Until it all, starts over... again

I've been pretty mum here about the fact that I've recently moved and changed jobs.

I think it's because I now realize how much I want to share the "how I got to what I am now" before I spend too much time talking about the straight-up details of my new job.

University of Texas at Austin (UT-Austin) was my first postdoctoral position following graduate school, and it has been pretty great. I generally like my coworkers and my work, Austin is beautiful and vibrant, and I got to live with my bestest favorite person (from whom I was separated for the immediately preceding two years while we finished graduate school shit). While here I've met some incredible people, officiated some incredible roller derby with the incredible Texas Rollergirls (fourth in the world, what, what!), and tasted some incredible food. Unfortunately, I've also done some incredibly trying work setting up a new lab, paid an incredible amount in parking costs, and placed an incredible number of miles onto my leased car.

More recently, funding became an increasingly pressing issue: my PI's grant is ending, and despite good scores on an NIH R01 grant, it will be unclear for months yet if there would have been money to support my continued work in the lab. I applied to become a research educator for the awesome Freshman Research Initiative at UT, but funding is tight, and the program did not have funds to support new "research streams."

This, and the rapidly approaching end of the lease on our condominium forced the hard question: Can I commit to another year in San Marcos, locking in  a long commute for both myself and the love of my life, without a guarantee that I would be employed during that time?

So, a few months ago, I started hunting for jobs in San Antonio. After all, my fiancee's permanent position was in San Antonio and I was already skating there once or twice a week with the Alamo City Rollergirls. In June I blogged that looking for academic positions was comically complex. . I know that I love doing science in the lab everyday, but the counterintuitive expectation that successful scientists leave the bench to become administration, teachers, and managers just felt stupid. I wanted off that tract, and I wanted off badly. Desperately unsure about what I wanted, I reached out to a lab that had posted a technician position, for which I was ridiculously over qualified.

But then I met this scientist and he was all human, and it was like, what do I want again? Because working with these people could be pretty awesome. Sure, it's another huge academic leap from one discipline to the next, but the cost-benefit was so disparate compared to my situation with UT-Austin: guaranteed funding, carpooling to work with the fiancee, and only a short drive from roller derby practice. We could live in a city near things and people, have social lives, and visit nice restaurants without spending more time in the car than at the table.


So, I started a new job on August 1 at the University at Texas Health Sciences Center San Antonio while still working (albeit long distance) with the group at UT-Austin. I was pretty entrenched at UT-Austin position, my exit was swift, and I had a lot of people with which I had to coordinate all of these changes (remember all of my undergraduate assistants?). The undergraduates with which I was working are now finishing some of the behavior that I help start before I left. It's so strange stepping away from a project before its natural conclusion, hoping that those I left behind pick up the slack. I know that they can, but I've never had to test that trust so completely in the past.

And like that, I know relatively nothing again. I'm a behavioral neuroscientist in an electrophysiology lab that uses patch clamp to examine dopamine signalling in a myriad of systems.  It's a bit like starting graduate school or starting the last postdoctoral position - it's an opportunity to demonstrate that I'm adaptable. At least, until it all starts over again, again.

Work smarter, NOT HARDER.

If you're not already reading Lifehacker everyday, you're missing out both as a scientist AND a human being.

The header on the website is literally "Tips and downloads for getting things done."


Lifehacker has helped me bend technology to my whim, find great deals on products or services, and solve small but meaningful annoyances in my everyday existence. I read it everyday, even if only glancing, because it is that useful of a resource.

Go. Now!

Packed and all eyes turned in

You're going to freak out about this.

But for even for scientists, sometimes life needs to take the front seat.

We just moved into our San Antonio townhouse (before the complex was completed with their renovations or turned on the air conditioning). It's been a flurry of angry cats, drywall dust, and achingly painful flea bites in our 85 F degree abode.

OMGWTFBBQ

Say something, say something, anything. Your silence is deafening.

If you need help, ask for it.

Seriously. It's incredible how many colleagues I've seen struggle and dredge through an experimental goal that requires the implementation of new or different techniques. Sure, they've probably read some scientific articles on the topic, but seldom do I witness fellow researchers reaching out to their colleagues for help when they're struggling.

In my postdoctoral fellowship, my research focus went from preclinical traumatic brain injury with rats (in a Psychology program) to functional adult hippocampal neurogenesis (in a Neurobiology department). It was a huge leap into much harder bench work with which I wasn't familiar - which meant that I had to reach out to the undergraduate technician in the lab to learn these techniques. The other postdoc didn't need this type of tutoring, so I quickly felt like an idiot, and I think that still kind of sticks with me even today.

Not many scientists will tell you this - but working in science is essentially a commitment to frequently feeling like a moron. For example:

I have done something so profoundly dumb in an experiment that I am briefly yet frequently certain I have multiple personalities that hate one another.

One time I returned an animal cage following behavioral testing, but did not notice that an animal was missing from its cage. Turned out that the animal was in my private testing room for the entire weekend, and I didn't realize it until I found shredded paper towels in the middle of the floor, Monday morning. CT-15 was fine, but freaked out, and honestly, so was I. What kind of bonehead does that, I thought.

