Tag: stress

A clock with wings flying in the air, with another one in the background out of focus. The background is a blurry tan.

Where does the time go?

Sue Ishaq1 Comment

As we rapidly approach the end of both the fall semester and 2017, it’s a great time to  reflect about the year’s accomplishments (update your C.V.) and look forward to what 2018 will bring (panic about all the things you haven’t finished yet that need to be completed by the end of the year).

Time management is a reoccurring theme in academia, and with so many items on one’s to-do list, it’s not hard to see why.  Everyone has their own advice about how to be more effective; which was the very first meeting in this year’s Faculty Organizing for Success professional development workshop series, which I attended in October.  I compiled some of the suggestions made there, along with advice I’ve picked up over the years, and strategies I use which I’ve found to be effective.

One of the major questions that came up at the FOS meeting was time management in the face of academic duties, namely service.  Academics have a requirement to provide service or outreach to their university, the community, and their field, and as I’ve previously discussed, these amorphous responsibilities can be time-consuming and under-appreciated.  Sometimes, turning off your ringer, closing your email application, or saying “no” isn’t enough or isn’t possible.  So, how can you make the most of your time while navigating the constraints of a fractured schedule?

Lists

  1. I find lists to be extremely helpful in keeping track of everything I need to do, and it really helps me focus on what I need to get done TODAY.  
  2. Lists help me organize my thoughts
    1. by adding notes for each particular item
    2. and ordering the steps I need to take to finish each item.
  3. Being able to cross tasks off a physical list is also a great visual reminder that you are, in fact, being productive.  
  1.  And, at the end of the day, the remaining items form a new list, so I know where to begin tomorrow.  This saves me a lot of time which would otherwise be spent trying to remember where and how I left off.

Calendars

Don’t like lists?  I also heavily rely on my calendar and will schedule appointments for everything, especially the little things that I’m liable to forget, including catching up on emails, lunch, reading articles, writing posts, etc.  I utilize color-coding and multiple calendars within a calendar, like shared calendars from research labs or online applications.  I have learned to schedule small blocks of time after meetings, especially project development or brainstorming meetings, during which I can write notes, look up deadlines, send emails, or any other action items that came up during the meeting while it’s still fresh in my mind.  I even schedule appointments for my personal events, like hiking, movies, or buying cheese at the farmer’s market.  Having them in my calendar keeps me from scheduling work-related things into my personal time.  Academics, myself included, have a habit of working more than 40 hours a week: “Let me just send this email real quick” can easily transform into “Well, there went my Saturday”.

I’ve been known to schedule reminders months or a year in advance, perhaps to catch up with someone about a project, to have a certain portion of a project completed by a soft deadline, or look up a grant RFA that will be made available approximately three months from now.  Making good use of my calendar has been particularly important for tracking my time for reporting (or billing) purposes. BioBE and ESBL use the Intervals tracking program, and it’s much easier to report my time if I have a detailed account of it in my calendar.  Even better- it’s great for retrospective reports:

Screen Shot 2017-11-14 at 11.36.46 AM.png
The categorical break-down of how I have spent my time from June to November.

 

Screen Shot 2017-11-14 at 11.37.34 AM.png
That time has been used for a number of different projects.

Perhaps the best use of my calendar has been to schedule themed time-blocks spanning several hours, such as “catching up on projects” or “data analysis”, specifically on a shared or public calendar to prevent time fractionation.  These events are marked as tentative, so I can be scheduled during those times as needed, but I find that I get fewer requests for my time when I don’t have unclaimed space on the calendar.  And, I can focus on a specific project for several hours, which I prefer to a “30 min here, 60 min there” approach.  If possible, I also try to concatenate meetings, seminars, training and workshops, or other short but disruptive events.  One or two stand-alone events can be a nice way to break up the day, but too many can fracture my time into small blocks and make it very difficult to effectively perform the research portion of my work which is best accomplished when I can puzzle out problems at my own pace.  So, I categorize the day as “administrative”, “social media“, or “project management”, and spend the day taking care of all the other responsibilities I have that are tangential (but important) to my research.

Emails

Prioritizing my emails with flags is also really helpful, especially if you can color-code by importance.  I get dozens of emails every day, from six different email accounts, but I keep my inboxes to less than 10 items each, almost every day.  I spend a few minutes to prioritize them for later, I archive old emails into other folders for future reference, and I dedicate time to deal with my emails on a daily basis.  I also liberally use the “unsubscribe” link.  

