You’d better like where you’re going…

Faculty Life

You’d better like where you’re going because you’ll be there for a long time. 

In my roles as attending physician, scientist, mentor, and director of an institutional career development office, I spend a lot of time talking to students, trainees, and early career scientists and physicians. Each conversation challenges me to reflect on my own journey, noting parallels and departures. As I progress in my career and find myself on the brink of being a “senior” faculty member (the horror!), these reflections have uncovered a truth about adulthood – it’s long.  

Yes, I am a rising senior who has been working as a physician scientist for 20 years. In some ways, I feel like I am just getting started. New students, innovative ideas, unexpected collaborations, exciting findings, keep the job fresh while a growing manuscript portfolio, lengthening list of “not discussed” proposals on ERA Commons, and ever stronger reading glasses remind me that I’ve been at this for a while.  

In the last year or so I’ve started to notice an underlying current of urgency in career development conversations I’ve had. Aspiring and early career scientists and physicians are anxious to get where they are going, and for good reason. It does take a very long time to become a scientist or physician. I added it up for my kids the other day when they asked me how many years of “school” I had. Four years of college, four years of medical school, three years of residency, three years of fellowship, before finally becoming an Instructor (an “almost faculty” position). I felt old by the time I finished.  

Trainees and Early Career faculty I talk to are loathe to add more years to that training. And I was too. So often I hear, “The opportunity sounds good, but I really don’t want to do another year of training,” or “I’ve been training forever, I’m ready to be done!” But what I’m realizing now with the benefit of 20 years of hindsight and hopefully another 20-30 years (fingers crossed) ahead of me, is that training is short in relation to the rest of it. You don’t want to sabotage the long game by conceding to short term pressures.  

All my years of training helped me to land in a career that I thoroughly enjoy. One that is different every day. One that continually challenges and excites me. In order to get where I am today, I had to take that long path.  

I do fully acknowledge that financial, family, or other responsibilities often dictate timing, but that doesn’t change the basic fact that you will be doing your “real” job for an awfully long time, so you’d better enjoy it. I’ve wondered where I would be today if I had tried to rush things. Maybe in a place that was not so fulfilling.  

If you are a student, trainee, or early career physician or scientist and find that you are saying to yourself, “I just want to be done and get to [insert job here]!”. I’d encourage you to take a moment and ask yourself, “What are you running towards?” 

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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Why Managing Technostress is Key

Faculty Life

As I arrive to my office, the first thing I do is check my email, which has become an unconscious habit as a way of prioritizing my tasks and, oftentimes, putting out fires. From there, I will take a plethora of remote meetings via popular video conferencing apps such as Zoom and WebEx. By the time I get home, I may quickly check my email again just to keep my head above the water. I might notice new potential collaborators, making it difficult to resist responding to their emails and justifying the extra communication efforts as just taking a few minutes of my personal time. Just like this, one can feel like the entire day revolves around technology in one form or another. This sentiment is not an uncommon phenomenon or experienced by a select few.

Technostress is the phenomenon of stress that is incurred from an increased reliance on technology and being unable to deal with it in a heathy, productive manner. Remarkably, the word “technostress” was coined by Brod in 1982. More recently, this term has been further contextualized with five creators of technostress: Techno-overload, techno-invasion, techno-complexity, techno-insecurity, and techno-uncertainty (Fischer et al., 2019). Each of these factors are distinct but may correlate with each other in specific ways. For example, techno-complexity and techno-uncertainty may occur when needing to learn and deal with new microscopy units and not getting the institutional support to utilize this innovation. Technostress is pertinent because many faculty and individuals in STEM are expected to be experts in new technological advancements. Beyond causing individuals to leave or avoid STEM careers, it can result in fear and anxiety about technological advancements. For many careers in STEM, avoiding technologies is simply not an option and can hurt professional reputations and self-esteem.

