Having Difficult Conversations

Communication / Doing Research / Management & Leadership / Mentoring

No matter how in tune you are with your colleagues, at some point, you’ll find yourself in conflict and needing to have a difficult conversation. In my leadership roles at VUMC and elsewhere, I’ve had plenty. Here are some strategies for making these conversations less stressful and coming out with a win for all sides.

First, what is a difficult conversation? Of course, it’s anything hard to talk about. Self-esteem of one or both parties is often at risk, and important issues are at stake. Often, when you’re having a difficult conversation, you care deeply about the other person or people. These conversations can center on a host of issues that may involve misunderstandings, assumptions, a clash of values, or a perception of unfair treatment. Some examples in science include:

  • A postdoc skips regular meetings with the group leader. The leader lets it slide, and then the postdoc attempts to publish on their own.
  • Authorship order and inclusion is not established early.
  • Trainee projects and roles aren’t clearly defined, leading to conflict instead of cooperation.
  • Someone in the lab isn’t doing their fair share of work.

When an issue like this arises, you have a few choices for responding. You can remain silent—but silence can take an emotional toll, and the issue can simmer until it explosively erupts. You can respond immediately—but then your response may become confrontational and/or unproductive. Or you can respond later, giving yourself time to think, but there is some risk with waiting too long.

Take a deep breath. Ask yourself these questions:

  • What is the importance of the issue and the relationship?
  • How does it make you and the other person feel?
  • What does this say about me and my identity?
  • What do I really want?
  • What do I want for others?
  • What do I want for this relationship?
  • Is this something I can possibly resolve with the other party, or will we need help?
  • What are the options?

Each difficult conversation is really three separate conversations: 1) What happened? 2) How does it make the people involved feel? 3) What does this say about our identities?

“What happened” is often a matter of perspective. Consider the picture to the right. Just because the person who thinks the number is a six is correct doesn’t mean the person who thinks it’s a nine is wrong. Both have their own perspectives. Assigning blame early is rarely productive.

Many people are reluctant to talk about feelings at work, but avoiding any discussion of how an incident made you feel can cause you to miss some important underpinnings of the conflict. How each party feels has implications for their identities. If someone is concerned about being perceived as a bad person, it’s hard to have a productive conversation.

Curiosity helps immensely in these situations. Try to set aside your preconceptions and learn more about the situation. Some things you might say:

  • Tell me more about…
  • My point of view is different. Can you help me understand…?
  • Help me understand your intent when you said/did…
  • What were you feeling when…?
  • Let’s figure this out together

Listen to learn, not just to respond. Bring empathy and grace for yourself as well as the other party. Acknowledge that impact often does not equal intention (and vice versa).

Here’s an example of this process in action: Imagine you are a radiologist like me. You’re performing an ultrasound on a pregnant person and a medical student is with you. You can’t find the fetal heartbeat, and the mom, knowing something is wrong, starts to cry. The medical student rushes from the room.

You could assume the student is uncaring about their patients. You could even say this to the student. But if you listen to learn, you might instead say, “I noticed you left when the patient started crying. Can you help me understand what was going on?” And you might learn that the student had a miscarriage three weeks ago. The initial assumption no longer makes much sense.

Stay curious and aim for the most respectful interpretation of others’ behavior. Let that curiosity lead you in these interactions and frame these conversations.

I am a certified Leadership and Performance Coach and have mentored and coached over 130 physicians and other individuals. Having a curious and open mindset is essential to coaching. I have published multiple peer-reviewed papers and have given national invited presentations on mentorship and coaching. My mission is to help physicians, scientists, and other individuals achieve personal and professional growth and fulfillment. Please feel free to reach out to me at Lori.deitte@vumc.org if you are interested in learning more.

Some of the information in this post comes from Crucial Conversations by Joseph Grenny, Kerry Patterson, Ron McMillan, Al Switzler, and Emily Gregory, and Difficult Conversations by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, and Sheila Heen. Check them out for more tips and strategies to make these kinds of conversations go well.

Published by: 0

Rekindling the Fire: A Review of The Joy of Science

Book Reviews / Doing Research / Faculty Life

For most of us, science begins with a rush of “Wow! This is super cool!” But the emotional fire can subside after years of hard work. Negativity in popular culture can make us forget the depths of our why. To rekindle our passion to see the universe’s beauty, physicist Roel Snieder and policy expert Jen Scheider remind us of the human heart of science and lay out a spiritual center to our enterprise.

By highlighting our personal role in discovery, they provide a template for scientists seeking to both live a fulfilling life and do first-rate science. This template offers seven principles that can enrich our lives under the hypothesis that happy people produce better work. These principles are harmony, courage, vision, curiosity, listening, compassion, and integrity.

Each chapter doesn’t merely provide a “rah rah” pick-me-up; it cites the literature and analyzes the subject in a manner appropriate for scientists. The authors study scientists’ spirits, how each of us feel as we work, and present these feelings as noble expressions of human spirit. Playful, hand-drawn illustrations excite the imagination as the authors practice what they preach – and bring readers along for the ride. Sections also provide practical exercises for readers to integrate these abstract concepts into their day-to-day lives.

One of my takeaways: Modern conversation often puts spirituality and science at odds with each other. Religions, the traditional home of spirituality, sometimes tread on science’s turf, and scientists sometimes fear the untested authority of religion. In my own life, I’ve found that science and religion have a lot to learn from each other, and both can benefit from more listening, a core principle in this book. This text does not address religion directly, but the authors do describe what human spirituality in scientific endeavors looks like from two scientists’ perspectives. They speak of science not as a chore to complete nor as a grade to earn but as a “love” to explore. In academe, it’s easy to neglect such intrinsic emotional engagement with our work.

