Helping the Minoritized Achieve in Academic Science

Archive for the ‘New Job’ Category

A Lab of One

So, you just started your new job. You have a new lab space with or without workstations or lab benches and equipment. But, at first, you have no students, technicians, postdocs. You are a lab of one. The people who will populate you lab are not just important to getting work done, they are also essential for keeping you in touch with science through regular conversations and working groups. What do you do to stay in contact with science during this short, but possibly debilitating time in your science career?

Build your network on campus. This is a good time to get to know the other people on campus who are doing work within and peripheral to your research. For people very near to your field, invite them to lunch to discuss your research plans and grant ideas. Ask them if they would be available to read a draft of your grants. For people more afar from your field, talk to them about what they are doing, get general advice about starting a lab, and time management, and maybe see if there are some collaboration possibilities.

Glom onto others. This is a bit silly, but what I mean is keep yourself in a lab culture of some sort by attending the group meetings of other people. When I started, I attended group meetings and had joint lab meeting with 3-4 different groups over the first couple years when we were still a very small group. Small groups can’t really have normal group meetings. If you rotate who is presenting, they end up presenting every-other-week! Combining with another smallish lab will give more lag time between presentations. Also, this gives you the ability to see how other people at your institution format their group meetings. You can choose your favorite method.

Join or start a journal club. Journal clubs are a good way to stay current with the latest in your field. Depending on the field, journal clubs are more or less prevalent, yet most people see the benefit of reading an article and discussing as a group. Joining an existing journal club or even starting a new one and including other professors and their students within your field is a great way to stay in touch with science and stay motivated while you start your new position. This piece of advice may seem really obvious and stupid, but when faced with so many new demands for your time, it is easy to decide to skip this practice that was a no-brainer as a graduate student or postdoc. All I am saying is, stick with it! Don’t give this up because it is a essential for when your science picks back up out of this temporary lull.

Build your network off campus. When you first start a lab, you may be tempted to stop going to conferences because you have to pay your own way and you don’t have anything new to present. Go anyway! Conferences are essential for keeping up your network of scientists and mentors. Don’t be embarrassed that you don’t have anything complete to present, discuss your plans with supportive mentors working in your field. Talk with them about grant writing strategies and see if they will read your proposals before you submit. In a couple years, you will have to go through the mini-tenure process and then the tenure process a few years later. Conferences are essential to build up your connections with potential letter writers. Even if you don’t talk to BigShotProfessor who will ultimately write your letter, if they see you across the hall talking science at a conference, they will assume all is well. Once you have anything even close to resembling results, submit an abstract to present. I recommend even submitting a late abstract if your results are late-breaking and after the normal deadline for abstracts. Tell people at the conference that you are presenting your new results and that they should stop by to see the poster or talk (shameless self-promotion is good, remember). Presenting new work early does two good things: (1) you are marking your territory on the project and (2) you are demonstrating your ability to create new science, fulfilling your promise as a young tenure track professor. Basically, use these conferences to see and be seen.

As your lab grows and you have students, these initial habits will pay off.

Any other suggestions for how to cope during this low time in the lab before you have people and perhaps even a lab at all? Please comment or guest post!

Category:

Career, New Job, Self-Promotion, TimeManagement

Hiring Woes

I found one of the most important, yet untaught skills, is assessing candidates to make hiring decisions. I am going to honestly say that I have not mastered this skill. Unfortunately, that means I sometimes bring people into my lab who do not work out for one reason or another. Hopefully some people who are better at this will comment and help out. Here, I will tell you about some mistakes I made in the hopes that others can learn from them.

The thing that everyone always says is, “Don’t hire the first person who comes to you.” Of course, I totally hired the first person who came to me. It is hard to avoid because you are just so desperate for people. I hired a graduate student who had been in the program longer than I have. This should have been a red flag. If a student ca not find an advisor by the time they are in their third year, there is something not quite right with the student. As perhaps expected, this student did not stay in my lab. Nor did the next 2-3 who randomly knocked on my door. Looking back, it was clear that these first students were aimless and had no real interest in my research. As a naturally curious person, I am excited by many parts of science. I hoped that my excitement about my science would entice them. It did not. This is when I realized that people need to be self-motivated to do science, and no matter how excited you are, that isn’t enough for anyone else. Happily, I was able to recruit two excellent graduate students who have been very productive. The first rotated during my second year and joined the lab official in year 3. She is getting ready to graduate soon, and I am super proud and excited! {I should note that I can take students from multiple departments. Some do rotations, and the student have to pick by a certain time. Others just have to try out advisors, and it is more like dating.}

I did hold off on hiring a postdoc. I felt that postdocs are a lot of responsibility because you are somewhat responsible for getting them a job. This was also a mistake. I wish I had hired a postdoc earlier. My first postdoc was first author of our first paper that was fully initiated, performed, and completed in my own lab. My first postdoc motivated the graduate students through his consistent presence – something that was impossible for me to accomplish with teaching and traveling. My first postdoc was essential to establishing the research program of my lab.  Two more postdocs later, my fears of mentoring and placing postdocs has been quelled since one postdoc successfully started a tenure-track job last year. Although I wish I had hired a postdoc sooner, I know other WomenOfScience who had very bad luck with postdocs, and it was a more expensive error than hiring the wrong graduate student.

After multiple fails, I started playing hard to get with certain graduate students {the ones who have to go through the dating route, but not rotations}. When I first started, I would pay them right away to show I was serious. Much like dating, this early commitment may have scared them away. Now, they have to do a training period without pay. If nothing else, it saves me money!

But, the worst part is that I still cannot tell, even after getting letters of recommendations and conducting interviews, who will be a good lab member and who will not. I have taken to calling letter writers to get more candid and truthful reviews of candidate lab members, such as postdocs and technicians. For graduate students, I have no clear cure. I have missed out on good students, and I have tried and given a lot of effort on terrible ones.

