc

Not sure I can offer anything by way of strategies! Though I'm usually better at doling out advice and comment than actually acting on my own advice.

There are several models of study leave. The 'traditional' one assumes a complete removal of two of the three categories of the academic workload, teaching and administration/outreach/service, in order to allow focus on a sustained piece of research. This is also most deserving of being called sabbatical. In this model, the person on study leave gets the whole of a unit of teaching-and-its-administration - an academic year in term-based systems, one or more semesters or quarters in a truly modularised system. In this ideal model, they hand over all their project students, committees etc. etc. They may, if they choose, continue to run their lab or meet occasionally with their doctoral research students. They frequently have funding, and move to another university (or a house in the country or a flat next door to their favourite archive) for the duration of the study leave. Whilst there are still pressures on these people, they are very different from the norm.

However, these 'true sabbaticals' aren't that common. Other duties leak in around the edges and nibble away at the freedom - little things like project students, finishing up an administrative duty, having a say on the curriculum for the following year, a demanding graduate student... it takes a lot of focus and some rather ruthless self-prioritising to avoid them, especially if you stay in your home location for your leave (due to money, lack of, or children, needs of, or just unheaval, wish to avoid). I'm not good at that. I like the variety of an academic job, and am easily drawn into things. Also, I'm not great at working at home all the time - most of my work books live in my office, the computer there is much better and the internet is snappy, my microscope and my bench are there, the printing is free... and when I'm a bit down or a bit bored, the structure of going out and to the office helps me get going.

In systems like the one I work in, study leave is awarded for part of an academic year, but the parts are not cleanly separated. I really envy US colleagues and blog-friends who teach for 10 or 12 or 15 weeks, have a final exam, disappear into grading jail, pop up a week or so later with final marks entered and the semester done and gone. We have the worst of both worlds - two semesters, superimposed over an academic calendar set by a three term system, AND a mix of one semester and year-long modules. It makes a total mockery of the idea that all modules are equal (first semester modules = 2 weeks of faffing and 10 weeks of classes/assignments, four week Christmas break to revise or write assignments, two weeks of exams, wait three weeks for an examiners meeting, wait another week, marks go to students - who are already three/four weeks into their NEXT modules. second semester modules: anything from 5 to 10 weeks of classes, a three week Easter break (during which students might work on assignments, or might not, and might be on field courses anyway), anything from 6 to 1 weeks of classes, one revision week, four weeks of exams (but all coursework has to be in after revision week, so a course-work only module can finish nearly a month before an essay-plus-exam one if the exam is late), wait another couple of weeks for examiners meetings and another week or two for paperwork then the marks go out... meanwhile NEXT year's modules have all been planned by the start of the second semester (before we have any idea how second semester went), timetable requests are in by Easter... but (as usual) no actual workload allocations agreed until well into the summer (which makes timetabling fun). Anyway. My point here is that other stuff leaks into the nominal study leave. I applied for second semester because a second semester study leave is nearly four weeks longer than a first semester one, but hadn't realised just how much rubbish from the first semester I'd be expected to deal with. Not making that mistake again!

If I was selfish and non-collegial, and highly confident that I would get a study leave, I would have applied for funding to go away, preferably to Australia or somewhere remote like that (that worked GREAT for a couple of colleagues in recent years), and then ignored all emails, pleas from project students etc.

If They had appointed another sand- and mud-castle-related specialist into one of the vacancies over the last few years, replacing the three people we've lost in the last six or so years, then I'd've had the option of buddying up with someone and handing over my project students/the mundane stuff in the lab for my leave in return for covering for them during their leave. As it is, there's just me and DrN. And that's just not going to work out.

If I'd realised that the so-and-sos would assume that I would mark second semester work from a full-year module I was assigned to in first semester, but never actually taught because I was sick, and the substitute didn't even teach the material I handed them, I would have refused to take the assignment in the first place.

All those things would have helped. But, basically, BemusedPostdoc has put their finger on it - the pressure never really leaves. Only by deliberately acting like deadwood, which, well, it's not ethical and I'm not able to do it... or by the technique known as 'plate-dropping'*, which is also kinda unethical but seems to be widely practiced especially by those who consider themselves above the need to pull their weight in every aspect of departmental life...

Advice for keeping productivity simmering nicely***...

