Being poor was not such a drag in hindsight

There are certain things about my scientific upbringing that sometimes makes me feel like a curmudgeonly asshole.

One of these things are privileged and un-self-aware* assholes who have only ever known labs that are flush with $$$BUX$$$ and take those conditions for granted.

I, however, spent a couple years in a lab when funding was scarce. I fought for, and eventually won, a teaching position to guarantee that I would be paid during the summer months in graduate school. Soon thereafter, my advisor was awarded a sizely grant, and we were suddenly a rich and powerful lab in our department. That didn't change how I approached my science work - I constructed the bulk of the behavioral testing apparatuses used in my dissertation study from abandoned materials found in the next door lab.

When I started in my current lab for my postdoc, we had substantial start up funds. Slowly, my active frame of mind has changed, but my perspective hasn't. Now, if I need something to complete my work, I simply order it without substantiating any of it to anyone, including an administrator. It was strange and new, but also amazing and liberating. Still - not something I planned to embrace mindlessly.

In fact, I switched to and learned a whole new statistical program because it was the cheapest through the university's IT department. I also negotiated aggressively with the vendor of our behavioral testing equipment - a system on which the lab invested more than $50K - to send us various free extras at every opportunity. Another major source of cost in an animal lab - the animals themselves - is often a poorly managed expense. With the help of my student assistants, I've been able to effectively manage and cull animals, keeping the smallest necessary group of animals.

Science is ridiculously expensive and the further the money goes, the further the science goes.

Now, as our current funding situation becomes increasingly dim - I'm even more thoughtful about how the lab spends its money.

So today, when I overhear a new graduate student flippantly declare that the lab needs to put forth $300 for statistical software on their personal computer, when it's available on numerous other computers in the lab, I pause. They probably don't know that it's possible that they got a position in the lab through the department's financial resources (rather than from the PI's funds) or that three of his coworkers are potentially losing their funding/jobs in only a few months. The Ivory tower of academia, it's sometimes called. And it is.

Even so, money is one of those taboo subjects in science - no one really talks about it. Sure, the PI is usually thinking about it, but few make a conversation out of it. Especially in the current funding climate, it appears that the predominant strategy is apply as often as possible and count the moments until the next grant review and score cycle. And probably pray, too, if they believe in that sort of thing.



* Yeah, I'm going to make up words. I use logic. Follow it.

If you liked it then you shoulda put your name on it

Dear everyone who's applied to or for anything ever:

Label the files that you email to someone in a way that would make the file names in someone else's possession make ONE MODICUM of sense.

For example, if you send me an email, and attach a resume(or CV), these file names make me want to reject you without further thought:

resume.doc
myresume.doc


This annoying little thing makes my frustrated mind over-value the resumes of people that actually put their name in the file. It's such a dumb little thing, but when there's a stack of applicants for a position, you might be surprised what people use as their selective criterion.



Like that one time, when someone forgot to spell check their email to me, and called me Dr. Swam.










... And then I stupidly and mockingly posted the above on Facebook, and now some of my roller derby family (lovingly?) call me Dr. Swam or Swammy.


So... yeah. Label those files.

I'm such a fool for you

Because of my need of organization, I have now accepted that I will forever be in charge of cleaning and putting things away - both at home and in the lab.

FML.

Now, I'm not saying that my lab mates are filthy pigs - in fact, I have a great lab family and I really like them. It's just... that there's a pervasive culture of not putting things away. In my experience, the outlook is poor for getting people to put their lab equipment away after it's been cleaned and dried. That minuscule area by the sink is constantly brimming with tools to be autoclaved or put away. It's literally limbo for lab tools.

Once a week, I've now resigned myself to putting things away. Sometimes I need to, because it's the only way I can place my used tools there to dry. Sometimes I'd prefer to postpone whatever science I have slated for the day in favor of the mindless indulgence that is organizing. Sometimes I do it because I have undergraduate assistants around me almost all of the time, and they need to be taught how to be good lab citizens.

There's absolutely nothing harder than trying to get a lab member to change a bad lab citizen habit. It's easiest to pretend it never happens, and hope that you can eventually have more good than bad lab mates. Maybe you can approach a poor citizen individually, and appeal for considerate behavior. ...And sometimes you let it roll, suck it up, and clean up after them silently. Not all lab mates are perfect or permanent, and sometimes it's easier to simply wait for the ticking time bomb to explode (or graduate, because that happens sometimes).

So today, I raise my glass to my lab mates. I put away your shit like a bitch.

Who gives a fuck about an Oxford comma

So... just so everyone knows:

Orientate is not a word.

Noun: Orientation
Verb (present tense): Orient
Verb (past tense): Oriented

Orientate is not a word and I reserve the right to snortle when you say stupid shit.


UPDATE: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/orientated

It's a word according to my Facebook and interwebs, so I gouged out my nasal passages to prevent future undeserved snortling.

Lies and Recomendations

I wish I could have an honest conversation with a professor who's written at least 20 recommendation letters. Maybe 50? ....100?

Wait, how many letters will a professor write in their time? That got scary fast.