These difficulties are not limited to my own lab.  These issues also affect larger-scale hiring, such as search committees when hiring new faculty members. When I witness faculty hiring I still think, “How did I get hired?” and “I have no idea what I am looking for,” at the same time. Unfortunately, in these cases, the stakes are higher. If you hire the wrong lab member, the most you suffer is for 1-year, given the typical contract. If you hire the wrong colleague, it is at least 6 years until tenure, and who wants to deny tenure?

So, if anyone has any helpful strategies, please guest post or comment. We who do not know are waiting to hear from you.

Category:

Career, New Job

What do I do?

As described a couple posts ago, there is a lot to do in this job. In my experience, it doesn’t all come at you at full force right at the beginning. For instance, when I got to my new position, I didn’t have a lab. So, although I was stressed about teaching and other new things, I didn’t have any people to manage or a place work to on research yet. Instead of lamenting the lab, I decided to take advantage of the fact that I didn’t have a lab. My solution was to spend time just writing grant proposals for the first two semesters while my lab was getting together. After this, I realized that spending committed time focusing on just one aspect of the job allowed me to get really good at it, so that it became second nature. After that committed time, I didn’t have to focus on that thing as much, and could use my new skills to save time. This is just another testament to the idea that there is no such thing as multi-tasking. Since you cannot really multi-task, why not focus on one thing at a time and get it right?

When I started my tenure track job, it worked out best for me to focus on grant proposal writing for 1 year.  A lot of the grants I wrote were horrible, but I got feedback, and I got better with practice. After writing more than 10 proposals, I actually got one my first year!

The second year, I focused on making my teaching better. After my teaching went just OK the first year, I decided to focus on making it great the second year. I re-wrote my lectures, offered evening office hours, and really worked to learn the names of my students. In our department, they have a good policy that you get to teach the same courses three times in a row. This is great because a class is always the worst the first time around, but once you get the hang of the material, the second and third years can be great.

By year three, I finally had reliable people in my lab, I had some grant money to hire people to work on specific projects, and we were getting results. In year three, I finally came back to research, which was super fun after my hiatus. I spent significant time with my students, gave myself my own projects to get good preliminary data for new work, and we wrote our first papers.

Although this timeline for focusing on proposal writing first, teaching second, and research third worked well for me, it is highly personally dependent. If you step into a beautiful lab that is fully functional with people who can work on day 1, maybe work on getting papers out first. Some people I know had this, and they got their first papers out a year before me. Most people I know had to wait 1-2 years for their lab situation to get working well. Why waste time and energy working on something out of your control that you cannot fix? Instead, refocus on other things that you can succeed at first. Get those things taken care of, so you can focus on other aspects later. By the fourth or fifth year, all the important aspects of this job are under control – tackled one at a time.

I want to mention that at no time did I focus on service. My advice is to perform adequate, or just good enough, on service to your department and college. Doing a good job doesn’t buy you anything and is a big waste of time for the other stuff you have to do. Once my grants and research got going, I got asked to do more service to my scientific community, such as reviewing grants, reviewing papers, and organizing conferences. I did not say no to those opportunities, and I did a good job on them, because they helped my research. These opportunities led to more invited lectures for seminars and conferences.

Do you have some helpful information about what to focus on first when starting an academic job? If so comment or guest post!

Category:

Career, New Job, Service, Teaching, TimeManagement

You Belong Here

One major issue that many new faculty face is Impostor Syndrome. ImpostorSyndrome is the feeling that you are a fraud, that they made a mistake in hiring you into this position, and at any minute they are going to realize it. ImpostorSyndrome affects women and men, but can be especially stressful for those who are a minority in their field. Unfortunately, women are minorities in many fields of science at the professorial level.

Just to put your mind at ease: this is a common feeling, and you can’t always believe everything you think. ImpostorSyndrome can hit at any level: upon entering college, entering graduate school, starting a first postdoc, your first tenure track, after achieving tenure, after being admitted to the National Academy… the list goes on.

Remember: they hired you. They wanted you out of the 300 candidates that applied and the 6-12 that they interviewed. They negotiated and spent money on start-up for you. You proved yourself in your Ph.D. and your postdoc and your interview to earn a place to be there. You deserve to be here because you are awesome. Think positive.

My solution: “Fake It Until You Make It.” This means that you just act like you belong. Even though inside you feel weird, you just pretend that you know what you are doing, and everything is OK. In fact, you probably do know what you are doing, and everything will likely be OK. As part of FakeItUntilYouMakeIt, keep your eyes open and see what others are doing and act like them.

FakeItUntilYouMakeIt does not mean that you should bumble around doing things wrong time and time again pretending that they are right. People are sure to notice if you are confidently wrong all the time.

I recommend: if you are unsure about something specific, ask your NearPeers how they solved certain problems. NearPeers are people 1-2 years ahead of you who have already gone through the same stage. I actually went as far as to ask my SupportiveSeniorColleagues about how they solve certain matters. I stress Supportive. Since they were supportive, they saw this as WomanOfScience addressing problems quickly instead of WomanOfScience doesn’t know what she is doing.

Another good group to consult are AcademicDynastyPeers. AcademicDynastyPeers are peers who have an academic in their family, usually a parent. They grew up knowing academia from the inside, and they feel pretty comfortable with the process that you are undertaking. Most AcademicDynastyPeers are open about their ideas of the job, and willing to share if you just ask.

After a while of FakingIt, you will forget that you didn’t know how to do that thing, and you will have MadeIt.

Are there other solutions to ImpostorSyndrome that people want to share? Comment or make a guest post.

Category:

Career, New Job, Self-Promotion

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