Did you know you could search online your and your colleagues' salaries if you work at a state-funded institution? Me neither. Not until recently.
I noticed something when I searched for my salary and the salary of the other postdoc in my lab. We finished our PhDs within two months of each other, and I joined the lab roughly a month after he started. I come from Psychology, he from Physiology. We both wanted to join a lab that was out of our comfort zone, so we converged on adult hippocampal neurogenesis as our focus. He's an awesome person and I have mad respect for him as a person and a scientist.
And his yearly salary is $1,000 more than mine.
I'm curious why this is the case, as the most obvious difference between us is our genders. I haven't come up with another convincing factor in this discrepancy.
Baby, watch your back. I'll be watching mine much more closely in the future.
*Edited: The title is actually a reference to Nellie McKay's song "Baby Watch Your Back" but it's not on Youtube and here's another one of her amazing songs.
For those that don't know - Big Brother is a reality TV competition that runs in the summer, airing three days a week. Approximately 13 people get locked in a camera-filled house without entertainment, outside contact, and limited access to resources. Over the course of the show, contestants compete for power, luxuries, and survival. Housemates vote each other out of the house until only two individuals remain. The winner is selected by a group of the most recently 'evicted houseguests,' making Big Brother a complex social, physical, and mental game.
I realize that many people think that reality TV is trash, but I would argue that Big Brother is psychologically fascinating. Because of a lack of outside stimulation, contestants quickly become immersed in the environment, frequently citing that they forget that the house is brimming with more than 60 cameras. There's some alcohol available, but things rarely devolve into a Bad Girls Club-level meltdown and the drama doesn't feel as exploitative as therapy shows for vulnerable people and doesn't make people sick. What makes Big Brother amazing is that you can watch as people become increasingly entrenched in the mind-warpingly intense game.
The game is so different in every incarnation that here is a brief description/commentary of the previous season's winners (that I've watched):
2012: Ian - awkward young dude who managed to outwit (and piss off fewer people) his Big Brother mentor, the infamous previous winner Dan.
2011: Rachel - Vegas resident with an obnoxious laugh and in-your-face attitude that used both brains and brawn to win despite being in an unpopular 'show-mance.'
2010: Hayden - Strong, handsome fraternity-type dude who forged a strong alliance and used it to easily navigate into the final three.
2009: Jordan - perhaps the most clueless contestant to win, the adorable houseguest bumbled to half a million dollars by the end of the summer by staying likable.
To become the winner, it takes a combination of physical, mental, and social gaming. As briefly touched upon above, winners come to that end using a myriad of strategies. I find it positively fascinating. So might the 6 million people that tune in for every episode of the people that pay more than $15/month to watch the uncensored, 24-hour live feeds. There's an after-hours cable show featuring action from within the Big Brother house.
There is at least one blogger that is making money by soliciting donations for covering the live feeds, and their coverage is good enough that I'm considering supporting them financially.
If you're into psychology or behavioral neuroscience, Big Brother is worth a watch as a fish bowl of human behavior. You can easily discount it as cheap reality TV, but that sort of closed mindedness might be a bit shortsighted. After all, as researchers we have ethical and logistical constraints from ever doing anything with the experimental realism that is evident in that house. Zimbardo (omg! not dead!) would get a kick out of it.
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...
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.
The people who do the neuroscience are the least appreciated and nurtured resource in science.
Here's why:
We never bothered to map out success.
Few labs have documented, readily available, and shared protocols. This usually means that people learn technique from an oral tradition. Strangely, oral tradition is an inexact method and seldom lends a deeper understanding of technique that a career scientist needs to troubleshoot, should things go awry (as they usually do).
Superiors/senior scientist advisors seldom establish clear goals for success for more junior scientists. Sure, projects come and go, but more long term goals (18- or 24-month long, or even 4- or 5- year long career-related landmarks) might lend better career perspective for scientists who frequently can't think far beyond the current experiment.