Therefore, I want to highlight ways to deal with technostress in STEM. On an individual level, practicing relaxation and mediation techniques can be invaluable, especially when getting frustrated with technology. However, to create structural changes, the STEM community needs greater adjustments than simply “taking a breather.” For example, mentors can change their style to prioritize work-life balance and hosting new courses that encourage new viewpoints that see technology as a tool rather than a threat. Additionally, institutional leaders need to recognize the toll that technostress may place on individuals. While it may be more cost effective to require PIs to perform all their microscopy, this can result in a burnout especially for junior or more novice faculty. Therefore, dedicated resources such as microscopy core units can help by not stretching labs too thin and reduce the technological learning curve.

Technostress is an issue that I believe will demand more attention and solutions as time progresses. Furthermore, as remote work and hybrid schedules become more prevalent in STEM, and technologies such as R, python, and machine learning become more typical, dedicated researchers should pay more attention to technostress. There are mental and physical health issues that technostress may cause, which may often be overlooked (Dragano & Lunau, 2020). Therefore, research on how technostress affects individuals, how to identify its causes, and how to reduce them, will only become increasingly important in the future for research, development, and innovation to continue in STEM (Murray et. al., 2022).

References:

Brod, C. (1982). Managing technostress: Optimizing the use of computer technology. Personnel Journal, 61(10), 753–757.

Dragano, N., & Lunau, T. (2020). Technostress at work and mental health: Concepts and research results. Current Opinion in Psychiatry, 33(4), 407–413.

Fischer, T., Pehböck, A., & Riedl, R. (2019, February 27). Is the Technostress Creators Inventory Still an Up-To-Date Measurement Instrument? Results of a Large-Scale Interview Study.

Murray, S. A., Shuler, H. D., Davis, J. S., Spencer, E. C., & Hinton, A. O., Jr (2022). Managing technostress in the STEM world. Trends in biotechnology, 40(8), 903–906. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tibtech.2022.05.001

More Resources:

Finding Your Science Flow: Yoga Lessons to Increase Productivity

Balancing on the Edge

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Taking a Break Without Losing Your Momentum (or Your Mind!)

Faculty Life / Productivity

We’ve all heard the adage “Vacation is a state of mind,” but some (or most) of us don’t embrace the core of this idea. In the competitive world of academic medicine, it’s easy to feel like you need to work 24/7/365 – after all, your colleagues, trainees and leaders often send you emails at 4am. It’s difficult to silence that little devil on your shoulder whispering in your ear, “Everyone else is working non-stop; you should, too.” The guilt is terrible. In the past, I would take vacations (they are called “family trips” when you do them with kids!) but I would feel guilty the whole time and try and “catch up” on work even while I was away “relaxing” on vacation.

A few years ago, I did an experiment. I decided to approach things differently. Before leaving, I met with my trainees to help them make plans for when I was away and asked a lab colleague to be available for “emergencies” in my absence. Then, I left and did no work while on vacation. None. Zero. Not even a single email. What happened when I got back to work? Nothing! My office was still there, my team was in the lab, the patients were in the hospital and the world had not collapsed. As a bonus, I had a great time away! Since then, I’ve adopted a “zero work” policy while on vacation.

Here are some “mind tricks” you can use to get into the vacation state of mind:

  1. First and foremost – give yourself permission to go on vacation and NOT WORK. The pressure to work continuously comes from within your own head, not from outside. Let go of the guilt!
  2. Don’t think about coming back to work. Often people are hesitant to be away because they know they will face the Mount Everest of email when they return. Let me ask you this: When is the last time you came into work and did not feel bombarded by email? I don’t know about you, but I can’t think that far back. Before vacation, I am overwhelmed with email. After vacation, I am overwhelmed with email. Being overwhelmed by email is an everyday occurrence. Don’t let that stop you from enjoying time away – the emails will be there when you get back.
  3. Don’t compare yourself to other people. Are you on track? Are projects moving forward? Do you have manuscripts and grants in the pipeline? Are you having productive mentor-mentee relationships? Are you enjoying what you do? Yes? Great! Don’t worry about what others are doing.
  4. And once again because it is so important – let go of the guilt!

Still not convinced? Why not try it once? Next time you are out of town plan ahead, don’t do any work while you’re away and see what happens. You might find that, like me, you return more energized, creative, efficient and content. Rather than slowing your career momentum, time away can give it a turbo boost!

