A post-doc by any other name...

Sometimes I see people on LinkedIn change their profession from Post-doc to Research Associate. That always makes me laugh a little and until recently led me to think that those people had been a post-doc for too long, and therefore just gave it a different name. But that is not true, as I have recently discovered that Research Associate is actually a thing. Because yours truly is becoming one, which not only allows me to change my profession on LinkedIn, but also allows me to receive a substantial increase in pay (which then causes me to lose the daycare fellowship that we have, so not much of a net increase, but still).

The reason I am becoming a Research Associate is because only then can I be a co-investigator (is that the correct term?) on my PIs next R01 renewal, for which I have a lot of ideas and preliminary data. I have also been involved in setting up a successful collaboration that has led to these preliminary data. The deal will be that if we get the grant and I leave, I will be able to take my chunk of this money (which is nice, because since I’m not a citizen I am not allowed to apply for a lot of US funding). 

So this is all really nice, but of course in the end I’m still a post-doc; doing experiments, panicking about writing papers and trying to find free cookies (that’s a pretty accurate job description, right?).

Writing your own letters of recommendation

The unimaginable has happened: there is an add for a TT job* in the home country. So obviously I (and probably another 16 million people) am applying. So I have to write a research statement and a teaching statement (AARRGH I thought I didn’t need teaching experience if I was going to be a career post-doc). And on top of that I need 3 letters of recommendation. The first one is going to be from my current PI, which will be easy, I just ask him. The second is going to be from my grad school professor, which is going to be a bit harder, because he makes me write my own letters of recommendation (yes this sucks). The third one is going to be a bit harder. I have a collaborator in the home country who has written letters for fellowships and such, but I’m already writing grants with this person and even though ze says I should totally apply for this job, ze also told me ze would prefer if I would work with hir. So it feels weird to ask this person for a letter. I don’t want to ask any of the people in my committee because they will also let me write my own letter and it’s even harder (and somewhat schizophrenic) to write two different letters on behalf of different people for yourself. My PI told me to ask someone in the field who I haven’t worked with but knows my work. I have such a person who I met at a meeting and who has written a letter for me in the past, so I think I’ll ask hir again.

But first, on to the hardest part: writing that letter for myself on behalf of my grad professor…

*So I can finally make use of all the super useful advice on Dr. Becca's TT job aggregator

How science is like classical ballet

When you watch classical ballet, you see dancers that appear to be flying through the air. You see women who seem to weight only 2 pounds, as the men can easily lift them up. You don’t see sweat, you don’t see hard work, and you don’t see feet that hurt. If you’ve ever attempted doing classical ballet, you know that it takes every inch of your strength to jump up, and then it probably looks only 1% as gracious as on stage.

I often think about this when I see someone present their science. It looks like they happily walked into the lab, thought of their hypothesis first, then did one Western blot, one immuno staining, and one behavioral experiment, and took the data to make beautiful figures. When I was an undergrad I honestly thought that the experiments you saw in a paper were the only experiments that people had done. Ha! Was I wrong! In reality, scientists sometimes just play around in the lab, do some experiments, and then think about how to streamline it into a paper. And my first experience in the lab was 6 months of doing a zillion Western blots, just to get a publication quality figure, which we then called a “representative” example. 

Now these processes are for everyone to be seen on twitter under the hashtag #overlyhonestmethods, created by @dr_leigh. It’s awesome!

Do you put maternity leave on your CV?

Today @Scientistmother asked the following question on twitter:

 

Q thats been asked before, how should we address gaps due to mat leave? cover letter or resume?
— ScientistMother (@ScientistMother) January 8, 2013

It’s been something that I have struggled with too: do you let people know you have (a) child(ren) or not? On the one hand it will explain any gaps you might have in your CV, but on the other hand it may lead some people (let’s say the gray haired male subset of people) to think that you won’t work as hard. And that maybe they should hire/fund someone who doesn’t need to leave at 5 to pick their child up from daycare, or who won’t have to stay home when said child is ill. 

I remember that I went to a talk at SfN last year about work/life balance and the speaker told us that research (that I’ve been trying to cite, but haven’t been able to find yet) has shown that for men it looks good when their CV shows they have kids (for example by including that they are on the PTA of their kid’s school) but for women it doesn’t (and even looks bad).

To speak for myself: I don’t really have a gap in my CV due to BlueEyes being born (although if I hadn’t been tired, nauseous and unable to think coherently I may have got more work done…), so I generally don’t disclose this on my CV or when applying for fellowships, unless for example a fellowship allows you to submit longer after obtaining your PhD due to parental leave. What about you? Do you disclose this somewhere and if so where?

 

Post-holiday blues

Nothing says back to work after a good nice vacation like a good spell of the post-holiday blues. When I thought about going back to work yesterday all I could think was: ”Yuck!” The feeling that you have to do actual work again, and that the choice isn’t beach or pool, but lab or office. Not caipirinha or mojito but paper or grant. Yuck again. I have been complaining about this after every vacation I’ve been on, but only found out today that it’s actually a thing. According to WebMD you should set big goals to fight it off, like change your career (if that means become a professor, then yes please!), make more money (also yes please!), or plant a tree. I just made artificial cerebrospinal fluid to keep my slices in, does that count too?

That's me with BlueEyes on my back in flip flops with a palm tree in the back, just strolling.