With a little help from my friends

Cow 1: Ok, PiT wants to take out a hit on a few people and it needs to look like an accident. How much money do we have?

Duck: About 8 cents. Do you think that will be enough to buy a machete?

Cow 2: I’m hungry. Where the hell are those burgers we ordered?

Sheep: Baaa.

Stabbed in the back

How are you supposed to react when someone with whom you thought you had a good relationship sends a group email in which they slap you in the face, stamp on your foot and then stab you in the back for no reason other than a difference in opinion?

I’m stunned, shocked, disappointed, hurt and motherfucking pissed off.

Incoherent ramblings

Spent all day at a seminar thingy that was not in New City. I’m finally back at home and somewhat delirious, hence the following ...

To the event planners: fantastic speakers, great venue, great food, great wifi connection. But seriously ... you knew that there were going to be a lot of people in attendance and that approximately half of them were women so why were we in a place with a ladies' room that contained only 3 toilets?

To the woman that sat next to me all day: I don’t know whether you were hoping for some loving or desperately needed to get away from the guy seated on the other side of you but continuing to move your chair over until you were almost sitting on my lap was just plain fucking creepy.

To Full Prof: thank you for seeking me out during each break amidst the sea of intense strangers, giving me a hug and helping me to remember why I signed up for the TT in the first place.

To the caterers: totally fucking awesome job on the cookies but removing all of the caffeine sources before the afternoon break and substituting them with sugar-free, decaffeinated alternatives did not make for an attentive PiT in the day’s final session and certainly did not help with the 2 hour drive home in the dark on a winding country road.

To the fucknut that drove 3 feet behind me with his high beams on for 60 miles: dude, we were on an empty fucking country road. Next time, simply overtake and fuck off.

To my car: I love you to the nth degree largely due to your luscious heated seats, furnace-worthy heater and ear-shattering stereo system.

To the evil Halloween candy sitting on the kitchen cabinet: STOP CALLING MY FUCKING NAME.

Shit, I need sleep.

Monday ... blink ... gone

Ever have those days where you spend 12 hours in your office but still get nothing accomplished?

I’m just not sure what happened today but I seemed to have spent the whole time putting out fires.

Was on the phone/Skype for a couple of hours with colleagues both in the US and elsewhere to try to sort out some problems with manuscripts and studies.

Had to deal with an emerging crisis in the lab.

On the phone to take care of some personal stuff.

Emailed back and forth with colleagues on another campus to try to sort out some logistical issues we’re both facing.

Emailed former labmate asking for help with troubleshooting on a technique.

Sat down with accounts manager to get the low-down on how much is left of my startup funds.

Chatted with colleague about a teaching issue.

On the phone with colleague in land far, far away to attempt to fix major ongoing problem.

And then suddenly ... blink ... it was dark outside and my stomach was growling.

Scheduling appointments

To whom it may concern,

When you email to inquire about my availability for a meeting in the coming weeks, don’t wait for a week or two before letting me know when the meeting is to be scheduled. I am more popular and certainly busier than you realize and I am unable to reserve entire days until you can make up your mind. My calendar for the days you had indicated as possibilities for the meeting may be empty today but it fills up quickly so don’t get mad when other events are added while you’re still deciding between a 1.15pm or a 1.30pm meeting time.

Yours most frustratingly,

PiT.

A tale of surviving the first year on the tenure track

It’s now almost one year since I started my torturous journey down the tenure track and I’ve finally been able to catch my breath in the past day or so and reflect on the interesting, enlightening, frustrating, painful and hilarious last 12 months.

I relocated from one side of the US to the other, from an area where I had a lot of close friends and a surrogate family to a city where I knew nobody, and subsequently retreated into my frosty introverted shell from which I am yet to emerge. I survived my first ever winter of living in a snowy wilderness not to mention the trials and tribulations of my first semester of team teaching, several big grant submissions, two orthopedic surgeries and the consumption of more family-sized bags of Doritos than anyone thought was humanly possible. But I also enjoyed some new winter sports, weekend getaways to a gazillion national parks, a hilarious road trip with close friends, several short trips to catch up with former teammates and being able to further cement both my friendship and mentor/mentee relationship with my postdoc mentor, Dr J.

I have the occasional freakout moment, though, where I think about what will happen if I don’t get substantial grant funding, if my lab’s preliminary work doesn’t yield supercool results, if I don’t get tenure, etc, and I blame myself for not getting my lab in order as soon as I arrived. And then I remember how my progress was slowed by the surgeries, other medical issues and the initially oppressive teaching responsibilities, get even more depressed, eat more chocolate and wait for the sugar high to kick in.

But then it hit me. It took about 6 months for me to get settled, start to develop the supercool research ideas I’d been wanting to do, get a tiny bit of institutional funding to supplement my startup funds, train a student and hire a postdoc. And while this means I’m probably about 6-10 months behind where I’d like to be, my hypotheses are now pretty solid, the lab is fully stocked, our animal facilities are finally operational, my trainees have started collecting the preliminary data and I’ve been able to work on my grantsmanship on two other projects that were leftover from my postdoc days.

Sigh.

Ok, enough with the reflections. It’s time to hit the couch with a celebratory family-sized bag of Doritos. I’ll go to the gym tomorrow and work it off. Or maybe Sunday. Then it’ll be a double session to make up for the Doritos AND the Halloween candy I bought for the neighborhood kids in the hope that it will too cold for them to venture out leaving me with no other choice but to eat the whole lot myself.

Manuscript stuff

You have a paper you’ve been working on for an eternity and you submit it to Top Notch Journal. The reviewers like the hypothesis but identify several fatal flaws and reject the paper.

Choose one answer that you feel best represents what you would do.


1. Based on the reviewers’ comments you conclude that:

a. They don’t know they asses from their elbows.

b. They must all be unfamiliar with this particular area of your field.

c. They have identified the flaws you were hoping they wouldn’t see.


2. Your next step is to:

a. Submit the paper to Another Top Notch Journal without changing a single word.

b. Add a few sentences to pay lip service to the issues the previous reviewers raised and submit the paper to Another Top Notch Journal.

c. Revise the entire manuscript so that the novelty of the hypothesis is highlighted and include a discussion of the study’s limitations before submitting the paper to Another Top Notch Journal.