By giving us examples of how personal attitudes interact with scientific endeavors, the authors explain these seven principles’ impact in concrete terms. For instance, they help us relate our science to our students and even our children. They also extrapolate what inner courage resembles in a scientific career. Elsewhere, they dwell on staving off a sense of professional loneliness and having compassion for students who can also be lonely in their work. To them, finding joy in your work translates into bringing joy to the rest of the world through your work.

Snieder and Scheider contend that honing personal qualities can reduce the chore of getting work done while encouraging us to skip to work each day. As with most things, increased happiness requires attentive effort but is ultimately realizable. Paying attention to our innate human spirituality can bring personal meaning to ourselves and help us convey nature’s wonder better to others. This book shows us how. It reminds us that life’s beauty isn’t found just in exotic natural oases; with the right attitudes, it’s found at our lab benches as we investigate, in our scientific journals as we read, and on our fingertips as we type.

Published by: 0

Reframing Rejection: Changing ‘No’ to ‘Not Yet”

Doing Research / Faculty Life

Current Application Status: Not Discussed

“Thank you for submitting your work to our Journal. It has been carefully reviewed by experts in the field and we regret to inform you that we must REJECT your manuscript.”

We’ve all been there, many times. Sometimes it can feel like the life of a scientist is one rejection after another. It can be defeating, demoralizing, and demotivating. I’ve been at this for a while now, and over time I have come to view “rejection” in a completely different way. It was really my roles as an Associate (and now Deputy) Editor at The American Journal of Physiology – Lung Cellular and Molecular Physiology and as a standing study section member for the NHLBI K08/K01 Awards (plus a little wisdom of old age) that fundamentally changed my view of “rejection”. Here are a few things I’ve learned:

  1. Peer reviewers are just like you and me. It’s true. I know it often feels like reviewers are ogres salivating at the chance to destroy your hard work (read: the dreaded Reviewer #2). This is just not true. You know who the reviewers are? You and me. Maybe you’re just starting out in your career and you haven’t had a lot of experience as a manuscript or grant reviewer. Trust me, you will. When I receive a paper at AJP-Lung or a grant for study section, I’m excited to see what it’s all about. After all, we got into science because it is exciting, cool and fun. I feel a sense of ownership of the grant/paper and I want to do right by it. I know that I am not unique in these sentiments and that (many?) other reviewers feel exactly the same way. You will too when you get there.
  2. Peer review makes the science better. Also true. Don’t believe me? Take a moment to pull out that first version of your grant, the one that was “Not Discussed,” and read it. It might be good, or not, but it is almost certainly not as good as the second (or third…or fourth…) version. Like me, you might actually be grateful that it did not get funded on that first go around. Each version of a grant or paper is better than the previous because peer reviewers (see #1) have read it and given you great suggestions. Peer reviewers often bring up new ideas, make you think of an experiment that you hadn’t considered, uncover unexpected conclusions. All in all, your work is better because of peer review.
  3. Our job is not as unique as we think. A few years ago, I was as an elementary school party talking to a parent of my son’s friend. This dad is a hotel developer. He buys old historic buildings and turns them into chic boutique hotels. I thought this sounded interesting, so I asked him to tell me a bit more about it. He relayed that his team of a few people find a building they are interested in and work for a few weeks or months to put together a proposal for the project. They then submit the proposal for review by the developers. Guess what? He said about one in five of his proposals actually gets selected. Put another way, 4/5 are REJECTED! Sound familiar? This encounter put my job (which I always thought was totally unique) in perspective. To me, being a scientist is like being an entrepreneur. We have lots of ideas. Some are good, others are not so great, and we look to our colleagues to help us move forward with the best.

With these ideas in mind, I’ve developed some tricks to help reframe “rejection” in my mind. Here they are:

  1. Read the reviews as if they are coming from your mentor. We are extremely grateful when our mentor takes the time to critically review our work and offer criticisms and suggestions. Read grant and manuscript reviews to yourself in your mentor’s voice and it will take away some of the sting.
  2. Put yourself in the reviewer’s place. Think of a time when you noted a major hole or weakness in something you were reviewing. You had to make pointed comments, but think of your mindset. I’m guessing you were truly trying to make the work better. The people reviewing your work are doing the same thing.
  3. View peer review as an integral part of the scientific process. This is key. Peer review, and its inevitable rejection, is not a barrier put in your way just to make you struggle miserably. Rather, it is an integral part of the scientific process that we scientists have established. In our lab meetings, we pore over data, picking it apart, looking for holes, making it better. Peer review serves this function on a larger scale.
  4. Get to know some people outside of science. Talk to people outside of science and I guarantee you will start to see parallels. Ask a songwriter if every song was a hit (I live in Music City after all!), have an investment banker tell you about their successes and failures, invite a teacher to tell you about a lesson plan gone horribly wrong. As scientists, we are privileged to have an uncommon and interesting job, but our struggles are not unique; they are just a little different.

So next time you receive a disappointing “reject” decision, take a moment to reflect, reframe, and resubmit.

