Abstract Reveiws

I agreed to review conference abstracts for a conference I’m not going to as a way to stay current with what’s new and hot in my field.  When I signed up, they said that there would be maybe two dozen abstracts each person would have to review, which is a lot, but doable.  When I got the assignment, however, there were more than 40 abstracts to review!  Even worse, I listed one of my areas of expertise as (roughly) “combining two or more techniques,”  which is a good description of my primary research interests, but I didn’t consider in terms of abstracts that means the topics I’m assigned are “combining ANY two or more techniques for ANY reason.”  I have yet to come across an abstract that I feel completely unqualified to review, but some have been in fields I only know through coursework.  I feel like I am learning more from reviewing these abstracts than I would by going to the conference.

After reading several abstracts, it’s clear what impresses me: statistics or quantitative data, figures, and references (though the references are mostly a proxy for placing the work in a larger context).  Some people didn’t take the abstract submission very seriously and they say almost verbatim: “we took some data, analyzed it, and found a result.”  I haven’t decided if those are in the reject pile yet: they are certainly “not even wrong,” so is the reject line at being wrong or being too vague to tell if they are wrong?

On Failing

Qualifying exams at my school are three consecutive half-hour oral exams on topics you’ve taken graduate courses in.  My background:

Topic 1:
1 undergrad course
1 grad course
1 audited grad course on a subtopic
years of research experience between undergrad and grad school
final exam for this class was an oral mini-qual
many friends who could quiz me on this topic

Topic 2:
2 undergrad courses
1 grad course
TAing 1 grad course including extensive discussions with the prof
generally intuitive subject for me
1 expert friend who gave me a few practice quals

Topic 3:
1 grad class, that I did alright in but not awesome
extremely busy prof who is known for failing students on quals
a few acquaintances that could spend a few minutes quizzing me


 I bet you can already guess where this is going.

When I took quals a few months ago I passed topics 1 & 2 easily but failed topic 3.  Although at my school, no one really said that I “failed,” just that I had to “retake” topic 3.  The way the qual structure works is here that if you don’t outright pass or fail (i.e., you are deficient in just one area), they make you retake the exam only in that area within a few months.  If you don’t pass that time you must transfer to the master’s program.

There are a lot of reasons why I didn’t want to transfer to the master’s program.  I’ve wanted to get a PhD for as long as I can remember, and due to some geographical constraints it would be difficult for me to do a PhD after an MS.  Plus, I transferred schools to attend my current institution, and I already passed the hard PhD qual at my first school.  Being in MS/PhD limbo for several months made me incredibly grumpy.  Despite the fact that everyone told me they were sure I’d pass, I didn’t want to jinx it and had a hard time thinking ahead to any time past my qual retake.  I didn’t want to think about going to conferences.  I didn’t want to think about what I’d do for my PhD project.  I didn’t want to have any big ideas, or buy books related to my field because I might have had to leave it.  And I was spending all my time and mental energy desperately studying a a topic that I don’t like very much.  Perhaps saying I was incredibly grumpy is an understatement.

Last week I retook the exam on topic 3, and I’m very pleased to say that I passed!  It was clear the examining prof was very impressed with my knowledge.  For the first time I’m a real PhD student, and it feels awesome.  Almost immediately after passing the qual I got a ton of new ideas on how to advance my current project and things I could do for my thesis.

As for failing the first time around, I’m still not sure whether I’m happy it happened or not.  I certainly know topic 3 much better than I did the first time, and could confidently teach a course on it now though I don’t think I could have after the first time I took it.  I don’t mind failing things every once in a while either- I think that if you never fail you’re not trying hard enough.  On the other hand, restudying for the qual took a huge amount of mental effort that I could have used to make actual progress on my project instead of listlessly poking at it for a few months.

On the third hand, sometimes you just have to jump through hoops and all that matters is that you got through, not how graceful the jump was.

Conferences: Not Feelin It

Usually I am really excited about going to conferences.  I remember the first conferences I went to very clearly: the ones in my own field, ones in fields I was thinking of switching to, the excitement of meeting people, learning new approaches and whole new problems to think about, getting feedback about what I was working on from new people, etc.  Even a few months ago I was excited thinking about the conferences I could attend.  Now that some deadlines are coming up, I am not feeling motivated at all. I think I’m tired of throwing things together for conference abstracts.  I want to spend my time working on something new and big and awesome, not rehashing the same things I’ve been working on for months with little progress.  Or maybe my data is just uninspiring lately, and if I’m not inspired, no one else is going to be either. 

Or maybe I’m just getting old and grumpy!

How to choose an advisor

It’s getting to be that time of year.  Grad school applications are due, acceptances and rejections start filtering back, and anxiety is in the air.  I haven’t completed grad school yet, but I have chosen advisors a few times for various projects, some of which have worked out better than others.