Screen Shot 2017-11-14 at 1.17.49 PM.png
Actual screenshot from one of my inboxes.

Caution: Work Zone Ahead

SantaCruz-CuevaManos-P2210651b.jpg
Cueva de las Manos, Perito Moreno, Argentina.

Academics love to work outside the office- most often because the office is where everyone goes to find you for some reason.  Coffee shops, parks, airports, and homes are popular locations for “writing caves” (I’m writing this from home right now).  Being in a distraction-free, or distraction-specific (i.e. white noise of cafe chatter) location helps me focus on things without interruption.  When I’m analyzing data or writing up results, I have multiple computer application windows open and am collating information from multiple sources, so I need to focus or else I waste a lot of time trying to pick up where I left off after every interruption.

 

Screen Shot 2017-11-22 at 6.09.48 PM.png
Monty Python

When I’m stuck on something, sometimes I’ll take a walk- usually to go get coffee.  Ok, always to go get coffee.  Exercise stimulates blood flow and lattes are full of glucose, so it’s a perfect way for me to recharge.  Often, that change of pace is all I need to accomplish in 2 min what I was struggling to put together earlier.  My best ideas often coalesce while hiking or biking home, so I started taking pens and notepaper with me so I can write them down on the fly before I forget.

When possible, I also try not to force myself to work to continue working on specific things past the point where I can make progress on it (you know, for all those times I’m not up against a deadline- haha).  Of course, this flexibility in my schedule during business hours is a privilege that most people don’t enjoy.  It also takes a great deal of self-motivation to enforce, but it can be very effective for me.  Instead, I set that project aside and  focus on something else entirely.  Often, this leads to procrastinating work with other work, but it’s productive nonetheless.  But for me, it also leads to more effective work-life balance. Late afternoons are not a particularly productive time for me; it’s better if I leave early and go grocery shopping, and then work for a few hours in the evening or on Saturday mornings, when I can get an extremely productive hour or two in after I’ve had time to mull things over.  Having down time built into your day has been shown to improve productivity.

Conversely, when I get new data, start writing a new grant, or acquire a novel task, my interest and enthusiasm are high and I’m tempted to drop everything else to start working on it. Following that passion for a day or a week gives me a great start in which to outline what I’ll do for the next few weeks or months.  Then, as my enthusiasm ebbs, my thoughts wander, and other deadlines become more pressing, I can set it aside and pick that outline up later after I’ve thought it over.  Collectively, these strategies allow me to be productive without reallocating time that I would otherwise use for sleeping, and without racing against the clock to submit something.

Find a system you like and stick to it

Everyone uses different technology and productivity applications, and everyone has a different style of organization, so you may have to try different things to find a method you like.  But once you find something that works for you, stick with it.  Too often I see people abandon a time management strategy because they don’t have time to invest in adapting to it.  Maybe you have several hundred unread emails you don’t want to sort, maybe you are having syncing issues across multiple device operating systems, or maybe you keep forgetting to use your strategy because it hasn’t become habit.  I encourage you to devote time to becoming comfortable with some time management strategy, as I can personally attest that it will pay off later.

Featured Image.

The Interviewing Game

Sue IshaqLeave a comment

Interviewing for research positions is challenging, and when it’s for a job at a university, the process can be lengthy and the competition fierce.  Some jobs for which I applied reported receiving 60 to 160 applications for a single opening.  When it comes to highly coveted positions, like tenure-track faculty jobs, the slow reduction in research funding and ever-increasing pool of PhDs can result in up to 400 applications per opening.  One faculty member eloquently provided stats on their job search, which involved more than 100 applications over two years.  I applied to a mere 22 jobs over a period of seven months (just counting the 2016-2017 season), but the lengthy process generated plenty of questions from family and friends who were dismayed by the slow trickle of news.

The Search Committee

The job posting needs to be carefully crafted.  While most academic positions are looking for candidates with specific skills or research backgrounds, many faculty positions are open-ended so that a wide variety of candidates may apply.  Any required elements of the job, such as teaching specific courses, advising, or extension activities, are often explicitly stated in the posting.  Once funding for a job position and a post has been approved, the search officially opens.  A search committee is formed, which is comprised of several members of the department, and perhaps members of other, closely related departments at the university.  They may aid in the drafting of a job posting, but will be in charge of reviewing every application, selecting candidates for and performing preliminary and full interviews, following up on references, and making final recommendations.