• work out what is an acceptable minimum for you for a year (me: 2 papers in peer reviewed journals, one as first author, and one other piece of published writing. grant applications to a certain value (about £150k). Getting my grading done on time and teaching all my classes. Seeing my project students once a fortnight and grad students at frequencies appropriate to their stage. Two meetings or workshops or other chance to talk to field-colleagues). Write this out. Keep it close to you. Look at it very often. Use it to help you make choices, especially later in the year.
• Aim to have two or three related strands of research interest. One gets dull and hits barriers and comes to a natural end at some point, or becomes unfundable, or needs a new ShineyMachineThatGoesPing or your new Dean hates it or the national society becomes a hot-bed of nepotistic cliquery and you can't bear to attend meetings. Six or seven are too many, even for the most distractable and bored-of-sameness of us. Under each strand aim to have several things going on, that are linked with and feed off each other. I'd suggest aiming for a mix of long-term and short-term, of can-keep-ticking-over-with-minimal-money and needs-people-power, because that way SOMETHING will be working or getting funding or just being fascinating at any point in time, and (assuming you are like the majority of academics, struggling for funding and running a small group mostly doing its own thing to get its PhD rather than working entirely on your Grand Ideas) SOMETHING will be productive for every annual report you have to write.
• Build collaborations - but build them slowly and cautiously. Work with people you like, and get on with, who have complimentary skills (DrPessimist, who I currently work with on DataCrunchingProject, is unbelieveably good at certain aspects of field work, and love-love-LOVES making millions of tedious measurements at the microscope. But he finds writing very hard work and spreadsheets always reformat themselves when he looks at them... I keep the fieldwork moving and keep an eye on the big picture, I enter and analysis his millions of measurements, I write fast first drafts and have an eye for different ways to present data or make publications or arguments come together - we make a good team). Team up with other people at about your level where you have similar incentives to get on with stuff - and who you can trust to do their share of the work. This is paying off for me now, slowly - but I've been at this more than a decade.
• remember why you got into your field. Find space for a little bit of whatever gives you the I-can't-help-grinning-it's-so-cool feeling. For some people, that's keeping in a hand at the bench - nothing like new data for a buzz. For some, it's a perfectly sharp western blot made by their own fair hands, or a week in the field. For me, it's a mix of that first analysis run on new data (mine or my students) and talking science with other enthusiastic people.
• Don't have all your eggs in one basket when it comes to publications or grants - waiting ages for SeasideGlamourMag to get back about your revised revisions is less awful when JournalOfRespectableNorthernBeaches is considering a note and you're working on a final draft for submission to NudeBeachesOfTheWorld.
• Think ahead - how will this data feed into papers in a year or so's time? Get used to anticipating possible gaps, such as very horrible teaching semesters, or the work intensive set-up phase of a new project/unproductive but time-eating stages of new students, and seeing if there's an easy way to fill them on paper, whether that's with book reviews or a little something from another strand, or getting everyone in your group to contribute a little something to an overview-paper or a methods-comparison paper.
• Don't compare yourself to superstars, especially the young ones everyone is talking about - they're exceptions. They often have had a mix of great mentoring, being 'adopted' as a protegee by an established Star, picking or lucking into a hot topic for their graduate work, a very supportive and effective home life/wife (or no outside life) - and maybe genius, a miniscule need for sleep or workaholism. Also a certain level of arrogance, to write up and push work into GlamourMagz and through funding boards (the sheer belief that your work is that good just doesn't come naturally to most).
• Be super-nice and appreciative of your support staff - lab techs, finance clerks, the research office, the travel agent, the secretary, the GuyWhoKnowsWhereTheTonerForTheCopierIs, the guy who runs the stores in a different department, the person who has a soldering iron and knows how to use it... When the chips are really down, these are the people who will come through for you, whether it's a rapidly thawing sample mountain in a broken freezer on a Friday afternoon or trying to get a grant submitted through a complicated approvals process in the same week that you're running a conference... upset them, and wave goodbye to productivity - it is amazing how many little rucks and inconveniences will come your way, and they do add up. Also, they are skilled, knowledgeable people being paid less than you and usually with worse working conditions - it's only good manners. it's nice to get on with your Dean, it's VITAL to get on with your department's office manager or lab superintendent or IRB chair.
• Do the best you can in your circumstances, then go home and do your best at something else, whether it's raising kids or chickens, acting as housekeeper for your cat or knitting lumpy socks, reading yaoi or romances or being really, really knowledgeable about the original Star Trek or every episode of Big Brother.
• Productivity comes from the work you get into the hours, not the hours you put in at work.
• Get enough sleep, take sick leave when you're sick, and practice trade-offs if you aren't good at outright nos.
• Always be open to learning more. Once you think you know it all it's time to retire (or become a Dean?)

Ah, if only I stuck to those! :-)

* Jo(e) hates washing up. When Jo(e) is forced to wash up, he(she)** manages to drop a valued and irreplacable item of crockery onto a hard surface, so that it smashes. Johnny isn't likely to be asked to wash up again, right? Screw up a few committee assignments, lose the marks for your tutor group (and turn up late and be unhelpful), let typos slip into the prospectus you were asked to proof-read... you aren't likely to be asked to do that again, right? Never be in when students come to see you. If they have the cheek to track you down at your obscure office hour, avoid answering their questions and issue a sarcastic diatribe about students today. you get the idea...

** they usually are he's though. Something about a greater likelihood of being socialised into NOT seeing housework/department-work/drudgery/necessary kleggich as THEIR work?
***add salt with a liberal hand, considering who's writing

"study leave" and "long weekends": sounds good, eh?

I am on study leave, and this weekend is a long weekend (Monday is a bank holiday in the UK). Excellent, right?

However.

Final year students' research projects were handed in on Thursday, so this weekend I have 11 (with another 2 to look forward to; those students have extensions) pieces to read, grade, and write thoughtful commentary on. Five are 10 thousand word, six are 18 thousand word (different programmes have different requirements). Because I am on study leave, I don't have a similar number of projects supervised by other colleagues for second marking. Yeah, I'm only slightly grateful for that, right now.

The first one was depressing, so I didn't get any more done today...

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.

Christmas is coming...

Today I stood in line at the post office and sent off a lot of parcels. The less than fun part of Christmas! Furball thoroughly enjoyed 'helping' wrap gifts last night - ribbons, pieces of crinkly paper, piles of new and interesting objects to sniff, boxes and carrier bags to be inspected and climbed into, fun reflections from foil wrap... there were plenty of things that needed her FULL attention.

Now I just have gifts for my parents to wrap, as I'm seeing them at Christmas, a stack of about 30 cards to write and send, about twenty letters to write (I did the lazy thing of adding a note to cards saying 'have been ill, am behind, will write over Christmas break'), and some gifts to wrap for people at work who have done significant extra work or been particularly helpful to cover for my illness absence. In all cases, they were either paid for the work or it was part of their job or they currently had a light workload which was increased to 'normal' by covering - but that doesn't make me less grateful for the fact that no-one grumbled about the necessity of changing their plans (to my face) and they were all prepared to help out, so a token thank you seems in order (bottles of wine. 'Tis the season, and I know that everyone who helped likes a glass of wine. Just hope I chose something drinkable!).

Then I gave what SHOULD have been my last lecture before I go on "study leave", but thanks to my having missed so much time with laryngitis, I have had to reschedule a few sessions with my year-long modules to after the break. But still, the last lecture of 2009 is DONE! And whilst I have grading foothills already present (mountains start to arrive from Friday), the grading deadlines are all next year (ah, the joys of a university with a 'hybrid' academic structure - two semesters shoe-horned into a calendar set by a three-term system).

I have loads to do. But it is sleeting, all my various academic visitors have gone home, SeniorStudent has submitted her corrected thesis, and I think I can allow myself to go home early today... this is the kind of day that needs a fire in the grate, a pot of tea and a nice novel, followed by an early night. Work can be done tomorrow... there are 5 full days before I go to ParentLand, after all...

The Problem of the Temporary Bureaucrat

Commenting on my last post, Comrade PhysioProf said...

Bureaucrat administrators care about you *only* in light of their *own* concerns. This leads to two key corollaries:
(1) The only way to make sense of bureaucrat statements and actions is to figure out what their concerns are.
(2) The only way to induce a bureaucrat to say or do what *you* want them to is to lead them to the conviction that your desired statement or action will inure to the benefir of *their* concerns.

I always laugh my fucking ass off when people talk about their dealings with bureaucrats using moral language like "doing the right thing" or "doing the decent thing" or "I deserve {X}".

