Fire Levels

Yesterday I mentioned something about the "fire" that some of us have for research. If you have this "fire" it means that you are deeply fascinated by research and discovery; you are motivated by a strong desire to investigate and answer questions; you are thrilled by new results and ideas.

Perhaps some people have this fire always. Definitely some never have it. For others -- perhaps most of us -- the flame flickers and may even appear to be extinguished at times.

If I were to graph my research-fire level vs. time, the time averaged result would show a steady presence of research-fire. If you looked at specific data points, however, you would see some extreme wiggles in the curve, including some very low points (though nothing like what one of my PhD students experienced in the lead-up to the defense). In my academic career, there have been months/years, especially during my student years but a few in the post-PhD years, in which events conspired to squelch my enthusiasm for science, research, academia or all three.

The research-thrill always came back. Typically the fire-squelching was driven by some sort of harassment or by major problems with co-workers or students. Through the bad times, however, I never completely lost my interest in research; sometimes it just seemed like the interesting parts of my job were overshadowed by the awful parts. On a few occasions I wondered if it was worth it to keep going or whether I should figure out a new career plan.

I haven't felt that way in a long time. The curve on the research fire level graph has defined a rather high plateau for the last 10 years or so, with only one valley of any note.

I think that once you find a good environment and are fortunate to have the opportunity to do the research you want to do, the research-fire level can stay high and can withstand the occasional negative things that happen in the course of any career and life. After a while, something that would have been a crisis or at least the cause for major anxiety and/or sadness doesn't have such a significant or sustained effect anymore.

Tenure helps with this, of course, but so does knowing that you have written successful grant proposals, you have successfully advised grad students and postdocs, you have received good teaching evaluations, and you have published papers (that were cited). Then, even if a proposal is turned down or a paper rejected and even if a vindictive student writes a scathing evaluation or a grad student flames out, you know that life goes on, the research and teaching fun will continue, and the disappointments will be interspersed with more happy events.

That perspective is one reason why I like being middle-aged. Perhaps it is the only reason, but it's a pretty good one all the same.

Tonight my mood (but not fire-level) has taken a minor hit because it turns out that the exciting research results I was expecting have been postponed for a couple of weeks. Unlike holidays and birthdays, which come on schedule, research results can be delayed, alas.


Data Kittens

Data Happy

When I was a kid, I had the classic childhood experiences of being extremely excited by holidays and birthdays and other special occasions (getting a new kitten!). The days of being thrilled by such things are long gone (new kittens excepted), but birthdays and holidays have been replaced by new thrilling events in my life. Some of these new thrilling events are in my professional life.

This week, I am feeling very excited about getting some new Science Results very soon. I CAN'T WAIT TO GET THESE RESULTS.

If the results are not great, I will be rather crushed. I have learned to deal with the disappointment of getting nautical-themed dishtowels from my mother for my birthday nearly every year, but I'm not sure I'm ready for the disappointment if these much-anticipated results do not live up to my expectations. If the results are boring or bad, I'll deal with it, move on, recover etc., but I hope I don't have to.

But if the results turn out to be as great as I expect/hope them to be.. it will be just like getting a dozen new kittens.

I'm not sure why the anticipation of interesting research results reminds me of childhood. I don't think data-anticipation is a particularly childish thing, but the feeling of excitement leading up to the revealing of the new results reminds me of that old-time thrill of special events. And I am counting the days.

Among a certain circle of colleagues of mine, there is the tendency to classify grad students as to whether they have a passion for research or not. There are various terms for the passion-for-research characteristic, many of them involving words like "fire".

It is not a requirement that grad students live and breathe research and only research -- I hope that we can all appreciate a hardworking student who has other interests in life -- but even a non-monomaniacal student should (ideally) want to investigate (and be given the opportunity to investigate) some questions or problems that they find deeply interesting. They should (ideally) feel the urge to discover things, and then also feel the excitement of discovery when it happens.

I have advised some students who truly had this "fire" for research. They just had it in them -- I did not teach them this. For those students, my hope is always that the stresses of grad school won't extinguish these feelings, that they will back up their "fire" with hard work, and that they eventually emerge from grad school with a degree and a still-flaming interest in research, and then go on to make all sorts of new discoveries that I can't even imagine.

