2015 – Page 4 – In Baby Attach Mode

What the nature series on post-docs forgets to mention

babyattachmode April 9, 2015 Academia / advice / Decisions / life in the lab / mentoring / new job / postdoc / publishing papers / science / women in science / work-life balance

Naturejobs has a whole series about post-docs which is quite interesting. Today’s post is about finding the right lab and PI.

“If you chose the wrong lab, a lab that isn’t publishing heavily or is not pushing you, you’re not going to be able to get the papers you need to get into that lectureship or fellowship position that you’re looking for.”

They list a bunch of important things to consider and most of them have to do with strategically planning your career as a post-doc. What they forget to mention is that it is very helpful when your PI is flexible and open to change. As a post-doc, you can change from someone who is single and in the lab 80 hrs a week to someone with a family who needs to leave at 5 to pick up their kid. Or you can change from someone who wants to become tenure track faculty at a fancy-named university to someone who would rather pursue a career as a science writer. Then, it is no longer the most important thing to that your PI is an important scientist who cranks out high impact factor papers, but it is nice if she is supportive of your choices. (luckily the nature piece acknowledges this in their last paragraph, that loving what you do is very important too). But when looking for a post-doc position, knowing that I would maybe want to have a baby in the time I was there, that was the hardest thing: figuring out if a PI would be supportive. I’ve seen instances where the support of a PI greatly diminished when post-docs started their family or looked for jobs outside academia and it doesn’t seem like something to bring up at your interview. So, how do you find out if that supportive mentor is willing to support you through periods of change from the initial plan?

And then just before posting this I saw this post from the new PI about the questions to ask when interviewing for a post-doc position.

Review karma

babyattachmode April 3, 2015 Academia / Decisions / publishing papers / science

When reviewing somebody else’s paper for a journal, I found myself thinking:”hey, my paper just got rejected with a similar response to the reviewers! Perhaps I should reject this paper too!”. Or I could think:”I want to submit a manuscript soon and would wish the reviewers would go easy on me, so I will accept this paper too.”

How do you use your review-karma?

The things that helped me move outside academia.

babyattachmode March 31, 2015 Academia / advice / industry / life in the office / networking / new job / postdoc

When you’re in academia, as a grad student or a post-doc (or probably even as a PI, but I wouldn’t know that), it is sometimes hard to envision what things you can do outside academia. When looking for a post-doc, it’s pretty easy to look up other academic labs, see who works there, see what papers they have, etc. Most labs have websites that nicely list what they work on. Companies on the other hand, rarely have websites like that. Sure, they have slick looking websites saying what they make or do, but it’s usually impossible to see who works there and what their jobs entail. So then how do you figure out if you could work there and in what kind of job? Here are a couple things that helped me find my job outside academia*:

– Be among others looking for jobs: often, looking for a job outside academia can feel lonely: you cannot always tell your PI about it, and it may feel like you’re the first and only one doing it. A couple years into my post-doc, my PI decided to leave academia. This meant for many people in the lab that they would be without a job within a limited amount of time. After the initial panic had faded, the lab turned into a little factory of people looking for jobs: people checked each other’s CVs and resumes, talked about what kind of jobs would be an option and talked about how to get informational interviews and actual interviews. At that time, I wasn’t actively looking for a job outside academia, I still had some time on my PIs grant, and I was planning to do another post-doc in the homecountry after that. But I listened to what everyone said, and most importantly: all of a sudden finding a job outside academia was a thing that around me did. If you’re not in a lab that is disintegrating, find these people elsewhere: on twitter for example, or at events aimed at finding jobs outside academia.

– Find examples of jobs on LinkedIn: as I said above, it is often hard to see from the outside what kind of jobs you can do. Or the other way around: what does it mean when somebody is “Regulatory affairs manager”? On LinkedIn, it can be helpful to look up companies you want to work for, and then see what the job titles are that people have in that company. Google what they mean and then figure out what you need to do to become that.

– Informational interviews: when you have identified jobs you might want, find out if you have somebody in your network who has that job – or works for a company where you’d see yourself working. Approach them and ask for an informational interview. This may sound easier said than done, but in my experience people are usually very willing to explain to you what they do and how they got there.

– Ask for help with your CV/resume: here, I was very privileged in that a family-member worked for a company in the same field as the one I was applying to, and in that way, they were very skilled in helping me perfect my CV. In addition, a couple tweeps were very helpful in improving my CV.

– Just start somewhere: probably the best advice I read on twitter is that the next job doesn’t have to be THE job: once you’re somewhere, new opportunities and paths will follow.

*This list is in no way meant to be exhaustive, it is my limited experience in finding a job in industry. For much more advice, Biochem Belle is curating a list with all sorts of advice on finding a job outside academia.