The Application

Applications require a Curriculum Vitae, which lists your education and other professional training, all the positions you have held, professional memberships you belong to, certifications, awards, publications, public presentations, courses taught, career development activities, students you have mentored, and any other skills that might be relevant.  Some applications require official transcripts, and all require letters of reference.  These may need to be provided at the time of the application, or may be requested later by the committee when you have been added to the short-list of potential candidates.  Your letters of reference not only confirm the skills you have claimed in your application, but they provide a glimpse into what it is like to work with you, so it’s best to pick someone who knows you well.

The brunt of the academic application is several essays that detail your experience, philosophy, and vision for each aspect of the job in question.  Some universities limit these to one to three pages each, but others allow you the freedom of word count.  Typically, you must provide a Statement of Research and a Statement of Teaching, and some may request Statements of Mentoring, or Diversity.

The Statement of Research asks you to detail previous work, the skills you have acquired, and important contributions your research has made.  Here, you outline your experience in obtaining grants, or your plan to obtain them in the future, as well as describe the work you would like to perform at the university and the lab members you would like to bring in (undergraduates, graduates, technicians, postdocs).  Outlining your proposed research can be tricky,  as you want to add your expertise to the ongoing departmental research, but without being redundant or too novel.  That might seem counter-intuitive, but if a department doesn’t have the equipment or funding to support your research, or similar researchers that can provide a research support network, it may be difficult for you to perform your work there.

Similarly, the Statement of Teaching asks you to explain in detail your previous teaching experience, and your philosophy of how courses should be developed to improve student learning, incorporate current research or hands-on experience into the curriculum, and use technology to increase student engagement.  Here you can suggest courses that you would like to develop or take over teaching, based on your knowledge base, if the position involves teaching.

Additional Statements may be requested to provide specific information on your philosophy of mentoring students, especially your Statement of Diversity for training new graduate students, or recruiting minority students to science and providing career development opportunities to underrepresented demographics.  The cherry on top is the cover letter that summarizes why you want the job and why you are the best choice.

The Wait

Applications may be solicited for several weeks or months, and some accept applications on a rolling basis until the position is filled.  You will receive a notification, usually automatic, that your application has been received by the system, and perhaps another one to notify you that the review has begun.  Otherwise, you have little communication unless you are selected for the short-list or the position has been filled.  I have waited more than 6 months to hear back about an application before.

It’s time to meet our first three eligible candidates…

The short-list is a subset of applicants, several or several dozen perhaps, that the committee would like to have a phone or video interview with, typically lasting 15 to 60 minutes.  Depending on the number of applications received and when the job posting  closed in relation to the end of the semester, you may not hear about a preliminary interview until several months after you have applied.  Questions requiring detailed answers are often provided in advance, but otherwise, preliminary interview questions usually ask you to reiterate what you might have put in your application: why you want the job, whether you have experience working collaboratively, where you see yourself in five years, etc.  These questions may probe your interpersonal skills, such as whether have you managed others, or whether you have dealt with academic conflicts.  Having been through a number of tele-interviews, I can say that they are more difficult than they seem.  You have a brief time in which to make an impression, and it can be difficult to read a room which you can’t see.

Round 2

From the short-list, two to four candidates are selected for full, in-person interviews, which are scheduled as soon after the phone interviews as possible.  These are complicated to schedule, as they are one to two full days for which the candidate and most members of the department need to be available.  You are required to present a seminar of your research, both past and future.  Depending on the position, you may be required to present a teaching seminar as an example of your style, or perhaps a “chalk-talk” where the committee can ask you questions on potential grants or experimental designs.  You will also have one-on-one interviews with university faculty and staff that you may be working with, tours of the research facilities, and a chance to tour the university.  From experience, even when the interview goes perfectly, they are exhausting. For two days straight you are talking about yourself, your work, your ideas, other people’s work, and potential collaborations.  You are listening attentively, trying to give the best impression possible, and eating meals as quickly as possible while still talking about yourself and hoping you don’t have food stuck in your teeth.

Only once all the selected candidates have been interviewed will the search committee deliberate.  They solicit impressions and opinions from everyone you met- faculty, staff, graduate students, technicians, as well as from your professional references.  They will decide if a candidate is ineligible for an offer for any reason, and rank the eligible candidates.  They will then make recommendations to the department chair or administrator, who will decide whether to extend an offer.

