News from the Frontlines

So I have an inside scoop on a big application for a career development award I put in a few months ago from a participant from the review committee. And it looks good! Apparently MDs and PhDs were ranked separately and among the PhDs I was ranked either 1st or 2nd based on 3-4 committee members' rankings. Though time will tell; the applicants are re-ranked after the full groups' discussion and my inside scoop wasn't allowed to participate in that discussion. Only 5 people will be selected for this career development award and the odds are that only 1 or 2 PhDs will be selected, so I hope, hope, hope that I was ranked PhD-Numero-Uno. Although that means staying here in Freezerville where I have no friends, am always cold, find the food bland, and where Spousal Unit (SU) still has no job. But whatever.

I had convinced myself that it was going nowhere. Silly Julep.

On a totally unrelated note, there is no reason I should have even come into work this week. I have done zilch, zilch. Instead, I cruised the internet, wrote a few emails, stared blankly at some articles I need to read, and put together a baby registry. Seriously.

Probably the most useful thing I got out of this week was a meeting with Visiting Professor (VP) from Scandinavian Country who may prove to be a useful future collaborator. VP does research on toadstools* in my favorite continent, Africa.** VP has never before examined the effect of lullabies*** on toadstools, however, and I happen to specialize in the effects of lullabies.*** This does not bode well for Spousal Unit (SU), who for some reason, does not fully support my desire to someday relocate to Africa.** But I jump the gun.

Tootles all and happy weekending.


*Research area changed to protect the identity of Visiting Professor.
**Actual favorite continent.
***Research area changed to protect my semi-pseudonymous identity.

Caught in the headlights

This is ridiculous.

An abstract I submitted to a conference has been accepted. Great.

I recently submitted revisions to a manuscript on the same research to a journal. The decision is pending. Great. Odds are good, but maybe they'll ask for more revisions?

The association sponsoring the conference wants to publicize my research: press conference, press release, stock footage for media, etc. Great.(!)

BUT, the journal has a press embargo. If it's accepted it's embargoed until it appears in print. If accepted today it could be till next spring. In which case, at the meeting, which is this winter, I will not be able to discuss my results. Only my methods and background and who really cares about that?!

I have an interview tomorrow with a journalist who is putting the press release together.

I have taken the initiative of trying to figure this out, to show that I am trying to be responsible. Dealing with university press people, journal press people, association press people. But holycrap, it's a mess.

After a lot of back and forth here's what it looks like I'll do. Do interviews. Suddenly get article accepted. (Normally this is a good thing!) No longer present at conference. Piss off conference association. Try to retract what I have said from the press release, if possible and not yet released, and attempt to just talk about my methods in any revised press release.

Press embargoes are really ridiculous. Seriously people? It's still my ideas and my work. Well, I guess it's not once I sign a copyright agreement but I haven't yet! But the journal says it's theirs from the moment of acceptance.

I don't think I'll ever submit a manuscript so close to the time of a conference again. Clearly, manuscripts take precedence here but press would be nice. What a weird pickle I'm in!

The Agro-Capitalist-Ritalin-Sugar-Industial Complex

Not that this is any huge surprise, but the findings are still pretty staggering. The fact that many of these cereals meet industry standards for "better-for-you" foods just shows what a joke voluntary industry-driven standards really are.


Kids Spoon-Fed Marketing and Advertising for Least Healthy Breakfast Cereals

A little bored

Well, crap.

I am a little bored.

I'm getting so many manuscripts off my plate lately I am running out of projects to work on. I guess I could work on CCL (Complicated Cover Letter) for a faculty position I am considering applying for. But that seems like a giant pain.

I'd ask my mentor to hand over PHAP (Potentially Huge and Awesome Project) but he'll say, oh, did you finish with SPCP (Stupid Pointless Crap Project)? and I will be forced to say no. But I don't WANNA work on SPCP, it's pointless! But I guess I should.

I hate media reporting about health and medicine

Dearest Gina,

9 times out of 10 I love your reporting.