Additional Resources

Not that Kind of Letter: Tales of Rejection
Honing Resiliency: Reminders from a Recent Disappointment
Growing Stronger in the Face of Rejection: Roundup

Published by: 0

Awesome Things About Life in Research

Doing Research / Faculty Life / Trainees

Building a list of awesome things that come with life in research, one quirky, funny, inspiring piece at a time. Missing your favorite awesomeness? Or have The perfect image? Add in comments or tweet @edgeforscholars to share your personal twist on why science rocks. #JoyOfScience

142. Having your NIH Program Officer say, “I am cautiously optimistic about funding your application.”

141. Meeting new incredibly smart people

140. My hypothesis was right

139. p<.05

138. The code runs with no errors!

137. When you actually learn something new

136. Getting to hear about others knowledge

135. Implementing evidence-based practice

134. Collaborating with amazing students who then become amazing friends

133. Seeing your mentees present at the Translational Research Forum

132. My RN6 colleagues/friends

131. Groundbreaking results

130. When your hypothesis was right

129. Learning the coolest stuff first

128. Developing new research ideas from clinical observations

127. Near peer mentoring

126. Training the next generation

125. Adding a new study site

124. Making new collaborations

123. Vortex machines

122. Talking to smart people all the time

121. Mentoring

120. Watching students & trainees develop & succeed

119. Assays (like ELISA’s) that change color

118. Working with smart trainees

117. Traveling the world in the name of science

116. Building a research team

115. Being on the cutting edge of discovery

114. Seeing the innovation of new researchers

113. The excitement of new findings

112. When the code has no bugs

111. When the data definitively disproves your hypothesis in a new and interesting way

110. Being surrounded by amazing minds

109. Watching participants grow up & change

108. Solving interesting problems with smart people

107. Putting complex data into human communication

106. Understanding the complex web of factors affecting the outcome

105. Answering the big question and getting answers

104. Spending my life’s work pursuing something other than the bottom line in a society that is solely obsessed with the bottom line what’s more punk than publicly funded science?

103. Having your NIH Program Officer say, “I am cautiously optimistic about funding your application”

102. Coming up with crazy ideas with my friends and then actually getting them funded!

101. Making a difference for people and advancing care/improving outcomes

100. Vortexing

99. Working with trainees/students

98. Travel!!

97. I get paid to read and think about cool stuff

96. I’m my own boss

95. Pipetting is fun

94. Things change color

93. Holiday gift baskets in the break room

92. Lab holiday spirit

91. Funny tweets from serious scientists

90. Uploading grades at the end of the course

89. Discussing a new project with a person who challenges the way I think

88. Embracing the unpredictable

87. Having the exact number of pipette tips left that you need

86. Using lasers as light sabers

85. Mice don’t page you at 3 AM

84. Flexible time

83. Mother Nature telling you a secret before anyone else

82. Community that comes to the rescue

81. Dry ice in Eppendorf tubes

80. Collaborations

79. It is the most rewarding job

78. Having the whole lab to yourself

77. Hearing patient perspectives

76. Getting paid to ask ‘why?’

75. New & immediately useful info in journal club

74. End of a semester

73. Start of a semester

72. Having lab animals in my life

71. Reward for being ADHD

70. Chairs who go to bat for faculty

69. NIH supplements

68. Congratulations from a distant colleague

Spontaneous science nerd discussions over lunch.

