A year ago today, I submitted my doctoral dissertation to my committee: 315 pages, 10 chapters, 73,009 words, 376 total citations (202 of which in the literature review). It was the culmination of almost 5 years of research, over two months of writing, and the entire Buffy the Vampire series in reruns. It seems fitting that the last two months of this year I have been equally busy writing a handful of grants, though without the help of old TV scifi dramas.
Author: sueishaqlab
I'm an assistant professor of animal and veterinary studies at the University of Maine, Orono, studying how animals get their microbes. I am also the Founder and Lead of the Microbes and Social Equity working group.
Not in my backyard!
Today I spent a few hours picking trash out of some steams bordering my housing development. It’s very windy on the plains of Montana, and wind storms contribute to pollution by spreading trash. These steams are home to ducks, fish, musk rats, snakes, and frogs, and they link to larger water systems which run through local farms and provide water to cattle. Since the water table isn’t very deep here, any pollution can have far reaching effects. In just two and a half hours, I managed to pull all this out using only a ski pole, proving that one person can make a difference. As an environmental scientist, it’s important to me to give back. Next time you’re looking for something to do, why not try some green up?
Where’d the spark go? When it’s time to break up with your graduate program.
Remember when you first met your graduate program? You got that little thrill whenever they emailed you. You started measuring the graduate student office for new drapes. You just wanted to spend all your time in the lab, and couldn’t be happier doing so. As time went on, you learned a lot about your field and about yourself. You grew as a person and became more confident in your work. Eventually, the relationship started to stagnate: you got tired of working on the same old projects, ran out of interesting classes to try, you felt like it was never going to get the next level and, well, you got bored. It happens to everyone, and it’s important to recognize the signs (1), before the relationship becomes negative.
I have seen it before. Graduate students have trouble finishing up projects and getting manuscripts published, their PIs change the subject when the time comes to set a defense date, they feel like a perpetual student, until they become frustrated at the creeping feeling of no control over their life or the pace of their career. And eventually, many of them reflect this frustration outwardly by complaining about their PI, their department, their university. This is detrimental to yourself and to the quality of your work (2) (3), to the other students around you who still have several years of graduate work to look forward to, and to prospective students (4).
And more than that, it doesn’t help you to find your next position, because you find yourself complaining to people that you probably shouldn’t open up to: people you meet at a conference, a candidate interviewing in your current department, the interviewer for your prospective job. No one likes to hear someone rag on their old boss if they might one day be the boss you are badmouthing on social media. Nor they do they want a team member who is going to bring down the tone for the whole group.
When you are ready to move on in your career, you know, and you need to take responsibility and control of your trajectory to make it happen. Set a timeline and stick to it, sit your PI down and set a defense date, curate your CV and start applying for jobs. Not just the two jobs that you really, really want, but any job that you think you might be interested in. The post-doctoral job market is small, and it’s difficult to find a position. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket, as you may find yourself stuck in that particular graduate program if you’re not able to find a new position. The process will hone your skills as well, especially if you can get an interview. Use each opportunity, and if you don’t get the job, politely ask the interviewer how you could make yourself more competitive, or if there was an aspect of your work that was underwhelming or poorly explained.
The point is, don’t wait until you are sick of being a graduate student and can’t wait to get out, keep an eye out for your next move and be proactive about it. So put away those free t-shirts you got from vendors, get yourself some new business attire, get your CV in shape, and you’ll be surprised at how many interviewers ask for your number.
Here is another relevant and entertaining blog post on the subject.
Grant Season 2016
For the last few months (and for at least two more) I’ve been hard at work writing several large grants for future projects: one looking at plant species’ interactions with soil microbes, one on the microbiome of women on hormonal contraceptives, one on grazing systems in sheep, and a few more that are under conceptual development. It’s intensive work, that requires a lot of time reading journal articles to formulate an argument for your proposed work, while making sure you are proposing something new and aren’t just repeating previous research. To top it all off, you have to do it within a certain page limit.
Grant season typically lasts from late November to early April: it’s when many agencies in the US put out general or topic-specific calls for funding. Each agency (ex. USDA, NIH, DOE, etc.) has it’s own requirements for formatting, the information that gets included, who can apply, etc. They are very picky, too; sometimes proposals will be sent back for having more than the requisite maximum of citations on your CV– without the agency having read your proposal at all. Many will also turn away proposals that they feel are not aligned with the goals of that agency or that funding call, even if they like your submission.
Despite the long hours and the nit-picky attention to detail required, I’ve enjoyed being able to hone my grant writing skills, to learn about different research topics, and to be part of so many exciting projects over the new few years. Most of these will be submitted in March, and we probably won’t hear back until mid-summer- fingers crossed!
The Reluctant Interplay of Science and Social Media
Recently, I had another in a long series of conversations with scientists about how they got into science so that they wouldn’t have to use any of their rusty social skills, only to find that social interaction, meetings, and now online communication were a huge part of their daily routine. The myth of the curmudgeon scientist holed up their lab seems to persist despite the current age of social media, perhaps because we scientists don’t seem to understand the appeal of Twitter (how do you include the p-value when you only have 140 characters?!). But in reality, a great deal of our time involves communication, and having practiced social etiquette can make or break you in an interview, at a conference, or at a project pitch meeting.
Many researchers wait until they are hired as assistant professors before they reluctantly make a website, start a blog, or even set up an email account for the lab. How disappointing it must be to wait all those years as a graduate student and a post-doctoral researcher, only to find that a website with your last name has already been taken! And what a hassle to have to generate blog posts, update project and personnel pages, and keep up with social media when you have just landed a professorship and are swamped with grant proposals, manuscripts from old projects that keep hanging around, comparison shopping for equipment to set your lab up, generating coursework for one or several courses, recruiting students…. It’s such a hassle that a friend of mine created an entire business around helping new professors create and manage an online presence: Tenure Chasers.
It really got me thinking, shouldn’t I be starting this? It’s a little preemptive, after all, I’m a post-doctoral researcher without a lab of my own. But it makes sense to start it now; for one thing, I have the time to devote to creating the mainframe. For another, as a new researcher, I sometimes need to prove that I exist. It seems like a silly thing to think about, but sometimes you need to prove that you are, in fact, a real researcher will real work experience and not just an email scam targeting disused academic email servers (happens quite often). And hiring someone is a serious consideration, as research funds are limited, indirect costs for personnel make total personnel costs high, you are trusting this person with your research and your career reputation, and you may need to work with this person for several to many years. It’s a commitment to hire a scientist, and you need to be sure about them. Thus, having at least one thorough online profile, or better yet- connections to other well-known researchers, can give employers more confidence in you.
Finally, having an online presence improves your communication skills, and shows a commitment to outreach, which is a component in any career level of academia. It helps to get your work out to other scientists, especially those outside your field whom you wouldn’t run into at a conference or seminar, and more importantly, it disseminates it to the general public. Graduate school and post-doctoral positions are designed to teach and refine skills, and the skill of communication is no different. So don’t wait until you really need it, start early and improve the quality of your social media presence, before anyone is paying attention.
2016 New Year’s Resolution
It’s 2016 and already it seems like the year is flying by. Between grant writing, manuscript writing, data analysis, and the thousand other little things you find yourself doing, it can be difficult to find time for outreach. As such, my 2016 New Year’s Resolution as a researcher is to solidify my online footprint to better disseminate my work. This site seeks to manage citations, connect all those online professional site profiles, give updates on my day-to-day, and to provide insight into the microbial communities that I investigate.
The Ishaq Lab 