I read this thinking, oh yes, of course, this is all true, but what does it have to do with my post? Then reaslised that PP was saying that my appraiser/Head of Department is a bureaucrat therefore why had I not listened to all their comments through the relevant bureaucrat-filter?

Answer: because he wasn't/isn't really a bureaucrat. Why not? The hierarchy here goes something like Vice Chancellor to Senior Management Team to Faculties (headed by Deans and Deputy Deans who are seconded from academic departments for periods of 3-5 years, not appointed separately - DDs aren't even seconded full time) to Heads of Department, and in the case of our department to a Department Executive Committee consisting of all Professors (in the UK sense) plus the major admin roles (Teaching, Research, Assessment and Admissions (Recruitment)) plus 'staff reps', and then to the rest of the department, faculty and support staff alike. Yes, there's a senate and a council and other stuff that technically checks and balances the VC-SMT, and Committees for just about everything. Anyway. The point is that to me 'bureaucrat' means 'works for centralised service in university' (e.g. Graduate Student Office, Central Admissions Office) or 'person on administrative career trajectory' - some Deans, Directors of various Offices or Centres or Institutes, people Seconded to Central Offices with the intention of moving off the academic career path into the administrative one.

In this university, Head of Department is a three year position, awarded competitively (in theory - in practice, it's advertised and everyone plays musical I'm-Not-Suitable until someone blinks and is inveigeled into applying and, lo and behold, 'selected'), after which the HoD returns to the ranks of the faculty and someone else has a go. Some people will actually want to be HoD as a boost to their application for promotion to Professor (you don't have to be Professor to be Head of Department - it's just that if you aren't, you better be both charismatic and machiavellian, or the Professors will all ignore you or block every reform you propose) or because they want to be a Deputy Dean/Dean/Administrator. These people, you expect to drink the KoolAid, go to the Dark Side and generally become bureaucrats, to be treated with the caveats PP outlines. However, other people do HoD because someone has to - either out of idealism, or a fatalistic acceptance that it's Buggins' turn (typically this someone has a departmental or established chair, so knows it's expected that they'll do a stint on rotation), or just the sense that the alternative of being a member of a department headed by one of the other candidates is actually worse than being HoD themselves.

The current guy is clearly HoD for a mix of the last two reasons, with maybe a small dash of the first - he's a research-active, teaching-active mid-career Chair-holder. When he did my appraisal, he was Director of Research for the Department and had led the submissions for the last RAE, and not yet appointed HoD although he was clearly the probable person - hence he was in a good position to judge my research relative to the rest of the department and to future RAE-replacements.

By becoming Head of Department, though, he has to partly take on the concerns of the bureaucratic layers of the system, the bits of the system away from the front line of lab and lecture room - he has the unenviable task of mediating between the two, of being the connection (although our Dean is VERY unusual by continuing to teach a first year core section every year), of in theory at least balancing the department's needs and his staff's needs with the Centre's strategies and competing needs. Not a fun job - one I certainly never want to undertake.

I can't say I like our current HoD or agree with some of his principles - but I respect him as an academic, know him to be fair and rational, and to put care and thought into his decisions, even if I don't always agree with those decisions. He is irritatingly reluctant to make commitments or promises, but if he does make them he follows through and delivers. None of these qualities lead me to think of him as a bureaucrat, yet PP is right - for these three years, at least, he has to become part-bureaucrat, to subscribe to some of the tenets of 'the centre', to shift his thinking and consider departmental colleagues as human resources and means to ends (more than usually, I mean). It's not a fun job.

Thinking this is a useful reminder that I have to stop thinking of him as 'slightly irritating but straight-talking colleague' and turn on my 'bureaucrat-filter' in dealing with him, or at least when dealing with his statements and directives.

Sigh.

Wouldn't it be nice just to go to work and, I don't know, do some science without thinking about people at all???

Ahhh, Friday...

It's good that it's Friday because, you know, FRIDAY - end of long week etc.



And it's BAD that it's Friday because, where did the week go? DrSabb arrives Tuesday!! Aargh! Conference Thursday to Saturday (talk + poster), then a conference Tuesday to Thursday (two different talks, different poster, workshop, with Monday travel), then off to Points North with Drs Visit and Sabb the following Saturday and... teaching is not SO far away.


posters
Anyway, Elizabeth asked about poster presentations (she is a humanities person... I think their conferences are a bit different from science ones! For example, I hear that many people wear black and are actually aware of style trends (sometimes even ironically!) instead of regarding chinos and graphpaper shirts as a major bit of dressing up compared to the usual bermuda shorts/ancient denim, Ts and birkies...) ). Yes, basically a poster is a large piece of paper that goes on the wall! At science conferences, it is normal to have both oral and poster sessions - oral sessions consist of talks, some from invited speakers, others chosen from submitted abstracts. Poster sessions are usually more informal - the posters (A1-A0 size roughly) are on display for at least a day (usually in a large room with rows of poster boards set out like zig-zag dividers) and can be looked at during official breaks or when taking a 'my brain is full' break from the talks. In the poster session, one of the authors of the poster stands next to it, and people circulate (often with free wine in hand) and (hopefully) talk to the authors of any posters that interest them. It's a less high profile way of presenting than giving a talk - good for nervous students or preliminary work - and you can actually get better feedback and interaction than from a talk. At some conferences, most presenters will give posters, with only a small number of oral sessions scheduled (no or few parallel sessions) - then getting to talk becomes very desirable, especially if it's invitation only, and some people get very silly about the whole thing...


Posters are a good way of spotting potential other conference attendees when in airports or on public transport, because the darn things usually need to be rolled and carried in either a purpose-made carrying case or an old cardboard mailing tube. As you can imagine, getting the wretched things printed can be pricey, and you have to have an eye for layout - you have about 500 words and 4 pictures to get your message across, and it's HARD to write well and concisely. Posters rarely fit into your luggage etc. etc. One of my colleagues in Sweden has found a T-shirt-printing company which, for a reasonable fee, prints her posters onto large squares of fabric which then roll up neatly for packing... they aren't as crisply presented as a paper copy, but are SO much easier to carry around!


I have come to dislike doing posters because I'm not arty (actually, am very bad at art, layout, design, that sort of thing, not being a detail person), because they have to be prepared early so that they can be printed (unlike a talk which can be written the night before - at science conferences, you very rarely have to hand in a manuscript before a session, even if there will be a special volume published later), because they have to be carried around (I once left three posters on a station in London and nearly caused a terrorist threat alert), because when you get them home there's rarely space to put them up but it feels wasteful to throw them out so they build up in the corner of your office...