Negotiations

When a job offer is first made, it is a non-binding offer.  Negotiations then take place until both parties are satisfied, and a written, contractual offer will be offered.  University positions have salary ranges by hiring level and experience, and a certain, somewhat unknown, amount of additional funding available for other benefits like relocation, computers, or basic research materials.  Tenure-track or other high-level research positions in the STEM fields typically come with start-up funds, which provide initial funding to buy equipment and lab materials, or fund lab personnel to get you started on pilot studies that can be leveraged for grant funding.

Screen Shot 2017-06-27 at 9.33.02 PM
http://www.glasbergen.com

This is the most delicate phase because this is your best chance to determine your salary, your title, and the specifics of your job requirements.  For example, you can use this opportunity to discuss when and how much you will be asked to teach, what your start date is, whether the department will reserve a teaching or research assistantship so that you may offer it to a new graduate student, and other non-specific benefits.  If you have multiple offers, you might ask one to meet the benefits proffered by another.  On the other hand, universities only have so much they can offer you, regardless of how much they like you.  Remember, you aren’t out to “win”, you are out to satisfactorily arrange a contract with the people you will soon be working with- both parties need to be pleased with the offer.  If an agreement can’t be reached, or if you accept a different offer, the second-ranked candidate will be offered the job, and so on.

Nothing is finalized until both parties have agreed to terms, a background check has been completed, and the contract is signed.  From application to contract, the process may take 6 to 12 months, and it may be a further several months before you officially begin, which is a long time to provide vague answers to eager questions from friends and family.  On top of that, most interviews are semi-confidential: you are not supposed to know who the other candidates are, so it is bad form to ask about them or for the department to discuss them with you, even after you have accepted the job.  And, most applicants keep their interviews quiet until they have a job offer.  For one thing, it’s not worth getting everyone’s hopes up for every application.  For another, you don’t want a prospective job to pass you over because it looks like you are going to accept another offer, as candidate searches are expensive to conduct and occasionally don’t lead to a hire (failed search).  There is also the potential for an uncomfortable situation to arise at your current job when they know you are leaving, although the pervasive search for job security and work-life balance in academia means most people sympathize with your search for the right job.

I choose… Candidate #3!

In the end, much of it comes down to luck: the right department needs to be looking for a candidate like you and have their hiring line approved, you need to find their posting, you need to craft an application that appeals to them while representing your interests and goals, and you have little to no idea who else might be applying.  Often jobs will be posted at an open hiring level to attract a wider variety of candidates, so you might be applying at the lower hiring end but are competing with people who have years more experience than you do.  And it’s important to remember that everyone in science has a large amount of technical training – we are all fantastic candidates and that makes it difficult to choose only one of us.

Since departments or fields don’t relist open positions predictably, most research job hunters will apply to jobs in their field to cover your bases, as well as several closely related fields (for me, it was animal science, microbiology, molecular genetics, microbiomes, bioinformatics, and any combination of those words); you are afraid to lose a whole year because you didn’t apply to enough postings.  This increases the applicant pool size, and provides departments with interesting research directions to take the potential hire in; sometimes you don’t know what kind of candidate you want until you meet them.  Moreover, you don’t really know if you will fit with a university, department, or research team until you have had some time to interact with them during the interview.  Really, applying for a job in academia is a lot like dating.  Some people go on many first date interviews, some on very few, in order to find the right match.  Either way, it’s fun to play the game, but to win you need to ‘make a start date’.

Featured Image modified from The Dating Game show logo.

If at first you don’t succeed… you’ve got the makings of a thesis.

Sue Ishaq1 Comment

In a recent post on The Rare Knowledgesphere, I mentioned that I when I tell people that I went to graduate school or explain what I do now, the replies can be overly modest or self-deprecating.  Sometimes, people tell me that they don’t feel smart enough to make it through grad school or to do what I do.  Graduate school or other professional schools aren’t for everyone, but there is a big difference between not wanting to go and not feeling good enough to go.  In my experience, people who think they can’t do it aren’t so much incapable as incapacitated by Imposter Syndrome.  In my 9 total years of acquiring higher education, plus 2 years and counting of post-doctoral training, I find that when it comes to academic success, academic achievement frequently takes a backseat to having the right personality.  In this post, I thought it would be helpful to describe some of those qualities that help set the most successful researchers apart.