How my personality test tells me to be on twitter

babyattachmode March 29, 2015 life in the office / new job / personality

A while ago I wrote about personality differences, and recently I had the training where we discovered our personal profile. Apparently, I am pretty extravert, and also competitive, enthusiastic, determined and strong-willed. But, the best sentence in my personal profile came from the page describing my blind spots: “This person would much rather engage in quick intellectual banter than complete some mundane task…” Seems like a perfect description of procrastinating on twitter!

On working for a company

babyattachmode March 22, 2015 cultural differences / industry / life in the office / new job

Via Nicoleandmaggie I came across this post about whether to work for a large company or not:

This is what I imagine working for a big corporation feels like:

You’re somewhere in the belly of a huge ocean cruiser, making sure that some aspect of the engines run smoothly, but you do not see where the cruiser is going, why it is going where it goes, and you are not sure whether it might currently be in the process of running over a small fishing boat or polluting the sea with oil. But at least someone is paying the cruiser for what it does. You feel some loyalty to the rest of the huge crew in the cruiser and you know that they all depend on the engines working well, maybe you also feel loyalty to the passengers who are paying your salary, but the captain and his plans are extremely far away from you, and you suspect the captain may be evil, you don’t know, you will certainly never meet him except when you see him in the news.

But you are surrounded by a nice team of specialists working on the engines with you. You have fun together and you can use your talents and capacities really well. Your direct boss is likable and praises you for your effort. You earn good money and you can live a life in safety.

Is that good enough?

*Spoiler alert*: this post is a couple weeks old and the last comment says that they did decide to join the large company.

I really like the analogy of being somewhere in the belly of a large ship, not being able to see or influence where the ship goes. For now – with small kids who still sleep-deprive me more often than not and a husband working towards getting some stability in academia – I like being in this safe big ship. I like the people in my ship and the ship often sends inspirational videos of what happens out on the sea to inspire the people working in the ship. But it’s a BIG change from academia where I felt much more like I could decide what to do and what to work on (which of course if you think about it is only true if the PI and/or funding agency allows you to work on it…). Now, I have to think about what my targets are, and which of those has the highest priority. And when I want to know exactly how something works scientifically speaking, the answer is that if it’s not in the interest of the big ship, it’s not something that I should be working on.

“Women are just not that interested in a career in academia”

babyattachmode March 10, 2015 Academia / cultural differences / Decisions / industry / life in the lab / life in the office / role models / science / women in science

I keep hearing people say this over and over and I am never sure how to respond to this. I usually ask if people who say this have data to support their statements, which they usually don’t. But in yesterday’s diversity journal club on twitter, the following paper was brought into the discussion: “What’s the purpose of a scientific career?” in which Kenneth Gibbs makes the point that women and underrepresented minorities tend to choose their career based on slightly different motives:

This and other work shows that women and URM scientists on average “choose differently.” Their choices are made “outside of ability, outside of competence”—but in keeping with expressed desires to pursue social justice, community involvement, and altruism, he says. In contrast, men from well-represented groups more often seek academic research careers that incorporate the value of “scientific freedom, the ability to research what you want on your own terms.”

For scientists with strong social concerns, scientific and social motivations are “intertwined,” Gibbs says.

This really resonates with me, because when people ask if I’m happy in my new job, I usually answer that what makes me most happy at the moment is that it is less personal. My job now is not about my ideas and my papers and my rejections anymore. It is about what I contribute to the team, and in the end: what we as a team make for the people that buy the things that our company makes. And while it makes me a little sad that the victories are not mine alone anymore, it makes me very happy and relieved that the rejections are not mine alone either. And maybe this feels different when you are the PI of a lab and you have a team of your own, but the difference between being a lonely post-doc in a competitive environment versus a team player feels like a huge difference to me.

On changing academic science

babyattachmode March 6, 2015 Academia / cultural differences / grant writing / postdoc / science

First, go read the long discussion happening over at drugmonkey about how the current funding situation affects early career scientists and current grad students and post-docs the most. Then come back here 🙂

In my homecountry, the funding situation is not that different. Less money goes to universities and the money that is there is divided through research grants that are harder and harder to get. At the same time, the EU is funding huge training projects for which 10-15 PhDs who are supposed to finish in 3 years and then those 10-15 PhDs with roughly the same experience and expertise flood the job market around the same time. Has anyone thought about the implications that might have for them?