More on vivas

chall said...

Being a scandinavian as DrU I haven't done the private viva either.Although
it is said that "a PhD is almost certain when they let you 'defend'" it is still
a clear meaning with it. It is public* since the potential PhD person should be
able to explain their research and like you wirte "not just say because
supervisor said so". They main reason, imho, that it is less "failing factor" is
that you can't get a PhD without published papers as a first author. The
accepted papers help support that you have achieved something... I think there
are pros and cons with both. I would prefer to have some kind of viva for the
phdstudents half way... if nothing else, it should help out with actually having
some research and the supervisors might be more interested in supervising?!

*it is also public since most universities are public and funded by tax money and
everyone therefore should be allowed to see it.

Yeah, getting papers published definitely makes a series of small 'exams' for the Scandinavian/European style student, and both offer some control on a minimum standard and make the external examiner's job less huge, in a way. The public bit must make it very hard for the opponent to actually ask nasty questions - or fail the student - especially as, at the ones I've attended, the student had already arranged a large formal party for the evening afterwards and invited all their family, friends, committee, examiners etc. - it would be so awful to go through one of those with a failed candidate as the guest of honour... (one of them was, I was told, very Swedish - 17 speeches during the dinner!!).

If the PhD is public because universities are public, are all the other examinations also public?

Another question from a reader:
An anonymous reader asked:

If you find the time, would you mind to elaborate on the academic career pathway
in UK? I recently came here to do a postdoc and am a tad bit confused with all
the lecturers around. I'd be ever so grateful.

It must be kind of confusing! I know I was confused when I met my first Professor who was ABD and therefore not yet Dr in north America - I really couldn't get my head around that one comfortably!

There is no one standard UK system - post-92 universities (former Polytechnics) have different labels for the ranks, Oxford and Cambridge have different labels and a very complicated system of possible cross appointment between colleges and the university. I'll write here about the typical system in an older institution (mostly, but not entirely, this correlates with a 'research-rich institution' so where most foreign post-docs are likely to find themselves!).

In the sciences, typically you do a BSc, PhD, and maybe a couple of post-docs (masters degrees are becoming more common but are by no means universal - it is possible to start university at 18 and be a doctorate by 24-25 if you take no years out and stick to the official time limit of PhD study (which not many people do...)). You then get a faculty job as a lecturer. Typically you are on some form of probation and are on the lowest 'I've got a PhD' payscale - sometimes this is called a 'Lecturer A position' (sometimes its not labelled as that but you can tell by looking at the salary band). Probation can last anything from 1-3 (-5) years, and 'passing' it can be a formality or a mini-tenuring process with lots of paperwork. In most cases, people who are struggling stay probationary until they aren't struggling, and in my experience it's not taken that seriously - the academic is appointed on a continuing basis 'subject to satisfactory performance' from the outset. We don't have tenure in the UK (except for a very tiny number of people who haven't been promoted since tenure was abolished and therefore have never signed a new contract...); appointments are either fixed term (because the money is for a set period - that might be cover for a leave or secondment, or a post linked to some specific initiative) or continuing (a contract with a notice clause and a clause which says that the university must show good reason why you are no longer needed before it gives you notice - in practice, this means that academics are sometimes redeployed, offered voluntary redundancy or early retirement, but rarely actually fired (made compulsorily redundant)). A visiting one year position or a contract to deliver one course for one semester is almost always still a lectureship - the title refers to the job not the kind of contract the person is on.

Having passed probation, annual increments (and perhaps a bit of paperwork) usually take you easily up the lecturer scale (if you were appointed as lecturer A, you become lecturer B essentially when you get to the top of one pay scale and move onto the next one; it's rare for this promotion hurdle to actually be set very high).

The next level is Senior Lecturer. This is a competitive promotion - you apply for it, you need letters of support from your Head of Department and dean, plus a folder of all sorts of STUFF like teaching evidence and research evidence and data tables (but not 'philosophy statements'). You are not guaranteed to get it... around here, typically people 'go up' two or three times, at 1-3 year intervals, before they actually get the coveted SL label. Why coverted? ££££ of course - it opens up a higher pay scale. SLs are also liable for more annoying and responsible administrative duties, get to be in charge of tedious exam stuff etc. This is probably the closest to the tenure process in the US, because pretty much everyone will have a go at it (and have a moderate chance of getting it), and because the Folder'o'Stuff has to be prepared. But failure just means staying on the same pay scale (usually sitting at the top of said scale and getting no annual increments, just 'cost of living' raises) for another year or two, not losing your job. Many academics will end their careers as SLs, having never gotten a higher promotion - this is not a mark of not suceeding, many of those people will be great teachers, good colleagues, capable researchers with funded groups and decent publication records. I'm an SL now - I was a lecturer for 7 years (and unusually got SL'd on my first attempt, much to my surprise).

Within the same pay band, but regarded as more prestigious and therefore desirable, is the rank of Reader. Whereas promotion to SL typically requires competance in all four areas of work (research, teaching, administration and reach-out) plus either good performance in several or excellence in one or two, the readership is awarded for research excellence only, so has more 'conference cred'. Readers are more likely to get 'discretionary pay rises' (points on the scale 'above the bar'). Again, a readership application requires a form, a folder, and Head of Department's support. I'll possibly go for one in a couple of years, partly for the petty reason that one of the Golden Boys never shuts up about his, partly because it would be a very nice recognition that my research is cool! Like an SL, I don't expect to get promoted first time of asking.

Above this are the Professors. Linguistically, this is equivalent to "having a chair"*. Professors come in several kinds. There is the Research Chair, generally awarded to an individual in recognition of individual research merit (applied for via binder, internal support, external letters of support, review by external assessors, long committee process, can be political to the nth degree. Appointment often seems to imbue the holder with the belief that they no longer need do any part of the job that they don't want to do. You apply for this in an annual round like other promotions), the Named Chair (money is donated to create a position, when an incumbent retires a nationally advertised competitive process selects a successor who may or may not already be a Professor), the Established or Departmental Chair (which is awarded for all round excellence; the post carries with it an assumption that the holder will continue to be an all round academic, and is almost certainly going to be Head of Department some time as well as teaching and continuing research and service activities. There is usually a fixed number of such positions in a department, such that when one retires, the position is advertised nationally for competitive appointment, and can be filled by internal promotion within the department but isn't always (external appointments do create a Lot Of Sulking. DrCarbs are often created by this process if they are Readers who have not succeeded in getting Chaired)). Some places are also trying to make sure that there are Teaching Chairs which, like the Personal Chair, are awarded for excellence in just one part of the job (i.e. teaching), because the traditional career path has been either subject-specific-research (i.e. not pedagogic research) led and: Lecturer, SL, Reader, Chair (Professor) or short (Lecturer, Senior Lecturer).

A typical department has a handful of professors, some older, some 'rising stars', then about equal numbers of SL/Reader and lecturers, although of course local demographics do differ. A top-heavy department has too many Professors, mostly personal chairs who think that they don't have to do what they're told, especially if the Head of Department is an SL...

I don't aspire to be a professor - I don't want the added responsibility of an established chair (and probably lack the people-handling skills and importantly the will to acquire the people-handling skills needed to run a department anyway), and unless I suddenly find a new vein of funding to tap I'll never bring in enough money to build up a large critical mass of research, plus my habit of pottering away at interesting problems rather than topical ones isn't that career-friendly, so I probably wouldn't even bother applying for a personal chair.

*There is a true story about an academic at Oxford who despite a successful career at that university applied many times for promotion to professor and never succeeded. When he retired, as is customary in the UK, a collection was taken up among his colleagues, students and former students to buy him a gift of his choice. He chose a fancy leather recliner... he said it was the only way that the university would ever give him a chair. I think that was pretty neat.

PhD vivas

When I opened up the googlymail that goes with this blog this morning I was excited to find that I had an Actual Question from a Reader - and unlike questions to the Incomparable Isis, there was no mention of shoes, just something I actually know a little about. Here is the question, from Dr U:

after lurking here for quite a while and reading your posts about supervising and managing PhD students, I was wondering if you could sometime write about a British viva from the point of external/internal examiner? As new junior faculty in Anglo-Saxon academic environment I'm a bit apprehensive of the time when I'll be asked to be an examiner myself. This is because I come from the Scandianvian environment, where a viva is a 3 hour public defense with an "oponent" (an external professor who reads the thesis and consequently does the presentation instead of the PhD student), a committee of three further external professors and a typical audience of 30-40 local people. The defense there is also more of a "show" than anything else (especially because the PhD thesis is finalised before the student is allowed to even have a defense). I therefore have no experience with a closed exam such as a British viva and obviously, since the vivas here are closed to the public, also not likely to get any experience until it's my turn to examine someone. My fellow faculty members are not of much help, as they all have been "raised" in this environment and a closed viva is second nature to them. While I have no idea what goes on in there, what are the appropriate things to ask, how the discussion is supposed to go, etc.

Since you can explain such things very well (I have actually picked up a few very useful hints from you - for example, just today I gave my new PhD student a copy of the book "How to get a PhD", which I heard about from you, got it, read it and found it fabulously informative and very appropriate!), your thoughts on the topic would be very much appreciated. Thanks so much in advance.

Flattery much appreciated, and I'm glad that the 'how to get a PhD' book is useful - I find it a great way to start talking about these sorts of things. And my first response to this question is that there is a book written by a UK academic called 'How to Survive your Viva', which I've also passed on to several students.

Now, my experience of vivas isn't actually huge - for some reason I have only been asked once to be an external examiner so far (well, once that has actually made it to the viva - I have been asked a couple of times but then the students disappeared and never submitted... I don't think that was anything to do with me!). But I've internalled, observed and prepared students for them, as well as taken one myself, and being an academic I have opinions on most things, so my relative inexperience will not stop me writing something - I hope that other people will expand on this in the comments.

UK PhDs
A quick recap for those unfamiliar with the UK system: a UK PhD is (ideally) three years of research. No compulsory classes (although some places now have required 'skills training' - which can take place 'on the job', e.g. through preparing a poster and taking it to a conference, as well as in the classroom), no comprehensive exams, no doing side projects on things your supervisor is interested in to earn your pay... The research project should be a substantial and (most regulations) original contribution to knowledge. Supervision can be by a single person, although most places have various forms of mandated committee and joint supervision structure which can be a total pain for a wide variety of reasons. Here, a student has a committee of three which consist either of two joint supervisors and one committee member (who only reviews progress every 4 months or so) or one supervisor and two committee members (usually the structure is the former OFFICIALLY and the latter IN EFFECT, for a variety of political reasons, not least of which being that a committee member role gets the academic no CV points...).

Upgrade
Students typically register first as general graduate students or for some kind of place-holder Masters, then are transferred to a PhD programme (upgraded) once there's evidence that they are capable of doing one. Most places have some kind of screening in the first year, anything from 10 weeks in (which seems a tad early) to one year (which is a bit late, because the end of the first year is a cut-off for various funding and bureaucratic things, and having the screening event AT that time leaves you no time for resits without bureaucratic nightmares. If your institution has a vague '9-12 months' guideline, go for the 9 months date!). In my current institution (and in fact every other UK institution I've worked in or with bar one) the screening 'event' or upgrade consists of the submission and defence of a report on results so far and a research proposal for the remainder of the project. The contents will vary a bit - for example, the amount of literature review required and the length of the report - as will the method of assessment. Here, the report is formally submitted, read by the three committee members and an 'internal external' (member of the university faculty who is not on the committee), and a formal viva is held.

The viva (viva voce, live voice) examination is steadily going out of fashion in UK Higher Education because, y'know, it's hard to audit, and disadvantages shy students, and May Be Unfair and Costs Money and viva'ing a sample of large year groups is unacceptable and... generally, all these comments have some merit, but I would argue that the viva has a useful place in assessing the sum total of a student's learning (even though mine began with the ominous question "now you've had time to think about it, would you say that E. coli was a bacterium or a virus?" which clearly revealed just how badly I'd cocked up one of my written exam answers (I still got a first. Some of the other questions must have been quite good... )). The one place the viva persists (as yet) unthreatened is the academic research PhD. This means that many students have not had the chance to experience this form of examination, and many lecturers (like DrU) don't have much exposure to them either. Hence, our use of a viva at the upgrade stage. Just like the PhD itself, a student can fail the upgrade (though that's rare), be referred for minor or major revisions, or pass. Referral is the commonest option, and getting referred work reexamined before the magic 1 year is up makes everyone's lives MUCH MUCH easier, hence my early-submit recommendation.
The thesis
Once through the upgrade, the PhD student researches and writes. A monograph. A small number of UK universities permit (slightly sniffily in most cases I know) an alternative form of submission known as the 'European style' which consists of several (typically 3-5) discrete papers, at various stages of publication (one might be out, one might be proofs, two might be submitted manuscripts), bound with a 'summary', a mini-dissertation pulling together all the contents of the papers into a single entity showing a broad understanding of the field. This is good if the PhD student disappears, the papers are easier to extract and publish. However, there are also problems (in my humble opinion), which I could talk about but won't in this post. A typical UK PhD is a monograph of 80-100 000 words (well, 50-60 k for the concise writer... 3 pages for the annoyingly smug mathematician... 80-100k is the upper limit set by the institution). Its survival beyond the examination process is typically one copy in the supervisor's office (unless the student hated them and didn't give them a copy - it's very rude not to give your supervisor a copy. And a pdf-only copy is also considered a bit cheeky, unless the supervisor specifically asked for it - I would not be impressed by that), one copy in an obscure part of the university library, and one microfiche copy which can be sent out to other libraries so that other PhD students can read it on a cranky old machine in an airless room and get headaches. Hence my powerful desire to publish stuff by my Doesn'tWantToBeABurden former student.

