Ever on & on

Last time on Ever On & On, biochembelle sensed a disturbance in the force, the hints of a squirrelly feeling about the plan to pursue a faculty gig. Now the continuation…

It took some time for me to realize that something wasn’t quite clicking. There was a sense of unease that I gradually began to acknowledge. As I took care of other things in my life, space began to clear in my head. I started to grasp that, for quite a while, I’d been pushing down this path without stopping to reassess whether it’s what I still wanted. At last, I accepted the possibility that I might want something else – or not, but I knew that I needed to take a look.

But how?

At first, I just expressed the “doubt” to a couple of people I trusted deeply. People I was almost certain would listen. Who might reflect what they were hearing back to me. Who might ask questions, but thoughtfully. Whose responses would be measured – never aggressive nor judgmental.

There was the occasional cryptic post or tweet I suppose, a number of musings about change, which were really quite applicable to a number of things in (my) live. But I was quite selective about sharing specific things. My partner, a friend (outside academia), my therapist.

Even then, it was still nerve wracking. What if they told me I was being ridiculous? Would they look at me differently? Would they see me giving up? What if it went the other way? What if they thought I wasn’t cut out for the academic life?

I needed space to make this decision on my own, but I needed to give form to the ideas by putting them into words. So I had to entrust my thoughts with those who would be responsive without trying to really influence my choice.

As these murmurings carried forward, an obvious question rattled about. If not the faculty track, then what? I hadn’t abandoned the academic route at this point, but I needed something less abstract than “everything else” for comparison. I needed to think in terms of places I might like to move towards.

I was considerably more savvy about available options than I was when I started grad school. There were things that held some vague potential. But what did I have to offer? What would be needed or useful? What might align with my interests? What were my interests?

There were a lot of questions. I needed something to bring some semblance of order to the jumbled mess in my head.

Quite some time before all this questioning, I had heard of myIDP as a tool for helping trainees finds some career direction. But then I knew where I was going. I was busy. And I was skeptical.

The IDP is an “individual development plan”. The National Postdoc Association has been encouraging its use for several years, and a number of institutions started requiring postdocs fill them out and discuss them with their postdoc advisers annually. At its heart, the intent of the IDP is to have postdocs taking inventory of skills and accomplishments, considering career targets, setting goals to get there.

In principle, this is how it’s designed to go:

However, I think many of us feel the process is more like this:

Of course, this is intentionally hyperbolic. I don’t think this reflects actual practice. Rather it’s intended as a hyperbolic synthesis of reality and emotion during a “temporary” phase of life.

And a reflection of why I wasn’t sure myIDP was particularly useful and hadn’t bothered to put the time into it.

But now I was looking for some focus. Then I saw a post from DNLee on myIDP. It sounded like maybe it was worth a shot.

So one afternoon, as some incubation carried on in the lab, I sat at my desk, committed to try it out.

Once I got through all the user info and intro stuff, it was on to the self-assessment. myIDP took me through a “guided” self-assessment. I wasn’t sitting there trying to divine strengths and weaknesses and interests out of nothingness. myIDP asked me to rate myself in several categories on a 5-point scale.

myIDP skills self-assesment

The skills assessment starts off with science or research-specific things, but it goes on to things like communication and management too – in other words, those “soft skills” that we might not usually think about. Next there’s an interest assessment that somewhat mirrors the skills one. Then on to “values” – what things do you want to get out of your work and what couldn’t you care less about, from benefits and job security to work environment to impact on society.

I tried to think about the questions and rate them realistically. Although I finished the assessments in an afternoon, it was not a 15-minute exercise. It took time. Because I was doing this for myself, I wasn’t rushing through to the finish. I used it to get to know myself, in a way.

Once I got through all the questions, myIDP offered some considerations for career fit based on the skills and interest ratings. This wasn’t a Magic Eight Ball, telling me which career I should pursue. Nor was I looking for it.

Instead, myIDP crystallized some ideas. Amorphous thoughts began to take form, and some new considerations emerged.

