Although I have not been a postdoc (you couldn't pay me enough... ha, ha) I did get to play along for five years while Dr. S enjoyed a passive-aggressive, backstabbing, lying advisor who liked to take people down in front of others.
He and I both got, and followed, lots of advice before choosing our various labs. He talked to many people who knew this person (including his grad advisor, who had known her both personally and professionally for 30 years). None of them told him the truth, which was: Run, don't walk.
So here's my unsolicited advice for anyone choosing a new lab: Do all the things people say - talk to the oldest grad student, talk to the postdocs, discuss possible projects and degrees of autonomy. Then find the last 5-10 people who have left the lab and gone elsewhere, and call them up on the phone and ask them what they really think of the lab. "What were the five best things and the five worst things, and what advice would you give someone thinking of joining this lab?" is a nice neutral way to ask. People with permanent jobs already (who no longer need the advisor's goodwill) have the least to lose by telling the unvarnished truth. Also, if there's rumors that someone left in a fit of bitterness, especially talk to that person. Their reasons may or may not be good ones, but you should hear them.
And if you are a naive young grad student who thinks "But it will be different for me! I will work extra-special-hard/ graduate in four years/ totally be the teacher's pet/ never be as bitter as that!"... well, don't say I didn't warn you.
Showing posts with label Choosing a Lab. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Choosing a Lab. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 18, 2013
Monday, January 28, 2013
In Which I Wish To Give Unsolicited Advice
There are currently three young women in Dr. S's lab. All three are grad students, and one just joined. (There are several not-as-young women, ranging from about 30 to about 60, who are all able to take care of themselves.)
The two older grad students are hopeless. They cry in lab meeting* (italics are insufficient to convey my horror!) when asked to justify their conclusions. They don't tell people to shut up. They're told to do pointless, won't-get-you-out projects - and they do them!
The third grad student is a little more clever. She had the sense to ask Dr. S (the longest-serving lab member at present) what the lab was really like and what was good and what was bad. But.
She's not tough. I have met very few grad students coming out of Cold University who are tough. My theory is this: They get pushed, but not enough. Their advisors don't mentor them well and don't encourage them to be independent- for example, at Snooty U it was pretty standard to spend a month reading up after quals, before picking a project- and then bully them into taking bad projects. And somehow, most of them never get pushed far enough to tell their advisors to take it and stuff it. And their colleagues are the same. (I once told the postdoc with the next desk over to shut the !@#$ up because I was talking, thank you. We were then the best of friends.) So when they leave, they're completely unprepared to be anywhere less nice than here, the nicest place in the Midwest.
I'm not saying that the piranha tank is good. But academic science is a piranha tank. Scientists are pushy, naturally skeptical people who ask "Why do you think that? Are you sure you didn't label your tubes wrong? Is it possible that Thing X has contaminated** your experiment and you're completely wrong?"
What I want to do is take the third young lady aside and say, "Look. You need to know a few things. One: nobody but you has your best interest at heart, and most especially not this advisor. Two: A week in the library will save you six months in lab; read a lot at the beginning and your work will go much better.*** Three: it's pretty hard to fire a grad student, so you have a fair bit of freedom. Four: you need to think about every single experiment, "What will I learn from doing this? Will it get me out faster?" And if it's not a useful answer that will get you somewhere in some way, don't do it. Five: if you've done an experiment correctly twice and it didn't work, it's not going to work, and don't do it again. And six: only 20% of grad students end up with tenure-track academic jobs. The seventh thing is optional, and it's this: If someone's trying to take you down, hit back hard, so you only have to do it once."
*There's no crying in lab meeting.
** Famous Russian (?) retraction about alternate ice structure; was actually a contaminant in their tubes.
*** They don't do this here. It's a travesty.
The two older grad students are hopeless. They cry in lab meeting* (italics are insufficient to convey my horror!) when asked to justify their conclusions. They don't tell people to shut up. They're told to do pointless, won't-get-you-out projects - and they do them!
The third grad student is a little more clever. She had the sense to ask Dr. S (the longest-serving lab member at present) what the lab was really like and what was good and what was bad. But.
She's not tough. I have met very few grad students coming out of Cold University who are tough. My theory is this: They get pushed, but not enough. Their advisors don't mentor them well and don't encourage them to be independent- for example, at Snooty U it was pretty standard to spend a month reading up after quals, before picking a project- and then bully them into taking bad projects. And somehow, most of them never get pushed far enough to tell their advisors to take it and stuff it. And their colleagues are the same. (I once told the postdoc with the next desk over to shut the !@#$ up because I was talking, thank you. We were then the best of friends.) So when they leave, they're completely unprepared to be anywhere less nice than here, the nicest place in the Midwest.
