Out of office

The worst thing about long-haul flights?

Being stuck in a window seat on a full flight (despite insisting that you wanted an aisle seat) next to a huge fat man who doesn't understand that he only paid for one seat, not those on either side of him. Oh, and poking his fleshy arm 10 hours into the flight to let him know that you need him to get out so that you can go to the bathroom only to have him respond with, "Oh, for fuck's sake." Motherfucker.

The best thing about long-haul flights?

There isn't one.

The worst thing about traveling halfway around the world to see your family?

Seeing how much they've aged since your last visit and having your mother talk about what she plans to do when your father is dead. (For the record, my father is in pretty good condition, all things considered.)

The best thing about traveling halfway around the world to see your family?

Knowing that, regardless of what you do or how far away you do it, your family loves you unconditionally and are proud of every single accomplishment.

Mentoring of junior faculty

Have a couple of questions for the junior faculty out there (or for the more senior faculty members who can remember their time as the new kid on the block) ...

1. Did you have a faculty mentor or a team of mentors?

2. Was this part of an official mentoring program at your school or did you seek these people out on your own?

3. Were your mentors from within your department, within your school or external to your institution?

4. What did your mentor(s) specifically help you with (ie teaching, research, grant writing, etc)?

5. How effective were your mentors in helping you find your way as a newbie?

6. How approachable and/or helpful are/were your non-mentor colleagues on newbie-related matters?

Ta.

My new career

I would like to publicly announce that I have decided to leave academia and pursue a new career.

I want to be a bounty hunter.

More specifically, I want to be the female version of Dog the Bounty Hunter.*

My plan is to get some serious breast augmentation, wear clothes that are several sizes too small (preferably white leather or vinyl) and pursue bail jumpers.

I figure that in my new career I can apply some of the skills that I’ve accumulated during my time in academia ... persistence, determination, research, troubleshooting ... in addition to my lifelong dream of helping to bring villains to justice.

Oh, and I plan to peroxide my hair to within an inch of it’s life and get it cut into a supercool mullet.

And best of all? I get to charge into bathrooms with my bounty hunting posse bearing flashlights and shouting “Freeze motherfucker!” I can then get the offender in a headlock and shout “Yeeeeeeeeaaaaahhhhhh, motherfucker!”

Hey, if Dog can do that, so can I.

And then I can use my mentoring skills to counsel the offender on making better life choices and being a better person before I deliver them to the police station.

Yeah baby! I’m going to totally rock my new career.

Sigh.

Ok, so I’ve had a bad day at work.

I don’t think the US government will allow me to remain in H-1B work status if I become a bounty hunter as you apparently don’t need an advanced degree.

Damn.

Looks like I’ll have to stay in my current position for a little while longer.

Hmmm ... although I could still do the breast implants, white leather/vinyl and peroxided mullet ...

I could totally pull off that look.


* Actually, I’d probably be more like this female bounty hunter. I’m a huge fan of hers and am almost as accident prone but luckily I don’t have her problem with cars exploding or catching on fire.

Choosing a thesis lab based on rotation experiences

I’ve had a much-needed bit of time away from the lab/office, hence the lack of recent posts, but it just wasn’t enough to allow me to decompress. I have a few more adventures on my calendar before the Fall semester starts and I’m just hoping that will be enough to allow me to retain some brain cells and prevent me from spontaneously combusting.

In the meantime, I received an email from JT who asks the following:

Can you write a post giving some advice for graduate students who are rotating in different labs in how to pick the right lab, how to choose between two labs that you really like? Like.. would you stick with a lab where you got interesting results versus a lab with some data but no conclusion can be reached yet? Would you judge a lab based on happiness versus the rank of the mentor and how successful they are?

Sure, JT. I’d be glad to give my version of what a student should or shouldn’t do. Before that though, I should let you know that the grad school system in which I undertook my PhD didn’t have lab rotations (entry into grad school was dependent upon a mutual agreement between advisor and student and there’s no turning back after that) and my only experience with this was during my postdoc where I supervised a couple of rotating students, both of which ended up joining the labs in which I worked.

Nevertheless, I’m always happy to spout opinions on topics about which I might not have much a clue. So, to address JT’s specific questions:

1. Would you stick with a lab where you got interesting results versus a lab with some data but no conclusion can be reached yet?
Depends. Are the results/data new and/or novel? Do they have the promise of a glittering and exciting thesis project that will blow the roof off your area? Is the work you’ve been doing something that actually contributes to the lab or have you been given a token side project? Realistically, the amount of work you can complete during a rotation is minimal so not being able to reach a conclusion isn’t that surprising.

2. Would you judge a lab based on happiness versus the rank of the mentor and how successful they are?
This has been discussed ad nauseum throughout the blogosphere and the advice you get will depend on who you ask and what their personal experiences have been. My bias is to choose a thesis lab where you can contribute intellectually, learn new skills, build your cv and with a mentor that actually feels like a mentor (ie not a “boss”). Some PIs treat students like an extra set of hands whereas others expect and encourage their students to develop new ideas and techniques. Are you capable of learning something new and enhancing the lab or would you prefer to be told what to do and how to do it? What do you think you would like to do after grad school? Prof Greybeard may have a ton of research awards and a gazillion dollars in funding but does he mentor his students? What do other lab members say about working in each lab?

Here are a few other things to consider ...

Have you spoken to each of the PIs to see how they feel about having you in the lab? If they both want you, which project do they envisage you doing? Is this something you can see yourself working on for the next 2, 3 or more years? Is this something you are actually interested in? Also weigh up learning and/or developing new techniques vs productivity and/or progress … there’s nothing worse that seeing a student agreeing to take on a project that is completely outside the PI’s knowledge and capabilities of the lab and watching them flail helplessly.

