Shut up, subconscious!

Been doing okay with the whole work-stress thing lately. At least, when I'm fully awake.

When I am angry or anxious, I go to the gym.

Switched to a new Omega-3-6-9 supplement and that is helping a lot with the apparently mild depression that seems to have gone away almost completely.

Calling a ridiculous and stressful situation at work "major depressive disorder" made even less sense to me after I met with the psychiatrist my now-former therapist recommended. When the doctor is hawking drugs like a street seller (Don't you want it? Come on, you know you want it! Take the drugs!), my answer is the same as it is on the street: uh, NO. Keep walking. Always feel better as soon as I turn the corner and get away from people shoving things in my face that I don't need or want to buy. And I really do feel very confident about that decision. There is no doubt in my mind.

The only lingering problem is the early morning hours when I'm not quite awake, but not entirely asleep.

At night, I have real dreams. Some of them are interesting, some are about food or vacations, but they are mostly not about work.

Sometimes I wake up very early, anywhere from 3-6 AM. Sometimes, just before I wake up I figure something out that has been puzzling me with science-related issues like what experiment to do next. That is always satisfying, and I say, Thank you, subconscious! I knew you would solve that for me!

But sometimes it's not productive, and I'd rather not be waking up at 3 AM at all. Exercising to exhaustion usually helps me sleep through the night, but it's not always practical to be tired and sore every day of the week.

Even if it only happens rarely, it's still kind of annoying because I'm more tired the rest of the day than I should be.

I usually try to go back to sleep, and sometimes it works better than others.

Those early-morning hours are the time of day when my brain insists on processing and reminding me of all the things that people have said that had implied meanings; things my adviser should have done but didn't; things that I have no control over; and worrying about the future. Etc.

For example, when some of the students or postdocs in the lab want to complain to me, I'm supposed to be sympathetic, but if I say anything in return about being frustrated with our adviser, they jump all over me like I'm the one who started complaining in the first place.

And I know they aren't sympathetic because they just don't understand. I know they're either too clueless or too terrified to admit that if it's happening to me, it will probably happen to them eventually, maybe already has and they've been trying to pretend like it hasn't. Or they've swallowed their pride or integrity or both, and tried to tell themselves that it will all be worth it.

I know it doesn't occur to them that I feel really isolated and let down by their complete lack of empathy or respect. I know all of that. But it's all I can do to politely listen and just say, "Yeah, that sucks" and stop myself from actually sharing, because I know they'll hold it against me.

So when I wake up at 3 AM, part of my brain is pointing out that I really just want to
say to them: please quit whining to me, I do not want to be your friend
because you're incredibly two-faced, self-centered and insensitive!

About half the time, I get up for a little while and do some yoga or writing or even watching tv, and when I go back to bed half an hour or an hour later, it's fine.

The rest of the time, I just can't make myself get up because I'm very tired, and then I end up having these little episodes of replaying irritating situations in my head and wondering whether I could have handled them differently.

My theory is that if I write about these things in a journal or blog before I go to bed, that might help avoid them popping up on their own and wrecking my sleep. I think it helps.

The thing is, when I'm awake I'm pretty good at noticing my thoughts and identifying them and saying, Okay, yes, that was annoying, but I need to let that go now. It's a conscious effort, though, and when I'm half-asleep apparently I can't quite pull it off.

So this is my message to myself via the internet. Shut up, subconscious! You can talk during the day if you want, but you have to let me sleep! The hours of 11 pm to 7 am are OFF-LIMITS! I will write to get you out of my system if I have to, but then you have got to shut up! Got it? Good.

Stupid vs. Devious

Lately I have a few (let's say 3) people in my work life who purport to be helping me, but whom I just don't trust.

Or maybe they're really just clueless, because some of the things they do seriously undermine me, fuck up my work, and get in my way.

Not knowing which is seriously hindering my ability to decide what (if anything) I can do about it.

1. The boss

Yes, I've blogged before about some of the PI-postdoc relationship problems.

The boss does things like making the titles of my papers so overstated that the reviewers can't help but say we haven't done what we claimed.

But it's really only the title that's the problem, because that's generally the main thing insisted upon by my PI. I have to pick my battles, and that is one I always lose.

Let me also mention, it has actually come to pass before that my PI deliberately refused to let me publish. Eventually, having failed to come up with sufficient excuses, PI made a lot of idiotic changes to the manuscript and then "suggested" reviewers whom I never would have picked in a million years.

Stupid? Or devious?

In all logic, PI should want to publish my work as much as I do. And yet. There have been so many cases of apparent sabotage... it starts to look like either the PI is a complete idiot (nevermind 20 years of experience on me), or it's all deliberate. I have seen PI stab other people in the back before, so why would I assume it's not the same with me?


2. The student

The student claims to want to help in lab. Wants to learn. Wants lab experience.

And yet.

Student has, of late, been fucking things up. Not taking notes. Not looking at old notes. Mixing things up.

Student is on 2nd chance already; do I give a 3rd?

I'm torn because I know this student does not want a career in research, and I respect that. But let's be honest: this student couldn't have a career in research anyway.

There, I said it. I've had other students. This one would be a no-go as a technician, nevermind in a graduate program where independence would be required.

But I do need an extra set of hands for some simple tasks.

And not much chance of getting a replacement student anytime soon.