I'm not saying that the piranha tank is good. But academic science is a piranha tank. Scientists are pushy, naturally skeptical people who ask "Why do you think that? Are you sure you didn't label your tubes wrong? Is it possible that Thing X has contaminated** your experiment and you're completely wrong?"
What I want to do is take the third young lady aside and say, "Look. You need to know a few things. One: nobody but you has your best interest at heart, and most especially not this advisor. Two: A week in the library will save you six months in lab; read a lot at the beginning and your work will go much better.*** Three: it's pretty hard to fire a grad student, so you have a fair bit of freedom. Four: you need to think about every single experiment, "What will I learn from doing this? Will it get me out faster?" And if it's not a useful answer that will get you somewhere in some way, don't do it. Five: if you've done an experiment correctly twice and it didn't work, it's not going to work, and don't do it again. And six: only 20% of grad students end up with tenure-track academic jobs. The seventh thing is optional, and it's this: If someone's trying to take you down, hit back hard, so you only have to do it once."
*There's no crying in lab meeting.
** Famous Russian (?) retraction about alternate ice structure; was actually a contaminant in their tubes.
*** They don't do this here. It's a travesty.
Friday, April 20, 2007
Friday Advice: Choosing a Lab: Personal Factors (3)
Choosing a Lab 3: Personal Factors
1) Advising
Availability. You will occasionally want to consult your advisor. Is the PI always off in Greece, California, and DC? Are there regular lab meetings? One-on-one meetings? Are there certain hours the PI is in lab?
Advisingness. You will also want advice. Good advice encourages you when you’re at a professional dead-end, suggests new avenues or resources, refers you to other people when your PI doesn’t know the answer. Good advising trusts that you are a competent scientist, but recognizes its own limitations (dated knowledge, ignorance of a technique, etc.). Needless to say, bad advice is the opposite.
Ability to give good advice. That is, you want an advisor who recognizes her/his own limits. Your PI should tell you when she/he doesn’t know the answer to something, and suggest how to find out: look here, ask so-and-so, write to my colleague in Ithaca. Similarly, the PI should accept undesired results rather than pushing for the 'right' answer. If you believe you’ve done an experiment correctly but it's not the answer your advisor wanted, she should accept it. A bad advisor will say you did it wrong. Most importantly for a grad student, your advisor should tell you when to cut your losses and move on. This is the most difficult thing for an inexperienced student to recognize, and so the most important in an advisor.
Clarity of expectations. A good advisor will tell you what she/he wants from you, and why. They will help you lay out reasonable goals and tell you when you are or are not meeting expectations. A bad advisor will be passive-aggressive, will tell someone else that she’s displeased with your hours, will refuse to read your manuscript because you were late to lab meeting.
Commitment to getting you out. Related to the previous one. You want an advisor who wants you to graduate in X years, and who will help you stay on track. How long does the average grad student take in this lab? Does the advisor lay out what’s necessary for a thesis? Likewise, commitment to YOUR goals, not to making you into an advisor-clone, is desirable. Do people go on to non-academic careers? Do they get support?
Opportunities for professional development. Ideally, you want to learn stuff in grad school. Do students ever help review papers? (Neutral to good.) Do students have to review papers alone? (Bad.) Does the advisor play favorites, and only the Golden Child gets to review papers? (Also bad.) Do grad students have opportunities to write reviews? Do they go to conferences? Which ones, and how often? Does the advisor think conferences are for your own networking and professional development (good), or a prize for being a good little girl, or a reward for publishable data? (Not so good.)
Atmosphere. What kind of atmosphere does the advisor foster? Does he/she allow people to be derisive or attacking towards each other in public meetings? Does she/he ask mean, awful questions of seminar speakers? Are people afraid to talk to each other or the advisor? Do people make fun of the advisor behind his/her back?
2) Co-workers: Generally, a PI controls what kind of people are in his/her lab. (Sometimes, there is merely no selection.) The tenor of a lab will tell you something about what kind of people the PI tolerates and/or encourages.
Helpfulness. Good labmates are a knowledge base. They answer your questions, give you protocols, and help diagnose what’s wrong. Bad labmates tell you what to do all the time, refuse to share their reagents, and take you down in public.
Aggressiveness. Some people like the stags-in-mating-season lab style. However, if you prefer not to spar in public all the time, avoid labs that are full of people who may bite at any time.
Knowledge. Your co-workers should be like a miniature library of papers they’ve read and negative results. There should be fruitful scientific interactions. If it seems like everyone in a lab is brain-dead, don’t work there. If no-one there has heard of the Biggest Paper In The Field, run.