But why did you have to write this article without distinguishing between breast and prostate cancer screening at all? There is a difference between the "exaggeration" of risk and benefit claims regarding an effective, proven, life-saving screening test (mammography) and the "exaggeration" of claims regarding an as yet unproven, probably pointless screening test with serious side effects (prostate cancer screening). Sure, both don't work as well as most public health messages claim. But one actually works! ARGH!

clipped from www.msnbc.msn.com Advantages to cancer screening ‘exaggerated’ By Gina Kolata The American Cancer Society, which has long been a staunch defender of most cancer screening, is now saying that the benefits of detecting many cancers, especially breast and prostate, have been overstated.

On Being Preggo and Productive

I never knew how much I'd learn just by having a fetus growing inside me. For example, today I learned that it just isn't old, really fat, or really uncoordinated people who can't put on their shoes while standing. It's also pregnant people! Wow, go figure!

Being pregnant is such a public thing. As a pretty private person (yeah I know I have a blog and you might be thinking, what kind of blogger is private?, but I don't tell you people anything about my personal life here really, so accept it, yes I am a pretty private person. Even my friends tell me so.) I don't really love this part of being preggo. Everybody looks at you and stares at you when you are drinking coffee. For example. It is none of your business, people! You even get random strangers who touch your belly. WTF?!

On the postdoc front, I'm progressing pretty well with pubs and such. I've got 1 new one under review, 1 revision under review, 1 about to go out the door next week, and more in the pipeline. Truth is, though, that the only one that is really compelling to me is the one that is so complex I can't find a statistician who knows how to analyze it. I need to work on meeting more statisticians. And then finding some money so I can pay one to do this for me.

In print, at long last

Several years after I first thought of the idea, shopped it around, clarified it, did the research, wrote the article, revised the article, revised the article again, and fought with a copy-editor, one of my dissertation papers is in print(!) at long last. Yay, me!

On another, unrelated note, it really creeps me out to watch people lick the tops of their yogurt containers. Ew.

My Own Awesome Typo

Thanks to a coauthor who reviewed my letter to the editor describing my revisions in response to a revise/resubmit.

Here's what I had written:

"While the reviewer is correct in nothing..."

While this is close to how I actually feel, what I really meant to write was:

"While the reviewer is correct in noting..."

Those Damn Letters of Recommendation

I am submitting an application for a K--an institutional career development award--by 5 p.m. today. All 3 of my letters of recommendation are yet to come in. I am watching the online system obsessively. Of course my two awesome proposed mentors have already submitted theirs. But my 3 recommenders are slacking. ARGH!

This happened a few months ago with the last application I completed. (Which btw I was awarded, even though one of my recommenders was LATE!) Why do people do this to me? I vow to never be this way with my underlings.

I know that in the academic world there is really no point at which you stop needing letters of recommendation. But really, it is sooooo irritating.

A dear friend, in that I don't know how else to commemorate his life and say goodbye

This weekend I lost a dear friend, J, to AIDS. Despite everything I know and have seen of the ravages of this brutal disease, much of it learned alongside J. in Africa, the death is a shock. There are people out there who have watched generations of their friends and loved ones die from this disease, but in my heterosexual, white, and affluent life, this is my first very close experience with the devastation of the virus.

It is with J. and our exchange team in South Africa where I came to believe in God. That trip was a life-changing experience for me, in no small part because of his influence. He shared with me his contagious love of life, his open-heartedness, his absolute lovable nastiness, so many of his irritating habits, and most surprisingly to me, his unwavering faith in God. The night after he disclosed his HIV status with our team, the night after we started calling him “Tati J,” we attended a song and dance session performed by children at an AIDS hospice. I was devastated by my own negativity when I watched the children laugh and sing, thinking fatalistic thoughts about their life expectancy, the absolute brutality of a virus that could hurt such beautiful people, and the horrible inequity of it all. J. smiled at me, put his arm around me, comforted me, and told me that God was with them. I hugged him back, loving every inch of him, marveling at his strength and will. Since I heard of his passing, I have heard his laughter, his cries, his little pearls of wisdom, in my mind throughout the days and especially, as I’m falling asleep at night. Now that he is with God, he is still comforting me. If I know him at all, he is probably serving up doses of his hard-won wisdom, laughing it up, and providing comfort to the lesser angels.