At the same time, a couple people in my homecountry have started an initiative called “Science in transition“. You would think that one of the things they address is this: how to make sure the people that are trained can get jobs and how to make sure established scientists get funded. Perhaps if you put together a collective of white, middle-aged men, it is no surprise they don’t think about this…

Repost: To a conference in baby-attachmode

babyattachmode February 25, 2015 Academia / attachment parenting / breastfeeding / meeting / networking / parenting / postdoc / science / women in science

Yesterday, Potnia Theron wrote about why it is so important to go to meetings to hear new ideas and stay creative. In response, Christina Pikas wrote how incredibly difficult and expensive this is when you have children. I couldn’t agree more after not having gone to meetings (other than our local neuroscience meeting) in the past two years because of being pregnant and having small children. There’s only so many options: take your kid(s) to a meeting means either bringing enough support so that you can still go to social events in the evenings (which is expensive), or not going to social events which takes away most of the usefulness of going to a meeting, or being able to leave your kid(s) at home, which has its own challenges (ask my husband about not sleeping for a couple nights the first time I left without 15 month old BlueEyes to go ta a conference…). That’s why I thought it would be fitting to repost my second blog post ever, about going to a conference with a small baby:

Last year’s society for Neuroscience meeting was right when I went back to work after my maternity leave. And since I had patched a whole bunch of cells while very pregnant, I even had something to present there. The meeting was right around the corner from where I live, which is why I decided that even though BlueEyes was only 4 months old, the whole family was going to the meeting (and in this case, with meeting I mean the actual science-part, and not so much the social and drinking part). So on Saturday and Sunday I put BlueEyes in a baby wrap (Girasol Chococabana for those of you interested), and walked around the conference.

SfN turned out to be very baby-friendly, since they even had a specific room for infant care, where you could nurse and change your baby. The only disadvantage was that this was kind of far away from the poster hall, so after I had checked out a poster or two I had to walk back there to nurse a hungry baby or change a diaper. Oh well, most people walk around the poster hall to meet people they know instead of actually look at the posters anyway, right? A major unexpected disadvantage was that when you show up at someone’s poster with a baby attached to you, they automatically assume that you’ve come to show your cute baby instead of ask a serious science question. So not much science talk for me that weekend…

On Monday BlueEyes went to his usual daycare, and I traded the baby-in-wrap for my breast pump. This was potentially even bulkier and certainly more annoying to drag around all day. The same sort of thing as before happened where I would check out a bunch of posters (at least now I got to ask science-questions and have people answer them), and then have to walk back to the infant care room to pump milk. And after I presented my own poster I realized that whoever thought of four hour poster sessions had probably never lactated him- or herself….

A last thing to note is that the night after we took BlueEyes to SfN, he had his longest night sleep so far (a 6 hour stretch of sleep!). And mind you, this was in November… So I guess nothing puts our baby to sleep like a couple 1000 neuroscience posters!

When do fresh eyes expire?

babyattachmode February 23, 2015 Academia / industry / life in the lab / life in the office / moving / networking / science

Both in- and outside academia it seems a good thing to move around. A good thing job-wise, but not necessarily personal life-wise because it means having to transport yourself and your family all over the place for a next job. The #academicnomad hashtag exemplifies many of these struggles in academia, but similarly, when I interviewed for my current job one of the first things they said was that moving within the company was deemed important*.

So why is moving around a good thing? I can really only talk about around as an academic because I’ve only been in industry for a couple months now. In academia, I think it is mostly a good thing because it gives you fresh eyes. It gives you a different perspective and teaches you new ways to approach a problem. For example, in grad school most of the labs in my university focussed on synapses – the connections between two neurons – and how those were affected in different diseases. Many of the projects had a similar layout, which basically came down to: study synapses and their content in relation to a particular question or disease model. When I moved to do my post-doc all of a sudden people weren’t talking about synapses but about circuits of neurons. Kind of the same thing but in practice a very different approach. And then I haven’t even talked about how the perspective on grant writing and paper writing was different in the different places. And now that I’ve moved to industry I also bring a set of fresh eyes to most of the projects I work on.

But to come back to the question in the title of this post: when do these fresh eyes expire, how do you notice they have expired and how do you keep them fresh? I guess it’s difficult to realize that you’ve been somewhere so long that you don’t realize you do the same trick every time. So how do you prevent this? How can you stay creative if you don’t move to a new place every so many years? Some of the things I can think of are to move around on a smaller scale: collaborate outside your own department, go to meetings you normally don’t go to, etc. What about you, how do you make sure your eyes stay fresh?

*this of course does mean you have a stable job, and when having to move abroad the company handles things for you. Which is of course MUCH different than doing an eleventh post-doc in a far-away country.

Some mansplaining about #womeninscience

babyattachmode February 9, 2015 Uncategorized

In my homecountry, only 16% of the full professors are female. Not surprisingly, the government’s vision on science for the coming years came accompanied by an inspirational picture containing 100% male scientists. Sigh.
This Saturday I read in the paper that Hans Clevers, the president of the Dutch academy of science knows why this is:”When it comes to becoming a group leader, women step back”. He continues to explain:”Mothers are still seen as selfish when they need to work full-time”. Well, thanks a lot for mansplaining that, and for not doing a damn thing to change any of this.