What has occurred to me, however, is that the student is the sort who might try to get kicked out, rather than quit.

So, stupid, I think probably yes (both of us).

But devious too? Or just more stupid than I realized?

And before you ask why I hired this student- this was the only one who applied.


3. The collaborator

I have lots of collaborators, and some are trustworthy individuals devoted to doing good work...and some are less so.

This one in particular is, I think, only stupid in an EQ way.

Some of the things this collaborator is doing appear quite devious.

For example, in timing, a devious thing to do is making suggestions in front of our other collaborators that should have been discussed first in private. The ambush tactic. It's awkward, and somewhat rude, and usually in my experience, deliberate. Especially when immediately afterward, instead of realizing their mistake, they make the "What, me?" face, like they didn't do anything wrong.

What I can't figure out is whether it is worth continuing this collaboration, given the added stress of working with this person.

Keeping in mind, I really don't have room in my life for added stress of any kind.

Even worse, some of our other collaborators have said they don't like this person and are considering backing out because of that.

I don't think it's worth sacrificing the whole project, but we'd have to find someone else, which is also a source of stress.

Upon confrontation in private, Collaborator claims to be working on communication skills, and has this great new insight, making progress, etc.

This has happened a couple of times now, although I haven't really brought out the Big Confrontation Guns and said Fix This, or Get Out Now.

Because Collaborator always apologizes.

I just can't tell if this is sincere.

My habit would normally be to cut off all ties with someone like this, because whether it's intentional or not, it's unacceptable and it's jeopardizing the project.

But this is the Grown Up World and we have to learn to work with all kinds of people... right? And maybe I'm just being paranoid?

---------------

So... to sum up:

I think the student often pretends to understand, but doesn't. I feel like this is a test for my patience, among other things.

The PI only admits to making a mistake when it's too late, which makes me wonder if it wasn't the intended outcome all along. Otherwise, you might expect a person to learn the next time around that the procedure should be 1. Listen to MsPhD, it's her project. 2. Have nothing to apologize for later.

And I just don't know what to do about the collaborator. It makes me angry just thinking about it.

I don't think I have the energy right now to deal with most of this, but the only non-optional one is the Boss.

So do I tell the others to fuck off? What do you think?

Go for broke

I've been extremely busy lately and not blogging at all, but no one seems too upset (thanks for being patient with me!).

However, Ambivalent Academic sent me this link to a post about being a grad student in a lab that is rapidly running out of money.

This is a topic I know from first-hand experience. I also know a lot of grad students and postdocs in the same boat right now, so I thought I would write a longer response here than I could do on AA's blog comment list. Especially since I couldn't sleep anyway and decided that blogging is usually calming and cathartic. Right?

My thesis lab went broke when I was about halfway through grad school. I didn't know how much more I needed to do, or what it would cost, much less how much longer it would take.

I was in a relatively good situation when this happened, but I didn't know that then. My grad school had (or found) enough money to pay my salary and health benefits, while my advisor made a half-hearted stab at writing more grants. I don't remember if any of them were funded, but we were in enough of a financial hole that it would have taken more than one grant to make much difference in my daily life (unless the school had decided to not pay me).

However, it did affect other things that were supposed to be part of my "training." For example, the department was supposedly going to cover 1 trip to a meeting per year for each student. Unlike every other student in the program, I was never able to take any trips.

[aside: this shows how 'departments' actually pay for things, grad students! Your PI is probably paying into a shared pot!]

But before you say oh boo hoo, as I know some of you will do, let me point out that the lack of traveling seriously hurt my ability to apply for postdoc positions intelligently (which, take it how you will, led inexorably to the existence of this blog!).

Anyway so back in grad school when this happened, the dean gave me some good advice. He told me to put my nose to the grindstone. So I did. That was good for a variety of reasons I won't go into here. It was also bad in some ways I regret more now than I did then. But mostly it was good, and I'm not sure my thesis would have turned out the way it did if I hadn't. I think of my thesis as a solid piece of work, and it's at least partly due to that grindstone-on-nose effect.

I think the key thing was that I was so determined to graduate and show those fuckers in my department that I could do it on the cheap, that I ended up convincing not just them but also myself. It was sort of a distraction, almost like an extra challenge that makes it into an even better story, to figure out how to do everything almost for free.

I did a lot of borrowing, and a lot of begging. I got really really good at asking for things from strangers, and from other students. And everyone was really generous about sharing. I learned that sometimes it's better to say which lab you're from, and sometimes you're better off just being the student from down the hall. I learned that it's really important how you ask, because sometimes you think you need something and nobody has it, but they have a much cheaper and better way of doing it, and they're happy to teach you. I learned a lot of random tricks this way.

And when I was really desperate, I got really good at asking for things from labs in the middle of the night... when there was no one around to ask. I never took anything irreplaceable or anything that looked like it was currently being used, but I wasn't shy about getting what I needed from labs that I knew could afford to support my research habit.

I'm not saying that's what you should have to do. But it is one way to get through, get shit done, and get out of there.

I think the key in these situations is to not panic, as ridiculous as that sounds right now. But the truth is, a LOT of labs have been operating in the red far too much of the time, and you're not alone.

Case in point: one of the labs I've worked with as a postdoc went broke a few years ago. The PI got rid of most of the people in the lab and basically covered the bare minimum of PI ass (but not anyone else's).