I love you, Jbear.

And to all of my friends who work so hard to prevent, cure, or treat this disease, or assist those living with HIV/AIDS, keep it up. You gave him many more years of life than he expected, but not nearly as many as he deserved.

Stressed! God! Cocktails!

I am stressed. But I really don't want to dwell on that right now.

I don't take direction well. Someone tells me what I'm supposed to believe and I get really, really ticked off. Which is why when I read about Anastasia's conversion crisis, I am even more convinced that I will never, ever convert to Catholicism. It's one reason I like Unitarians, even though they too, drive me crazy. (They embrace doubt and the questioning of dogma.) It's also one of the reasons I always wanted to be Jewish, because even if I didn't agree with all of their dogma, I'd still be Jewish by birth. That's something, right?

The reason I'm thinking about this is because I've been praying for a friend in trouble. Actually, to be honest, for more than one friend. And for those of you who never stopped to think about this before, praying is hard when you're somewhat spiritual but you're not affiliated with any religion or were never raised in a tradition in which you have ingrained ways of doing these things. Who and or what do you pray to? How do you do it? You have no guidance. Most days I believe in God but I don't really go in for any one of his prophets more than the others. This causes complications.

Sigh. I could really, really use a beer. No, make that a Manhattan--with Maker's Mark, and not the sleezy kind with maraschino cherry juice or anything. Too bad a drink is not exactly an option for another 5+ months. Well, I have to go to put on a post-doc happy hour. Where I will be drinking water. Sometimes being pregnant sucks.

Why Do People Eat Bad Food?

I don't mean just junk food. Because I'll admit it, I love the stuff, especially Cheetos.

But I just don't understand why--unless limited by real constraints on choice such as income or access--anyone would regularly chose to eat bland, boring, soft, squishy, meaty, crappy food. White bread. Mayonnaise. The exact same lunch every day for years?

I also simply can't believe how some people really think differently colored tomatoes are some kind of new designer food. Seriously, people? Tomatoes aren't just red! Peppers aren't just green or red! Squash comes in all kinds of shapes! Sometimes it's eeven spiky! (YUM, bittermelon.)

Most every day when I see colleagues during lunch time, they peer into my tupperware and ask, "What'd you bring for lunch today?" This makes me feel a little like a creature in a zoo, exotic and strange. Today I had leftovers, as usual. Moroccan curry--sweet potatoes, golden raisins, garbanzo beans, assorted veggies, all on couscous. "What's couscous?" In my mind, this doesn't make me unique. I just like delicious flavorful food. Shouldn't everyone?

Come on people, branch out, there's more to food than Luby's!

Productivity

Why is it so hard to focus on a single project? Am I totally ADHD? Or ADD? (I don't know and don't care about the difference between ADD and ADHD. Although it would prove a useful waste of time and way to procrastinate.)

I've had this pattern for years. It was a big driver of my DHP (Dissertation Holding Pattern). I was able to crank out other papers and projects, much to the dismay/delight of my committee, but somehow it was like pulling teeth to work on the actual diss.

Little has changed. I am writing a proposal for a mentored career grant and presenting it to a small group of colleagues at a meeting early Thursday morning. Have I worked on it at all today? No. Instead, I'm preparing a manuscript for publication that is...TOTALLY UNRELATED and despite its near completion, BASICALLY IRRELEVANT to my current situation.

I think a lot of it has to do with my perfectionism. I hate to do something where it's not perfect. And trust me folks, a proposal with only $25K/year for research expenses is hardly going to be perfect. Or...maybe I'm just lazy.

Good News: My Postdocly Life isn't only about Neverending, Tedious Analyses

Postdocly bullets of the good and the bad and the research proposal:

I just got word that I was approved for a NIH loan repayment program. No word yet on the amount of the award, but I just wanted to thank myself and the rest of yous guys. Thank you, American Tax Payers! Yay! This is awesome.