Learning is a skill

Don’t get me wrong, you need to pass the graduate record examinations (GREs- general and subject) in order to be accepted, be able to understand the material once you are there, do well on exams, and maintain a certain grade point average (GPA).  While grades and exam performance can be good metrics for intelligence, there are a lot of circumstances that could preclude someone from doing well, thus they aren’t the only metrics.  Certainly you need a solid knowledge base in any subject in order to participate in it.  But I don’t usually get asked by people I pass on the sidewalk to explain how 20 different enzymes react instantaneously when you consume a meal in order to alter your metabolism to maintain homeostasis.  I am asked on a daily basis to assimilate new information, process it, and then apply it to my work.  Whether it is learning a new skill (like learning to perform a laboratory technique or how to analyze data I have not worked with before), whether it is evaluating a proposed experiment and looking for flaws in the experimental design, or whether it is reviewing someone’s manuscript for validity and publish-ability, I need to be able to learn new things efficiently.

Learning is a skill, just like wood-working or weight-lifting: you need to start small and practice regularly.  Learning a new skill, language, or activity challenges us.  Not only can it broaden our view of the world, but continuing to learn throughout your adult life can improve health and cognitive function: essentially, the more you learn the better you become at learning.  In addition to physically performing new tasks, reading is a great way to inform yourself while improving your reading comprehension skills, verbal IQ, and  critical thinking so that you can assess the accuracy of the information.  Scientific texts, even for those who are trained to read them, can be extremely difficult to fully comprehend.  Articles are full of very technical language, explain new concepts, and often rely on a certain amount of knowledge inherent to the field.  It’s tempting to read quickly, but in order to do this you efficiently it can help to be systematic and thorough.

study cards

You may not feel you are ready for graduate school, that you belong in grad school, or that you are ready to leave, but grad school isn’t the end point- it’s a learning experience to become a good researcher.  Even once you leave, you never stop learning.  Good graduate students don’t have to know everything, but they do need to know how to learn and how to search for answers.

Put on a happy face

You don’t need to love grad school, your work, or the process of research every second of every day, and you don’t need to pretend to, either.  It can be difficult, and like with any job, there are good days and bad days.  A hardy personality falls a close second to being able to learn new skills.  The road through graduate school is arduous and different for everyone, and it takes a tough person to make it out of the labyrinth of Academia.  Moreover, you are truly surrounded by your peers; everyone in graduate school has already maintained a high GPA, passed the GREs, gotten into grad school, etc.  You are probably never going to be the smartest or most accomplished person in the room again, certainly not for a long time.

You need to be able to take criticism, and not just the constructive kind: not everyone maintains polite professionalization and at some point, someone will bluntly tell you that you don’t belong in graduate school.  For me, this occurred about two years in, when I submitted my first manuscript.  A reviewer mistook my statement that a certain type of photosynthetic, water-based bacteria were present in the rumen of moose (who acquire them by drinking swamp water) for saying that those bacteria normally lived in the rumen of the moose, and commented that the latter was incorrect, that I did not know what I was doing, and that I did not belong in science.  To be sure, being able to deliver information in journal articles in an accurate manner is critical, and if a reviewer mistakes what you say in a manuscript, then you need to clarify your statements.  If a journal article is found to be unsuitable for publication, the reviewer can recommend it be rejected and offer commentary on how to improve re-submissions. However, it is widely accepted to be inappropriate and unprofessional to make personal comments in a review.  I was taken aback at how one misinterpreted sentence in a 5,000 word article could lead someone who had never met me to determine that I wasn’t suited for science.

In the end, I clarified that sentence, resubmitted, and the paper got accepted.  Four years later, that article has been viewed over 6,500 times and several other papers have come out identifying bacteria of that type living in the gastrointestinal tract of animals.  Research is a competitive field, and by its nature requires repetition and trouble-shooting.  You need to be able to fail on a daily basis and still find the enthusiasm to learn from the results and try it again tomorrow.

Two heads are better than one

Working well with others is extremely important in graduate school (and really any work environment).  In graduate school, other people can challenge you, help you reason through problems, identify holes in your logic, or add a perspective based on their personal experiences.  In science, you can never be an expert in everything, and to be able to really answer a research question you need to be able to look at it from different angles, methods, or fields.  Collaborations with other scientists allow you to bring a breadth of expertise and techniques to bear in projects, and can improve the quality of your research (1, 2, 3).