The favorites got their papers published; the un-favorites got treated even worse than they would have otherwise. In one really disgusting example, the PI gave an unpublished mouse project away to another lab, who then proceeded to publish a bunch of papers on it. The grad student who had done all the work is not first author on any of the papers, but the PI still gets to list them on grant renewal applications...

And fast-forward a few years, guess what? The PI eventually got more grants funded and an almost entirely new crop of slaves, er I mean, postdocs. But in the meantime, most of the people I knew there either quit science or left for greener (literally) labs.

In some ways, learning to deal with this kind of stress is EXACTLY what research these days is about. Doing it for the first time as grad student is almost a blessing, because believe me, you're going to have to do it again as a postdoc, and again and again and again and AGAIN as a PI.

Lots of PIs at my university run into funding problems - surprise! - a few times a year, because of the way the budgets are done here. Mouse costs go up by $1/cage/day, and nobody finds out for a while. Guess what that does to your planning? It's a fucking nightmare.

And there are always unforseen costs. Lots of PIs don't want to pay for maintenance contracts, because they're so expensive and you don't always need them. But when you need them, boy will you regret it! Equipment breaks down, or there are floods from the floor upstairs, and projects fall behind for months during the repairs... then the preliminary data for the next grant is delayed, not to mention everyone's papers... and in this climate, nobody can afford to be publishing a year or two late.

Anyway, so back to my story about what I did. I did two things with regard to publishing.

First, I sent my "big" paper to a slightly lower journal than I would have if my advisor had been up to the task of advising. And it got accepted faster than it would have at a "bigger" journal.

You can see the pros and cons of this. The cons are obvious. It didn't have the kind of impact on the field or my CV that it could have had (emphasis on the CV).

The pros are more numerous but less obvious. My paper got out; it got cited actually a fair amount because it was still in a pretty good journal; I had it on my CV; I got a postdoc fellowship that I wouldn't have gotten if I had no publications; I got interviews for postdoc positions based at least partly on that; my thesis was easier to write because the papers were all published.

Which brings me to my next point, which is the opposite. As they say in the fishing business, I cut bait.

I had other projects I wanted to do before I left. They were things I had been doing on the side, longer-term things that were finally starting to make sense and were really exciting to me.

But I took a hard look at the timing and I stopped them cold. I had to. I wrote my papers and thesis. There were more experiments I could have done to make my last "big" paper into a potentially "bigger" paper, but I didn't do them because I knew I had to get out.

In addition to borrowing in case of emergency, my thesis committee members let me do experiments in their labs, and they gave me anything I needed that we didn't have. This only works if your thesis committee members are not also broke, but it's worth looking into. Maybe another PI would even be willing to split your salary (e.g. if you're doing a collaboration?). Your department might not be able to pay you, but do you know people in other departments who can help cut your costs?

My current PI, for example, is always more likely to come up with ways to pay us and our health coverage if we're saving money or helping the lab out in other ways.

Maybe you can cut a deal with your advisor this way. PIs love to act like they're running the whole show when things are going well, but when things are not good, suddenly you're part of a close, dysfunctional family "where everyone pulls some of the weight". This would be a time when offering to help your PI with his/her grants would not be uncalled for. Even if all you do is copy-editing. You might even be able to secretly help by asking to write an aim as part of your "training."

I also applied far and wide for postdoc positions and did phone interviews. This helped me figure out what I wanted to do next. But that's a blog topic for a different day.

My point being, I came up with an exit plan. I made sure my advisor knew that recommendation letters were expected, where to send them, and ASAP.

If there's one thing I think I could have done better, obviously it was choosing my postdoc lab. But in terms of the science, my first postdoc lab was great. But I do think that being in a hurry to get out put more pressure on me to find a lab faster, so I didn't have as much time to think about my options from a creative state of mind.

Having said that, I have another friend whose lab also went broke in her last year of grad school. She ended up working in her thesis lab for free for two months to finish her last paper. And now all her recommendation letters, from everyone on her committee and probably even her stingy advisor, say how she made this heroic effort and got the paper published.

I don't recommend taking this route, for a variety of reasons, but if you can keep it to a minimum, it is often possible to cut your personal expenses down (or run up credit card debt) enough to get by for 4-8 weeks, even on a grad student salary with essentially no savings.

She stayed at friends' houses, it was very poetic, the sort of thing that humanities folks are probably more familiar with. Artists and cinematographers do this sort of thing all the time. It's just that scientists tend to think our work should be, I don't know, more valued by society or something, and that our PhDs should mean some guarantee of getting paid.

Newsflash: society doesn't really value what we do, and our PhDs are not exactly guarantees.

I actually think her PI could have paid her salary out of his personal pocket, and the only reason I can see for not doing this is because there were others in the lab at the time who also had papers to finish, and he couldn't afford to pay everyone that way.

But I maintain that she might have been able to negotiate with him for some money if she hadn't let on that she was willing to work for free. Truthfully, he needed that paper at least as much as she did, and he would have found a way to pay her if he had to.

You might also be eligible to apply for your own money. I wasn't eligible for any senior grad student fellowships, but I applied for postdoc fellowships before I actually started in my postdoc lab.

Keep in mind, there are lots of awesome young PIs out there who need postdocs, and lots of senior PIs telling their grad students to go work for someone established and famous. I'm still not convinced this is good advice for anyone, but especially now.