More importantly, it had provided a framework to focus in on what I had to offer and what I was looking for in a career – whether that was an academic track or not.

To be continued…

When we’ve been pursuing a path for a while, considering a change of course might not come easily. I think we often expect to realize a need or desire for change to come in a flash of clarity and certainty.

Perhaps that’s how it works for some. Not for me.

When I decided to go grad school, I had no concept of the career options available for Ph.D. scientists. I knew there were industry jobs, and I knew there were professorships. I had little idea what either entailed. But I knew that I’d discovered a love for science, and I had some feeling that I personally could maybe accomplish something meaningful if I followed it.

As I finished grad school, I had a better idea of the variety of academic environments and what people did in those positions, though I still really didn’t know much about what was possible outside the world of academia. It simply hadn’t occurred to me, and the few around me looking beyond careers at a university were heading to bench work in industry. Personally I’d adopted the vision that the research-intensive faculty track was where I could have the impact I was looking for.

My first postdoc experience shook my confidence in that vision. But during that time, I’d also discovered this virtual science community, and I began discovering that there was more out there than just bench work and running labs. So as I prepared to exit my postdoc, I found myself considering whether a broader change of course might be in order.

At the time, I took another postdoc. I kept working toward the faculty track. Or at least that’s what I told myself and those who asked.

Yet there were things that I was supposed to be doing to get there that I kept pushing back. There were reasons – reasonable reasons, even.

Like the disintegration of my decade long marriage, for instance.

As I emerged from the “survival mode”, though, I found myself wondering: Am I just overwhelmed by other parts of my life right now? Am I waiting to get other things in order so I’m striking at the right time? Or am I holding back because I’m not sure I want this anymore?

I’d been working towards that endgame for years. Considering the possibility that I might want something else wasn’t easy. I stressed over whether it represented a personal flaw, a lack of drive or commitment. Initially it almost felt like a bit of a betrayal – to myself, to those who had trained me, to those who had supported me.

Eventually I started coming to terms with the possibility of letting go. There was still plenty of trepidation. But I began to realize that it shouldn’t be about making others “happy” with my decisions. It should be about what I wanted.

I didn’t commit to change. I wasn’t “walking away” just yet. I was simply giving myself permission to entertain the possibility that I might want something else for my career and my life – or not.

If I was going to stay on the faculty track, I’d better make damn sure I was doing it for me, not some sense of responsibility to someone else. If I decided that wasn’t the path for me, then it was time to figure out where I wanted to go.

To be continued…

The gossip of the scientific water cooler (aka Twitter) the past week: James Watson is selling his Nobel Medal.

Watson, with his colleague Francis Crick, received the Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1962 for their work on the structure of DNA. They shared the prize with Maurice Wilkins, whose work confirmed the pair’s proposal.

Today, at least in the scientific community, we also recognize the invaluable contribution of Rosalind Franklin to this work. I cannot do the story justice in a quick post. The short version: Franklin was a crystallographer. She essentially captured the “pictures” of DNA that would provide the evidence for its structure. Wilkins shared the data with Watson without Franklin’s knowledge. Watson and Crick went on to publish their seminal paper – with a brief nod to Wilkins and Franklin – that would, in part, lead to their selection for the receiving the Nobel Prize.

By the time the Prize was awarded, Franklin had died – four years earlier, due to ovarian cancer.

Watson is now looking to sell his Nobel medal to garner a bit of spending money. Apparently funds are running a bit low now that he is, in his own words, an “unperson” following racist comments in 2007 – but one of his controversial statements in the past couple of decades.

Adam Rutherford and Laura Helmuth have written excellent pieces about why one might save their tears – and so I won’t retread this ground.

I want to tackle a different point.

A number of folks on Twitter suggested a crowd funding campaign to buy Watson’s Nobel and give it to Franklin’s family or use it to some way honor her.

When I first saw the idea last week, I thought it lovely.

Then time passed. It surfaced again. And a different reaction bubbled up.

The auction house thinks that the medal could bring between $2.5 million and $3.5 million.

Three. Million. Dollars.