 

More Resources:

How To Be an Academic Leader and Maintain Time For Yourselfhttp://vacation

Build a Great Team: Help Your Staff Help You

Not that Kind of Investment: Tales of Time Commitment

 

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Asking Questions at Talks: Curiosity is Best When Shared

Faculty Life

Imagine that you put in lots of time to prepare for a talk, honed it down, practiced it, stood nervously, went brilliantly through your talk as planned, and bamm!  No questions.  I’ve had that occur – multiple times.  Not getting questions feels like a door has been slammed in my face. I feel cheated, because someone else may have caught some detail that I missed in my work and that would improve my science. So, I have an informal rule of thumb: the audience has a responsibility to make sure that every speaker is asked questions by at least two people.

Asking questions at the end of a talk is an important skill for scientists and for the scientific enterprise itself. In my experience, science is most insightful when there’s input from different people.  Imagine going to a concert with 100 trumpets.  Not nearly as interesting as a typical symphony with different instruments.  Science is like that.  My best structural biology insights come when there are questions from the biologists and biochemists.  So, even if you are not an expert in the same field, your perspective is of value.

Here are some tips to overcome common reasons for not asking questions:

  1. I don’t have a question ready. Try to plan in advance. As the speaker goes through their talk, my notes are a list of questions I have.  If stuck, ask practical questions.  How much sample did you use?  How did you come up with this idea?
  2. Who am I to ask that question? Yeah, I have imposter syndrome, too.  Think of your question as a positive contribution to the scientific community sitting in the room.
  3. I’m an introvert. Yeah, that’s me, too, along with having poor social skills.  Pretty common among scientists.  But curiosity is also pretty common among scientists.  And curiosity drives the best science, particularly when it’s cross-disciplinary.
  4. I’m afraid I’ll make a fool of myself. I get around this by asking my question following a formula. Praise the speaker (Great talk. What a lot of work. I liked your talk.). Give an excuse (I have a naïve question. You might have said this already, but…).  Ask the question. Sometimes the simplest questions are the wisest.
  5. Don’t push an agenda with your question. We’ve all seen this and we know what we think when someone brings up their own work or looks like they’re trying to bring attention to themselves. Keep it to genuine curiosity and you can’t go wrong. If someone thinks poorly of you for asking a genuine question, that’s their problem.
  6. If you can’t bring yourself to ask the question in front of the audience, go up to the speaker later and ask the question. Your interest will be appreciated.
  7. If you enjoy the research, ask the person to share a meal or have coffee with you. At the best, you’ll gain additional insight and get to know a fellow scientist better.  At the worst, they will say no.  You have nothing to lose and much to gain.  That’s the kind of odds that I like.

Interesting and novel insights are what I live for as a scientist. Questions from a different perspective at seminars and conferences can produce these insights. This is why diversity pays. This is also why senior scientists try to force younger scientists to ask questions. In a way, this blog is me asking for your help. Please share your perspective with me and ask questions at conferences and seminars!

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Faculty Life

Honing Resiliency: Reminders from a Recent Disappointment

Match Week, when graduating medical students learn whether they matched into a residency position in their specialty of choice and where they will spend the next 3-7 years of their lives, brings a roller coaster of emotions for students and their families. Seeing the ups and downs that students vulnerably shared on Twitter inspired me to share my own recent disappointments in a Twitter thread.

I ran for a chief resident position two months ago and lost.

To be honest, losing the election sucked. It felt like an invalidation of everything I’d been doing for my program and my co-residents even before starting residency. After some reflection, however, I remembered a couple of things.

First, I keep two documents on my computer:

  1. Failure CV: I took inspiration for this from Dr. Johannes Haushofer after a thread he wrote about his own CV of failures on Twitter. In this document, I record every opportunity that I was rejected from, ranging from college and medical school applications to scholarships and elected positions.
  2. Sunshine Folder: This is by no means a unique idea either and has popped up in various forms from multiple people, but I personally was inspired by a thoughtful essay written in JAMA by Dr. Adam Cifu. I save every award, scholarship, superlative, and positive evaluation I’ve received in this folder.

