Giving Thanks For My Advisor

I am sitting in the office past 6pm on a Friday night, getting eyestrain from staring at my computer screen and goosebumps from the extreme AC. But I am sitting here conducting lit searches and extreme data analysis because I feel like doing it now, not because my advisor requested an end-of-business day meeting on a day when the university is closed (and grad students technically get the day off) so she could request work be done in preparation for another meeting first thing Monday morning. None of the faculty here are really insane, but one or two can pass for it easily.

My First Conference: Socializing

Perhaps the best thing about My First Conference was the chance to hang out with friends and/or colleagues. The other three grad students from my lab were there, and for the most part we were attending the same sessions. We formed a peanut gallery during the talks, exchanging whispered comments and questions about the talks in progress, and often remained together for meals. It's entirely possible that if they hadn't been around, I'd have spent Friday afternoon attending talks not very related to my research and burnt myself out, instead of heading out to a two-hour "happy hour" before our lab reunion dinner.

I also got to see some old friends who have moved on. My main collaborator (aside from my advisor) graduated from post-doc in our lab to professor in a different country a few years ago. After two years of mainly communicating via email, it was incredibly refreshing to sit down for an hour and brainstorm ideas in real time, with sketches that don't have to be scanned or created in PowerPoint. Our former lab coordinator, now a grad student in another state, was also there, stopping by our posters to catch up on all the news and progress, joining us for dinner one evening. In a career that feels so isolated - just me, my computer, and sometimes my Internet connection - seeing people in person and having whole conversations was a welcome experience.

The downside to all this socializing is that I didn't take full advantage of this being a local conference. I could have brought a bagged lunch most days, and had late dinners at home. Instead, I wound up with a coffee every day, lunches out, dinners out. I spent my entire "fun" allowance for the month in just four days, and four days at the beginning of the month at that. It was completely worth it, but I might have a hard time remembering that at the end of the month when I've had three months of bare-bones activities.

I Am So Cool

Or at least my research is. In the eyes of one of the other graduate students in my lab. When that research involves an unexpected result with task he himself has been using heavily. But my presentations have rarely, if ever, inspired others to write emails talking about how awesome my research is and how I should try to publish it right away. I'll take what I can get.

My advisor has similar opinions. One brief report accepted, and now she wants to start on another - and neither have anything to do with my dissertation. When will that get done?

Advisor Commiseration

Saturday brought both myself and the other comps-writing grad student in my lab into the lab. We're working our way through a joint data collection project, existing entirely because our advisor insists (from her position far from the university) that we be collecting data. As if comps weren't enough. We're both taking our time in this project, because we certainly don't have the time to devote to data collection and the impending time-sink of data analysis.

It was something like a mini grad student dinner, full of casual yet helpful discussion of our advisor. I am not the only one who thinks our advisor is ridiculously firm on the department deadlines given that 1) no one else in the department cares (there's a student who was supposed to defend last year and still hasn't, and has not been kicked out or denied funding) and 2) she usually doesn't know there even are deadlines until we tell her. We agree that it is probably due to her need to not look bad while on maternity leave. I personally can't wait to see how much of a stickler for deadlines she intends to be when she's on sabbatical in a different state next year.

I'm glad I have someone else to check progress and commiserate with, since the only other person in my entering year is on a different track and doesn't have to defend until next year, lucky SOB (of course, I consider him unlucky every time I see the classes he has to take for his double-major). We don't pressure each other about our progress, and it's nice to konw that someone remembers that I'm working on comps and is interested enough to make polite conversation about it. I sincerely doubt my advisor will remember me before December, when she'll remind me that the deadline is here or past.

