It’s a funny thing. I stand by what I wrote recently about the painfulness and lack of reward that often characterises the life of the research scientist. With a new beginning, new lab, new projects, I am feeling hopeful now, but I know I will visit those dark places again – if I choose to continue on this path. And yet, I still want to do it.
What do you make of that? Crazy, perhaps, stupid, some might say, hopelessly optimistic, probably. But for now I am going with it.
I spend a lot of time thinking about the problems with a traditional academic career, the reasons not to do it. This is fine but at some point I feel like I should answer the question ‘do you have a better idea?’. After all, we need good academic scientists and we don’t (in my opinion) want them all to be obsessive, single-minded workaholics with no connection to the rest of the world. So I have been thinking about what it would take for me, at least, to stay in academic science and maybe even still wind up as a PI.
Idea #1 is to extend my lifespan as a postdoc, including some years when I would go part-time in order to be a good parent to my (future) kids. Ideally, this would be mostly done in one lab, where I would establish a long-term partnership with the PI and benefit the lab with my greater knowledge and experience, both in my own research projects and in day-to-day mentoring of students and more junior postdocs (which many PIs do not have the time to do in extensive detail), as well as the consistency of my presence (how much work gets repeated in labs because no one knew it had been done already, or could find the data?). If I do say so myself, I could probably contribute more to the lab working 3-4 days a week than some postdocs I’ve encountered do working full-time. Eventually, when my kids are older, and with the benefit of a less ageist environment and one more open to different kinds of career structures, I might start my own small lab.
Great, but what about making it easier for people to become PIs without jacking in everything else that life is about?
Idea #2: Why can’t PIs jobshare? Instead of one PI heading a lab, you could have two people working as a team to bring in the grant money, provide direction to the research, supervise lab members and fulfill teaching commitments. Each PI would probably end up with a workload more appropriate for a single human being, and be more creative, innovative and productive (not to mention happy) as a result.
Idea #3: Take some of the pressure off PIs. Increase research funding so that people who are doing good work don’t have to submit ten grants to get one funded. Award grants for longer periods so the PIs have some time to think about science. Reduce teaching requirements by hiring people who actually want to be teachers to do that job (a good use of some of those highly educated and trained grad students and postdocs who outnumber faculty jobs 3:1). And… create permanent positions for researchers (the ‘Permanent Postdoc’ theory) who can stay in their labs long-term managing people and projects (see Idea #1).
Idea #4: Scrap the current structure altogether and come up with something new and more effective. More research required on this one.
It’s amazing what a bit of success will do for your brain. Mine has been crackling with activity ever since getting back into the lab on Monday morning. Even though I have not been managing to get any more sleep than usual, and I spent all of my Sunday off doing things (fun things, like going for a bike ride and playing music, but nonetheless I did not stop all day), I feel awake, alert, focussed, motivated and am full of energy!
Although I am elated about overcoming my experimental block, all I have actually achieved is to get myself back to square one. Now I have to get the data, rework the manuscript, send it to the other authors for comments and submit it, within the next three weeks. Oh, and there’s the other experiment the reviewers asked for, which also needs some work. So, in typical Human Scientist style, yesterday I ran a double batch of the newly-working experiments, and am ploughing through part two of them today.
I also got excited about the idea of submitting a feature to one of our University magazines, based on something I wrote during my nonfiction course. I spent some time identifying the best publication to go to, trying to write a ‘query letter’ and figuring out if and when I would find time to do the interviews I would need to complete the article. This is a plunge into the unknown for me; the process of pitching an article idea to an editor is a completely new challenge, with its own formats and conventions that I have no experience of, and I feel the terror of that plunge. But I also relish it, as more and more I find that opening unfamiliar doors leads to new and exciting outcomes that I could never have imagined beforehand.
With all this brainstorming, I was glad I had my yoga class last night to remind me to keep breathing.
Good day
Yesterday, I wandered out at lunchtime and sat on a bench in the middle of campus to eat my bagel. It was a perfect sunny autumn day. I noticed the way the light fell through the leaves on the trees, which were just beginning to turn, and made patterns on the path. I observed the people walking by, tuning into snatches of conversation, and I thought, we need this. We need these pauses, these spaces in between the things that are our lives. We are such reductionists, we scientists. We know that spending time in the lab and performing experiments lead to results, publications, and all good things that we desire, so we assume a linear relationship and think that the more time we spend, the more experiments we do, the more results and publications and recognition and success we will have. But it doesn’t work like that. Our capacities are not limitless. We are not machines; we are so much more than that. Of course hard work matters, but I say what matters more are those moments of clarity, of inspirations, when we think ‘I wonder if…’ These are the things that true progress is made of, and it is no use expecting them to come when we are overworked, stressed, exhausted, burned out and want nothing more than for the next day, week, month to pass. We must take a more holistic approach, taking good care of ourselves physically and emotionally, to be ready for these insights to strike.
Bad day
Apparently, things have been too easy for me lately. (For details on just how easy things have been, see previous two blog posts). With only one of the two key experiments needed for my resubmission in a state of abysmal failure, I was dangerously close to actually being able to submit the manuscript some time this year. To rectify this state of affairs, the Universe decreed that the CO2 tank for the cell culture incubator should run out shortly after we all left for the night, and that the inner door should be accidentally left just a crack open so that all the CO2 would escape and we would arrive in the morning to a screaming alarm and an incubator full of dead cells. There goes my work-plan for the weekend. My only consolation is that with everything that has happened lately, there really can’t be many things left that could go wrong… can there?
I was talking to my housemate in the kitchen this morning about my frustrations over my work and how my experiments are not working even though there is absolutely no reason why they shouldn’t, and how I might reluctantly have to hand it over to one of my coworkers to have a go. She smiled and said maybe that’s the whole reason for this – you have to let go control of it. My immediate reaction was that this was a pretty stupid hypothesis for why my experiment doesn’t work. But then I thought, well, at least she has a hypothesis.
Partly inspired by this, I did something that doesn’t come easy to me, and asked for help. I swallowed my pride, stubbornness and incessant need to do everything myself (it was quite a mouthful, believe me), and asked my most trusted/experienced fellow postdoc if he could try running one of the experiments for me next week. He very kindly agreed to fit it in around all the other stuff he has to do. Even this made me feel comforted – I am still working on fixing the problem myself but now I have a back-up plan. Plus, it’s good to feel that I have someone who is willing to help me out like that.
Cross your fingers for me!
My yoga teacher talked recently about the ‘what’ and the ‘how’. That is, that people often give up on ‘what’ they want because they don’t know ‘how’ to get there. In her words, if you can just identify what it is that you want to achieve, the Universe will provide the means to get there. You just have to be open to it.
Whether or not you would frame it in this vocabulary, it makes sense that you are more likely to be successful and to recognise opportunities to advance towards your goals if you first define for yourself what they are. I decided to try to make a list of my ‘whats’. After some initial scribblings, many relating more to things that I don’t want, I came up with this statement: ‘To be focused, engaged, productive, creative, generate ideas and do the best work that I can do’.
I realised that I had defined what I believe I need in order to be both successful and happy in whatever I do. This is the state I am in on my ‘good days’. I often reflect that if all my days were good days I could rule the world. There is nothing that I would not be capable of.
Underneath my ‘what’ I wrote a question: ‘How is this place reached?’ I do not know the answer to this yet, and I suspect it is complex. But I would like to know what you think. What are your ‘whats’ and wishes, and how have you found the means to achieve them?
The Human Scientist 