I'm on the Fast Track

To Glory? Hell? Riches? Fame? Mediocrity?

I don't know which one. Any, or all.

This comes up because I am a couple of years short of my thirtieth birthday and have already been a post-doc for close to a year and a half. I'm yooooouuunng! by the standards of this industry. To many people that is something to be envied: I have an edge in the job search. Even if my first two years of post-doctoral work don't lead to great success, I can spend more time on it, or even go to another lab for another post-doc. I have time you see. I can zip through a few more years of this and even be the right age to have children after it all!

Time is precious, even more so when you find yourself in frustrating situations with no perceptible way out barring extraordinary success, in other words a post-doc in a foreign country. It is of great value and I do value it. There is a cloud of implied purpose and ability that follows a post-doc who is younger than grad students :). She must have ability, you say, look at how fast she's reached where she's reached. Maybe so.

Or maybe, by a lucky chance of birth-date and state education systems she ended up the youngest extreme of the age range in her class long before it was a question of work or ability. Maybe growing up in a competitive education system meant that she didn't take gap years. Maybe putting her head down and thoughtlessly ploughing through the rows of academia meant that suddenly, one day, she was twenty-five and planning a dissertation.

What I'm building up to I suppose is whether youth really is an advantage. What do you think? Sure, one still has freshness and energy to bring to grad school and post-doc-hood, but doesn't that mean that the crushing disappointments of that life come to one sooner? Age gives one the skills necessary to navigate the perilous waters of academic personalities, but does youth supply the absence of cynicism that disarms? More time give ones more leeway with one's career decisions, but the assumption of more time leads to sloppier decisions and extended procrastination.

This isn't something that has bothered me much personally, but the age reaction is such a strong component of how people react to me, especially in the academic world. Stronger, even, than the woman component. I have had to think of it as a result, and I still can't decide whether its to the good or not. Let's see:

I'm safely short of thirty and I have had a repetitive stress injury that put my right hand out of commission. Twice. As a result my left isn't in good shape, from overcompensation, and my wrist seizes up when I type too fast. I'm nowhere near thirty and I have to think, plan, act and raise funds for myself. I am almost thirty and have but the veriest pitiful beginnings of retirement money. I will be thirty soon and I may have to throw away ten years of hard work and switch careers. Thirty looms and I have no secure career prospects. No house. No IRA.

I was recently past twenty-five when I got a Ph.D. I am, on average, four years younger than my peers in equivalent positions. I will likely never lose a position because I am older than the maximum allowed age to apply, as has happened to friends. I really can switch gears, I can even go back to school and get another degree (hah!) and enter the job race nearly at par. I can take a year off, go travel and still come back with time to spare. I don't need a house, I have time to get an IRA.

Half-full, half-empty, take your pick. It's all in the viewing.

scientiae-carnival

Scientiae Carnival

Skookumchick at Rants of a Feminist Engineer is hosting a blog carnival, about Women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). Scientiae starts on March 1st, check it out, it will be great!

No Refunds No Exchanges on Valentine's Day Merchandise

I digress from my overarching theme, but that is probably to the good in terms of general moroseness and mental health. I saw a notice at the local Walgreen's the other day, Feb 15th to be exact. It said "NO REFUNDS and NO EXCHANGES on valentine's day merchandise". I love it!

Can you imagine the scene? One disgruntled person after another coming in and trying to return cards, balloons, pink chocolate boxes, teddy bears wearing little red t-shirts with hearts on them and gazing meltingly into the distance. Y'know, she just refused to be with me, or, she threw me out despite aforementioned teddy bear and a pound bag of Hershey's kisses. Or, in a shout out to our brothers out there, he just wouldn't be my valentine. I don't know about you, but if I went a-wooing and failed in such a signal endeavour (Whether I would go a-wooing on Valentine's day, or with Walgreen's merchandise is a different issue, no matter, for the purposes of argument), I would grind my teeth and throw my rejected gifts into the nearest dustbin. Or eat the chocolate, or give the balloons away. Walk into the store and try to return them? I don't know. Takes a certain amount of gall and a breathtaking...lack of class? understanding of the appropriate? I would be a quivering mass of embarrassment before I even got around to trying. Whoof, imagine that.

Anyway, got a good long laugh out of it that day, and have been chuckling ever since. Wish you could have seen it!