Truthfully, your best bet right now for getting a postdoc position fast and paid for is to join up with someone young who is trying to get their new lab off the ground. They all have startup money, you see, which is even more valuable in times like these.

Another thing you might consider: go for a shorter time. Maybe 1-2 years to learn specific techniques. This is what the postdoc "training" time used to be for. It's also a lot easier for a PI to envision where to get salary for 1-2 years than for 6-7 years.

And then if it works out, you can apply for fellowships, and stay there. If not, you've had plenty of time to finish publishing your thesis papers, and find a second postdoc.

Many PIs will let you go back to your thesis lab and finish off your last paper if you need to go for a week (or a few) to finish up experiments to address reviewers' comments. So if you can line up a postdoc ahead of time, you don't necessarily have to do things in the obvious order. Sometimes it goes

paper --> thesis --> postdoc position --> fellowship applications

and sometimes it goes

postdoc position --> fellowship applications --> thesis --> leftover papers now in press

And that, my dear blog readers, is a 2-hour long post. Whew. I guess I really have a lot to say on the topic! Or maybe I was just in blog withdrawal. I think I write longer posts in the middle of the night....

Trying to remember how to be a person.

It's Sunday morning.

I'm caught up on sleep, and resolved to try not to be miserable for the next month or two, until some of my current uncertainty is sorted out.

I will know in the next month or two whether I will be applying for faculty positions.

Again.

The alternative is to let my current postdoctoral position run out, be unemployed for a while, and hopefully have some kind of new career in mind by this time next year.

And in the meantime, I need to figure out how to be more of a person.

I have had these times, they come and go. Times when I know that, regardless of how I fare in terms of 'success' or science or career, I am a person:

I have hobbies, and character, and family and friends. I live in the world.

Sort of.

One of the things that appeals to me about academia is that it serves as a built-in, more or less permanent excuse to avoid the real world.

I've been thinking about this because one of the things I do when I'm really stressed out is read novels. Yes, it's yet another form of escapism. But somehow "I'm reading a book" just doesn't fly as an excuse the way it did when I was a kid!

When I'm working my ass off, as I have been lately, I have every right to have no idea what's going on in current events, to pay my bills late, to avoid chores and irritating family obligations.

"I have to work" is almost always an acceptable excuse, for almost everything.

(I'm busy fixing the world! I'm being a superhero! Leave me alone!)

One of the weirdest things to me about deciding whether or not to (try to) stay in academia is having to give up this complete devotion to my career. I just can't see myself being anywhere near as invested in working ridiculous hours if I just take a "job" somewhere doing something that will probably bore me.

And I can't quite see how I would fill up my time without working ridiculous hours. At the beginning, sure. But in the long run? What am I going to do, join the Peace Corps?

Right now, everything is up in the air. And in the grand scheme of things, current global financial crises are not helping.

So, as is often the case, I am not just waiting on my advisor, but also on a variety of other things out of my control.

I know from experience that the best thing to do when waiting is to try to spend some time in the real world. Not just emergency chores, but maybe even some other activities that help remind me who I am when I'm not trying to be a Scientist.

Switching gears back and forth is sometimes harder, sometimes easier.

Right now it feels really hard. I don't want to lose sleep over things I can't control.

I don't want to waste my life in waiting mode, when I could be doing other, more enjoyable things (while I wait).

On the flip side, I'm always afraid to relax even just a little bit, because before I know it, I'll be thrown back into the maelstrom. My advisor will email me, or some other crisis will appear out of nowhere and ruin my calm.

This is one of the things I hate about life in academia. No one ever wants to make a schedule and stick to it, and if by some miracle they actually do, they forget to tell me.

All of this means, in practical terms, that I can never seem to plan a vacation.

Oh, for a little control over my life. I have a few hours here and there where I get to decide, but that's all. I rarely even have a full day off with no emails that need immediate attention.

Nothing is really up to me.

I have two things I can control: what I do each day (the minutia). But I can only plan a day or two at a time. Everything else is at the mercy of scheduling.

And then there's the big, looming question that I still can't answer with confidence:

should I stay, or should I go?

I'm looking ahead at nothing but more of this kind of uncertainty and stress, and I'm thinking, what the hell am I doing this for.

Sure, I remember what got me into science. But why I stay will have to be more than that.

And what I'm going to do if I don't stay is another question entirely. Watching the Second Great Depression is not making me feel optimistic about options.

Hellish week almost over.

Tired. Verrry tired. Lots of data to analyze, no space on my hard drive, PI is nagging me, and I couldn't sleep last night and didn't get enough sleep the night before, either.

Something about not having enough time to wind down after working late, or drinking a half-caf o'lait at 4:30 pm is too late in the day... or maybe just stress.

But for the second night in a row, I had a hard-core, grad-school-style anxiety attack last night and spent most of it on the couch watching some old Meryl Streep movie on We. Yeesh.

Better now, crossed that line to "too tired to care right now", where it is somewhat more peaceful.

Trying not to be too short-tempered, despite all that. It's taking a major act of zen serenity right now. Deep. Breathing.

So even though I will probably have to work late again tonight, which will probably necessitate a return to coffee (I skipped it this morning, trying to calm my rattled nerves), and I will most definitely have to work most of the long weekend, I am trying to look on the bright side:

-Got data.

-Making progress.

