Hypocrisy is an ugly beast

I was very angry yesterday because my Ph.D. advisor let me down yet again. We do this dance every time I need a letter of recommendation. He says he'll write it, then he goes into a phone and email black hole until the day of the deadline (or after). I don't understand what's so hard about responding to someone's email and saying "I did see your email, and I will get back to you by ---." Is it really more effective to completely ignore the person, thereby stressing them out?

I should add that I try to keep my emails to a minimum and I'm very courteous and grateful in them. The last thing I want to do is piss him off. But how can he be too busy to meet a deadline he agreed to... and then I find out he's off camping? Everyone needs a break, but shouldn't you finish up your obligations beforehand?

So with a recent deadline for a fellowship, he as usual stopped picking up his phone and answering his emails. Then an hour before the website stops accepting submissions, he finally picked up his phone. (I always know he's done with a letter when he finally stops avoiding calls.) He said he was done and had submitted it. Except I had just called the fellowship office (shamefacedly) to ask if he had submitted, and they hadn't received anything from him. It turns out he had submitted a letter for something else by accident... and the deadline for that something was still a month off! So we went back to our little game until he finally submitted just before the deadline.

The several days leading up to the deadline were so stressful for me. I had worked hard to submit all my materials on time, all my other recommenders had submitted on time, and all I had was this missing letter from my advisor who was ignoring me completely. I think one thing that finally helped nudge his hand was when I called on a few friends who are still in his lab to go to his office and bug him in person. (The in person reminders were the only way I used to be able to get him to do anything when I was his student.)

I should also add that he once sent me a letter one week after a deadline. Luckily in that case it was something I could mail in and I had accounted for his usual irresponsible quirk by giving him a deadline that was a bit earlier than the actual. So I still managed to get the application in by overnighting it.

I think the thing that bothers me most is that he used to complain so much when I was a graduate student about how his students always leave him with unfinished papers and then he never hears back and has to do all the work, or else it's like pulling teeth to get them to respond. I have always been prompt to respond to his emails when we were publishing together. I even respond promptly to his current students who still periodically email me with questions about the apparatus I built. Hypocrisy is an ugly beast.

The 1-minute girl scout

I have been having a lot of fun recently contacting people with things I thought they might find handy. Here are a few illustrative examples in no particular order:

1. Suggested to a friend of mine at another university that he consider a post doc with Prof Y whose invited talk I went to and thoroughly enjoyed. It seemed like a perfect fit for my friend's interests, and a potentially great fit personality wise.
2. Found an article right up the alley of a science writer friend of mine and asked him if he'd like to get a copy (he did).
3. Told an assistant prof I know at another university about a grant program I think she'd benefit from.
4. Told a post doc friend of mine at yet another university about a job website I thought he'd find handy.
5. Sent a lawyer friend of mine who's struggling with work-life balance and family issues an article on the best family-friendly law firms in the country.

I basically just shot someone an email when I thought of them in conjunction with something I came across. Fyi, I use the term 'friend' above loosely. The thing that made this all fun and unusual is that I did this for people I don't usually see or speak to, but who I know or met at different points in my life. (I've always done this for people I see more regularly, but that's not the point here.)

I think some people would call this savvy.
Some would call it networking.
I just did it because it made me feel darn nice and useful.

And now I have all these people feeling like I'm thoughtful. Maybe one day they'll even send me something handy that comes on their radar. Sounds win-win to me!

Pick your poison / antidote

I have heard many academics lament / complain about the hours they work, the lack of compensation given the hours, the loneliness of a job spent mostly writing grants, the pressure to wow your academic peers with your ingenuity (ie, very few professors have name brand recognition in their relative fields, and these few have a lucky cascade effect where their success means easier funding and prime pick of postdocs / students, which leads to more success and funding, etc...). Sure there are perks like flexibility (you get to decide which specific 60-100 hours of the week you want to work) and relative freedom to choose projects that interest you (assuming you can get funding for them). And for some there's also a joy in teaching / motivating students.

But are the tradeoffs worth it? Most graduate students leaving a PhD program clearly don't get that impression, hence, the massive influx of people into industrial jobs. Jobs which also have their pluses (high pay, no fund-raising responsibility) and minuses (some inevitable drudgery and boredom, longer total time at a lab bench before you have management authority relative to academia, more bosses to answer to, and less control over what questions to pursue). Notice I did not list hours. In general, the idea that industry is a 40 hour per week job for PhDs is a complete fallacy in my experience and in the experience of those I know. But in general it probably is still fewer hours than academia. I've also been asked by a friend to include opportunities for mentorship as a plus. For those PhD students who enjoy teaching and think they can only get that type of mentoring interaction in academia, there is actually plenty of opportunity as you advance to teach and motivate a team of people (not to mention some smart summer interns that flood large companies each year).

Notice I also left out "politicking" from both sets of lists. Though many students run from academia for precisely this reason, I think any job that involves human beings involves politicking. (I hold to this belief even more firmly after speaking with people in other fields such as ministry and non-profit orgs who have had similar experiences.) I will say that the brand of politics changes in industry. Many academics get away with more blunt statements than would generally be considered acceptable in a professional environment.

So what is the point of this post? Mainly it's just a haphazardly organized, mini-summary of some recent conversations I've had with students and faculty. I'd also be curious if anyone has any additional major points to add to the above mentioned pluses / minuses of industry versus academia.

What women can do to get ahead

There's an article called "Ten Things Companies - and Women - Can Do To Get Ahead" that I came across, and there's one particular item I found interesting that made #3 on the top 10 list for women. (If you're curious, the other 9 items were somewhat typical advice such as network, articulate your skills, have an elevator speech, etc.)