Post-doc issues can wait awhile, I have to figure out what to do with my shiny plastic St. Patrick's day hat, it just doesn't bring out my eyes y'know?

Snicker.

Working Late

One of the things that really gets to me is the whole working-late-for-the-sake-of-it thing. It really really bugs me, drives me nuts, makes me want to scream with frustration.

Even as I write this though, I feel bad about saying it. I feel bad about being bitterly cynical about all those people who really work hard. They stay late because they have work to do. They may be under intense pressure to succeed, they may be terrified of the consequences of not working, they may be, heaven help me, truly consumed by what they do. Or they may be inefficient, poseurs, show-offs or any number of other negative things.

We scientists often talk about "heroic experiments". These are experiments that demand tremendous effort, time, materials and commitment. These experiments are the "money" figures in Science papers, they are discussed in awed tones in multiple lab meetings throughout the research world. "I can't even imagine how they did it, but they did, and they showed it!" (Which masterly ambiguous statement is patently made-up and was never actually said, but you get my drift.) Heroic experiments are often a test of speed, strength, precision and agility, but most of all of tenacious stamina. Nope, we are not talking about triathletes, merely post-docs and grad students. You really have to be burned up by an idea, to be so convinced of your hypothesis, that you design the theoretically perfect but practically impossible experiment, and you pull it off. It's an amazing thing to behold, and must be even more amazing to do. I have never done it. I lack the burning drive and vaulting ambition, and certainly the coordination, although I can probably lay claim to some speed and stamina. But it must be something.

Something that can you can possibly only feel once in a lifetime. At least that is my reading of it. Most of the biological research published today and much that leads to medical advances comes from slow painstaking groundwork, from patient methodical people who carefully sift through endless little findings and piece together something solid that eventually will fit in to the much bigger picture. (That I have done.) The Ironman experiments are not the norm. Which is why it really bothers me when people in a lab are always doing heroic experiments. Enough already! Just do the methodical experiment, come in, work well and responsibly, and leave! Live a life! Don't sigh theatrically and bemoan the weight of your vastly important experiments. Let it go.

I probably have it all wrong. It may be that if you never aim for the Ironman you will never finish the New York Marathon. Maybe the reason I cannot abide the wannabe-heroes is that I lack the drive and the vision and that makes the grapes sour. I'd like to think not, and I'd like to think that balance, intelligence and method and a little prayer to the Gods of serendipity are the way to go. What I do know is that if I have to be consumed by lab research, if I have to think about nothing but experiments, if guilt, fear of failure and crushing expectation are to be my constant companions, I pass. I am bright and I am a hard-working ambitious person, but if I am to immerse myself in the lab to the exclusion of all else, then academia will get along very well without me. No great loss to either I would imagine. But there it is.

Onward, experiments! Anyone want to grab a beer after?

The Fellowship of Fellowships

One of the the best things I have found about working in academic research is what I like to think of as the Fellowship of Fellowships. The Fellowship being the community of us aspiring scientists and the Fellowships being the grants we apply for from various funding agencies. Not being an American citizen, there are just so many fellowships I can apply for. The same is also true for most of my post-doc friends, we are all hoping to get the same limited set of awards. A situation fraught with the possibility of conflict, one would think, but astoundingly enough not so.

I have been (unsuccessfully as yet) on the fellowship go-around for about eight months now. First, in my Ph.D. lab. Three of us applied for the same fellowship, a really prestigious one, and the three of us actually managed to not only consult amicably about the various bureaucracies of the application process, but we also managed to wish each other well. None of us got it, as it turned out, but it was such a pleasant experience when it had the potential to be not so at all. Same again, now in my new lab, I am applying for fellowships, and so are so many people around me. To the same agencies too, and I still hop around and discuss the process with these people who are ostensibly my competitors. I haven't felt like I was in an envious conflict as yet. It may happen, but I sincerely doubt it.

It may just be that I am amazingly lucky in my friends (which is true, shout out to you all, you know who you are). I would also like to believe it is because there are still people in the research world who are good and true and worth it. And there are, one just needs to be reminded sometimes. This reminder came at just the right time for me, right about when my insecure cynicism was about to swamp all god feelings.

So, today I am warm and fuzzy about the research world :) let's see how long it lasts! At least i will have a written reminder out there that can drag me back from the depths of self-pity and raging helplessness which seems like the dominant emotions of large swathes of post-doc-hood.