-Not homeless yet (have to drive past a particular homeless guy each morning, who always gives me a very knowing look like he knows that I know I should be glad I have a job and a place to live, at least for now).

-Not unemployed yet (unemployed friend of mine, meanwhile, is getting increasingly anxious about her lack of options, and I'm trying hard not to worry about her too much)

-PI is trying to help with project.

-Friends and strangers are helping with reagents, equipment etc. on short notice.

-I have learned, over the years in science, how to not let stress rule my life completely. That's really a Major Victory.

-Can make a point to go to yoga on Sunday and hopefully make an appearance at 1 or 2 friends' labor day get-togethers.

-It might rain this weekend, which is bad for get-togethers outdoors, but perfect when your plants need it and you know you have to work indoors anyway!

-Can sleep in tomorrow. Hale-fuckin-lujah.

Hooray for Friday.

Momentums lost.

Not so long ago, I wrote briefly that I had made some progress with my advisor. I knew it was a fragile momentum, but I thought it was at least a step in the right direction.

But as often happens with these things, before I could gain sufficient momentum in that way, we hit a roadblock and the momentum got lost.

It's frustrating because the roadblock is also a wake-up call for my advisor.

In a way, this was exactly what I needed: an outside Voice of Reason to say

"Hey, MsPhD wanted to do THIS and you told her to do THAT and she did because you're the PI, but you know what?

She should have followed her own instincts, and done THIS instead.

You should have listened to her."



[Those of you who have been reading this blog know that the subtext is

Since PI accused her of ignoring all PI's suggestions, MsPhD had to do THAT to show she can go with the flow (or whatever)]




The trouble now is, this wake-up call has already had a variety of undesirable consequences.

(1) PI feels doubtful.

1a. PI is self-doubtful (because THAT was not as good as THIS would have been)
1b. PI feels guilty about feeling doubtful.
1c. PI feels doubtful of MsPhD (even if that might be unfair, PI is human and that is how PI feels, and it shows)

(2) MsPhD is doubtful too.

2a. MsPhD is questioning her abilities and desire to keep on this path
2b. MsPhD is questioning whether she really has sufficient spine to stand up to PI as much as necessary
2c. MsPhD is doubtful of PI for pushing THAT when it wasn't the right thing
2d. MsPhD is also pissed off because she KNEW it wasn't the right thing but felt like she had to do it anyway, for the reason mentioned above (and previously on this blog*).
2e. MsPhD is doubtful that she can figure out how to get past this roadblock, and that it won't happen again, and that if it does it won't eventually push PI to conclude that MsPhD is not worth it.




*[The damned-if-you-do-or-don't reason, which has all along seemed like something of a sexist problem to begin with. The male postdocs who ignore everyone's suggestions somehow still manage to get jobs. A guy can be a Troubled Child and get away with it. They get to be Mavericks. When women do it, we're difficult, we're Bitch.

Yes, I am Bitch. But lately I am just Tired. It takes a lot of energy and confidence to be Bitch. Right now I am 'haggard', as someone said in a comment. I love that word. Somehow I always pictured haggard as a tall, skinny guy with stubble. See? I'm sexist! Can I be haggard too?]



So because of what should have been only a momentary loss of momentum, although we have a plan for what to do next, PI's current response, despite agreeing to this plan, is to stall everything.

In other words, PI has chosen to procrastinate.

Procrastinating is the WORST possible thing we could be doing right now.

But what can I do. PI is out of town again.

In the meantime I am trying to think.

Lately I have felt like I can't. Think.

The last couple of weeks I've been trying hard to clear my head enough to figure out what I want to do next. It hasn't been working. I make seemingly endless, nested lists of things I want to do... but lately there are too many things, and I can't prioritize them by the main criterion of Things I CAN and absolutely SHOULD do HERE AND NOW.

My favorite organization tool, Omnifocus, isn't helping, because the whole point of scheduling things is that you have to know how long things are going to take, and be able to break them down into predictable units of time. So it's kind of a joke for research anyway, but it can be helpful...

I guess I need to spend some time figuring out how many units and how long each one would take in the perfect world (multiplying by factors of 3-10x for conversion to the research world)...

At one point I was thinking of things I should do to get preliminary data for grant application(s). Then I was thinking maybe I should focus on things I can do while PI is paying for it (as most of the other postdocs who got jobs did before they left). Maybe some of those things are the same?

Maybe instead of making lists, I should be making Venn diagrams?

The wake-up call just reinforced once again how important it is for me to have my own agenda and push it hard, even if it means risking pissing off PI because really, what's the worst that could happen? I need to buy something to do the experiments I decide on, and PI says no? Not that that's ever stopped me, I can always go do it in someone else's lab...

Meanwhile, I've tried soliciting feedback from numerous people on the work I've done so far, and all the questions everyone would like to see answered. To try to figure out what to do first.

But beware this approach. Although it has helped in the past, this time it has not helped. The suggestions I've gotten are range from boring to bizarre to bewildering.

Most people, I've realized, only suggest what they know best, which tends to be whatever model organism or techniques they use in their own research.

I guess because I have so far been somewhat fearless about trying new things, people seem to assume they can suggest anything and I will try it. Which might be true, but, um, this is really not the kind of suggestion I'm looking for right now.