Here is the abbreviated version:

Questions to ask yourself before choosing an advisor:
Do you think what the potential advisor is working on is interesting and important?
Can you easily understand each other when having technical discussions?
Does the potential advisor value the sort of work you want to do?
Are there opportunities to interact with and learn from many different people?
Is the school well-regarded, organized, and collegial?


And here is the long version:

The most important quality to have in an advisor is someone you can have technical conversations with.  You should be able to understand each other easily.  When you ask a question, your advisor should be able to answer the question in a way that indicates they understood what you were asking, and when your advisor asks you something you should be able to understand why they think it’s a concern.  Communication works best if both advisor and student are good listeners, but more fundamentally, it’s about having similar approaches to problems and similar scientific values.  It’s best if you have worked with someone before agreeing to be their advisee in order to figure out if you click scientifically.  Some fields recognize this and require people to do lab rotations in different groups before choosing an advisor.  Unfortunately, many times people have to choose their advisor without working for them. 

All is not lost though- there are other ways to get clues as to how you may work with someone without actually working for them.  First of all, the topics people work on are often good clues to their personalities.  If you love producing great data, you’ll probably want to work for someone who values experimental work.  If you’re interested in elegant models, you’ll want to work for someone who appreciates that sort of cleverness and mathematical rigor.  Bad advisor/advisee fits happen when the advisee is, say, interested in producing an all-encompassing mathematical model to describe a system, but the advisor is more impressed by good data and running elegant experiments.  People with different approaches to problems can be good colleagues, but the cases of this I’ve seen in advisor/advisee situations have not worked out very well for the advisee.

Secondly, never agree to work for someone without having a technical conversation with them.  Ask prospective advisors questions you have from reading their papers (you have read their papers, right?), or where they see the lab going in the next five years, or talk about a project you’ve worked on.  Make sure questions are asked and answered, discuss both details and big picture issues.  Think about if you’re going to be able to learn from this person.  I’ve had a few professors who, despite being clearly intelligent and well meaning, approach problems so differently from me it’s hard for me to learn from them.  Don’t pick one of these people as your advisor!  They can be great people to talk to about career advice or to get advice from if you’re stuck on a particular problem on their area of expertise, but you want your advisor to be someone that is easy for you to learn from.

Third, don’t pick a lab that is scientifically isolated.  The situation you want to avoid is there being just you, your advisor, and maybe a few other grad students around. It’s not good for the science or your sanity to just work with the same few people all the time.  Luckily, this is easy to avoid.  You can choose a big lab, or a lab that has a demonstrated track record of sending students to conferences, or a school where many professors have an open door policy and there are other professors that do related work, or a lab that has more than one PI, or a lab that has a close collaboration with another lab, or a co-advising situation, etc.

Lastly, there is the school itself.  In the best case, the school is well-regarded, organized, and collegial.  Many schools are lacking in at least one of these respects.  I think it’s important to assess the school on these merits, but being lacking is not necessarily a deal-breaker. It’s just a way to think about what will be important to pay attention to as you go through the grad school process.  For example, if the school is not organized, you should step up your personal organization to make sure deadlines are met and requirements are filled.  These qualities are mostly relevant if they keep students from graduating and finding jobs.  If the school is so disorganized students never graduate in a timely fashion, so uncollegial that grad students are used as pawns in some larger agenda, or so poorly regarded that even the best grad students from the best labs can’t find jobs, those are signs to run despite a good fit with an individual potential advisor.  The best way to find out this information is to talk to current grad students, who are often remarkably forthcoming about these deficiencies.

Too often the advice on choosing advisors that I see is all based on how famous the advisor is.  It doesn't matter how famous the advisor is if you don't impress them because you're not interested or good at what they value most, or if you don't complete your degree because the department is disorganized and full of backstabbers.  When picking advisors the ultimate question is: which one will get me out the door with the best career prospects?

Unscientific America by Mooney and Kirshenbaum

I just finished Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens our Future by Mooney and Kirshenbaum, and it was a little depressing. The book is about how science and scientists are perceived in general American culture, with the main thrust of the argument that science and technology are becoming even more critical to our lives while the number of Americans that understand and trust science is dwindling. Carl Sagan is presented as the ideal citizen-scientist, someone who was able to present science in an interesting and accessible way to the average American. He was also apparently denied tenure and Harvard and not seen as a serious scientist, despite his Nature and Science articles. The authors would like to see scientists take responsibility for making their work accessible to the general public, though I think the story of Carl Sagan is a bit of a warning: even if you are well published, it may still be difficult to be seen as a “real” scientist if you are too interested in public communication. The most interesting thing about the discussion of Sagan was his approach to public communication. I haven’t read or seen too much of Carl Sagan’s work, but the authors describe it as being question focused. He addressed questions that nonspecialists were interested in, like: what happens to us after atomic bombs go off? What does science have to say about God? What are other planets like? This sort of receiver-oriented approach is easy for the public to understand, as opposed to a sender-oriented approach that scientists tend to use, where the scientist explains a topic in as much detail, and as technically correctly as possible.