More good news, a 2-times revised article has just been finally, officially accepted for publication in a high impact journal. Bad news, they are very very picky about editorial issues. Bah!

Another article, dating from my very first job as a graduate student--yes, this was years ago will be submitted in a few days, or whenever I get to it.

I am applying for an institutional career development award (75% salary support + some research support.) I so don't feel ready for this yet as I'm not even done with my first year of postdoc life. But it's an annual cycle and it's due at the end of September, marking my one year anniversary. So in some ways, it's good timing. Anyway, the good news here is I finally have an idea for what to propose. Still trying to figure out if it's feasible though.

The only bad news in the hopper (besides my recent family-of-origin drama that would make you cry if I told you more about it), I can't seem to run the analyses I need to present at a meeting next Monday. This might entail weekend work. :( Super lame, except that I have been keeping really limited hours lately due to pregnancy-related exhaustion and food requirements (which require me to spend more time eating and sleeping than working.) So I owe the postdocly Gods some more time, for sure.

Any of you female post-docs or grads in science/medicine/psychology who will be applying for faculty positions in the next year? (Not that there are any openings.) There is a great program at Rice University in Houston designed to help you find the ideal faculty position. Although I might be increasing my competition by doing this(!), I do think it's a great opportunity. Check it Out, the deadline for applying is mid-August.

Happy Research!

An Open Letter*

Thank you for your apology.

However, I doubt your sincerity. Although I knew what you would say, and had spent one month preparing my response to your negativity, and was very proud of my calm response, I cried after we spoke yesterday. You have, again, hurt me to the quick. This is our routine; I make independent decisions and you degrade them. Remember when you called me a whore? You degrade me. I don't know why. We have done this for more than 30 years.

There will be no degrading of my child's life choices. I will raise this child with love, tolerance, and support. I will do my damnedest to keep my child's life free of the ravages of hate, intolerance, mental illness, suicide, violence, lies, addiction, emotional and physical abuse, and the other toxic elements of my childhood. Inshallah, there will be no kidnapping of my child by my ex-husband in the middle of the night, no police and social-services interventions, no government cheese, no severe social and cultural deprivation. I can only imagine my excitement if my child ever makes the decision to have a child of his or her own. I would never, ever, degrade this decision. A new life is something to be celebrated, treasured.

I can't understand why you still find fault with my life/my choices. I am 32 years old. I am happily married to a stable, loving man who will provide the support to my child that I never received from a father. I have received the highest academic degree possible. I am independent and have not relied on your financial support since I was 18, not that you were offering. I own a home. I am academically and professionally successful with a promising career in front of me. I have many friends. I am healthy and happy. I have explored the world and the people in it with an open mind and have grown so much since I left your home. I make plenty of money. What the fuck have I done wrong? Are you comparing my life to yours? Please don't. Just stop.

Yes, I am grateful that I was raised to adulthood, free of any physical signs of the shit you put us through. I am healthy and have straight teeth, had a roof over my head, always got my vaccinations, and while I ate junk I had to make myself, I never once went hungry. Thank you for these things.

But I wish I was like my husband. To have a long list of family members to call who whooped with joy and excitement (maybe also some relief? disbelief?) at our news. Who already are opening their hearts and minds and making plans and preparations to welcome a new life into their family.

Remember a few months ago when you announced you were grateful you didn't have the brood of your sister as it would be such a burden to keep track of so many grandchildren? I assure you, this child will be no burden of yours.

In closing, I am grateful to my husband, my sister, my in-laws, and my countless dear friends who have wished me nothing but happiness on this new journey ahead of me. Who I can and will count on for the support and love a new family needs. I love you all.

-Julep

*Yes, I know damn well that I am posting this on a public forum. While at it's best it is adolescent and vindictive, I have done this for full public disclosure, for shaming, for the opportunity to make a public proclamation of my pregnancy and most importantly, a public vow that I will be a better parent than you ever were.