Preparing to submit the thesis
Three months or so before the student plans to submit the thesis, they apply for permission (or register their intention - depends on the system) to submit. This triggers forms to the supervisor, who is asked to appoint the examiners (yeah. Still haven't appointed SeniorStudent's internal examiner. Bloomin' summer holidays!). A typical student has two of these, one internal (i.e. from the home university), whose main job is to look after the process, and one external, whose main job is to look after the content, of the exam. Many universities now require a third, 'neutral observer' to attend - they may not take notes, they just have to sit there, but are available as a witness in case of some kind of proceedural challenge by the student. In my experience they are either really offputting (they fidget, they try to look interested, they clearly LONG to join in, they look disapproving...) or they quietly read a paper in the corner (not exactly attentive witnessing...). They also are in a great position to start all sorts of gossip or rumours after the viva, if they are malicious, bored or just generally chatterboxes.

The student has the right to request that another person attend, typically the supervisor, but this isn't the norm. A typical case might be a student with English as a second (or fourth or fifth) language, who tends to lose language skills under pressure (common enough in the sciences) - the supervisor then may rephrase questions appropriately (e.g. 'translate' the examiner's jargon into the lab jargon) - but this is very tricky and to be avoided if at all possible.
Appointing examiners
Choosing examiners is one of those things which is never very well explained and often not clearly legislated in the regulations. Regardless of what the rules actually SAY, in my experience what should happen is that the committee (or the supervisory members, at least) draw up a short list of suitable examiners. They need to balance status (the external needs to be recognised in the field) with all the subtleties like hobbyhorses (Z will ask about the beach huts, regardless of the topic), specialities (X is a statistics whizz but this project uses very few statistics, so I might choose Y instead who has more of a field-based research programme hirself) and to a lesser extent reputation as an examiner (for example, the person I will recommend for appointment for SeniorStudent is a bit of a combative, forceful personality - I wouldn't have even put him on the possibles list for BlockedStudent, even though he's equally suitable in terms of academic knowledge and reputation, because she gets incredibly nervous about assessment anyway, and nearly cried when he asked her a (perfectly reasonable and answerable) question about her poster in his normal style at a conference - they'd bring out the worst in each other. This is only a reasonable factor when there are several equally suitable possible examiners, of course). This list is then discussed with the student in an abstract way - IF your examiner was to be X, Y or Z would you have any particular objections to that? (occasionally, something comes up, whether that's 'yes, his group just published three papers rubbishing the method that I validated, so the examination might end up being about methods rather than results' or 'my husband is his brother-in-law'). Then a decision is made by the supervisors, an approach made to the external, who then fills out a form and supplies a c.v., which then gets sent to the University along with a form from the supervisor and similar info from the internal, and then the Board of Graduate Studies or equivalent decides whether to appoint those people as examiners and THEN sends them a letter asking them to please consider being an examiner. Some academics ask their students who they want to examine them. This seems... both a slightly pervy question (to the pernickety mind) and academically inappropriate.

The viva (lets have some bullets to break this up. It's turning into a looooong post).