So the suggestions I've gotten range from testing my models in 3 different organisms (none of which I have worked with before, and all of which have their own set of methods and problems I only know about from a distance) .... to learning really cutting-edge new techniques, some of which can't be done at my university or even in my town ... to backtracking to methods I've used in the past but with a new twist ... to doing experiments completely in vitro with only purified components.

And it's not clear that any of these will work faster, be easier, or more informative than any of the others.

Or that any of these would be guaranteed crowd pleasers (where crowd = search committee and/or paper referees and/or study section).

So you can see how I'm feeling like gee, maybe input is not what I needed after all?

Maybe what I need is some time to decide for myself what I think is most interesting, and then do that.

Trouble is, I don't have a lot of time. Time is the one thing I do not have.

Here we are, it's almost July, and despite my gently reminding PI (which doesn't seem to be helping since guilt seems to feed the procrastination response)... for me to apply for jobs this year, we are already several months behind. Maybe already too far behind.

So I guess that's what I should be doing.

To do:

1. Build Time Machine.
2. Make all new mistakes this time around.

More useless PI advice.

Okay, let's recap how this year has gone so far.

Had paper draft since year before. Was already sick of looking at paper.

Was more than sick of being asked what was going on with paper.

Submitted paper with overly grandiose claims to a journal where it wouldn't get in, based on overly optimistic advice of well-meaning PI.

Predictably, paper did not get in.

Had plenty of stamina to revise and plenty of time to send it elsewhere at that point, but no. PI wanted to try an even more ambitious plan, including augmenting paper with numerous uninformative and risky experiments.

Had a bad feeling about this, but wanted so dearly to believe that PI, with much more experience and wisdom, knows more than little MsPhD.

Experiments were done. Not much new could be concluded from them.

Paper is now much longer, arguably not much better, time has run out, and PI is now talking about sending it 'elsewhere' (meaning, the same level of 'elsewhere' where it could have been published in its original form many months ago).

PI won't even take a strong stand on which elsewhere, although some possibilities suggested a month or two ago were shot down.

The same possibilities so recently shot down are now regarded as perfectly reasonable.

When you can't even agree to continue to disagree, and the random changes of opinion occur too late to be useful, one has to wonder why anyone ever thought the apprenticeship model had anything to offer.

I gave up on it long ago.

Noisy neighbors and lack of sunlight.

So much for working outside. In theory we should have enough wireless signal to work in the yard and enjoy a little sunlight on the weekends that way. In practice, sometimes it just won't fly.

We have one of those neighbors. She doesn't throw parties or generally make much noise, but she likes to talk on her cell phone in the yard. Correction: when she speaks on her cell phone in the yard, IT'S REALLY LOUD.

She's usually not working on her garden while she does this.

There are nice areas nearby where she could walk and talk on her phone where everyone else is doing this, too, but she doesn't.

No, she has to talk, really loudly, right outside our house.

I realize that it's a free country and she should be allowed to do whatever she wants, so it's ridiculous for me to complain. But it's still driving me crazy.

In general I love where we live. But there are some things that make me fantasize about moving away. In theory we'll move when (if) I get a faculty position, since I'm assuming I won't be getting one near where we live now.

Even if I don't get a job this year, I think I'm reaching my limit on the current situation. I'm one of those people, I like to move every five years. Maybe that's weird, or just a leftover from moving so much when I was actually in school, but much as I like stability, I also get restless.

Someday I want to live in a house that is not a cave. Where we could just pull back the shades and get actual daylight and some idea what temperature it is outside. Our current house is perpetually cold and dark, which is nice when it's hot out and gloomy the rest of the time.

It's especially bad when I feel like I'm spending most of my life indoors with no windows. Sometimes I feel like a houseplant in the shade, on its way to wither and die.

A friend of ours has been on and off the wagon with blue light therapy for his sleep disorder and SAD. He says it works and that I should try it, but for some reason I'm always too lazy. Maybe it's because I'm always tired.

Hiding in my office.

I am feeling frazzled. So even though I have bench work I absolutely have to do today before I go home, at the moment I am more or less planning to wait until everyone leaves.

I'm not returning phone calls. I should. The phone will certainly ring again before the day is over. Lord only knows what I'll do if someone knocks on my door. Hide behind the file cabinet?

I have barely any email to deal with, but what little I got today makes me want to throw things and break windows. So I'm avoiding dealing with it at all.

I've realized what it was that kept my thesis advisor incommunicado so much of the time. And why I got so much done in college.

I cope with stress by working. Quietly. I like books. I like reading and writing. I really do. It seems so simple and soothing compared to all the crap beyond my desk.

So I am hiding. I have plenty of things to do, so I'm getting things done, but you know it's bad when you're afraid to even microwave your lunch, for fear that you might get caught having to talk to someone and pretend like everything is hunky-dory, because nobody actually wants to know the real answer to "how's it going?"

Today is just one of those days, I'm just not in the mood for getting anyone's advice.

It might all be moot.

Things have been going pretty well in terms of experiments. I've been getting enough data that my ideas are advancing... that's the fun part, what keeps me going despite all the s**t. In fact, I am downright excited about the science.

But this week I have had this awful feeling, like something really bad was about to happen and I wasn't sure what.

Today I got an inkling of what it might be, and realized that it probably doesn't matter how good my science is, if politics are really so important.

Which is really too bad, since I think I'm onto something of potentially wide interest, but if I can't finish it, nobody will ever know.