We expect a level of devotion that's religious to qualify for respect.
Unless you're an undergraduate (and sometimes even that won't help), your PI expects you to be at the bench during business hours and toiling on everything else before and/or after that work. Usually more.
People who pass on family commitments or personal needs in the name of scientific work wear these sacrifices like a badge of honor, whereas someone who strives to achieve a work-life balance is considered less dedicated. Recently, a co-worker of mine declared that they had to leave work early, at 5 p.m., to "babysit." I couldn't help but scoff. "I don't think it's babysitting if it's your own child," I mused.
I've been involved in roller derby since my third year of graduate school (that's nearly four years, including the two years I've been in my postdoc). Both of my superiors have reacted to my involvement in that community like it's the most insane thing they've ever heard. When I told one about making the team, he reacted like I had just told him that I was from outer space.
Professional conferences and workshop cruelly test your endurance in front of your peers (read: competition). For example, the annual meeting for Society for Neuroscience starts on a Saturday and runs through Wednesday. Talks start at 8 a.m. each day, and continue for 5 to 60 minutes, with more than a dozen ongoing sessions as any given time. Posters are presented in shifts, with hundreds simultaneously available for viewing. At 5 p.m., the at-conference bustle largely ends, but socials, meetings, lectures, and socializing (i.e., drinking) commence and continue into the morning hours. There are also several programs/events that precede or follow that main event. A couple of years ago, I spent a whole week at the SfN annual meeting in Washington, DC. It was so grueling that I skipped the last day of the conference in favor of spending the rainy day writing a manuscript and considered it a day "off."
We suck at communicating, but especially "thank you."
Everyone's been busy in the lab, using up the aliquot of this, the last of that, and spilling it on here. Sometimes, you fail to replace things or clean up after yourself before someone else also needs that resource. Both parties have the choice to be classy team players or unnecessary dickheads about the situation.
Dealing with equipment or facility issues can be a comedy of errors as each lab member independently discovers the issue or missing resource. A scientist could be royally screwed if they haven't accordingly planned ahead (which is probably most).
Periodically, the PI tries to show their appreciation for the lab team by providing food or drinks. It'd feel more meaningful if there was any real forethought, creativity, or commitment to it. Sure, they bought the food, but seldom is the act concurrently presented with an actual "thank you." It feels more like a tribute to an angry god than a team coming together to celebrate the group's efforts.
Team building and respect for one's peers is heavily undervalued and largely nonexistent.
Scientists, who appear to have a higher incidence of social awkwardness than the general population, work in groups that are hardly encouraged to communicate with one another. Without careful moderation, they won't actively challenge that difficulty. There needs to be a leader for or in the lab itself, aware of the social and functional culture of the lab. The chaos of every-awkward-(wo)man-for-themselves can easily devolve into shitty science work.
As a behavioral neuroscientist who works with operant chambers, I needed to quickly build up a competent crew of undergraduate assistants to help with the testing so that I could dedicate more time to the other things I need to learn, master, and accomplish as a postdoc. I solicited, interviewed, and trained an army of assistants with which I am excited to work everyday. It's a ton of front-end work and double checking that if implemented properly, pays major dividends in team member contributions. Because of them, I am frequently able to accomplish twice as much work as I would on my own and their efforts are a major factor in my scientific throughput. I get the feeling that my PI wouldn't agree with me, however, despite requisitioning my most senior assistant to take over a project dropped by someone under his own supervision.
Thinking is seldom considered to be productive, and haphazardly doing without thinking is generally promoted by the get-it-done-yesterday culture of science.
It wasn't until my fourth year of graduate student that an advisor demonstrated the importance of reading and thinking. It blew my mind! I had been focusing all my efforts on doing science with very little reading or understanding of science to guide it. Too few advisors and mentors encourage thinking about science in a creative way, especially when that time could be spent doing science.