67. Spontaneous science nerd discussions over lunch

66. JIT requests

65. Media coverage that gets it right

64. Perfectionist biostatisticians

63. Travel funds

62. Color coding OCD is normal

61. Upgrade of computing power

60. Invitation to serve on grant review panel

59. Seeing the twinkle of understanding in a student’s eyes

58. (Safe) lab pranks…dry ice in eppendorf tube under you labmate’s chair

57. Genuine breakthroughs

56. Your own brand-new lab equipment

55. Your first student’s first publication

54. Desk copies of textbooks

53. Cures

52. Labs that believe in parties

51. Reviewing an amazing and well-written paper

50. Academic kindness

49. Upbeat program officers

48. New knock out/in created in record time

Cat-o-meter via @icedarkroast47. Science communication

46. Science advocacy

45. Congratulations on your science received in public

44. New data visualization tools

43. Playing with the infrared thermometer.

42. Catching up with old lab buddies at meetings.

41. Coming home inspired.

40. Going to scientific meetings.

39. Fellow post docs starting their own labs.

38. Science & umbrella drinks (aka destination conferences)

37. Anticipation before settling down to analyze data set. Christmas for adults!

36. Minor revisions to resubmit

35. Gorgeous results from immunofluorescence assays

34. Finding your ‘invisible’ splinter under the microscope

33. Getting to draw on the windows

32. Dunkin Donuts naming scientists #1 consumers of coffee

31. Cold room on a sweltering day

30. Celebration stickers for lab notebooks when folks crush their experiments

29. Fact that scientists actively rebel against meetings

28. Dancing and pipetting with headphones

27. Seeing science in everything

26. Joys of liquid nitrogen and latex gloves

25. Being in charge of my own schedule (and not just because I don’t have an assistant).

24. Celebrating null findings

23. Finishing the last analysis for a paper

22. NOGAs

21. A tweet about your recently published paper

20. Running with slides

19. On time participant who holds their breath for their MRI

18. Permission to ask incessant questions

17. Curing cancer in mice

16. Mass spec works for seven days straight

15. Big donor (where are these?)

14. Grant funding

13. Confirming the drug binds the target in humans

12. Drying my shoes in a dessicator

11. Creating science fiction tools in real life

10. Statistical significance

9. Unlimited access to dry ice

8. Free lunch/dinners with strangers (aka applicants)

7. Working outside in the sunshine

6. Isoflurane contact high

5. Quoting your favorite science tweeps

4. The fume hood is free

3. Seeing the microscopic world

2. The model converges

1. Zillion uses for Parafil

Published by: 1

Leading a Lab: Compass Program for Leadership and Management Training

Doing Research

This fall I had the opportunity to participate in Compass (Wash U Compass: Elevating Biomed Professionals (researchercompass.org)), a leadership and management training and mentoring program for early career researchers. An NIH-funded program led by a team at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri, Compass is open to all biomedical junior faculty and postdocs in the United States for FREE! The program “trains individuals to lead and manage successful teams, navigate career challenges, and balance life and science by providing mentoring, practical tools, and other resources.” It is a fully remote program, which makes it easy to fit into your schedule, and I found it incredibly helpful. The program runs multiple times a year and applications are accepted on a rolling basis.

Compass provides a TON of information and resources. Here are just a few key highlights I found especially helpful:

  1. Learning Content. The Compass program is divided into three units: Leading Others, Managing Scientific Work, and Leading Self. The team has put together incredible Coursebooks for each unit that share a wealth of information on topics such as cultivating a positive work environment, building relationships, giving and receiving feedback, resolving conflict, hiring and managing team members, setting boundaries, and managing wellness. There are also several videos throughout the learning platform that highlight some of the best practices found within the Coursebook material. The learning platform is sleek and easy to use.
  2. Expert Advice. In addition to the main content shared throughout the course, expert mentors are invited to share their experiences through short videos, case studies, and live events. It was nice to hear from successful lab leaders on what has (and hasn’t) worked for them as they’ve developed their careers.
  3. Putting it into Practice. One unique aspect of this program is the ability to practice new skills and receive feedback. There are several opportunities to video yourself responding to situations you might encounter in your career where you can get instant feedback via an Auto Analysis tool. Though a bit uncomfortable, it was great practice! Additionally, the main “deliverable” of the program is to complete a Lab Manual. This assignment, which you work on over the entire course, really gets you thinking about how you would like your lab to operate. There are multiple chances throughout the course to receive written and oral feedback on the manual.
  4. Peer Mentoring. Another fantastic aspect of Compass is the ability to connect with peers. This is partially done through topic discussion boards in the learning platform, but the most helpful, in my opinion, is meeting regularly with a peer mentoring team. My peer mentoring team clicked really well, and we enjoyed seeing each other each week. Some of the weeks had guided activities, some we worked on or discussed Lab Manuals, and others we bounced ideas off each other and helped each other work through challenges. We found our meetings to be so helpful that we have decided to continue meeting monthly.

I would highly recommend this program to anyone leading or planning to lead a research group. The course is geared more toward the academic track, but the skills learned would be valuable to any biomedical scientist leading a lab.

For more information or to submit an application, visit the Compass website at Wash U Compass: Elevating Biomed Professionals (researchercompass.org).

Published by: 0

Advice for (New) Assistant Professors Extravaganza

Doing Research / Faculty Life

Originally posted in #MHAWS: Mirya Holman’s Aggressive Winning Scholars Newsletter.

Hello darlings!

Welcome to the annual “Mirya Holman gives some advice to (new) assistant professors” extravaganza! MHGSATNAPE just rolls off the tongue, right?

Here’s the advice I gave last year about starting as an assistant professor in the middle of a pandemic. A lot of it still applies! Read it if you want!

Updated advice: What I wish I knew 10+ years ago.

Remember: Mirya Holman is not for the faint of heart. If all this advice doesn’t work for you – congrats, you are normal. Take what might work and move on. Or listen to none of it. I don’t give a shit. But maybe MHAWS is really absolutely super your fucking jam? Then go get yourself some MHAWS merch!

Five rules that I wish I had known: 1) be a good social scientist and collect and organize data; 2) Borrow, beg, steal, but don’t reinvent the wheel; 3) Self-care is never selfish; 4) Make your own damn rules; & 5) be kind to yourself and others. Do you want a little note that features this advice? Download it here!

How the fuck are you supposed to do all this while learning how to be a professor… a job that feels like an Olympic sport and one that graduate school does not train you for one fucking bit?!!? Keep reading my lovelies for some tricks and tips:

Rule 1: Collect and organize data. That means: asking a lot of questions, observing social patterns, figuring out the written and unwritten rules. It also means figuring out who you can trust and who can be vulnerable with – both are SO important. Collect data on where the money is, where the course buy-outs are, how new classes work, what is the schedule of things. It means document the bad shit. It means knowing yourself. So: here’s what I would do:

  • Keeping track of deadlines: Anytime any important date comes up, put it on your calendar. This could be internal grant deadlines or when grades are due or when you have to apply for a 3rd year leave (if that exists). Is this a yearly deadline? Make it a repeated reminder every year.
  • Collect data on who should be in your coven: Peer connections are the fucking bomb.com. Scope the situation at faculty orientation – who are the other people who seem like they won’t be assholes? (Or the right kind of assholes. Find your kind of assholes!) Make lunch or dinner or drink dates with other junior faculty in your department if they exist. If you meet someone cool at a university event, send them an email the next day and invite them to lunch or coffee. Make connections.
  • Find mentors who will tell you all the important bits of data: This is tough. Sometimes you will get a mentor and it will be a perfect fit and the birds will sing (this happened to me! At Tulane! Shout out to Celeste Lay who is an amazing mentor. I’m super lucky.). But sometimes this most definitely won’t happen. So be entrepreneurial. Ask lots of people the same kinds of questions and see what answers you get. Turns out, professors LOVE giving people advice (helllloooo, I write a newsletter of this shit), so there will be LOTS of advice and some of it will be absolute shit. If someone gives you really good advice, go back to them. If someone gives you bad advice, DON’T TELL THEM. Instead, hide a cracked can of tuna fish in their ceiling tiles right before they go away for a month. Just joking. Kind of.
  • Document everything. If you have a meeting with your chair where they promise you repeat preps for your first three years, follow up with an email that says “confirming the details of our meeting” with the exact details. If a student is being weird, send an email to someone about it. ANYTIME anything is weird – sexual harassment, racist shit, sexist shit, DOCUMENT IT to a neutral third party. Easy way to do this is to send yourself an email with the details, especially who, what, where, and when information like day, time, witnesses, exact shit that happened. Is someone regularly an asshole to other people in the department? They are an asshole! Document that shit! It took me a long time to realize how correct Maya Angelou was when she said, “When people show you who they are the first time believe them.” So keep a list! (personally, I have a little black book entitled “People I want to punch in the face.” Go here to get yourself one.)
  • Code the data the right way from the beginning: Do it right from the start. Find out if you will have an annual or semi annual review and ask for a copy of the template. Even better – ask someone in your department if they wouldn’t mind sharing one of their past ones so you can see it filled out. Put your shit in that template as soon as you do it. You know what? You are not going to remember in Dec 2020 that in March 2020, you attended a brunch with incoming students. But if you put it down, then you don’t have to remember!  Ask what kinds of documents you will need for tenure and promotion – will you need hard copies of book chapters? Conference papers? What should your CV look like? (Mine had to be in chronological order. What asshole decided that?) If you start off collecting and coding your information the right way, you can save time and energy in the long run.

Rule 2: Don’t reinvent the wheel. Don’t act like you are the first person to teach a class or try to submit an article. Don’t you dare think you are the first person to ever think that department meetings are the dumbest shit on the face of the planet. Don’t think that you are the only person who has ever felt depressed and lonely in our jobs. Don’t believe that you are the only one in academia, in your discipline, in your department who has been harassed or discriminated against. That’s what the man wants. Don’t give it to him.

  • Ask for help from other people who have done what you are doing. DO NOT come up with a syllabus from scratch. Trust me, in the 10000000 times that someone’s taught Congress, there haven’t been 10000000 unique approaches. Or probably 1000 unique approaches.
  • Ask for help from other people (I’m putting it twice it is so important). Like really. Did you know that I’ll send you my syllabi, slides, and assignments from any class I’ve taught? I will! Just ask! Other people will as well! Did you know if you tweet out help for an assignment on XYZ, people will just respond to you with their assignments? SERIOUSLY. ASK FOR HELP. Did you know that there are entire journals on how to teach? FOR REALSY. Maybe not all of the stuff you get will work for you, but that day that you slept like shit and you forgot about a meeting and you have 15 minutes to prep for class – that lecture or activity is going to be FUCKING GOLDEN.
  • Ask for help from people in your department. This is harder. None of us want to seem like we are dumbasses in front of our colleagues. I’ve found that flattery is the best way to get assistance, but to still look like you know what you are doing. “I noticed that you have a lot of students working for you. That’s so awesome. Would you mind walking me through the process of hiring a student? You are clearly the expert here!” There’s also a ‘question window’ for your first couple of months where everyone assumes that you are just trying to figure out how stuff works. (But if you’ve worked at my university for 20 years and you try to get someone else to fill out a fucking form for you because ‘you don’t know how to do it’, I WILL LOSE MY SHIT. True story.). Also, if you are nice to the office staff, they will answer your questions for you. ALWAYS BE NICE TO STAFF.
  • Ask for help from people on campus who are paid (really!) to help you. Go to all the orientations and afterwards, type up your notes about anything that was important. Ask HR questions about benefits. Figure out your retirement asap and start paying as much as you can into it as soon as you can (some places require that you be “vested” for some period before they match. Put that vesting date on your calendar and make sure they start giving you your fucking money!) Learn about free shuttles, when parking rules change, and whether you’ve been assigned a librarian (REALLY).
  • Ask for help from your advisors. Look, we all think of ourselves as baby bald eagles, pushed out of the nest, left to swoop – or fall – without assistance. But the reality is that your advisor is stuck with you FOREVER. BAHAHAHAH. But really. They are still around for you to ask for advice from and get a boost from. They’ve already read ALL YOUR SHIT so asking them to read an article revision isn’t actually asking all that much from them!

Rule 3: Take care of yourself. That means: exercise, eating relatively healthy, socializing, and seeing a therapist. My fav Peloton instructor tells me that self love is never selfish (I’m not sure I buy it, but okay). How to force yourself to put yourself first:

  • Move your body. Pay upfront for exercise, whether it is a monthly yoga pass, a fancy ass new bike to ride to campus, a block of lessons with a personal trainer, a peloton app and a spin bike, or a yearly discount on the gym. YOU KNOW your just out of grad school cheap ass isn’t going to let that money go to waste. Can’t afford this? Join a program like the November Movement or a running group. Don’t buy a parking pass so you have to walk. DO SOMETHING to make you move your body on the reg.
  • Make it easy to eat well. Meal plan like a mofo, especially for breakfast and lunch. Figure out healthy, easy things that you can make ahead of time and repeat. On a budget? Check out Budget Bytes. Want healthy and fast meals? Buy Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything Fast. Here’s the doc that I use to plan my meals (Note two tabs: a template and a filled out example)
  • Talk to humans. Like face to face. Regularly. Make friends with people in your department, at your gym, by volunteering for a political campaign, walking in your neighborhood. This is hard.
  • Get enough sleep and get good quality sleep. Invest in a good mattress. Get a good pillow. Buy nice sheets. You spend a third of your life there – make it an enjoyable experience. Give yourself a bedtime. Take naps. WHATEVER. You will not be healthy and happy if you don’t get enough sleep.
  • Use your fancy new healthcare. Go to the dentist. Get an eye exam. Get your skin checked. Buy life insurance (it will be CHEAP!). Go to all the doctors.
  • Find a therapist you like. Ask your HR department for information about therapists that are covered by your insurance (seriously – these exist. For some of us.) Ask junior faculty in your department. Try some out. Figure out what kind of therapy you like (hello behavioral modification therapy for me!) But seriously – get a fucking therapist. No, twitter doesn’t count. Neither does a devoted partner. Guess what? They are sooo sick of hearing about goddamn academia.
  • Get a hobby. Or hobbies. I read a lot of mass market fiction and see a lot of live music. And eat out a lot. And drink. And paint REALLY terrible watercolors. And hang out with my dogs and cat. And talk shit. Read some books (Get a library card ASAP). Join a sport team. Take an art class. Fight racism.

Rule 4: Make your own rules. Decide on some hard and fast rules for yourself, and then let the rest slide. What do you really care about in terms of productivity this year? What are your absolutely NO FUCKING WAY things that you won’t tolerate? What are your absolute most important things for your personal life? What do you actually care about with teaching?

  • The absolutely no-go-no-fucking-ways: what is the shit you won’t tolerate? Guess what? You have power now. Use it to make shit better. Hopefully your no-go rules include confronting people (even people with power) being racist and sexist in front of you. Figure out this list early and stick to it so that you won’t hate yourself.
  • Research productivity: the tenure clock is long. Yay! Also our research takes fucking forever. Boo. It’s also really hard to figure out what tenure standards are, because they change over time and by your gender, race, sexual orientation, and national origin! So – rough to figure out just how productive you have to be. What you can probably figure out: do you need a book? Do you need a top hit? Do you need to get over some threshold of a number of publications? Understand these rules and then figure out how to start to make that shit happen. You don’t have to make it happen your first year. But you need to figure out the first steps. Set some minimum goals for yourself and get that shit done.
  • Teaching: What do you actually really care about in the classroom? You might not know! If you don’t, pick a few things. I like students to show up to class. I like students to have done the reading. I like students to have a relatively interesting time in my classes. So I have an attendance policy, I test and quiz on readings and discuss them in class, and find videos and memes and gifs. Over time, I’ve realized that I don’t’ really care about: students meeting some strict deadline (why do I care about 10:05 over 10? That’s some kindergarten shit right there), students on laptops (hello disability shaming!), and students showing up late. What will make your life easier: telling students what your hard and fast rules are and then following them. If you want papers in hard copy, bring a fucking stapler. If you care about papers being late, TELL YOUR STUDENTS. If you care about attendance, TAKE ATTENDANCE. This is not some plot twist show where the students will never see it coming. That’s setting yourself and your students up for failure. Don’t do that.
  • What do you want your service to be? Sometimes this is hard to figure out because some committees SEEM like they will be easy, but they will really suck. Others seem intense, but oh look, no one ever shows up! So – gather evidence about the expectations for service. You might find this matrix and podcast useful! It is going to be pretty easy to figure out who the laziest asshole is your department. Guess what? Lazy assholes have a highly tuned sense of which service tasks will be a pain in the ass and which won’t. Use that information as you will. But this is the big thing: figure out your service caps and then stick to them.
  • What are your hard and fast rules about self care? What can you absolutely not handle missing out on? Sleep? Time away from a screen? Weekends off? Therapy? (it’s okay if it is all these things). So set yourself up to make sure that you do these things. Put a reminder on your calendar to go home at 5. Use an app to block yourself off your devices for 2 hours in the evening. Book your therapy appointments several months in advance. Whatever it is – hold yourself to that rule. Turns out, if you NEED sleep and you don’t get sleep, you are going to be a crappy human being and a crappy assistant professor.

Rule 5: Be kind. Be kind to yourself. To others. To yourself. But seriously, cut yourself some fucking slack. This shit is hard. No one trains us for it.  A lot of us manage to have both imposter syndrome and survivors’ guilt. We are in new places without social support doing a job we’ve probably never done before. SO:

  • BE KIND TO YOURSELF
  • Be kind to the office staff
  • Be kind to your students
  • Be kind to your colleagues
  • Be especially kind to contingent faculty
  • Be kind to your friends and your partner
  • Take advice from the late, great Toni Morrison: “I tell my students, ‘When you get these jobs that you have been so brilliantly trained for, just remember that your real job is that if you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else.” YOU HAVE THE POWER. USE IT WISELY.
  • Be kind to yourself, please?

Listen – you are a really fucking smart, capable person. (Do you want a mug that says this? Now available!) Unless you do something totally illegal, they aren’t going to fire you this year. They can’t. So all you really have to do is make it through the end of the year. Just get through. Just by existing in academia, you are destroying a system built for jerkfaces and their sexist, racist ways and remaking it into something new and better. I’m rooting for you. We are all rooting for you. So chin up, forward motion, one stroke at a time. Eyes closed, head first, can’t lose. Get a fucking whiteboard. Get a coven. And get to work.