So I'm having that feeling again, like I should just try to hang in there until I can finish this project and get it out there, since I think other people would benefit from knowing what I did, even if it doesn't get me a job or any accolades whatsoever, it might save someone else from wasting time and effort reproducing what I've been doing all this time.

But I think it can't be coincidence that everyone always seems to be putting obstacles in my path, making everything harder than it needs to be. At some point, it's too much to be unintentional, it must be deliberate.

They are never acknowledging how hard I work, both on my own experiments and to help everyone around me get their experiments working.

You'd think they would appreciate it, but instead I get nothing for rescuing their grad students, saving them money by troubleshooting BEFORE expensive mistakes are made, calling the repair people to maintain the equipment, everything.

But no. Instead I am getting into trouble.

First I'm in trouble for spending too much time helping other people when I should be focusing on my own work.

Then I'm in trouble for not helping people as much as I used to, even though I still try to make sure everything is taken care of, and everyone knows I have my own work to do.

I don't know if it has to do with being female, maybe it has nothing to do with that. But I do think that male scientists can, and do, get away with personality quirks and flaws, and a lot less generosity, than female scientists can right now.

In fact, I have NEVER seen a male scientist, of any level, help his coworkers as much as I've been expected to help mine, while still getting all my own work done. If I fall down on either of those counts, I must be a failure.

But maybe I'm just playing the game all wrong. I'm sure I did something stupid along the way, but it's too late now to go back.

Yes, this is probably all my fault. Too bad nobody ever gave me the keys to the club, or the location of the manual of unwritten rules.

***

I was thinking of this guy today who started his own lab a couple of years ago, and how it's amazing that anybody would want to hire him, much less want to work for him.

This guy was not a team player. He was not liked by anyone. His science wasn't even that great. And he was among the most arrogant people I've ever had the misfortune to meet.

I can think of plenty of examples of people like that, who are not likable at all, whose science is mediocre, but who have somehow managed to what, dodge the politics? Blackmail someone? How does that even happen?

Because I'm wondering if I should change my strategy. Maybe, instead of trying to be liked by the right people, and do the right thing, I should just figure out what people do whom nobody likes. How those people are successful despite being selfish jerks.

Pulling my hair out.

I'm literally stressed to the point of pulling on my hair, as if free time and all the frustration will come out if I just pull hard enough.

In the great words of Snoopy, and I can only say AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGH!!!!

Riding the wave of chaos.

Today I read a stack of papers (most of them interesting) and some grocery shopping.

That probably doesn't sound very chaotic, but I promise you, the grocery store was really crowded.

Tonight I am going to a party, which I'm sure will be chaotic.

I am going to cook dinner shortly (will take an hour to incubate on stove) and then do some more reading before I leave.

We tried to watch the pilot of The L word on DVD from Netflix... ugh. Too much like a gay, humorless version Desperate Housewives, with no substantial writing or characters we could much care about. Maybe it's just the wrong time in my life, but the straight character is too young and the dysfunctional couple is too baby-aholic.

Not particularly looking forward to the party, but hopefully it will be good for me to get out and be social.

?

Or something.

I hate winter because it is so cold. Makes me want to do as little as possible, under as many blankets and sweaters as possible.

And all the other stuff I want to blog about, I can't.

Suffice it to say that things are changing at work, and I think it will consist mostly of continually escalating chaos.

I am trying to be the calm little center of peace while it all swirls around me, but some days it's tough to put up walls and say emphatically,

THIS IS MY PERSONAL SPACE!

or, my personal favorite:

NOT MY PROBLEM, FUCK OFF!

And, I'm feeling continuing pressure to do things I'm not interested in doing, on a schedule I hate, which is screwing up my schedule not just at work but also at home. So it's putting pressure on my personal life, which is not helping anything.

Lots of yelling at home = using up energy and patience I don't have because of work, or for work. It's a vicious cycle.

We don't mean to be stressed out at each other, we just are.

I would so very much like to get out of this cycle, but right now I don't know what's going to happen so I'm just kind of clinging onto the rollercoaster by my fingernails. I guess I will know soon enough if I'll be screaming with excitement (not likely) or if it's going to make me throw up (probably) or if I'll just fall out of my seat and crack my head open on the way down (always a possibility).

Had an interesting chat with a friend last week about something that I now realize is commonly referred to as 'existential anxiety.'

She was saying that she can't picture her life in the future, so she has this irrational fear that what she's seeing is a prophesy of her death happening sometime soon. She realizes this is silly, but I knew what she meant. I told her I never pictured myself doing what I'm doing now, and I still can't picture where I'll be next year.

I have another friend who said this to me, how the thing that bothers him most about being 30ish and in academia is that lack of knowing where he'll be next year, much less 5 years from now.

What I find most astounding is that most scientists don't seem to realize that this constant feeling of free-floating anxiety is actually bad for creativity and analytical thought (or so is my impression).

Wouldn't fixing the system improve all our productivity and cure, you know, lots of human diseases a whole lot faster?

I intellectualize, therefore I am.

Enforced relaxation time this weekend. Tried to make the most of it by focusing on relieving stress via busywork intellectualizing.

One of the career/confidence/self-help books I read included a little bonus: a Neuroticism Test!

For me??!! You shouldn't have!

