When talking to students and post-docs

Dear senior investigators,

When you are invited to give a talk somewhere, and are thus scheduled to have lunch with students and post-docs, PLEASE don’t talk about the following topics:

•          The bad state of the economy

•           The recent sequester

•           How those two things lead to a sad state of funding

•           How that leads to very little job opportunities for students and post-docs that want to stay in academia

•           Oh wait, industry is not much better at the moment

Because really, we have heard that before and to talk about this a couple times a month with different people really doesn’t add to our morale. Please just talk about other stuff, like science, or your hobbies.

What sequestration looks like to an ignorant foreigner.

Obama: We have to reduce the debt ceiling by saving some money here and there.

Republican: No

Obama: Like by increasing taxes here and there.

Republican: No way

Obama: Fine, then we’re going to cut money to research when we don’t reach an agreement before March 1^st (or another date, cause we cause this kind of panic all the time) 

Republican: Fine, see if I care

Obama: Fine

What I think this conversation looks like. source

 But really, we should do something about it! And I still don't understand the whole sequestration thing, to be completely honest.

Who gets to worry most?

For some reason the past week has been full of pessimistic (or realistic) remarks about how bleak the funding situation is. First, my PI was announcing at lab meeting that the two big R01s that the lab has will end next year (that was not new to me, but it was to some of the lab) and that it’s unsure whether they will be successfully renewed. Then, he told us about how if the US government has not determined a new budget in Januari, NIH may cut, even in existing grants. I didn’t know how that worked, so I asked DrugMonkey on twitter, who explained that indeed the NIH can do that, but that Obama promised it wouldn’t happen (if I have time I will embed those tweets later).

Same day, I got an email from the Society for Neuroscience asking their members to oppose sequestration (and they have a webinar about what it is too). And then today we had a seminar speaker who at lunch started to talk about how the current environment is not very good for young scientists in terms of money. Oh and a home country paper talked about how some of the grants from the home country’s scientific organization only have a 5% funding rate….

So at lab meeting we were talking about who gets to worry most. One of my post-doc colleagues has a husband with a good job, so she is last in the line of worrying about her job. I come next, because Dr. BrownEyes and I both have jobs, but they’re both in science. And the one who gets to worry most is my post-doc colleague who is single. For now, this is how I approach this: