As I sat through five years of Newman Society seminars, I often left them with feelings of anxiety and dread. I would listen to tenured faculty tell me all of the things I needed to do to be successful at Vanderbilt. And no other talk probably shook me more to my core than the one from Dr. Hartmann entitled “Avoiding the K Cliff.” Not only had I seen the cliff, I was about to go over the edge and cling to the lone plant growing out of its rocky edge before plummeting to the bottom. I was into the latter half of my K award without anything to show for it, and the clock was ticking.
But after attending these seminars for a while, I realized I wasn’t alone. As I looked around the room, I noticed the same disbelief and horror on the faces of many of the other young PIs around me. While we all may have had different challenges, we were all in the same boat, and many of us were not sailing through calm seas. These challenges were quite evident in the types of questions that were being asked which often resonated with me. However, there is no “one size fits all” solution for everyone, so it was difficult for the speakers to answer career questions in detail. Moreover, the majority of speakers were seasoned veterans that had not had to grapple with these types of concerns in quite a long time.
To get my questions answered for my particular situation, I began seeking out faculty members that were at a similar career level or slightly ahead of me that already had some success. I went and talked to as many of them as I could. I picked their brains. I asked questions. And I complained. And complained again. And they understood. They always understood. Because they intimately understood my concerns and worries. They could not only sympathize but empathize as well. And, they were also in a position to provide great advice whether they thought so or not because they remembered what those moments felt like since they happened not too long ago. And after every meeting, I always felt better. They were productive, informative, and even cathartic.
These experiences have had a profound influence on my outlook on mentoring in academic research and were the driving force for the formation of COMPASS (Creating Opportunities for Mentoring by Peers And Social Support). While we work to retool COMPASS to better suit your needs, I would imagine many of you have felt this way and still have many questions and/or concerns. In the meantime, please do not hesitate to contact me if you want more information or simply need to chat. In fact, feel free to join me for COMPASS “Ground Level” in which I will be offering a weekly drop-in hour every Wednesday from 1-2 pm starting next week. These will initially be held in my office (522B PRB) but will also occur at other locations on campus and include guest faculty members whose brains you can also pick. So, if you want to discuss any aspect of career development as a junior PI or simply need to blow off some academic steam, please feel free to stop by.