Optional: Selection for Bathing. Self-explanatory.
3) Everybody hates grad school. (Except the rare person like my darling spouse, who is a mostly happy grad student.) There are always awful parts, and science is 99% negative results. Steel yourself for personal disappointment, find some fun hobbies and distractions, and don’t take your work too seriously. You can always leave, after all.
4) Deal with your depression (if any). Some reports say 50% of all grad students become nonfunctionally depressed during grad school. Depression is a real illness, just like having the flu- for years on end. It will make your life miserable, your work worse, and your PhD take forever. If exercise, extracurriculars, and friendships don’t help enough, please seek treatment. Some of grad-school depression is situational, and having a life often helps, but it's still a real biochemical problem. SSRIs and other antidepressants can make the difference between crying on the couch every day and actually writing your thesis.
1) Advising
Availability. You will occasionally want to consult your advisor. Is the PI always off in Greece, California, and DC? Are there regular lab meetings? One-on-one meetings? Are there certain hours the PI is in lab?
Advisingness. You will also want advice. Good advice encourages you when you’re at a professional dead-end, suggests new avenues or resources, refers you to other people when your PI doesn’t know the answer. Good advising trusts that you are a competent scientist, but recognizes its own limitations (dated knowledge, ignorance of a technique, etc.). Needless to say, bad advice is the opposite.
Ability to give good advice. That is, you want an advisor who recognizes her/his own limits. Your PI should tell you when she/he doesn’t know the answer to something, and suggest how to find out: look here, ask so-and-so, write to my colleague in Ithaca. Similarly, the PI should accept undesired results rather than pushing for the 'right' answer. If you believe you’ve done an experiment correctly but it's not the answer your advisor wanted, she should accept it. A bad advisor will say you did it wrong. Most importantly for a grad student, your advisor should tell you when to cut your losses and move on. This is the most difficult thing for an inexperienced student to recognize, and so the most important in an advisor.
Clarity of expectations. A good advisor will tell you what she/he wants from you, and why. They will help you lay out reasonable goals and tell you when you are or are not meeting expectations. A bad advisor will be passive-aggressive, will tell someone else that she’s displeased with your hours, will refuse to read your manuscript because you were late to lab meeting.
Commitment to getting you out. Related to the previous one. You want an advisor who wants you to graduate in X years, and who will help you stay on track. How long does the average grad student take in this lab? Does the advisor lay out what’s necessary for a thesis? Likewise, commitment to YOUR goals, not to making you into an advisor-clone, is desirable. Do people go on to non-academic careers? Do they get support?
Opportunities for professional development. Ideally, you want to learn stuff in grad school. Do students ever help review papers? (Neutral to good.) Do students have to review papers alone? (Bad.) Does the advisor play favorites, and only the Golden Child gets to review papers? (Also bad.) Do grad students have opportunities to write reviews? Do they go to conferences? Which ones, and how often? Does the advisor think conferences are for your own networking and professional development (good), or a prize for being a good little girl, or a reward for publishable data? (Not so good.)
Atmosphere. What kind of atmosphere does the advisor foster? Does he/she allow people to be derisive or attacking towards each other in public meetings? Does she/he ask mean, awful questions of seminar speakers? Are people afraid to talk to each other or the advisor? Do people make fun of the advisor behind his/her back?
2) Co-workers: Generally, a PI controls what kind of people are in his/her lab. (Sometimes, there is merely no selection.) The tenor of a lab will tell you something about what kind of people the PI tolerates and/or encourages.
Helpfulness. Good labmates are a knowledge base. They answer your questions, give you protocols, and help diagnose what’s wrong. Bad labmates tell you what to do all the time, refuse to share their reagents, and take you down in public.
Aggressiveness. Some people like the stags-in-mating-season lab style. However, if you prefer not to spar in public all the time, avoid labs that are full of people who may bite at any time.
Knowledge. Your co-workers should be like a miniature library of papers they’ve read and negative results. There should be fruitful scientific interactions. If it seems like everyone in a lab is brain-dead, don’t work there. If no-one there has heard of the Biggest Paper In The Field, run.
Optional: Selection for Bathing. Self-explanatory.
3) Everybody hates grad school. (Except the rare person like my darling spouse, who is a mostly happy grad student.) There are always awful parts, and science is 99% negative results. Steel yourself for personal disappointment, find some fun hobbies and distractions, and don’t take your work too seriously. You can always leave, after all.
4) Deal with your depression (if any). Some reports say 50% of all grad students become nonfunctionally depressed during grad school. Depression is a real illness, just like having the flu- for years on end. It will make your life miserable, your work worse, and your PhD take forever. If exercise, extracurriculars, and friendships don’t help enough, please seek treatment. Some of grad-school depression is situational, and having a life often helps, but it's still a real biochemical problem. SSRIs and other antidepressants can make the difference between crying on the couch every day and actually writing your thesis.
Friday, April 13, 2007
Friday Advice: Choosing a Lab: Professional Factors (2)
(Since I regularly repeat this whole thing to new students- sometimes without being asked.)
Choosing a Lab: The Personal and the Professional.
So you get to grad school and they hand you a 300-page booklet, one PI per page. But say you don't have any research experience. How do you know what kind of science you want to do? Well, I can't help you with that one. But how do you know what kind of lab to join? What should you look for?
Professional:
A good lab is well organized: things are put away when they arrive, there’s a chore list and people do chores, there’s an ordering system such that you’re not running out of reagents all the time. Ask: How does ordering work? How are chores assigned?
A good lab has adequate funding and support: A lab of more than five people should have a dish-washer. A lab of more than ten needs a support tech. A lab of more than fifteen should have a lab manager. There should be a secretary, an organizational structure to handle ordering, possibly a stockroom. There should be enough funding for all the people there. Check: how many grant apps has the PI submitted in the last three years? How many were funded? How many of the postdocs have outside fellowships? Do grad students have to apply for fellowships?* Who guarantees the funding, and for how long? How much longer and how much money is left on the current grant? Is money, even tight for essential reagents? Is there a good variety of equipment available?
[Note: I know there are plenty of wonderful labs- and entire fields- with inadequate funding. I'm not saying you should never go there, just you should know it'll make your life harder. Money is nice. Helpful, even. And a good lab manager is worth his or her weight in SDS.]
A good (biology) lab is scientifically diverse: People should be working on substantially different things, not all in one little corner. People should NOT, EVER, NEVER be competing within the same lab to publish first. In most cases, there should be a range of experience (cell biologists, biochemists, etc.). Ask: Where did people come from? What did they work on before?
A good lab has research with possibilities:The research should be headed somewhere, and not towards a dead-end. There should be branching possibilities. The model should support more than one assay. This is hard to define specifically, but if the research premise sounds like a narrow bad idea, you're probably right. Ask people in the lab, or the PI: where is this research headed? Where is this field headed? Where do you see this lab going in five years?
A good lab publishes regularly: Check how many publications per year for the last X years. Did they all go to Science? (Bad.) Did they go to a range of journals? (Good.) Did they all go to Journal of Molecular Catalysis B: Enzymatic? (Bad.) Will you have to churn out a Science paper to get out? Do all the papers have a bazillion authors? (Bad.) Do grad students get first-author papers? (They should).
Next week: Advisors and Colleagues and Depression, Oh My!
*In biology, it’s relatively uncommon for grad students to have their own fellowships- for example, I am funded entirely off my PI's RO1s- however, in other STEM fields it happens more often.
Choosing a Lab: The Personal and the Professional.
So you get to grad school and they hand you a 300-page booklet, one PI per page. But say you don't have any research experience. How do you know what kind of science you want to do? Well, I can't help you with that one. But how do you know what kind of lab to join? What should you look for?
Professional:
A good lab is well organized: things are put away when they arrive, there’s a chore list and people do chores, there’s an ordering system such that you’re not running out of reagents all the time. Ask: How does ordering work? How are chores assigned?
A good lab has adequate funding and support: A lab of more than five people should have a dish-washer. A lab of more than ten needs a support tech. A lab of more than fifteen should have a lab manager. There should be a secretary, an organizational structure to handle ordering, possibly a stockroom. There should be enough funding for all the people there. Check: how many grant apps has the PI submitted in the last three years? How many were funded? How many of the postdocs have outside fellowships? Do grad students have to apply for fellowships?* Who guarantees the funding, and for how long? How much longer and how much money is left on the current grant? Is money, even tight for essential reagents? Is there a good variety of equipment available?
[Note: I know there are plenty of wonderful labs- and entire fields- with inadequate funding. I'm not saying you should never go there, just you should know it'll make your life harder. Money is nice. Helpful, even. And a good lab manager is worth his or her weight in SDS.]
A good (biology) lab is scientifically diverse: People should be working on substantially different things, not all in one little corner. People should NOT, EVER, NEVER be competing within the same lab to publish first. In most cases, there should be a range of experience (cell biologists, biochemists, etc.). Ask: Where did people come from? What did they work on before?