XOXOXO
Mirya

 

 

MORE RESOURCES:

Academic Non-Renewal: Don’t Think it Can’t Happen to You

Productivity Tip #5: Delegate! What Can A Virtual Assistant Do For You?

10 Takeaways for Managing Undergraduate Research Assistants

Published by: 0

NIH’s New Data Sharing Policy: Not So Scary

Doing Research

NIH now requires a formal data sharing plan for each grant they receive. (A few exceptions, primarily T32s and F grants, exist.) It sounds complicated, but they’ve actually made it pretty easy. You’re probably already doing some of what’s required.

First of all, there’s a template with reasonable descriptions of what to put in each piece. This is a great place to start. NIH has also created 12 example plans for different types of data such as human genomic data, clinical data, tech development, and more. (Most are 2-3 pages, so not too scary.)

“Scientific data” must be shared. This includes everything needed for someone to replicate your experiments or findings. Some journals now request this information, so providing it may be familiar. But before the thought of submitting everything related to your research overwhelms you, note that NIH has excluded anything not necessary to validate your findings, including, among other things, lab notebooks, preliminary analyses, and plans for future research. They’ve also defined fairly broad justifiable reasons to limit sharing of data. Examples of data types to be shared.

If you’re new to data sharing, you may be wondering how one puts data out there for the rest of the scientific world to use. NIH has a guide to selecting a data repository as well as a long list sorted by NIH institute of their preferred repositories.

The process for publishing a paper now includes sharing your scientific data “no later than the date on which the article is first made available,” which for most journals means when it first comes out online. If you have data that hasn’t been published but has been documented (e.g., conference proceedings, preprints), you must share it by the end of your grant performance period. If you have null results that don’t have a hope of being published, this is your chance to share them.

You’ll also need to identify which entity at your institution will monitor your compliance with your plan. Typically this is your grants office.

NIH has an extensive FAQ page that delves into the nitty-gritty of what, when, where, and how to both share your data and write your data sharing plan. There’s also a specific team to contact with further questions.

Your specific NIH institute may have additional requirements for your plan. List of policies by institute or center. You can see which policies apply to your data using this decision tool.

Data sharing is the first ingredient for replication, which can only help science progress.

IMPORTANT RESOURCES

Data Sharing Plan Template

Data Sharing Plan Examples

NIH FAQ

Published by: 0

De-Mystifying Single IRB: Let IREx Help!

Doing Research

As you travel the long, often winding and shadowy trail of initiating a new study across multiple sites, you may suddenly find a fork in the path to your welcoming mead hall – a requirement to use a single IRB (sIRB). From afar it seems simple enough to traverse, but what does it really mean to use a single IRB? How do your sites get approved for the study and, if there’s only one sIRB, how do you get sites their approval documents from the sIRB?

Fortunately, the IRB Exchange (IREx) is a freely available web-based portal for lead study teams to manage and streamline sIRB documentation and coordination for their studies.

First, let’s consult the rune stones and examine how sIRB review works. To combat the Grendel-like trolls of trial management, such as duplicative reviews and burdensome bureaucracy, the use of a Single Institutional Review Board (sIRB) was mandated in 2018 by the NIH and the Office of Human Research Protections for federally funded multi-site research studies.  While it sounds simple and the goal is laudable, implementing an sIRB can be shrouded in mystery, and to those of us who have had to navigate that path,  involve some pain. Although the study will have only one IRB of record (the sIRB), each study site’s human research protection program must still provide critical local information before the sIRB issues approval for the site: Whether there are conflict of interests, adequate resources, study teams have the necessary training and qualifications, etc. This involves persistent coordination, communication, and documentation.

To the rescue, like a mythical figure of old, has come the Beowulf of single IRB review management.  Wielding the sword of harmonization, IREx has been cutting its way through the confusion and establishing an easy, free, and centralized system for managing single IRB documentation for over a decade, thanks to continuous NIH funding since 2011.  Long before the NIH mandated the use of an sIRB, VUMC was given funding to explore novel IRB models.  In 2012  IRBshare was launched, which would evolve over time into IREx.  The IREx platform has amassed 458 institutional sites who have joined the platform with over 485 multi-site studies.

The IRB Reliance Exchange grew out of the need to standardize the single IRB review process across institutions. When you’re on the lead study team of a multisite study implementing a single IRB, you must communicate the sIRB plan of attack to sites, capture local nuances about each site, submit sites to the sIRB for ultimate approval, and inform the sites when sIRB approval is granted, and that’s just the beginning of the battle!

The lead study team is a critical component to successfully and smoothly executing the sIRB review process.  IREx arms those warriors of regulatory compliance for the battle by capturing reliance and local review documentation in a centralized portal so lead study teams have everything needed to submit sites to the sIRB for review. Through automated notifications, IREx apprises sIRBs, study teams, and participating sites of the progress made and how much of the battle is yet to be fought.

If all of this still sounds daunting, don’t worry – IREx users consistently report that IREx is easy to use because it automates communications and the tracking of site progress via dashboards.  Moreover, IREx has incredible YouTube videos, regular trainings for lead study teams, and live user support is available on a regular and as-needed basis for IRB and lead study team staff.  It’s freely available to all US institutions and has gone a long way toward bringing single IRB reliance out of the dark ages by supporting the single IRB process with its automated communications and robust tracking tools. Make your study team’s process and toolkit battle-ready with the many resources we have to offer here: https://www.irbexchange.org/

Published by: 0

The Power of Strong Collaborations

Doing Research / Networking & Collaboration

Biomedical science is no longer primarily conducted by brilliant individuals running their own labs and writing paper after paper using the same methodology that they have perfected over the course of their training and career. Even the seemingly simplest of projects likely requires use of another lab’s equipment or model, or utilizes multiple Core facilities and services. Some may see this approach as diluting the importance of each contributing author, but in fact it enables a far greater influence and benefit of any one individual’s work.