Squishy Deadlines

What is a deadline, exactly? In the program brochure, they seem so strict: Failure to make adequate progress will get you ... I want to say "expelled", but the language is more like "asked to leave the program". In real life, however, they aren't so strict. First there was a general consensus that, due to a probable typo in the guidelines, "by Month" really meant "by the end of Month". Everyone gained a 30 or 31 day extension on deadlines (there are no deadlines in February). Several of the master's students are being granted informal extensions on the grounds that their advisors were travelling during the critical pre-defense period. Only my advisor seems to break the laissez-faire attitude in our department by insisting on keeping deadlines or requesting formal extensions (when she's aware of them, which isn't always).

Now another grad student in my lab and I are in a small dance of deadlines. She started a year before me, but due to extensions granted to those pursuing a double-major PhD (I am not so dedicated), we are both due to defend our comps by (the end of) December. Which of us has a better chance of doing so is a matter for any departmental betting pools. What I do know is that

1) Last year's defenses were all late (I think ranging March-April after the deadline)
and
2) I assured my advisor additional teaching responsibilities would not delay my comps, so I must stick to the deadline.

This puts my poor lab mate in a sorry position. She doesn't have to really worry about the deadline, in the way that I do. I haven't checked with her yearmates (all of whom are doing the double-major thing; I'm a bit of an underachieving oddball) to see if they'll defend on time or late, but our advisor's measuring stick is more likely to be me than them. Our advisor is the one who will probably care, and just think how bad it would look if I defend (less than a year after I proposed my comps) on time and she's late (closer to 2 years after she proposed).

I sort of feel bad about this. My assurance of on-time performance is stressing out a fellow who has been very helpful on assorted matters over the past three years. I don't have much choice on how to progress, however. If I don't manage to defend on time, my advisor will never let me teach again, which would be problematic as I'm seriously considering finding some magical teaching-only position after graduation. So there will be no dance of unspoken agreement that we can both be late defending, taking advantage of those "holidays".

I also feel bad, after reading assorted mother-faculty-challenges posts on ScienceWomen, for hoping that a semester's maternity leave will be as good an excuse for our late defense as an advisor out of the country was for the Master's students'. It's not that I want people to get a negative opinion of childbearing and lactating faculty members' productivity, it's just that it would be so much easier if the deadline were in January.

Graduate Student Survival Kit

Our lab coordinator is leaving for graduate school. We encouraged this, perpetuating the great circle of no-life. We were, however, nice enough to provide a Graduate School Survival Kit. It contained:

-Combination coffee mug and french press. Caffeine is vital.
-Dial-An-Excuse wheel. A must-have for all advisor meetings.
-PhD Comic Scrapbook. Rather than conducting research, time was spent selecting a dozen PhD Comics, putting them in a nice scrapbook, and adding advice. For example, "don't take bad papers personally".

This kit was presented as part of my advisor's Fourth of July lab barbecue. The departing lab coordinator then gave a thank-you speech, to all members of the lab. I was singled out for being very organized (this makes a lab coordinator's job much easier). It is my defining feature.

An Overflow of Grad Students

My first e-mail announcement as lead TA, describing the teaching/professional development workshops being offered over the summers, only gave me a minor fit. Fortunately, I sent it out before I realized how many people there were on the department's "students" list, and how few of them I knew.

The official list of students requesting TA funding for the fall numbers 43 students. The count of graduate students on the department website is 93. I can take some comfort from the fact that this is out of date - at least three students are listed in my area that I know have since graduated or left the department - but I hadn't realized exactly how big our department is, when it isn't broken down into our specialties. No wonder we have a multi-person department business office, and one staffer assigned just to administrating graduate students.

On the bright side, if five or even 10 students see that I'm the new lead and create a filter to junk my messages (which wouldn't surprise me), I can console myself with the knowledge that it's only a small fraction of the students I'm supposed to be inspiring to expand their graduate training. Sure.

Collaborate, Good Times, Come On!

It might not say the best for my graduate career thus far that I didn't really have an appreciation for collaboration until today. Thus far, I have only "collaborated" with my advisor (who discusses ideas and tells me what analyses to run), her former post-doc (who discusses ideas and tells me what analyses to run), and assorted undergraduate students (who I had to tell ideas to and run analyses for). Which means that it never mattered how many people were involved in a project, it was always me turning the data into digestible information. "Collaborators" meant people I was responsible for reporting to or people I was responsible for guiding. Aside from having other people (undergrads) to collect the data, it has never meant a decrease in the effort involved.