Whilst attempting entrance to graduate school, I had a letter writer fail to send promised letters. I apparently wasted time completing tedious applications and a boatload of money during my college-induced poverty because some dickhead lied to my face. The part that made it so excruciating was that he was not the only asshole liar to exploit my work in academia. I'd spent my junior year of college managing research assistants and collecting human-subjects data for that asshole's graduate student. His student absconded with the data to a post-doctoral position in Texas somewhere and never again responded to correspondence. Upon hearing the issue, his advisor agreed to write letters in his stead. Note: agreed to. NEVER ACTUALLY DID.

Now, in full disclosure, I am *JAZZED* that things turned out the way they did. Apparently so glad that I have completely forgotten the name of the graduate student who was the ultimate culprit in the above debacle. During my senior year I worked in a lab with amazing researchers (Gerald Wasserman, Mandy Bolbecker-Hosking). I later joined Mike Hoane's lab at Southern Illinois Unviersity as a graduate student and fell in love with traumatic brain injury work in the following application cycle. Met my future husband, fell in love roller derby culture with some people in Southern Illinois, blah, blah, blah. Birds singing, sun shining, everything is perfect and wonderful.

...Yet there's still a little salt in my soul about that damned letter.

I needed a crew of assistants to help with operant chamber testing, and that's now ballooned out to more than a dozen assistants. Most people balk at the number assistants, but these rad miniscientists substantially increase the quality and throughput of my research. There's a time trade-off for me - management, recruitment, retention, and enrichment requires substantial effort, but it's VERY worth it, in my opinion. 

My recommendation letter guidelines:

1. I honestly assess their letters' potential content to the apprentice (while working together or when asked for a letter, but preferably the former).

2. Apprentices provide as much notice as possible, with a plan in place, ao I can easily complete the letter and send it.

3. I supply a copy of the letter to the apprentice following its submission.

It's my belief that if you're going to train or be trained someone, there is ideally a commitment to doing so well. It would be easier for one to know how they could excel if the rubric on which they will be graded is clearly described. Mandated for courses, unheard of with research assistantships.

As the discipline of Neuroscience matures and becomes a recognized and established independent academic entity, I'm excited to see how the recommendation letter evolves. Research involvement whilst and undergraduate is an increasingly necessary component to admittance to Neuroscience graduate programs (as well as many others). Maybe the recommendation letter culture can sustain a similar evolution.

At least it's digital now. Letterhead is a bitch.

I believe in a thing called love

As a behavioral neuroscientist, the bulk of my scientific data comes directly from the actions of animals. My experience thus far is predominantly from my graduate training in preclinical traumatic brain injury with rats. The tasks I perform with the animals can be as hands-off as activity monitoring (a motor and anxiety measure where the subject is simply placed into a box) or as intimate as forelimb placing (significantly restraining the animal and moving them about a plexiglass plate to stimulate their whiskers to examine reflexes). Despite the 'intimacy' of the task, handling and becoming familiar with the animals is a standard practice before using animals in a study, although its implementation differs wildly across researchers and is seldom mentioned in Methods sections.

The primary goal of handling is to make the animals familiar enough with the handler/researcher that they can satisfactorily perform the behavioral tasks that will be asked of them. At first, this means acquainting the animal with simply being touched, as many animals sit in tiny boxes without social stimulation of any kind as they await use in a study. Later, handling can mean manipulating the hands and feet of the animal, or even getting them used to being held in one's arms. 

But when I first started working with rodents, I was told not to get too emotionally close to the animals. "Don't get attached," was uttered on dozens of occasions by lab members at every level of training. Indeed, the practice of endearingly naming one's subjects is usually the sign that one isn't long for the scientist career.

Sure enough, I named one of my first subjects, a female retired breeder, because of her insatiably sweet yet voraciously intelligent behavior. Sure, "Number Seven" sung in a baby voice isn't a name by the strictest definition since its true label was AS-7, but I loved this animal. Just as everyone had told me not to do. When the day came to sacrifice the animal, my first on my own, I tried to hide how difficult it was for me. I shut the door after I was finally able to administer the euthanasia agent. I shut the door and I cried as I watched the animal die.

It would be almost three more years before I would bestow nicknames on animals again. But this time, I'm much more conscious of what that endearment means. Since then, I have been passionate - nay, outspoken - about how important it is to treat these precious animals with care, rather than data-producing meat sacks. When given the opportunity with my postdoctoral position, I was quick to insist that basic animal care include more enrichment items (for example, we now use nestlets and paper mouse houses). I insist that animals are never singly housed, unless necessitated by health concerns.

I fear that the dire need to produce research littered with p-values below .05, we forget that science should be the pursuit of truth. If our animals are truly modeling the human phenomena, we need to commit to that by treating them as preciously. Anything less is a conscious disassociation with sufficiently rigorous research. Why do some researchers forgo enrichment items for their animal subjects? Because the improvement of the reprehensibly impoverished environment is sufficient to endanger hopeful significant differences among experimental groups.

Scientists shouldn't be so afraid to not find significant differences that they allow subpar care of their animal subjects. I dream about a science that embraces and supports good, rigorous, and creative work. I also dream about manuscripts that write themselves. Sigh... another day, another day.