However, it can be difficult to wrangle so many researchers, especially when everyone is so busy and projects may span years.  Emotional intelligence, the ability to empathize, has been found to contribute to academic intelligence and can foster interpersonal relationships and collaborations.  When money, prestige, and ideas are on the line, the drive to be recognized for your work needs to be balanced with empathy in service to completing the experiments and disseminating the results.  At some point in academia, personal conflict will jeopardize a project.  As much as you have a right to recognition and reward for your hard work, you need to remember that other project members are due the same.  That being said, as a graduate student you don’t always feel in a position to negotiate and may feel pressured to minimize your contribution or the thanks to which you are due.  Settling on an order for authorship, or credit for contributions, is a conversation that needs to happen early, often throughout the project, and inclusively to acknowledge that you all worked hard for this.

Organization

Being able to juggle taking classes, teaching and grading, performing research, attending meetings, and all the other hundred things one must do in an academic day, takes a high degree of coordination.  Your calendar is your friend: schedule everything from meetings to reminders about tasks.  And using shared calendars really helps to schedule meetings or remind others.  There are plenty of apps that are specific to laboratory scheduling needs to help coordinate meetings or assign tasks across multiple parties.

30-rock-school-supplies-liz-lemon.jpg
30 Rock

Even more important these days is digital organization: whether it be your email or your hard drive.  You need to be able to confidently curate and store data or electronic materials so that you or someone else can find them, even years later.  You never know when you will need to resurrect an old project or check on a method you once used, and without a solid paper trail you may not be able to locate or understand your digital breadcrumbs.  Lab notebooks, protocols, data files, and knowledge need to be accessible to future members, and it is your responsibility to make them available and intelligible.  There is nothing more frustrating than finding an unlabelled box of samples in a freezer and being unable to identify their owner or contents.  While the Intellectual Property might be yours, if that research or your salary was paid by a university or governmental agency, you have a responsibility to make that information public at some point.

A high degree of organization can help you manage your time, keep track of your results, coordinate with others, and maintain a project schedule.

A spoonful of extra-curricular helps the biochemistry go down

Work-week expectations, course load, teaching load, research load, and financial compensation of graduate students vary by the nature of their appointment, by university policy, or even by department within a university.

Graduate Teaching Assistants are paid a stipend for providing undergraduate teaching and other miscellaneous help to the department (typically 20 hours per week), and may receive tuition compensation for the classes they take.  Depending on the nature of the program, they may do research as well in order to write a thesis (masters) or dissertation (doctorate), or not do any research for their degree (non-thesis major). Graduate Research Assistants (GRAs) are hired strictly to perform research (again, usually 20 hours per week), for which they receive a stipend and/or tuition compensation, and also take classes.  Most programs require GRAs to teach for one semester to gain the experience, and GRAs are almost exclusively performing research for a thesis/dissertation-based degree.  Regardless of the type of appointment, there are a certain number of classes and hours of research which must be logged before a degree may be obtained.  Between courses, teaching, and research, there is enormous pressure on graduate students to work more than 40 hours per week.

It might seem that immersing yourself in graduate school is the best way to be a good student.  Or, maybe you are overwhelmed by the amount of work you are being asked to accomplish and feel pressured to spend 12 – 18 hours a day at it just to meet deadlines. Firstly, you are not lab equipment and should not be treated as such.  As a student, as an employee, and as a person, you have rights in the workplace.  It’s worth looking into university policy to see exactly what it required of you.  Secondly, over-working yourself is a terrible way to be more productive, as I discussed in a previous post on work-life balance.  To summarize that post, over-working yourself negatively affects your health, your cognitive function, and the quality of your work.  On the other hand, taking regular breaks and vacation can help keep you focused and solve abstract problems.

In addition to helping you manage stress, having an active life outside of your program helps give you other experiences from which you can draw upon to aid your graduate work. For example, I worked for several years at a small-animal veterinary hospital before going to graduate school, at which I trained employees and had extensive interactions with customers.  There, I gained the skills to manage others, simplify technical information, be very specific in my instructions, or maintain a professional demeanor in the face of emotional or chaotic events.  My interests in painting and photography have improved the quality and presentation of graphical results, or visually document my experiments.

Learn to Type

Seriously.  I spend most of my time at a computer: reading, writing, cut/pasting.  If you can type as quickly as you can gather your thoughts,you’ll find that you are much more productive.

phd022410s.gif

Imposter Syndrome

Sue IshaqLeave a comment

There’s been a lot of attention paid online lately to “Imposter Syndrome”. It’s that sneaking doubt that makes you feel like you don’t belong somewhere because you aren’t qualified, and eventually someone will realize the mistake and fire you.  In short: that you are an Imposter.  It’s extremely common among graduate students and young faculty.  In fact, I haven’t met a graduate student that didn’t doubt themselves and whether they deserved their place in a research program at some point in their studies.  Most studies on this phenomenon have been relatively small and in specific populations of people, thus estimates of affected individuals range from 40 to 70%, at some point in one’s life.

cat-imposterFrom my experience, in academia, Imposter Syndrome stems from feeling overwhelmed by the amount of information that you need to learn, or the amount that you need to accomplish.  The interdisciplinary approach to graduate studies has increased the number of scientific fields you now need to be familiar with, and compounds the amount of material that you have to memorize.  This seems to leave many students feeling inadequate and dumb, because they are unable to perfectly recall every fact they learned in two or three years worth of graduate courses.  For post-doctoral researchers and assistant professors, your To-Do list only grows longer by the day, as the reduction in federal funding increases the competition for fewer and fewer job postings and more pressure to distinguish yourself.  These tasks seem insurmountable, and that you simply aren’t up to them.  You start to doubt your abilities, and think that there has been some mistake.  You think, someone will realize how dumb I am, and that I don’t deserve to be here.

At best, Imposter Syndrome makes you nervous, at worst, it can lead to a lot of work-place stress and low self esteem.  It can also prevent you from taking risks in your research, or being ambitious in the positions you apply for, or make you feel guilty about taking time off when you feel that you should be using the time for career development.

 

screen-shot-2016-10-13-at-3-03-33-pm

Imposter Syndrome, or more clinically, Imposter Phenomenon, has been studied for several decades, and is reviewed thoroughly here.  Originally it was thought to be a symptom found only in professional women who weren’t emotionally strong enough to deal with the stress of the workplace.  Later, after it was described by Dr. Pauline Clance in 1985, and observed in many different careers and both genders, we came to understand that this sexist stereotype was in fact common to high-achievers, “perfectionists”, and those with anxiety and the motivation to succeed.

Correlations have also been found between feeling like an imposter and low or conflicting family member support, low self-esteem or general self-doubt, neurotic behaviors, or when there are negative consequences to achieving success.  For example, if a person is ostracized by friends or family for working hard, studying, getting an education, or generally wanting a “better life” than the cohort has.   This can also occur when there is jealousy or competition between coworkers, where a promotion or other success would alienate you.

Own your success

goddess.jpg

When graduate students express feelings of self-doubt to me, I remind them that they already got into grad school.  Their graduate program was satisfied by their application, their PI or advisor chose them for their accomplishments.  I remind them that in academia, you can’t compare yourself to anyone else.  Everyone has come from different backgrounds, has different work experience, took different classes, read different papers, and has different research and career goals.  Maybe you got PhD but you don’t want to do research, only teach.  Maybe you only want to do research.  Maybe you want to publish ten papers a year, or maybe you only want to publish once a year because that is more consistent with the pace of your research and the type of work that you do.  Maybe you have more post-docs who work on complicated questions, or maybe you have undergraduates and your projects are smaller.  Some research fields (especially literal fields) can’t be rushed, and it’s unrealistic to expect prolific publications from everyone.  Cognitive behavior therapy guidelines for dealing with Imposter Syndrome recommend distancing yourself from the need for validation from others, to improve your self-awareness about your own abilities and needs, and to lessen the feeling that you need to hide the real you.

There is no litmus test for whether you are a “good graduate student”, or a “successful researcher”, except for your own demanding self-assessment.  All you can do is try to set realistic goals for yourself.  And not vague, large ones, such as “I want to publish 5 papers this year”.  Be more specific, and more short-term: “This week, I want to finish the Methods section of this paper, and hopefully have a working draft of this manuscript by the end of the month”.  I also find it helpful to keep a written record of what I’ve done.  Maybe keep a running To-Do list, and at the end of the week, month, or year, look back and see all of the things you have crossed off.  This is most helpful to me when I find that projects are getting delayed, or analyses need to be redone, or I generally feel like I am spinning my wheels.  Or, when I write a number of grants but some of them don’t even get submitted.  I still did all that work, but if I don’t have that item crossed off my list, I don’t have a visual reminder that I accomplished something.