• The student submits the thesis, two copies, to the university, and goes out and gets drunk and feels a worrying sense of anti-climax/emptiness in their life. They try to remember what they did in the evenings without a thesis to write.
• The internal examiner is then asked to contact the external examiner and agree a date for the viva, usually 4-12 weeks after the submission date.
• The internal then books accomodation for the external, arranges their 'entertainment', books a suitable room for the defence, informs the university and the student and the supervisor (hopefully).
• The examiners then read the thesis, usually keeping themselves awake by making cryptic annotations on post-it notes and plastering them all over their copy.
• If there appears to be some serious problem, the external MAY on OCCASION contact the supervisor to check that they aren't going to step into a minefield, or to hint to the supervisor to prepare the student for the possibility that things won't go well (having your supervisor assure you that all is brilliant, then having a crap exam/result, tends to encourage the student to distrust the supervisor and possibly even be minded to appeal...).
• The two examiners meet before the exam and discuss their findings - this might be by phone if the external is coming on a flying visit, but is usually the morning of the exam day (vivas are nearly always in the afternoon...). They will aim to agree on the classification - fail, award MPhil, major revisions, minor revisions, pass, or whatever the system is locally (the internal needs to know the local system because most likely the external has been completely baffled by the legally-phrased regulation sheets sent out by the university), list their areas of concern, and plan out the viva.
• The student sits in the hall for the second-longest five minutes of their academic lives, feeling really uncomfortable in their Smart Outfit (smart clothes in the department? Cognitive dissonance!!!), and clutching a well-thumbed copy of their thesis (which they don't recognise right at this moment, or have just found a typo on the first page).
• What is the viva for? Two things. The first and most important is to assess whether the thesis is the student's own work. Does the student understand the contents, can they explain the methods, justify the decisions made (NOT 'my supervisor said we should...'), summarise the findings? Is the written language actually reflecting the student's level of thinking? (this can be of benefit to the student - if they defend better than they write, they may well get a better result than was originally suggested from just reading). Secondly, the viva is a chance to address substantial problem areas or gaps in the written thesis. This might be poor choice of statistical methods, no discussion of a particular environmental factor, a weak argument, not mentioning particular lines of research, papers or key concepts in the field. If the viva finds that the student has a good grasp of the material in question and can explain the choices and compromises made in the writing up process, they may not be asked to actually fix those things in the written thesis.
• The student is called in. If you are the student, I don't recommend catching your jacket sleeve on the door of the examination room or tripping over the chair you're supposed to be sitting in (however, I did get my PhD despite that, so it's not a disaster).
• The viva typically begins by asking the student to summarise their aims and key findings in 3 or 4 sentences, maybe a couple of other general ease-setting questions, then into the detail, working through the thesis in order (you hope). It can last... well, hours. Comfort breaks are allowed, especially if it goes beyond 2 hours.
• Quite often, the examiner will give the candidate some sort of hint if things are going to go well - opening with positive comments. It's also helpful to briefly explain the plan for the viva 'first this, then a few questions about your methods, then...', as it gives the candidate the sense that there is a structure and an end to the process!
• Sometimes questioning is divided between the two examiners by topic, sometimes it's a three-way conversation, sometimes the external does all the asking.
• It is entirely permissible to ask for a question or answer to be rephrased, or to ask whether you've made sense or more info is required (whether you're student or examiner). It is much less OK to offer monologues exceeding 2-3 minutes, even if the question seems to be asking for one.
• A good viva is a really interesting conversation about research, an exchange of ideas, and kind of, in retrospect at least, fun. A bad viva is painful.
• It's important to bear in mind the purpose of the viva - it is NOT to go over every minute detail and typo. Even if there are few major problems, the examiners should be able to challenge the student in a positive way by asking them to relate their findings to other locations/systems or whatever, to demonstrate that their ability to conceptualise and discuss their subject goes beyond what is presented in the thesis.
• Typically, a viva lasts 1.5-3 hours, I'd say. Too short is insulting to the candidate (or means the examiner isn't doing their job), too long suggests there are serious problems. If the problems are with the thesis, and the student can't address the first three or four, is it fair to keep pushing once the result is clear? Or if the student (or examiner) is rabbiting on, the onus is on the examiner (internal if the problem is partly with the external examiner! or vice versa) to manage the conversation.
• Vivas typically finish with some easier, opening-out questions. e.g. If you were starting this project over again, what would you do differently? If you had a couple of years more funding, what would the next steps be? How do you plan to publish this work?
• Then the student is banished to the hallway for the longest wait of their academic career, and the examiners reach their decision. Most often this involves some level of revision, and the internal must make sure that the correct decision is made according to the university guidelines (read the guidelines!), and that the external knows the correct form of words.
• The candidate will be called back in, and it is important that the form of words used to tell them the result is correct - the examiners will recommend a certain result, remember that marks/results are NOT FINAL until approved by the university board of examiners or whoever the higher-ups are. The candidate is NOT yet a doctor, not until they have made any necessary revisions and had them signed off, been approved by the university AND HAVE GRADUATED (the period between approval and graduation, they are a doctorand in some jargons...). It smacks of arrogance to use the 'Dr' title in any written form until you've got that letter of approval from the university... (yeah, I went to an Ancient Foundation. I was taught to care about these things. AND I'm a scientist and hence like details and terms to be used correctly...). Congratulations are of course in order!
• The internal needs to make sure that everyone knows what will happen next before they all leave the room - who will write the final report, or can it be done immediately? Will the external send a letter detailing any corrections required? what is the process?
• The student may now proceed to the bar, via their supervisor's office (it is REALLY RUDE not to tell your supervisor how it went. They should be among the first to know. Probably before your significant other. Definitely before sixty assorted friends and hangers-on).
• I was always taught that it was appropriate that the supervisor have some convenient present (a bottle of proper, vineyard champagne or culturally-appropriate-alternative-luxury-treat) to present the student with on completion of the viva... after all, they've earnt it!
• Only now is it appropriate for the supervisor to socialise with the external examiner.... although you may not want to!
• Once the viva is over, the external and internal prepare a report. For minor revisions, the internal checks that they have been completed and signs the work off. For major revisions, the external and internal both reread the thesis to confirm that the necessary changes have been made. Sometimes a second viva is required.

Personally I believe that helping the student prepare is part of my job as a supervisor. Getting the group (or at least the post-doctoral members thereof) together to give them some practice is very useful - typically I ask everyone to come up with the worst questions they were asked themselves, and ask the student to list three or four questions they really don't want to be asked. Then the questions are asked and the student has a go at answering them, usually with feedback as we go along. I aim to keep this a really positive experience - usually, feedback is more about 'stop selling yourself short' or 'that second point is exactly what you need to say' than about criticism - hopefully most of the criticisms have come up during the reading and revising of draft chapters. Depending on the student, this might happen once, or as several short sessions. DrN disagrees with the need to prepare students, but I wrote earlier about StudentMum's rather disasterous viva... the evidence does not support her argument.

Ummm. That went on longer than I intended! Oh well.... hopefully there's something of use.

Now over to you, my readers (if anyone has time around the 'back to school' and 'Augustitis' currently assailing us):

1. those who know the UK system - what would you add, what did I miss, is it different at your institution?
2. those who have had vivas, what are the killer questions you've been asked? (SeniorStudent will be preparing to defend in a couple of months, I might as well add to my current selection!)

a better day, plus The Exam System

I'm glad that I did end up cancelling my trip south. I rang my friend last night to explain and apologise, and she was very nice about the ankle... then we chatted for over an hour which was about 80% her opinions of all the people who got academic jobs since she moved into her other field, how her publication list is still better than theirs, how most of them are nothing like as good as she was at the subject and she isn't bitter but it's not fair. Most of this is not far from true, but it's very hard to listen to cheerfully and supportively, so not having to do so in person (when you can't do anything other than look supportive) is kind of a boon as I'm just not feeling it at the moment.

But today was a better day all round. I got a reasonable amount of sleep and the alarm went off at a point when I was close to awake anyway so there wasn't that awful dragged-from-the-depths feeling you get sometimes when it goes off just at the wrong time. I drove into the office because I had to make sure that the marking I'd done was checked and submitted to the admin team (today was the first big deadline day of the season for courses), and I got a parking space unusually close by (good for my poor foot). Then I'd just handed in the work when WierdBugMan wandered past and suggested we went and had a cup of tea, and we ended up having a really good talk and properly agreeing what he will and won't want to do after he's retired, which parts of the Bequest project he will definitely do, help with or not be available for, and a bit about how to tidy up the ends of our joint research activities, and I now feel a lot more secure about what will happen there. It's good to get things out in the open, and it was fun to talk research. Then Dr Labrador wandered by and asked me if we could set up a time after the exam period when we could talk about our teaching for next year, as he wants to plan ahead... this is the first time in eleven years that I haven't had to be the person to push for early planning of joint teaching! Such a treat! A meeting is in the diary... Then I drove home, and my ankle was sulking so I had a nap (foot up, bag of frozen peas draped over it) with the cat (who likes lying on warm human on a hot day), then marked a few essays, made myself a proper fresh fruit smoothie and rang my parents - most unusually MaleParent answered and I got to have a nice chat with him whilst FemaleParent was finishing something off in the kitchen (he doesn't like answering the phone, which is fine but means I often don't talk to him for a couple of months even if I phone home once a week). Then I did a few more essays (15 down), knitted a few rows and am blogging to wind up the day (with my foot up).