F = 2

Whenever I find myself on a new committee or on a committee whose membership changes from year to year, it is a reflex for me to scan the list of committee members to see if there are other women on the committee. My heart sinks if I am the only woman (F = 1), and I feel immense relief if there is at least one other woman (F >= 2).

When I am the only female member of a committee, I may or may not have the same status as the other committee members, depending on how obvious it is that I am the token female. There have been many instances in my career in which I have been added to a committee because the committee had to have a woman member. In some of these cases, my opinions have counted for less and I have been criticized by other committee members for being "biased" in favor of women or women's issues. I hate being on these committees, although in some cases it has turned out to be important that I was there.

I like being on committees that have at least F = 2. On those committees, we women are treated as equal members of the committee -- as people who were chosen for our expertise, just like the men. It's amazing the difference F = 2 makes compared to F = 1.

I was just thinking about this today because I was scanning the list of a new committee that I joined this year. To my relief I saw that there is one other woman. Now I don't even have to think about it any more. We will just be a group of scientists and engineers getting together to discuss things and do a task.

The day seems far off when such committees of scientists and engineers will have equal numbers of men and women or random gender ratios that arise when people are selected out of a gender-balanced pool, but for now, I am grateful when F = 2.

Not Advisable

Part of my job is to give advice. I am an adviser of students, and I serve on committees and panels with an advisory role. Reviewing manuscripts and proposals involves giving advice. And, although it's not part of my job, I respond to (some) e-mails from FSP readers asking for advice.

I prefer to give advice that helps explain or at least explores some options, ideas, and/or relevant facts that someone can use make a decision. Giving advice doesn't require saying "You should do THIS" (or THAT).

Of course in my professional life I do sometimes have to say "(I think) You should do THIS" (or THAT). You should take this class. This paper should be rejected. We should hire this person and not that person. Such things are part of teaching and advising and making professional decisions.

When it comes to complex issues involving other people's decisions about school, work, or life, however, my interest in telling someone what to do decreases dramatically. That is why I am not very good about providing useful advice to those who send me email. Questions like: Should I quit the PhD program because I live far from my boyfriend? Should I tell my adviser that I detest his/her advising style? Should I accept a visiting professor position? Is it a bad idea to have a baby before I get tenure?

If I were to answer for myself, based only on my own life experiences and thinking only of what has or would work best for me, my answers to those questions are: no, no, yes, and no.

If I were to answer for someone else, my answers are: I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, and I don't know.

I don't mind getting emails with questions about Major Life Decisions (though I can't respond to all the email that I get). Sometimes it can help to get another perspective or to bounce an idea off someone else, even (or perhaps especially) someone you don't know. I hope, though, that any advice (such as it is) that I give is just one part of the dataset used in the whole complex decision process.

The most difficult question for me to answer is also one of the most common questions that I get: Should I leave [my graduate program, postdoc, tenure-track/tenured position] so that I can live with my [geographically distant] beloved?

These emails are all from women. I hope that somewhere there are an equal number of males who have similar questions about their own careers.

Noted

Team-teaching has its perils and rewards. I have team-taught quite a lot over the years, mostly with compatible people, and, with few exceptions, I have found the benefits to exceed the chaotic or unsavory elements.

There are some classes I have team-taught many times over the years. There is one class in particular that I have team-taught at least 15 times. In this and other oft-(team)-taught classes, when I am not teaching and am sitting among the students listening to someone else teach, I may or may not take notes. If I do take notes, it may be to note new and interesting things in my colleague's lecture or to jot down something that will help me figure out what I need to teach when it is my turn. In some cases, I take notes to help keep me awake and alert.

The person with whom I typically team-teach is an excellent teacher, but there are a few lectures in particular that I'm not sure I can face a 16th time. I suppose it would be rude if I sat in the back of the room, sent text messages to my cats, and read blogs.

My team-teaching experience this term has thus far been very different because I am team-teaching a new class. In this new class, the primary classroom activities are talking and writing on a board. My colleague and I don't use lecture notes or Powerpoint in this class and we recently realized, after the first class, that we will have no visual 'record' of what we teach, for use when next we teach this class. It would, however, be useful to have such a record.