You might wonder, why not just keep a sunshine folder? Why write down the negatives? Well, my failure CV reminds me that failure is not final. I will (should!) experience rejection many, many times, but it doesn’t define me. And each rejection makes future successes that much sweeter. I read through my failure CV and my sunshine folder and came away proud that I went for something I wanted even though I didn’t get it. Only by going for the opportunities I wanted and facing that risk of failure was I able to achieve the successes written in my sunshine folder.

Second, in my sadness about not being elected chief resident, I’d forgotten to broaden my perspective. I still have many opportunities for leadership within and outside of my program. Not being chief means I’ll actually have time to pursue those opportunities. Plus, my colleagues who were elected are incredible, accomplished, and deserving people, too. I have no doubt that they will do an excellent job. My disappointment does not take away from their success and their amazingness.

Ultimately, I’ve come to peace with the fact that I lost this election, and I’m back to work serving my communities, training to be a better doctor and a better person, as I always have and always will.

I am grateful for the positive response to my original Twitter thread. I hope it serves as a reminder that failure is part of how we grow, and that every failure fuels the successes that follow.

More Resources

The Thrills and Perils of Living on the Edge – Anxiety Edition

Staying Mentally Well in Academia is a Balancing Act

What Makes You Unique?

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How to “Do it All” (By Not Doing it All)

Faculty Life

As an academic mom of three, I get asked all of the time how I “do it all”. Short answer: I don’t! Long answer: Check out these thoughts, tips and tricks I shared recently in a Twitter thread. 

1) Set boundaries and choose exceptions carefully: Because much of academic work is flexible, creating your own boundaries around when you will/won’t work is crucial. Seek to align boundaries with your core values. Some exceptions are okay – but be judicious and strategic.  And remember, it is okay for boundaries to change over time and in response to changing life circumstances.  For example, when I was a PhD student with very young kids, I did lots of work during off hours (naptime, nights, weekends) because full time daycare was not feasible financially for my family.  Now, in my current position, I keep a strict no nights/no weekends boundary around my work schedule to maximize that time with my growing family, and I work during the day while my kids are in school.  Boundaries are personal and should be set and maintained to maximize the work-life balance that feels best for you in your current circumstances.

2) Recognize that your “could-do” list is never-ending. Instead, create to-list that strikes a balance between “must-do” and “want to do”. Work to identify top priorities based on your position, career stage, long term goals, and personal values. Leave room for projects that bring you joy.  This will (almost) always mean walking away at the end of the day- and the end of the week- with many tasks and projects left undone.  The good (and the bad) news is, those tasks will still be there waiting for you when you head back into work.  Tip: Set aside time once a week to examine your to-do list, compare it your upcoming calendar, and create a plan for yourself for how and when you will tackle the must-do items on that list.  Block time on your calendar to tackle the tasks that need to get done – and don’t forget to save space for writing, thinking, and bigger picture thinking.

3) Avoid the comparison trap. Maintaining boundaries often means turning down opportunities that peers eagerly accept and/or progressing slower on research, writing or mentoring goals compared to others in different circumstances. That’s okay! Comparison is the thief of joy.  To avoid the comparison trap, I try to keep my core values top of mind. It’s true that sometimes I’m doing less than others, but (for the most part) I’m choosing that because I’m gaining more time with my kids or taking time for self-care (adequate sleep, exercise, etc). If I could do it all, I might choose that. But “doing it all” is a myth, not an actual option.

4) Some seasons are just hard. Be kind to yourself. Sick kids, ill parents, relationship challenges, global pandemics. Life presents challenges that no organizational tool or time hack can fix. Maintenance of boundaries and self-care routines becomes MORE important during those challenging seasons.  There are occasions to muscle through challenging circumstances (e.g, defending your dissertation the day after your kiddo was up all night with a fever), but there are also seasons of life during which to extend yourself grace and self-compassion, and to do a little less work, so you can sustain yourself, your health and your relationships over the long haul.

5) Acknowledge systemic barriers that make parenting in academia hard – seek opportunities to challenge biased assumptions, model alternative approaches, and promote culture shifts when possible; and give yourself permission step back from such efforts as needed for self-care.

This thread originally appeared on October 21, 2021.

Additional Resources

Honing Resiliency: Reminders from a Recent Disappointment

Tune Your When, How Much, and What in Your Days

How to Really Manage Your Time

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