So today have been both reasonably productive and reassuring, and my ankle's been bad enough with a small amount of walking that I feel justified in not having travelled... about time something went well!

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I feel like I should explain why the marking season here is going on so long - North American bloggers seem to have one mad final week or ten days and then they're done, whereas in this uni at least (and I believe most UK unis) it's a much more drawn out process. So I will now explain HowItWorks at this uni - do feel free to skip, there are essay 'howlers' in the next post down...

There are two types of module, one which is assessed by course work plus final exam (let's call that CW-E) and one assessed by course work only (CW). Whilst there are usually one or more small pieces of work handed in, graded and returned during the teaching period, there is always at least one big piece due at the end. Plus, this semester, there are the dissertations - year-long 'independent study' research projects which all final-year students do. The first handin date is the dissertations, which come in about four weeks before the end of teaching. These are double-marked, so you get all your own supervisees plus a large pile from colleagues who work in faintly related areas. The next deadline is the end of the penultimate week of teaching - the assignments from the CW-E modules. At this point you begin to curse having set a "pedagogically stimulating" but hard to mark project and wish they were all multiple choice quizzes, but know that you'd've never got that approved by the assessment committee (yes, assessments have to be approved). The following week's classes are mainly reviews and preparation for exams. Work from CW modules comes in at the end of the first week of the exam period (which starts immediately after teaching ends). Exams are spread erratically over a four week period (this week is Exam Week 3). Deadlines for marking are spaced through that period, partly to try and get academics to actually DO their marking, partly because the office can't process it all at the last minute, and partly because a sample of modules has to be mailed off to the external examiners every year so that they can check on our overall consistency, practice, standards etc., and they need a week or two to look over it (partly because they are also academics and in their own marking maze). One also hopes sincerely and devoutly that the progress person didn't give out too many long extensions to students, which mean that unexpected, urgent marking of a few pieces turns up in your mail tray pretty much randomly, and that the master's course coordinator hasn't picked you to second mark a module but forgotten to tell you (this happens every year to someone).

The week following that four-week exam period is officially the start of the vacation (yee-haaa!) but as it is mostly spent checking everything and ends with the 'module board', I count it as marking season and use it mostly to do the previous semester's filing, throwing out, cleaning of teaching files, backing up etc.. By the module board all the marks must have been collated, submitted and checked, and at the module board the individual marks for modules are fixed. The exams officer spends this week looking sleep-deprieved and harrassed, and getting really really grouchy with colleagues, and the secretary-who-supports-exams is reading the job ads blatently in the tea room and muttering 'never again'.

The week after THAT is the external examiners week, when we have a long meeting to go over all the finalist's profiles, the external examiners arrive, we lock the external examiners in a room with all the work for all the borderline candidates (yes, we keep copies of ALL their work) plus anything that they need to look at but we forgot to mail to them. There is a dinner which we are all meant to go to - and pay for - and be positive and cheerful at. This is hard work. Someone always gets really drunk and says inappropriate things about either a) the senior management of the university, b) one or more colleagues who haven't attended the dinner or c) someone at another university who always turns out to be the partner/protegee/BFF of one of the external examiners. This bit is quite amusing, as long as you aren't the unlucky soul giving drunk person a lift home. Some people drink and eat loads, others have a salad, and then the Head of Department insists that we just split the bill equally, and the sober people are still minding their manners so they don't argue about it in front of the externals, they just grumble for months, and the drunk people are getting subsidised but may complain anyway. At least half of the local people dislike the choice of restaurant (hard to get to, poor choice/quality of food, expensive - or all three which is a bumper year for whining). The following morning we all cram into the committee room (cram is the operative word, the room is always well above it's official capacity and the meeting starts late because we're short a chair and it takes quite a few PhDs to fetch an extra chair, apparently. Plus there's the problem of Having A Quorum - lots of chasing around to roust Official Examiners out of their offices where they are hiding or just checking their email, or fielding them from the back step where they are having a quick cigarette...

Anyway, this meeting is ExCruCiATing. I am not allowed to knit during it (Gives A Bad Impression When Outsiders Are Present). First, the results for every first year and every second year are read out, individually, and approved. Anyone who tries to interject or comment in ANY other way than 'that's been added up wrong' is glared at - we're all desperate to get this over with. At the end of this torment, we usually get some instant coffee and a plate of cheap biscuits (stateoftheeconomy donchaknow, plus the department budgeting year runs to the end of July so we really are out of cash). Then each finalist is considered. Their profile over the last two years is discussed. Their class is declared. If they are borderline the external gives a report. Externals like to show how carefully they've considered the matter so they talk and talk. Eventually a degree class is declared. Sometimes there is a vote and then people argue about whether the vote is fair. This goes on and on and on. Someone usually starts an argument about a) a point of university proceedure which can't be altered by a mere department, b) a proceedure which was formally agreed by the department the previous year, but which the speaker now decides to disagree with, c) the likelihood of a student having an undisclosed mental health problem or d) which weighting-of-results system the student started their degree under. There are also frequent attempts to 'guess the student', since all of this is done on anonymous sets of marks. Then we go through the list again with names. Then we discuss the awarding of the departmental prizes. Then the externals give little speeches that go on and on and on about standards and what we did right or more usually what we did wrong. Then we think we're free, but Oh Noes, we do it ALL AGAIN for the masters degrees. Then the Chair of Examiners gives a speech, the Exams Officer gives a speech, and we are all released. It sounds like the last day of school. Many people rush for the pub. THEN exams are OVER and the summer 'research season' has actually started. On the following Monday, we are asked to set resit exams or topics for reassessment essays, and so it all starts again.

So, if we ignore the dissertation hand-in date, the whole thing goes on for about seven weeks... of which this is the start of the fourth. Yeah, it's boring to read about - but it's also quite a challenge to go through it!