I had no idea what neurotic meant. The official definition of neurosis is suffering from anxiety out of proportion to real threat.

Yes, MsPhD is officially neurotic about the whole faculty position thing.

So then, since I thought I had found something potentially insightful, I got another book. The take home message being, of course, "I'm neurotic, you're neurotic, and we're both ok!"

I'm not sure this revelation is going to help me in major life-changing ways, but I'm learning a little bit of psychology theory, which helps to pass the time.

I am trying to get away from this habit of blowing things out of proportion, which is apparently common in neurotic people, and feeds the negativity monkey on my back.

I also read some scientific journal articles, which was oddly comforting. And it was comforting that I enjoyed it the way I used to: it was both relaxing (easy) and stimulating (fun).

Maybe it's too soon to retire after all.

I know getting a job is highly competitive, and that staying funded in science is extremely difficult. But am I panicking out of proportion to a real threat? What's the real source of the problem: them or me?

(aside: I'm having deja blogging vu. I think I've written about this before.)

I'm trying to liken it to something a teacher told me when I was a kid. I was in a competition, and I was watching the other kids go before me. I thought they were better than I was.

She said I was better than they were, but I didn't know whether to believe her. I thought maybe she was just saying that to be nice, trying to build my confidence.

Objectively, I was trying my hardest to observe these other kids, and I really thought they were much better than me!

Objectively speaking, I have a similarly hard time figuring out where I fit into the whole job competition scene. My CV is really not that bad, I think. What I don't know is how worried I should be. Okay, that's neurotic, worrying about how much to worry!

One thing I can say for sure is this: if I'm neurotic, then working with, around and for highly neurotic people has certainly made me more paranoid, and more neurotic, then I would have been otherwise.

That's definitely them, and not me.

Haunting wide-open spaces.

I like being a ghost. I've been in lab a lot this weekend, when no one else was here.

I'm trying to save up on quiet, no-people time. I've got a lot of seasonal socializing and meetings coming up when I know I won't have a single moment alone.

I'm dreading it.

I have so much work I would rather be doing. Even the schmoozing- which usually comes with free food & booze, and technically counts towards work, right?- seems hugely onerous.
.....

My only regrets for the moment:

1- Not getting enough sunshine.
I notice this particularly in the winter.

2- Not getting more done earlier in the year.
I have several deadlines coming up.

My natural tendency is to give up before I've even started. I do this especially if I feel like something is at all optional and I won't have time to do it well without being tremendously stressed out.

3- I worked this weekend on something that appears to have been a waste of time. Argh.
I try to rationalize this by saying well, it still would have been a waste in the middle of the week, and then I would be several days behind where I am now, but it's small consolation.

4- Not being able to blog the most interesting things at work.

.....
Being a ghost is an enviable position. Lately I find myself daydreaming about all the stuff I'll do if my funding runs out:

Crazy, risky science that has nothing to do with what I work on now. Will I contact strangers and ask to haunt their labs for free just to do experiments?

Learning various languages- romance and computer languages.

Blogging about all sorts of things without having to worry that it could potentially jeopardize My Future Career.

I keep looking at the space on the calendar when my grant ends. And the space between now and the grant deadline I'm still debating about.

Even though the grant deadline is looming, and for the moment I'm still thinking I might not even try to make it, the space and time after I'm out of money is much, much bigger.

When it's just space and time, it has so much potential. When it's far off in the future, I still have potential. There's still a chance I'll get a job (okay, fat chance) or more funding between now and then.

I went through this planning-ahead panic attack already last year. This year I promised myself I would face the fear, admit what I want- a job- and that the only way to get there is to not give up. I know panicking leads to depression... which just wastes a lot of time. Too bad I couldn't save up the time and space last year when I couldn't do anything but wait, and use it now, when I have so much to do and really need it.

Job Search Stress with a capital J S S

I sent another one today. I'm up to about 30 so far. The only 'feedback' I've received are those occasional affirmative action forms you get in the mail. You know, the ones they swear won't be linked back to your applications? I think I mentioned this before, one of my friends noted that she only got those forms from places that rejected her outright. Our theory is that they have to get the paperwork done so at least they can say they had a certain number of women apply , even though they had no intention of actually hiring any .

Sigh.

Meanwhile I'm taking Tagamet, drinking Aveda tea and having nightmares. This morning's nightmare was bizarre, it involved some kind of large bear/dog-like animal arriving on the ocean, there were two of them. I was in a house on the beach, I think there may have been a couple of other people there, I think they were women. Anyway we were terrified the animals would get in, and we closed all the doors and I started to open the back window to escape. But then the animals got in and they turned into guys with red spots on their faces.

???? According to my dream book, dogs are good, the ocean is good, windows are good, I think. Nothing about guys with red spots on their faces.

Anyway, I am an expert at coping with stress, really I am. I exercise, I eat healthy stuff, and all that. I only drink 1 cup of coffee a day, but I think I should try to cut that out again, too. Very sad. I was so enjoying being able to drink coffee!

But I am wishing I had some kind of magical cure for this stress, since I am pretty sure it's irrational. Either I get interviews this year, or I don't. Either way, it's not the end of the world. So why do I feel like I have cancer of the puppy?

Speaking of Joss Whedon references, we went to see Serenity this weekend. It was great, btw. And I'm doing experiments again, which is kind of fun for the moment (until I find out whether anything actually worked).