I’d say go with the lab that is doing something that you find interesting and in which you can learn some new things and develop some stuff of your own but, above all else, choose a mentor that is a great role model, who will be your advocate and who will help you develop into a scientist.

From my own experience, I chose my grad advisor based on a mutual interest within our subfield and his willingness to let me be relatively autonomous. At the time, he was a freshly minted faculty member with a strong biosketch, a tiny bit of funding and I was the only one of his students working in my area. It worked for us but others who came along after me weren’t so fortunate. What is right for one person isn’t necessarily right for another. Talk to each of the PIs and go from there.

Hope this helps, JT. I’m sure the peanut gallery will have much more to contribute in the comments ...

Gotta get me some R.E.S.P.E.C.T.

The school within which our small department resides hosted a visiting speaker today, Prof Accomplished, who is an old school practitioner of Professional Stuff and I was forced had the very great pleasure of meeting him amongst a group of cool Professional Stuff clinicians, most of whom are junior faculty and some of whom were already aware of my inherent brilliance.

We were forced encouraged to introduce ourselves to the speaker and to give a brief history of our career trajectories and it was hilarious to see the reactions of the clinicians who didn’t know me when I outlined my background and the location and scientific area of my postdoc ... my biosketch is certainly a gazillion times better than they could have ever imagined for someone in my poorly-respected sub-field of science.

The most satisfying moment of all was when I said that I was in the process of setting up my new lab and that I had a service tech upstairs putting Expensive New Equipment together and that my student was busy troubleshooting her western blots. Prof Accomplished did a double take and asked if I had ... gasp ... my own lab space as if it was incomprehensible that someone from my discipline would ever need, or indeed actually be allocated, a lab. I then went on to describe my basic science research and it was then that he realized that he had underestimated me and the program to which I belong.

Several of the Professional Stuff clinicians were extremely complementary about the work my students had done with their students. They also made sure that Prof Accomplished understood that my students are also training to be healthcare professionals, just in a different area to theirs, and that one of the great strengths of the School of Professional Stuff is the unique integration we have among the disciplines.

While it frustrates me no end to hear disparaging remarks about my sub-field, I always feel vindicated when someone finally comes to the realization that I am a relatively-accomplished basic scientist, that my students are highly intelligent trainee-practitioners and that we do make a kickass contribution to the scientific and healthcare communities.

My hope is that between my research, our program and the amazingly talented and enthusiastic graduates we produce, my sub-field will no longer be viewed as the runt of the scientific family. Days like today make that seem like an achievable goal. Huzzah!

Dilemma

What do you do when you have a sudden influx of brand-spanking-new equipment that you plan to use in the near future and you’ve run out of space to house it all?

My lab is piled so high with boxes I’m not sure if my student is buried underneath it all or if she’s gone home for the day.

I guess it’s a good dilemma to have ... assuming the student hasn’t been crushed to death, that is.

Must. Not. Kill. Old. iPod.

Gaaaaaah. I’m spending my Saturday night trying to get my old 3G iPod to sync on my MacBook so that I can have new tunes for an upcoming roadtrip. For some reason, the damned thing has decided it doesn’t want to mount on either computer let alone sync with iTunes. Piece of shit. I’ve already restored the bastard twice tonight. Grrrrr.

Anyway, I’ve been surfing the intertubes in between moments of teeth gnashing (damn you, 3G iPod, damn you to hell) and came across this article in the NY Times. Believe me when I say that I don’t plan to flog a dead horse about the current funding/reviewing situation but the article discusses some of the very same points that have raised my ire of late.

The article focuses on the problems associated with trying to obtain funding for “risky” projects and without significant preliminary data, specifically looking at cancer research and the National Cancer Institute (of which I know nothing).

Go check out the whole shebang here. In the meantime, this is just a small selection of bits from the article ...

The institute’s reviewers choose such projects because, with too little money to finance most proposals, they are timid about taking chances on ones that might not succeed.

“We have a system that works over all pretty well, and is very good at ruling out bad things — we don’t fund bad research,” said Dr. Raynard S. Kington, acting director of the National Institutes of Health, which includes the cancer institute. “But given that, we also recognize that the system probably provides disincentives to funding really transformative research.”

For 25 years, Eileen K. Jaffe received federal grants to run her lab. As a senior scientist at the Fox Chase Cancer Center, with a long list of published papers in prestigious journals, she is a respected, established researcher.

Then Dr. Jaffe stumbled upon results that went against textbook explanations, suggesting that it might be possible to find an entirely new class of drugs that could disable proteins that fuel cancer cells. Now she wants to find chemicals that might be developed into such drugs.

But her grant proposal was rejected out of hand by the institutes of health, not even discussed by a review panel. She had no preliminary data showing that the idea was likely to work, something reviewers always want to see, and the idea was just too unprecedented.

So Dr. Jaffe was not entirely surprised when her grant application to look for such cancer drugs was summarily rejected.

“They said I don’t have preliminary results,” she said. “Of course I don’t. I need the grant money to get them.”

Dr. Young, chancellor at Fox Chase, said Dr. Jaffe’s situation showed why people with bold new ideas often just give up.

“You can’t prove it will work in advance,” he said. “If you could, it wouldn’t be a high-risk idea.”

Some experienced scientists have found a way to offset the problem somewhat. They do chancy experiments by siphoning money from their grants.

Anyway, I just thought it was interesting to see these issues brought up in the mainstream media.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrggggghhhhh. Damned iPod has frozen again ... and it’s frozen the fucking iBook yet again. Don’t make me pull you apart again, iPod. You know I’ll do it, you little bastard.