Boy Howdy, I love Jimmy Carter

I heart Jimmy. And the best part, as evidenced by this statement: he loves me!

I know, I know, for those of you still there, that I haven't been much of a blogger lately. Chalk this up to my lack of angst. Which is a good thing....right?

MD-PhD Smackdown

I've taken quite the hiatus from blogging. Some of you seem to still be hanging around and I admire your persistence.

This last month I've been cramming on a manuscript that I want to go out the door before I get scooped. Now that it's nearly done I've lost all my motivation. The analysis was fun but now the last minute tweaking is a major drag. I hoped to submit it this month but I have been a bit distracted the last 2 days. And now I'm leaving for a few days vacation (Yay!) So I guess it won't be till the following week.

Anywho, the topic of this post is a long-standing rivalry that I face routinely: the MD-PhD fight. As a PhD in a medical field, this is a battle I face routinely in my professional life. I prefer to leave it there and keep it out of my personal life but recently, it crept right in where it didn't belong.

A few weeks ago I went to a ob/gyn I found through a referral hotline. In the past, my criteria for gyns was complicated and I really missed the mark this time by bypassing my usual selection process (involving a tedious internet search process involving the following criteria: faculty member at prestigious medical school, no pending complaints to the medical licensing board, bonus points for board certification, fellowships in family planning, some scientific publications, advocate/user of IUDs, volunteer work at select non-profit organizations, political donations to appropriate candidates, membership in abortion-rights, universal healthcare, and select reproductive health organizations, and editorials and/other other advocacy regarding the above). Come on, you all know I'm obsessive compulsive about research so this should be no surprise.

So I go to this gyn who fits 1 1/2 of the above categories. He was very jovial and had a superb bedside manner. When he found out my line of work, he was very excited and said "That's great! The world needs more people like you!" Well, so far so good. But then he embarked on (an obviously well-rehearsed and un-educated) tirade in which he dismissed ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT EPIDEMIOLOGICAL STUDIES ON WOMEN'S HEALTH. Apparently, one of the main reasons this research was so horrible is because they didn't have a single gynecologist on their initial published finding (one of the most highly cited articles in the field, btw), it was all PEOPLE LIKE ME WRITING IT. Also, it was horrible research because it "confuses" his patients and now he has to explain something to them (Why worry the little ladies so much? I know what's best for them!) I won't go a ton of details here but I will tell you this: I knew, immediately, he had absolutely no fucking clue what he was talking about. OTOH, this finding is something I know a thing or two about. I tried, and succeeded, to keep it collegial.

Listen, MDs, I wouldn't presume to tell you how you should conduct a physical exam or prescribe medicine. (Although I will tell you that this guy doesn't practice evidence based medicine on either of those fronts, much to my dismay.) Please don't tell me how to do my job.

On another note about the patriarchy, check out how real princesses live their lives.

From my to-do list

6. think about power

Quitting Graduate School- I Didn't Do It, Should You?

Despite a continuing number of hits to this blog from individuals considering "quitting graduate school," I acknowledge that I am no longer an expert on this topic. I consider only those poor, overly tortured saps currently in school to be experts on this topic. Did you graduate? Then you don't know what you're talking about anymore. (HELLO, recall and Pollyanna biases.) Did you quit already? Recently or many years ago? Then you're clearly not an expert either. (Quick, what type of bias is this?)

Anyway, I still get a lot of hits on this so I thought I'd revisit how I feel about not quitting graduate school. Clearly, as a disclaimer, this is pretty field-specific. I have the (um? luxury?) perspective of working in a relatively interdisciplinary field with connections to both hard and squooshy and very very fluffy sciences, so while that gives me some options, it also shows me that in terms of faculty appointments and expectations, that while I someday (Imshallah) may have it much easier than some, I may have a much harder academic life than others. (As in, there is no program in my primary field in which I could ever have a summer break. I know, boo-hoo!)