I have struggled with lab techniques and let it go on longer than I should have because PRIDE.

I didn't learn PCR and gel electrophoresis until my postdoc, and I was able to hide my troubles with genotyping until the laboratory technician left his position a year later. And then it still took four months for me to go from "recipe-following automaton" to "sufficiently proficient scientist." The undergraduate assistants understood more about the process than this postdoc did, so I avoided that shit like a shameful plague.

More often than not, experimental results are the opposite of what I would have predicted, despite all the science things I thought I knew on the topic.

The first study I did in graduate school demonstrated that a vitamin effective in young animals as a treatment following TBI (traumatic brain injury) was completely ineffective in middle aged animals. The finding was so surprising that my master's thesis wound up being a study of the effect of age on that drug's efficacy. This is a normal progression of experimental investigation in science, but it's not difficult to interpret it as being incorrect or even moronic in your scientific predictions.

It can be really painful to admit that something is difficult for you, even more so when the people around you, your peers, don't seem to have the same troubles. We're all competing for the same grant money, recognition, and success. So you don't say anything about your struggles, you don't ask for help, and something that is a frequent and necessary task in your scientific endeavors turns into a monster of an undertaking. At least it did (and still can) for me.

The too frequently unspoken truth in science is that as a group, we all rise and fall together (in a lab, in a research group, in a department, in a university, in a field, etc). If one of us makes a major breakthrough in methodology or technique, all of us might benefit from it. If one of us secures funding, there's more support for the rest of the team, or another piece of equipment. If one of us expands their professional network to include rich or powerful people, all of us might now have a powerful friend-of-a-friend.

Putting together a great team of a lab is important for each member's benefit. This is true for both social and professional climate, but I'm talking specifically about professional development. For the sake of the team, each member should seek to be open, considerate, thoughtful, and dedicated. It needs to be a safe place to ask for help or advice without fearing judgement and persecution. It allows its members to play to their strengths, and others to support them with their own, symbiotically.

In science, as in life, it's best to forgive yourself for your failings, and move the fuck on, preferably with your friends.

I can say I hope it will be worth what I give up

When I am at work, I am making a conscious choice to be a scientist rather than a derby girl, a future wife or best friend. Much like many other scientists, I have frequently made this choice for about 60 hours a week for much of my scientific career. While this sacrifice is commonly borne with a stamp of pride, there appears to be mounting evidence that this level of dedication could have a deleterious effects on productivity, creativity, and quality of the work and seldom leads to a healthy emotional or personal life.

How many scientists:

1) Brag about missing major life events in the name of science?

 I skipped [major holiday with family] so that I could run an experiment.

2) Have talked about family obligations or responsibilities as though they're an unreasonable drain of one's time?

 :::scoffs::: I have to go babysit [my own child].

3) Talk about how much they work and how stressed out they are?

I'm so stressed out that I grind my teeth during the little time I'm capable of sleep.

Part of the problem is that this is the culture of science and it's run  in a way that's counterproductive to effective stress management and efficacious productivity. I'm stressed out, producing crappy, not-significant research, and sacrificing the little time I have to enjoy the things I enjoy to drudge along and feel this way. 

How many career scientists have strained family relationships, or worse, have severed them altogether from the strain of scientific study and participation in this culture? How many of these people spend many of their years alone because their dedication to their work makes it difficult to find or maintain healthy or meaningful interpersonal relationships? How many people opt to pass on seeing their loved ones because of their commitment to scientific inquiry?

How many of them come to regret these choices?

I wish the culture of science didn't promote these sacrifices for the sake of science valor with a smear of pride. Perhaps then a retrospective account of a career in science wouldn't sound so much like a sad story borne by an unfortunate soul, driven by a slavish commitment to improving or informing the world in some noble way. I've hardly seen any movies where that's worked out in any way that seemed positive (The Saint?), forget any real life instances.

We mostly work to live... until we live to work...

Time goes by SO SLOWLY

I have a confession:

At every lab meeting, I track how much time one of my colleagues speaks.

Yes, I am a jerk.

No, I don't care.

In graduate school, lab meetings were held sporadically - but not at all for most of my graduate school career. This is a probably a large reason as to why I find anything but the "Reader's Digest" version of the whole affair absolutely excruciating.

And why I time my colleague in our lab meetings.

Content-wise: This person struggles with saying anything clearly, effectively or efficiently. They use lab meeting to think out loud to themselves. They don't think through their presentation's narrative and then I end up watching them sort through old presentations and graphs looking for the "one".

We hold data meetings every other week - and  this person speaks for about a half hour at each gathering.

It is the water torture of lab meetings.

So... I bemusedly count. Because the alternative would be to dread the whole thing and bitterly stare at the otherwise nice individual while they talk about their work.

...

Did I mention that they gave a more formal project update using a Word document? It was ridiculous. I could hardly hold back the humored and amazed smirk as they slowly and awkwardly scrolled through their graphs in Word.

Do your labmates and/or co-workers a solid and make that presentation quick, obvious and to the point. We'll thank you for it.