And keeping a tally of everything you’ve done- not just the things that get published, can help you prove your worth and your effort when it comes time for job assessment.  Whether it’s a weekly meeting with your PI where you need to account for how you’ve spent your time, an annual performance review, or the tenure process.  If you have a written record of all the things you have done, all the little things that you spent your time on, you have proof that you have been productive.  Remember that success and failure are often out of your hands- especially in research.  Sometimes all you can do is try your best and hope that your fairy grant-mother rates your proposal wish as “outstanding”.

cinderella.jpg
Cinderella, 1950

Work-life balance: the unicorn that is the 40 hour academic work week

Sue Ishaq1 Comment

In the first installment of the work-life balance discussion, I discussed the different levels of employment for university faculty and gave general information on the different functions they performed on a daily basis.  I also talked about how many of them work longer than 40 hours a week, including nights and weekends, and may even work summers without compensation.  For example, in a 1994 report, the American Association of University Professors reported that professors worked 48-52 hours per week, and this had increased to  53 hours by 2005.  Other sources over the past five years have reported more: 57 hours per week at a Canadian research institution, 50-60 hours per week in the UK.  But like with anything, work quantity does not equate to quality.

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy

For one thing, working long hours without sufficient weekly time off, or vacations, can significantly increase stress.  And this stress can lead to all sorts of different mental and physical problems.  Working long hours can interfere with our normal circadian rhythm– it can disrupt our sleep cycles, throw off our eating times and appetite, and make it difficult to exercise regularly.  Longer hours have been directly correlated with incidence of hypertension and other cardiovascular problems (also reviewed here).

Moreover, long work hours and work stress can negatively impact mental health (1, 2, 3, 4), and increase the use of legal and illegal substances (reviewed here).  A study of work hours on over 330,000 participants in 61 countries found that working more than 48 hours a week was associated with heavy drinking in both men and women.  Stress, lack of sleep, and a subsequent difficulty paying attention can also increase the frequency of injury at work, and this injury rate directly relates to the increase in hours.  Jobs with overtime hours have been associated with as much as 61% more work-related injuries than those without.  In fact, there is so much research on stress, health, and occupation, that there are numerous journals solely dedicated to reporting on those findings: The International Journal of Stress Management, Occupational and Environmental Medicine, The Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, just to name a few.

 

Having a life makes us better employees

But for all that personal sacrifice, mounting evidence shows that a reduction in work hours is what promotes productivity, not a 24-hour work day.  Reducing weekly hours increased productivity as employees were less likely to be absent from work due to poor health (reviewed here).  Taking scheduled breaks instead of skipping them was also responsible for improving cognitive function in students.  Even brief diversions were shown to improve focus and cognitive function. Besides giving us a rest from our current task, or engaging our attention with something novel, taking a break allows us to daydream.  While this may seem like a waste of time, letting our minds wander activates different parts of our brain- including those involved in problem solving and creative thinking.  If you’ve ever come up with a brilliant solution while doing mundane tasks, then you’ve experienced this.  For my part, I tend to think of great ideas when I’m washing dishes or biking home.  Daydreaming, or taking a break, also helps release dopamine, a chemical neurotransmitter involved in movement, emotions, motivation, and rewards.  It’s very helpful in the creative process, as explained in a discussion of creativity in the shower.  Restful thinking also seems to be involved with promoting divergent thinking, emotional connectivity, and reading comprehension.

Going on regular annual vacations was correlated with a lower risk for coronary heart disease: not only are vacations great for reducing stress, but they also provide opportunities for more exercise, mental downtime, and creative outlets.  Mandatory time-off during nights and weekends for consultants resulted in a reported increase job performance, mental health, and attitude, though many said it was a struggle to enforce “time outs” from work in the beginning because they felt guilty about not working during their personal time.  This was seen again in a study of Staples managers who did not take scheduled breaks out of guilt.

It’s this persistent feeling that you should be working at home, and that you could be doing more, which is largely reported by “driven” employees and workaholics.  This feeling has lately been coined “tele-pressure“.  It’s particularly invasive these days as you have access to work emails and other communications via smart phones, laptops, or tablets.  In fact, by syncing many of these devices, your attention is compelled by multiple simultaneous electronic signals and vibrations whenever someone contacts you.  It’s no wonder we can’t shut off at the end of the day. (And for the record, I wrote this on a Sunday evening.)

More important than knowing that taking regular breaks and vacations will help manage your stress and improve your productivity, is remembering that you are entitled to it.  We have labor laws for a reason, and you are entitled to your nights, weekends, and your X number of weeks a year.  You are entitled to stay home when you are sick, or whenever you feel like it.  It’s your personal time, take it.

So, if you’re in academia, what do you do to unwind?  Leave me some comments!

 

Photo courtesy of Lee Warren.