My current project actually involves a collaboration with another graduate student. I did the programming and collect the data, but it was his idea originally. Thus far, "collaboration" has again been based entirely on a handful of discussions, since we had no data worth mentioning. There were, however, many data files that could be analyzed that hadn't been. These are Excel files, which each contain the neighborhood of 3,500 to 4,000 rows of data. Knowing that these would have to be analyzed, I set aside a day of spring break to dedicate to the problem. Or, at least, to learning how to script in Excel so that I could have any hope of analyzing the data.

I emailed my collaborating grad student just to make sure I had some idea of what we wanted to analyze. And, lo and behold - send me the data, I'll put together the analysis script. This should have been an obvious reaction. C. actually has experience with scripting and these types of data files in particular; what would take me several days will take him - well, far less; I'm sure it might still be a day's work in there, depending on how cooperative the technology is. It's entirely reasonable, and thus all the more insane that it didn't occur to me that a "collaborator" would do more than give me a few tips on how to handle the list of things I would need to take care of.

Overheard in the Office

Grad students in my department have little clusters of offices, and mine is right next to the grad student lounge. I overhear quite a lot when I decide to leave my door open. This is often, as grad students are not entitled to such things as "windows", and open doors alleviate claustrophobia.

This put me in a position to overhear brief comments between two other grad students. In true cocktail party fashion, I was ignoring a conversation until I heard my name. This turned out to be:

"[Grad Student] dominates when she talks, but she doesn't talk a lot."

Blinking (trying to be sure they were talking about me, since my name is rather common), I discovered the discussion was about the dynamics of the graduate student seminars. The seminars are populated by a mix of first- and second- year students, and the discussion was between a current 2nd year (who had seminars with me) and current 1st year (who probably wouldn't recognize me by sight). The 2nd year student wasn't so much complaining as contrasting how different it was (the current 1st years are apparently a quiet bunch who need to talk up more).

I certainly have no problems with the statement - anyone who has sat through a seminar with me would say the same thing, if I didn't say it first. I usually just listen and think, but if I have a point to make I want to make it now and I want to make it clear. It was just an odd moment, mostly because I'm even quieter outside of seminars and was shocked anyone would talk about me in general conversation. Still, it's a reason I keep comments on other people to closed-door situations.

A Gray Mark?

The black mark is a strong argument against accepting a prospective academic. They've done something extreme, like ignoring the advice of the natives and getting incredibly drunk, or saying that they had just finished writing an R01 grant and hated it and were never doing that again (actual hearsay of a faculty job talk). These are the clear situations where the prospective has just shot himself in the foot, and would to do some fast magic to salvage the job opportunity.

Then there are the gray marks. Nothing obviously bad, no story that will be repeated with relish for the remainder of the department's existence, but something that instills doubt about an otherwise unremarkable person.

As a third-hand story. One of the prospective students had to catch a shuttle to the airport at 3, 3:30 in the morning. The shuttle stop (a local hotel) was too far to walk. The host offered to call the prospective student a cab, setting everything up the night before. But, no, what if the cab didn't come. The host should drive the student to the shuttle stop, at 3 in the morning. The prospective does not apologize for the inconvenience; it is the host's responsibility. To add insult to injury (sleep deprivation should qualify as injury), they nearly missed the shuttle because the prospective hadn't finished packing, so the host worried she would be called upon to drive the student all the way to the airport (a 45 minute drive or more).

It's hard to tell how bad this is. I have it in the retelling that there was a sense of "entitlement" on the prospective's part. I would never have asked a host to drive me somewhere even at six in the morning, but then I was never comfortable asking my hosts for a glass of juice in the morning. The general consensus is that this was a bit extreme.