Did I quit graduate school? No. Am I glad I finished? Abso-fucking-lutely. Will I actually be able to use the knowledge and skills that I was taught in graduate school? Only time will tell (so far I've been lucky on this and the answer is "yes" but I'm still only a postdoc.) Am I still considering "quitting" academia? Yes, just not as often as I once did. Am I trying to gain some realworld skills just in case? Yes.

...and now, more about you:

Should you quit? Odds are, yes. Why should you quit? This depends on your goals. Have you always thought you would be able to grow up and be just like your professor? Hey, you might, but don't hold your breath. If you think you can apply the knowledge and skills and socialization you gained in school in a number of different environments and toward different ends...well, more power to you. Keep going. If you just want someone to call you "Doctor" someday? Then keep going, you can totally make it and get what you want from the experience. If you seriously think you'll get tenured someday? Take an informal poll of assistant professors out there. If you want to stay in academia but can't stand the thought of adjuncting or remaining research faculty? Consider a different field or get ready for disappointment.

Restructuring the University

clipped from www.nytimes.com In other words, young people enroll in graduate programs, work hard for subsistence pay and assume huge debt burdens, all because of the illusory promise of faculty appointments. But their economical presence, coupled with the intransigence of tenure, ensures that there will always be too many candidates for too few openings.

Mark Taylor's NYT's recent editorial calls the graduate education the "Detroit of higher learning." As in, it's doomed. The quote here (below? above? I don't know) sums up a lot of the ambivalence I feel about academia. WAY too many people are churned through a ruthless system.

I like what he says about disciplines and about problem-focused learning and restructuring the university, and even abolishing permanent departments (to a lesser extent). His suggestion of a "water program" was obviously based on (or was strangely coincidental with) a famous course called (you guessed it) Water at my alma mater, The Evergreen State College. But while this is a great idea for undergraduate education I am not convinced this should be the way of graduate education. Disciplines serve as a form of organization, structure, and shared memory for thought and knowledge. Collaboration is great but without any solid grounding in one or many disciplines, all you have is loose and unstructured knowledge. Plus you have no academic lineage and good luck succeeding in academia without lineage. I can say this for a fact because Evergreen had no disciplines and I am missing a lot of the basic grounding in certain fields that would serve me well today. (On the plus side Evergreen, you excel at the promotion of critical and innovative thinking, reading, and writing skills.)

Taylor spends some time bemoaning narrow scholarship. He's right. I can hardly even explain my work to others. But my field is primarily supported by grants from the federal government (primarily NIH). Should they be paying me to do something that everyone else is doing and that is "obvious"? Clearly not. Is the pursuit of new knowledge flawed just because it's obscure? So what if few people ever read my dissertation. Only a few people need to for it to have any actual impact on the world. In this way, it only matters that people who want to move beyond it read it. They learn what is already known. Then, they go farther. Clearly, many paths are dead ends. But you can't learn or discover something new until you ask a new question, something that hasn't been asked or answered before.

He also suggests mandatory retirement. Oh hell no. Seriously? Abolishing tenure? Yeah, that's probably on its way out anyway. I won't get into that here. Transforming the traditional dissertation? It's likely that any changes in the diss won't be as radical as he suggests. I see no problem with writing a long tome that is rarely read by others. It's a learning exercise. Besides, I had to write one.

Taylor suggests expanding the range of professional options for graduate students? YES. YES YES YES. This is a suggestion of his that I adore. To do this, the graduate students need to be taught practical skills and to be taught by non-career-academics.....people who actually work in their field in the real world (if there is one.) This never happened in my graduate school.

There have been plenty of other responses to this. I'll post to them later in a format that takes html.

Till then, publish or perish!

Sometimes Quitting Is a Good Thing

One of my most recent visitors found me by googling the words "why i quit grad achool."

R01s and Pirates

Given the recent pirate incident, I want to clarify that I think pirates are actually only cool in books and movies and also in costumes at wooden boat festivals when they kidnap your wenches.

Also, in other late-breaking news, Dr. Mentor received an R01 yesterday. There is still some hope.