Item 3:
Dare to Apply: McKinsey, citing internal research from HP, found that "women apply for open jobs only if they think they meet 100 percent of the criteria listed, whereas men respond to the posting if they feel they meet 60 percent of the requirements." That by itself, if it holds true across the corporate world, could be holding back a lot of talented women.

First it makes you wonder how the data was gathered (eg, an objective assessment of candidates' experience compared to the requirements for the job, versus a subjective self-assessment in which case some interesting gender self-perceptions affect the results).

But assuming for a moment we can believe these numbers, what does it tell us about women in general? (Yes, let us allow ourselves a little room for generalizations and stereotypes here.) A couple possibilities:

1. Women are less willing to face rejection / failure, ie, "I will only apply for a job I'm very likely to obtain."
2. Women take metrics much more literally and do not leave as much room for the nuances of what actually goes into hiring decisions, eg, "My background is in 'limes' not 'lemons' so I don't qualify."

It also makes me wonder if women would hold others to those same standards. For example, if a female hiring manager and a male hiring manager were both given the same candidate to interview who met 60% of the job requirements - would men be more likely to consider this adequate? Would women hold the candidate to a higher standard? Hmmm.....

What women (don't) wear

A CNN article today reported on a declaration by an Egyptian cleric that women will NOT be allowed to wear an all-covering veil (niqab) anymore in areas of universities frequented only by women, eg, female dorms or all-female classes.

There is no specific reason given for this other than the speculation that it's meant to counter extremism. Also, the article mentions that there have been protests by women who choose to wear the niqab and are now being denied this right.

I for one don't understand why anyone has to dictate what a woman should or shouldn't wear. Although, you might play devil's advocate and ask if it would bother me if at the opposite extreme some women (or men) chose to attend university in the nude. I would personally find this distracting, though I don't think it would offend me as long as no one lingered in my "personal space" (which I assume would be of a much larger radius in this situation).

For now we will just satisfy ourselves with this quote from a cleaning lady who was apparently interviewed for this article:

"The niqab should be worn under two circumstances... A very beautiful woman should wear it to prevent men from fighting over her, and an ugly woman should wear it to hide her face."

Parenting pickle

Some graduate students were telling me about a student in their lab who attends conferences with her small child. They spoke of it with a slightly disparaging tone (only insomuch that they could still walk the fine line of being PC), and I couldn't help but feel sad that there was no sense of empathy for what it must be like to be that mom. Although it's possible she takes her child along because she wants more QT, I think it's more likely that she does it because there aren't too many alternatives. This made me think of other moms I'd heard of who take their children to conferences (a brave few I think given that I have yet to notice the presence of children at any conference I've attended). These are the reasons I've heard people give for doing so:

1. The child is small enough that it is still nursing
2. The cost of childcare is too high for students / post docs to leave the child with someone
3. The spouse works full-time and there is no nearby network of family / close friends who can watch the child

These are the reasons I've heard people give for why this is a terrible idea:

1. It makes it difficult for the mom to concentrate on the talks
2. It makes it difficult for anyone else in the same room to concentrate on the talks (I assume this mainly applies to louder children, or to people who are easily distracted because they hate/love babies)
3. It's unprofessional (I'm not sure what this means unless it means 'different than what's typically done by those in the profession,' in which case this is certainly true.)

I've also heard that some people will book an extra room for a grandparent / spouse who can watch the child during parts of the conference. (Some women have also been known to try this solution if they're nursing while going on job interviews.) This sounds like a great solution although it's somewhat cost prohibitive.

Long story short, I think people need to get over it when someone tries to live their life and balance their job in a way that isn't "the norm." The face of academia and the job market in general has been changing (slowly but surely) over the last few decades. I for one am excited about what this world will look like in another few decades. (Who knows, maybe they'll have temporary daycare available at conferences.)

Ebb and Flow

I decided it would be interesting to quantitatively track my perspective on "desirability of an academic job" this week. First an intro as to why...

A graduate student I spoke with recently was surprised / disappointed when I told her that being a postdoc didn't automatically make you any more certain of your future and that many postdocs still wonder whether they really will end up in academia.

She said "darn! I was hoping to have the answers by then." But I had to tell her that, alas, just being 1 year (or N years) "wiser" doesn't mean you actually have all the answers. (In fact, many of the faculty I've spoken with echo the same sentiment of "still trying to figure it all out.")

And now to the plot! At the beginning and end of each day I recorded my desire to go into academia on a scale from 1 to 5 (Monday was retroactively averaged since I started this Tuesday).

1 = No way, Jose
5 = Academia, here I come!

A few observations:
~ Though my desire does fluctuate, the average is definitely a significant shift upwards relative to my theoretical plot from graduate school
~ In most cases I gave higher ratings at the end of the day. Apparently I enjoy working in my postdoc enough that it makes me want to stay in academia. (Or maybe I'm just not a morning person.)
~ I was surprised that specific events didn't always catalyze the ebbs and flows of my desire for an academic job. Rather a lot of the fluctuations were related to whether I was over-analyzing the future (as usual), was tired / cranky, was optimistic for no particular reason, etc.
~ I wonder what it would take for me to feel a "5" on any given day...

All in all, this was a rather fun and interesting self-reflection game, so I may play it again next week.

Notes on points A and B
A: Met with my advisor who was feeling overwhelmed. This was not for any reason related to me, but it still made me question my sanity in wanting an academic job.
B: Submitted a grant application for money I was unlikely to get, but it still felt good to get it off my plate!