Creating and teaching a new class is a lot of work, and 2-3 years from now when I/we teach this course again, it would like to refer back to an archive of course materials from this term.

We therefore decided that one person would take notes while the other person is teaching. We both participate in every class in which we are both present, but typically one person is at the front of the class leading the discussion and the other is sitting with the students, mostly listening.

We decided to try to make these notes as complete as possible so as to have a good record of what exactly we covered. This will help us gauge the amount we can reasonably discuss in each class, what types of topics needed greater coverage (perhaps guided by questions from students), and what worked/what didn't.

Of particular interest for future improvements of the course will be keeping track of how we make transitions between topics and how effective we are at explaining certain concepts. These are difficult things to make notes about while also trying to copy everything that is written on the board. This type of note taking involves the same issues that students face when taking notes in a fast-paced course on a difficult topic, with some additional challenges.

During my student career, I was pretty good at taking notes that proved useful for later studying, but I have struggled with note-taking of the sort needed for this team-taught class. I know that I should write down everything, but sometimes, if my colleague is discussing something that I know extremely well and/or find obvious, I forget that I need to write it down anyway. Then I suddenly realize that I have a gap in the notes and I try to jot a few things down as a reminder, but while I do that I am missing some of the new information being presented.

Other times, my mind wanders as I ponder how my colleague has chosen to explain something and I consider whether/how to add to the discussion, either at that moment or later, and then I find a few more minutes have gone by and I have not been taking notes. Once again, my colleague is erasing the board of things I have not written down.

No, we are not going to do anything of an audio/video sort. We are going to accomplish this (or not) with notes.

I would give myself a C for note-taking so far in this class, but the academic year is still young and I hope to redeem myself by mid-term. My colleague isn't doing any better with his notes, but that doesn't make me feel any better. It will not be a disaster if we fail at our note-taking, but it would be nice if we could create some kind of useful record.

Not You

A recent phishing scam involved an unknown and nefarious person who sent an email to faculty in my department 'from' one of our departmental colleagues who had an emergency whilst traveling and needed a quick infusion of cash. This scam is surely being repeated in other departments/universities.

The fascinating thing is that this email appeared to be from the only person in my entire department who actually might end up unexpectedly and unannounced in a foreign city and then lose wallet, phone, and everything else and suddenly need money sent. This person is also the only one who is likely to attempt such a transaction entirely by vague email to colleagues.

Given that the basic scenario was actually kind of believable in the case of this particular person, the other fascinating aspect involves how various other departmental colleagues detected the scam. I have conducted an unofficial poll, and there are two strong contenders for the primary red flags:

1. The email opens with a polite statement that says the sender hopes that we and our families are well. Our real colleague would never ask about our families (or us).

2. The email, although not well written, is surprisingly cogent and includes capital letters and punctuation. That would be very uncharacteristic of our colleague.

This made me wonder what would signal a scam email (or blog post) that appeared to be from me but was not really from/by me. Would a giveaway be references to sports or other important American Cultural Icons? Photos of dogs? A poem extolling my fondness for university accounting systems? An ode to faculty meetings?

You Bet

How do we feel about graduate advisers betting with each other on the progress of their students?

I am not talking about a vast gambling ring involving misuse of grant funds. I am talking about one professor saying to another (from time to time) something like "I bet you a medium caramel macchiato that Student X will not finish the next draft of the manuscript by next Tuesday" and then the other professor says "OK, I think Student X will finish that draft by next Tuesday, but I don't want a medium caramel macchiato, I want a large extra-hot pumpkin soy chai latte."

Despicable and unprofessional behavior that Student X would find deeply troubling were he/she to find out, thereby preventing the completion of the manuscript draft by next Tuesday owing to emotional turmoil?

Harmless fun between professors who are seeking ways to stay sane after years of graduate advising/cat herding?

I personally do not find the revelation of these professorial gambling habits at all shocking or disturbing. In fact, I think that the Student X's of the world should start to worry only when no one is willing to bet on them because no one believes they will meet their deadlines, ever.