Perhaps ordinarily this wouldn't have been enough to count against the student, but in this case my advisor is purportedly looking for students who can work independently, since she already has four of us making demands on her time. Here we have a prospective that isn't capable of taking a taxi for lack of hand-holding, and seems to feel that sense of entitlement (not my words) on what should happen. Three days of unremarkable interactions were so easily negated by one anecdote.

It remains to be seen whether my advisor, and the rest of the faculty, would have the same reaction to this story (assuming the host passed on the perceived problem). The host isn't the kind to hold a grudge (obviously, she wasn't the kind to refuse going out of her way, where I would probably have said "I'm calling you a cab; take it or leave it"). But if the prospective is admitted and comes to the department, she's going to start out with a bit of a negative balance; even a mildly bad impression will leave quite a bit to overcome.

Enter Prospectives

The first prospective student is scheduled to arrive in just a few hours. Let the partying commence, or something like that.

It's always hard to figure out how to interact with prospectives. We do interviews. Out of the 12 visitors, somewhere between a third and a half will actually return in the fall (based on recent entering class sizes of 3 to 6). My input may or may not be useful (i.e., used) when the faculty decide who to accept. Based on recent ruminations about my own acceptance decisions, my biggest role is in helping the prospectives figure out what they will decide if they do get accepted. I can either scare them away or share the misery.

Not that I intend to frighten them off, or am that miserable in graduate school. I intend to be honest, should my opinion be solicited. Not long ago, someone asked if I would still come to this school if I were making the decision now. There is no straight answer for this question. Things have obviously not been perfect. There have been times where the alternative - a professor in the middle of switching schools, where the first year would have been taken up by lab building - seems preferable. But then, I could never really know what that advising relationship or research would have been like. I don't like being so far away from my family, but I prefer the city I live in to the closer-but-blah alternative. I don't regret the decision I made, and am in general quite happy with the way things turned out.

On the other hand, I have a lot of pointers to prospective students. I've heard tell of one particular advisor who does not meet regularly with his students. One was okay with this; one hated it and switched advisors; one asked for regular meetings. It's things like this, specific to the advisor to the department, that would have been useful to know a few years ago. It's always good to have some idea about what you're getting into.

Prospectives Parties

Let the weekend of obligatory party attendance (and free food!) commence.

Thursday evening is the graduate student social, when the prospectives have a change to unwind before some early-morning interviews. This has become an unofficial part of Prospectives Weeding. Last year, I heard (over and over and over), one of the prospectives ignored repeated warnings of "alcohol will affect you more strongly here", got drunk, got sick, and was found naked on the bathroom floor of his host's home in the middle of the night. The graduate students involved begged their advisor not to admit him.

Friday afternoon is a boxed lunch, to give us the opportunity to meet with prospectives in their interview attire instead of fresh off the plane. More to the point, it's free food. I entertained prospectives in my own interview year by my haphazard attempts to identify the ingredients of the fruit cup (turns out those green squishy balls have their own name).

Friday evening used to be a dinner with the grads, followed by a general Area party as a faculty member's house afterwards. Last year, at the request of faculty wanting more time to spend with prospectives, it was changed to dinner with the faculty and the grads were invited to a Dessert Party instead. I think the addition of the dessert buffet was intended to entice the graduate students into attending (free food!).

Saturday is generally not free, but will include group activities like brunch and probably hiking (if the weather is nice - there was snow this morning). Generally speaking, an excuse for not doing research over the weekend.

Why say they're obligatory when there's all this free food enticement? Well, there is a general expectation that current grads will show up for these things since food is provided, although no one is going to be walking around with an attendance sheet. Most importantly, my advisor is interviewing 2 prospectives who would be interested in working with her. Unless I take a fatalistic perspective that my input counts for nothing, I need to evaluate these perspectives to see if there is anything outstanding or insane about them.

So I'll be spending the weekend being social, regardless of how much I would rather spend my time reviewing papers or analyzing data. Truly, it is a great sacrifice.