The (recent) history of science and the media was also discussed. I was amused to read that in their opinion, the best TV science reporting was on The Daily Show with John Stewart.

The authors’ proposed solution to the communication breakdown is that starting with graduate students, scientists should be trained in communicating with the public. As a graduate student, I would definitely take advantage of this training if it existed. The problem as I see it is that I don’t personally know anyone who is good at communicating science with the public, and the problems in communicating science stem from structural things about science like the fact that progress is slow, progress is uncertain and has to be replicated, and progress may have to be interpreted in a sophisticated or nuanced way.  As for the book, it's an interesting if somewhat lightweight read.

The many forms of assertive women

This last season of Project Runway has gotten me thinking about how people perceive competent and assertive women.  I have run across quite a few forms of assertive women in my undergrad/grad training.  In fact, I am one myself.  I am always interested in which of these women are termed “bitchy” or mean.  Assertive women may be any combination of:

-sharp-witted/sharp tongued
-cold
-sarcastic
-competent
-hard-working
-rule sticklers
-outspoken
-non-deferential

In my experience, being sarcastic along with being sharp witted and a rule stickler is the surest combination for having people perceive someone as bitchy.  Some people don’t like being reminded that they’re not the smartest person around.  I have also noticed that being cold (i.e. not smiling a lot or not generally projecting that you like people) is a bigger problem for women than it is for men.  People expect women to be “nice” and friendly so if a woman is unfriendly, it’s a strike against her in a way it isn’t against a man.  In fact, men may get a bonus for being friendly, while women can only get points taken off if they are not.

When I was an undergrad I was a bit intimidated by assertive women.  I was unsure of myself and wondered how they could be so confident.  Now, a few years later, I find I really like assertive women- the more outspoken, the better!  I’m glad to see women that have been successful and still have rough edges- more importantly, I’m glad that there’s not only one personality type for successful women.  As for Irina from Project Runway, while she didn’t go out of her way to be nice, she never did anything unfair and everyone else knew they were competing against her.  If she’s honest when she said she would never say anything behind someone’s back she wouldn’t say to their face, then I don’t see what everyone was complaining about.  Or more precisely, I do see why they were complaining- she wasn’t sweet or friendly- but I don’t think that’s a legitimate complaint about a competitor.

Academic Love

In grad school (and beyond, I imagine), hardly anyone ever tells you "Good Job!"  There are few formalized performance reviews and no bonuses for doing good work.  My strategy is to look for things that are like telling you "good job" without explicitly saying those words.

One of the other grad students in my lab and I trade the good comments our advisor says about the other one.  Sometimes when I'm talking to my advisor about my project, it's all very technical and the discussion is focused on where the project is going and how I'm going to get there.  But if my advisor mentions my project to one of the other grad students in the lab, he tends to be a lot less technical and focus on how great my project is or how far it's come or how excited he is about my latest result.  If my advisor mentions how awesome another student's project is to me, I always remember to tell that student that our advisor thinks their work is awesome, and there's another student that does the same for me.  It's always nice to hear that my advisor is excited about my work!


However, the real currency in the research world is time and attention.  If someone spends time with me talking about my work, and thinks hard enough about it to ask me good questions, that's academic love.  My friends have spent hours grilling me to help me prepare for qualifying exams-  and I think that's the nicest thing they've done for me.  The people who have really ripped in to my research are telling me a few things aside from all the things I need to address in my work: that they think I am capable of doing excellent work and they respect me as a researcher.  After one particularly grueling session with me, my advisor, and some big name researchers, my advisor made some comment about how I seemed elated.  Of course I was elated, big names were paying thoughtful attention to my work!  It was awesome.

Ironically, this means that someone just saying "good job" without any further comments is about the worst feedback I can get.  I suppose "terrible job" with no further comments would be worse, but I haven't had that happen. Yet.   Anyway, these short comments generally mean that whoever hasn't really thought about whatever I'm working on.


As for showing academic love, I really enjoy helping people (well, people I like) with their work when I can.  Reading application essays,  listening to people talk about their grant ideas and asking questions, teaching people software, and listening to someone talk through the homework problems when they are stuck are all things I have done for people I like and truly believe will succeed.  I do try to be explicit and tell people when they have done a good job, or at least when I first started being in a position where I could tell people they did a good job I did.  Lately I have been forgetting.  I think the longer you have been in the academic system the easier it is to forget to say the implied "good job."  Would it make research a nicer or easier place to be if we remembered to say it, or is the implicit system good enough?