I love having young science minds around me in the lab because I can't possibly espouse their worldview after 7 years of scientific devotion. Too few scientists solicit, or even value, the viewpoint or opinions of their fellow scientists. As a behavioral neuroscientist for seven years, I have developed firm opinions about how to get the best possible behavioral data out of my animals (obey their light cycles, avoid wearing or using perfumed products, approach animals with a calm, loving, but firm hand). Not that anyone would ask, however, so good luck with doing a cognitive task at the cusp of animals' day-night cycle while sporting that Axe body spray.
Likewise, my colleagues have strengths in techniques and fields that I don't know anything about. I wish asking for their help or opinion didn't feel so much like a confession of idiocy, even though it is completely normal and reasonable that I'm not the foremost expert in everything I do. Isn't having more smart people attacking a challenge better than fewer? Problem solving can be a funny thing - a novice could approach a problem with creative insight that a specialist in that field might not observe. Likewise, an expert might understand limitations with precision that can help modify a solution to fit the parameters at hand. Now that's fucking teamwork!
The only scientists you see working alone are in movies or TV, and they are generally "mad genious" scientists, and not in a good way (THERE'S AN ENTIRE WIKIPEDIA PAGE??!). I can think of villains whose desire for fame, money, or power drove reasonable people to extreme ends. Sure - real science isn't a Hollywood movie, but it's also not completely unlike its depiction in films, either.
I firmly believe that while science is an academic endeavor, it is too seldom considered to be a group or team venture. I think failing to recognize and act upon this can make good, rigorous, and thoughtful scientific work more difficult to accomplish, and we already have enough barriers to that outside of what we scientists can directly control.
Thank you for making a job search in academia/research the world's cruelest scavenger hunt.
As a neuroscientist. I have used some of the following sites to look at positions:
Professional Society page (Sfn's Neurojobs, APA)
University-specific HR page (Research, Staff, Administration positions)
Research-specific Department page (Postdoc positions)
Academic Unit Page (Professor and Lecturer positions)
So I've had this behavioral soap box just sitting here and I don't feel like I've abused it at all, and that's a crime.
Something that scientists hardly ever is do is slow the eff down. That exact issue is what lead to severe burnout for myself this spring, possibly culminating in writing a blog about neuroscience because I needed some catharsis from a stressful and sometimes abusive science career.
For the last year, I've managed a large mouse colony, learned to assemble, troubleshoot, and use operant touchscreen-equipped chambers, coordinated a crew of more than a dozen undergraduates, and completed *8* behavioral experimental projects (each requiring 4 months to run) in that time. Do the math - my crew has completed 32 months of projects in about 18. That doesn't even include the 50-ish pilot animals we ran during that time - each for at least six months.
This would be ridiculously productive if being productive in science was purely who finished the most studies - but it's not. The work that you publish and present is the true measure by which your productivity is measured in science. The quality of this work is a big factor in that judgement, and the rush to finish work before someone else publishes that technique or finding can frequently results in slap-dash work of questionable standards.
Why do you think the hashtag #overlyhonestmethods exists?
So I have a ridiculous and soul-crushing amount of data and it wasn't until I turned off the damn chambers and killed all of the trained animals that I was able to make myself stop. Now my PI and I are finding way more cool stuff (where cool stuff = possibly publishable data) than we've noticed in two years. It could lead to several meaningful publications of the behavioral correlates of adult hippocampal neurogenesis. Isn't that the point of all this?
To boost productivity in science - and not just perceived productivity - may actually mean spending more time idly or even at other pursuits.
It's shocking how infrequently this topic is broached in the workplace. Things that seem like they would improve productivity (i.e., working more) probably hurt output. Like one of my graduate school mentors, Greg Rose, impressed upon me - too little time in science is spent thinking. If we spent more time thinking critically about all aspects of our work, and ensuring that the endeavors we undertake are done so with a rigorous dedication to high quality technique, a lot less time, effort, and money would be wasted.