A good lab has research with possibilities:The research should be headed somewhere, and not towards a dead-end. There should be branching possibilities. The model should support more than one assay. This is hard to define specifically, but if the research premise sounds like a narrow bad idea, you're probably right. Ask people in the lab, or the PI: where is this research headed? Where is this field headed? Where do you see this lab going in five years?
A good lab publishes regularly: Check how many publications per year for the last X years. Did they all go to Science? (Bad.) Did they go to a range of journals? (Good.) Did they all go to Journal of Molecular Catalysis B: Enzymatic? (Bad.) Will you have to churn out a Science paper to get out? Do all the papers have a bazillion authors? (Bad.) Do grad students get first-author papers? (They should).
Next week: Advisors and Colleagues and Depression, Oh My!
*In biology, it’s relatively uncommon for grad students to have their own fellowships- for example, I am funded entirely off my PI's RO1s- however, in other STEM fields it happens more often.
Friday, April 06, 2007
Friday Advice: Choosing a Lab: Intro (1)
I write this not in the expectation that any of my dear readers need my unsolicited advice, but from the need to get it off my chest. Besides, maybe someday, advice will surpass plastic wrap as my most-searched topic!
******
In the beginning, there was the delusion.
New grad students often think that only the professional climate matters, that interpersonal relationships will have nothing to do with their success. It's all about the science, and nothing else matters! Ha ha ha. WRONG.
A bad lab will suck out your life and energy. Your motivation and mental health will go to hell, which will wreck your thesis, health, and everything in between.
A good advisor will give the advice you need, when you need it. He will be tolerant when you are sick, or getting married, or taking a three-day vacation. She will read your manuscript even if you're late to lab meeting.
A sexist lab will treat you like an idiot if you don't fit into the alpha-whatever mold. You will be condescended to and dismissed. You will feel you can never wear a skirt again. A bad lab will leave you depressed and hopeless.
In a good lab, your co-workers will help you. When experimental disasters befall, there will be support. They will encourage you to keep going.
You think it won't happen to you
But it will. Bad labs don't make an exception because you're nice. And you think I'm making this up; no one lab could be that bad! But these things ALL happen in my lab.
Why yes, if I had known this five years ago...
One scream if by land?
The best way I know to discover a lab’s personal atmosphere is: ask a senior grad student. Not someone who’s been there a year or two and is full of bushy-tailed enthusiasm, no. A nice cynical fifth-year (or third if you're in Europe). If there aren’t any, try to find someone who’s left (check the lab’s webpage or the publication record for departed members).
The postdocs know some of the ups and downs, but they are both more experienced and less vulnerable than grad students. For one, they usually have their own funding. And they have enough experience that bad advising is less harmful; for example, a better handle on when an experiment will never work.
If you want the real dish, ask your informant to speak to you privately, and tell her/him you won’t repeat it. And don’t.
Bribery by coffee or chocolate won't hurt, either.
Next week: So Do Good Labs Smell Like Dead Chicken? (No.)
******
In the beginning, there was the delusion.
New grad students often think that only the professional climate matters, that interpersonal relationships will have nothing to do with their success. It's all about the science, and nothing else matters! Ha ha ha. WRONG.
A bad lab will suck out your life and energy. Your motivation and mental health will go to hell, which will wreck your thesis, health, and everything in between.
A good advisor will give the advice you need, when you need it. He will be tolerant when you are sick, or getting married, or taking a three-day vacation. She will read your manuscript even if you're late to lab meeting.
A sexist lab will treat you like an idiot if you don't fit into the alpha-whatever mold. You will be condescended to and dismissed. You will feel you can never wear a skirt again. A bad lab will leave you depressed and hopeless.
In a good lab, your co-workers will help you. When experimental disasters befall, there will be support. They will encourage you to keep going.
You think it won't happen to you
But it will. Bad labs don't make an exception because you're nice. And you think I'm making this up; no one lab could be that bad! But these things ALL happen in my lab.
Why yes, if I had known this five years ago...
One scream if by land?
The best way I know to discover a lab’s personal atmosphere is: ask a senior grad student. Not someone who’s been there a year or two and is full of bushy-tailed enthusiasm, no. A nice cynical fifth-year (or third if you're in Europe). If there aren’t any, try to find someone who’s left (check the lab’s webpage or the publication record for departed members).
The postdocs know some of the ups and downs, but they are both more experienced and less vulnerable than grad students. For one, they usually have their own funding. And they have enough experience that bad advising is less harmful; for example, a better handle on when an experiment will never work.
If you want the real dish, ask your informant to speak to you privately, and tell her/him you won’t repeat it. And don’t.
Bribery by coffee or chocolate won't hurt, either.
Next week: So Do Good Labs Smell Like Dead Chicken? (No.)
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