It would  be incredible if the crowds could scrap together that kind of money. It’s certainly not beyond the realm of possibilities. After all, Matthew Inman, creator of The Oatmeal, managed to bring in $1.3 million to create the Tesla Museum.

But…

Does buying a hunk of metal – 200 g of 23 carat gold – accomplish that?

More than that, does filling Watson’s piggy bank accomplish that?

I don’t buy it.

There are other ways to honor a woman scientist who encountered great barriers and great dismissals in life and death.

Giving her contributions due credit today. Creating an inclusive environment in sciences – not just for girls and women but for people of color, LGBTQ, persons with disabilities… Supporting diversity in science.

Outreach programs for kids who continue to encounter barriers today. Stipends for research experiences for high school and college students who might otherwise miss out. Travel awards for a conference. A named fellowship for early career scientists. An endowed chair for a rising star (who perhaps also happens to be a woman).

Just imagine what a million dollars could do…

Of course, we each get to decide what to do with our disposable income. And I suspect that the suggestions are more statements of principle than intention (which is fine too). But if you’re serious about a crowd funding campaign, don’t ask me to help pay for Jim Watson’s twilight years. There are finer ways to honor a historic woman in science.

November is flowing by, now 2/3 gone.

I started #digiwrimo with the goal to write everyday.

Technically I’ve done that.

But the real intention was to spend at least half an hour everyday writing for myself. I’ve come (surprisingly) close to that. The time is not always the most focused. I might feel like I should have gotten more produced in the time. But that wasn’t part of the deal. The deal was about making the time, not volume or quality of writing.

I’m (re)discovering things in this process:

• I am not a fast writer – even when I think I know what I want to say.
• I often write things two or three before I actually get it down. I write. I tweak. I re-write.
• I edit and revise as I write. This is probably not the most effective approach. (Maybe someday I will learn to just write and do the other bits later.)
• I sometimes have a lot to say. But for my writing process (and for digital reading), it’s often better to break it into pieces.
• I can get tangled up in my own writing and ideas. When I write, I just start writing; I don’t organize my thoughts first. This process works when I’m not sure where I’m going, less so when I have a clear topic with many facets.
• Words are first. Always. Images are often afterthoughts, trying to find something that works with what I’ve written, when I even bother to pull an image.
• Words are my primary medium. I’m comfortable with Twitter and blog formats. I’m looking for a a little something more. Once upon a time, photography was a bit of a hobby. I wonder if picking it up again might do something for my digital writing.
• Connecting – with others and the world around me – is an important part of creating. Connecting sparks ideas, provides motivation, offers new viewpoints. I need to make figure out how to build, nurture, and discover connections through digital media again.

Failure.

A simple concept.

Yet there is vast complexity embedded in how we interpret and treat failure, particularly in how the term applies to our own lives.

Failure comes in many forms. Standards go unmet. Objectives aren’t fulfilled. Deadlines are missed.

Things fail. Projects fail. Even people fail.

At its core, failure is an outcome, the result of an event. Simple.

But when I listen to how people (myself included) use it, it often becomes something more.

Failure becomes a personal trait. A character flaw.

It’s not that I failed to accomplish something. It’s that I am a failure.

In the deep darkness of loneliness and fear and anxiety, failing to meet a goal suddenly becomes a reflection of who and what we are. It’s no longer about what we have done or are doing. It’s a thread of our character, bright and gleaming for all to see, much as we long or try to hide it from view.

And sometimes we define “success” in such a way that it’s might be nearly impossible to achieve. We adopt narrow, detailed ideals of how our lives should look. We set unrealistic deadlines. We make no allowances for how factors beyond our control might call for reassessment of definitions or deadlines. We leave no room for our lives to change.

We look for perfection that none of us can deliver.

So failure becomes messy. Complex.

We set ourselves up to fail, and then we internalize that failure as a part of who we are.

But that’s not failure.

Failure is an outcome.

I have failed at many things. I will fail at many more.

Failure is a part of life. A part of learning. It shapes my experience. But it is not who I am.

I am many things. But I am not a failure.