There are many reasons why successful scientists collaborate:

– It’s a chance to learn new scientific approaches and access new techniques, models and equipment.

– You can greatly expand your publication record. Although a series of middle author manuscripts won’t make or break a tenure package, it certainly demonstrates a collaborative scientist who fits well within the local research community. Tasks that seem routine to one lab may represent a critical control for a manuscript from another group and earn a spot on the authorship list. Likewise, engaging other people and their specialty area will allow you to level-up your own work and submit more compelling stories to stronger journals.

– Reading and editing the work of other people is a great way to learn better writing skills for manuscripts, grants and posters. Many useful style tips and tricks can also be gleaned from the way other people edit our own work. Once we leave the trainee state the opportunity to have someone thoroughly red-line our work diminishes and it is a gift when it happens. In academia, editing is how we show that we care!

– You can share the highs and lows. An academic career entails a lot of rejection and it can be hard not to internalize a rejected paper or a triaged grant. Writing and submitting with other colleagues that you know to be brilliant can help to convince you that a poor score really may be due to the vagaries of the review process rather than a personal attack or judgement. Two (or three) heads are better than one in planning a new line of attack and the celebratory champagne also tastes better when shared.

There are several ways to increase your collaborative reach:

–  First, do your research. Find local experts and contact them directly. Invite them (or a trainee from their lab) to present data at your lab meeting, or offer to present something to their group. Be clear about what you need and what you will offer in return such as authorship, funding, or future joint grant applications – particularly if what you are asking for might be costly in time or research funds.

– Graduate students and post-doctoral fellows are a great way to expand your reach. Serving on committees will introduce you to work that is going on in other labs and you may be able to offer your own expertise to enrich their projects.

– Internal seminars are a great place to meet new colleagues. Ask questions of the speaker afterwards, introduce yourself, and find your shared interests.

Some collaborations may only last as long as it takes to get a manuscript published, whereas others may last for years. But remember, if the grant application is successful you will be stuck with that person for years so a functional working relationship is just as important as the science itself. And sometimes, just sometimes, a simple scientific question results in manuscripts, funding, and friendship.

 

More Resources

Connecting Through Poster Sessions

Navigating Academic Relationships

Paper-Writing Checklists To Prevent Headaches Down the Road

Published by: 1

Perfection is a Productivity Blocker

Doing Research / Networking & Collaboration

I recently attended the Edge for Scholars Retreat: Building Collaborations, Creating Connections and learned so much about connecting with others throughout an academic career. Meeting new people at a similar career stage and getting advice from those who have gone before us made for an invigorating and inspiring day.

A piece of advice that was shared during a roundtable discussion really stuck with me: Learn where your B+ work is okay. *Skrrrt* Wait, what? I am an A+ student. A high achiever. A…perfectionist. How could I possibly produce less than THE BEST?

While I am of course exaggerating (kind of), this advice got me thinking about how often my colleagues and I do struggle with perfectionism. Scientists are generally high achievers and producing anything less than our best might feel like failing. However, perfectionism is often a barrier to progress. So, how can we be okay with our B+ work sometimes? Some things to keep in mind:

  1. Perfection is impossible. I know, I know. Everyone knows this. But do you truly believe and accept it? Even if perfection was theoretically possible, would you ever actually believe you reached it? I suspect if your expectations were reached, you would probably just raise your expectations further. Besides, everyone’s definition of perfection is different anyway.
  2. Perfection makes us less relatable. Showing others your flaws takes pressure off of them to feel like they have to be perfect. Especially in mentoring, we owe it to our mentees to show them that we make mistakes, too. This also makes us more approachable and takes away the fear of backlash when our trainees make mistakes. Furthermore, we each have a desire to be loved for who we are. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to constantly wonder if people like the real me or just the “perfect” version of myself I allow others to see.
  3. Perfection blocks growth. Progress and process are just as important as the outcome. Taking risks and trying new things and failing at them is how we learn. Of course, we should strive to do good work, but waiting for it to be perfect before we share it with others can be a huge waste of time. The best example I can think of for this is scientific writing. Don’t wait for your draft to be perfect before you share it with a colleague or mentor for feedback! Involving others early and often can help you develop your skills more quickly and expend less mental and emotional energy you can use toward other things. I promise they won’t think you’re dumb.
  4. Perfection blocks opportunities. Perfectionism often grows out of a desire for control. By trying to control everything, you might take away opportunities from others, blind yourself to alternative ideas and perspectives, or have unrealistic expectations for yourself and those around you. Scientific advancement requires diverse backgrounds, ideas, and skillsets. Letting go of our original “perfect” plan makes way for better plans to arise that we hadn’t yet thought of.

We probably shouldn’t have needed a global pandemic to teach us that disruptions and interruptions are a part of life and that we just can’t control everything, but some of us are slow learners when it comes to perfectionist tendencies (hi there!). It is a process to learn how and when to let things go, but a necessary one. As we begin to learn where our B+ work is okay, we will improve our well-being, time management, and yes, our productivity.

Published by: 1