Journal Club

As part of our ongoing efforts to train our undergraduate senior thesis students (read: make the graduate student mentor's life a little bit easier), the lab is reviving journal club. Theoretically, for the past few years all grad students have had the opportunity to read papers somewhat related to our work and share them with the lab, but I think it's happened perhaps twice in four years.

Now, grads are expected to "model" the journal club presentations, so the undergrads can take over later in the summer, as part of their much-needed practice in reading and critiquing published research. Time to emerge from the mind-numbed cave that is extensive dissertation/manuscript preparation, and attempt to convey enthusiasm for other people's research while clearly and concisely summarizes an entire paper - in 5 minutes. And I've been volunteered to go first.

It doesn't help that the topics aren't optional; we're helping my advisor prepare for her sabbatical by reading papers authored by the professor with whom she'll be working next year. Perhaps if my advisor promised she'd fly us each out to California for an in-person meeting at some point during the next year, I could work up more enthusiasm...

Dissertation in Progress

I am working on my dissertation. Not even two full days of working on it (two days of copy-and-pasting old papers into dissertation chapters) can take away that thrill of finally being close to being finished. My dissertation committee approved my proposal with what I will happily call "minor" changes - taken care of by spending five hours programming on Sunday, and running a few extra analyses in the past two days. For the rest of the summer, it's just a matter of collecting data and reading the background literature.

I'm going to hate that reading, sooner rather than later, just as I did for my comps. But as long as I stay focused on what it will get me - the first chapter of my dissertation - I should be able to survive it.

Acceptable and Unacceptable Excuses

Acceptable reason for emailing an hour before a paper is due and asking for an extension: My roommate OD'd last night, I was the one who found him and called the paramedics, he almost died, he only regained consciousness an hour ago, I have police paperwork to verify. I could have done without some of the graphic details, but I don't expect someone who's just been through an experience like that to have a fully functioning courtesy filter.

Unacceptable reason for asking for an extension to an extension: I have another paper due on the extension deadline and I don't want to have to ask for an extension on that paper too. This is crossing the line between an understandable request due to circumstances beyond your control to the undergradese "please rearrange your life to suit mine".

I'm sorely tempted to institute a "turn in what you've got on the deadline or turn in nothing at all" policy when I actually have control of the class you teach. If I'm going to feel like the bad guy (for not being completely flexible), I might as well be one.

Grad School and the Economy

I graduated from college in a year of relative economic prosperity. But I was terrified of the job market, and one of advantages to applying to grad school was the security of knowing what I would be doing months before I actually graduated. So I can certainly understand why people enroll in grad school in times of economic uncertainty. I wasn't willing to go on the job market when times were good, so I certainly wouldn't want to be on the job market now.

Unfortunately, I don't have much choice. Unless something goes horribly wrong with my remaining two experiments (always a possibility), I have no excuse for not graduating next Spring. And I have many more good reasons to leave (running out of funding, wanting to get a real life) than to stay.

Actually, I don't think I have any good reasons to stay; I think the only arguments in favor of staying can be summed up as "fear". These fears are supported by the news. First there was article in the NY Times that started me reflecting on the likelihood of getting an academic position. Now there's an article on Slate examining the true value of higher education. This article contains a very poetic and potentially apt description of career prospects for recent and impending Ph.Ds:

"I am hurdling toward being the saddest type of graduate student—the one who has finished and is at a loss for what to do next. I'm going to be the one sitting on the front steps of that Ivory Tower with my elbows on my knees and my chin in my hands just begging to be let back in."

Unfortunately, the Piled Higher and Deeper comic strip offering advice on whether grad students should worry about the economic meltdown does not fit my situation (I can't decide if "I'm going to graduate and I want a real job" just applies to "real world" jobs only or also faculty jobs). I have no easy source of humor to turn to in contemplating my career prospects. I just have the knowledge that professors never retire; that the only news these days if of people who fail to find jobs because there's no funding for new faculty; and that my advisor's previous grad students, from many years ago, sent out over 50 applications before getting hired.

I'm trying not to stress out about my job search until fall. There won't be any postings about job offers starting in 2010 until the 2009 school year starts. But it's very hard to maintain any optimism in the face of all these stories.

Time to Graduate

The best thing about PhD Comics is that sometimes there's a comic that perfectly encapsulates my feelings at the moment.The closer I get to graduation, or even the idea of scheduling graduation, the further away it really seems...

April Showers

April always showers me with work, not rain, and this year it's started raining all the way back in mid-March.

April is the end of the semester. Officially, the last day of classes is May 1st, and there's all that "final exam" stuff, but that doesn't mean anything to the graduate student. Only the run-up to the last day of class matters. It's always a combination of papers I need to turn as a student, papers I need to grade as a teacher, the yearly progress report, and whatever milestone has to be met by the end if the academic year - this time, my dissertation proposal. I foolishly offered to give my department presentation that first week of April. And to top it all off, this year I attend my very first conference ever, complete with two poster presentations, April 1-4th. It's almost enough to set off a mild panic.

On the bright side, my posters are beautiful (barring complications in the poster printing process), I've already gone several rounds of revisions on my dissertation proposal with my advisor, I don't care about my grade in my one class (I need a B- to get the Cognitive Science Certificate, and no paper is that hard anymore), and I gave myself two weeks to grade my student's final papers. Next week is Spring Break, and I will spend it here, at the office, using this as my last opportunity to prepare for the April deluge.

Rise of the Machines

I have been stunned by the department copier. Not because of stapling and collating, which is simply how copiers have "always" functioned. Because the administrative assistant typed my email address into the copier, pushed a button, and by the time I was back at my desk across the hall, I had the .pdf of my form waiting in my inbox. The .pdf doesn't make the "foom" sound (and I missed the new-email "ding"), or look as impressive, but I found myself completely amazed nonetheless.

All this stands in complete counterpoint to my much-less-thrilled amazement that the journal publishing company, based in the Netherlands, of all places, requires a full-page document of refusal to pay $700 to have a figure published in color - a document that could not be modified on the computer, and had to be printed out. Perhaps they were aware that my department copier must be able to make new .pdfs in under 10 seconds. They couldn't really have wanted me to pay to snail-mail or fax something from midwest USA to the Netherlands.

Holiday Grace Period

I was vastly amused by the latest PhD comic, on the holiday grace period. Possibly because I took advantage of this implicit grace period, skipping my weekly progress report the week after Christmas on the grounds that it was better to tell my advisor nothing than to tell her there was no change at all, not a single paper read in the previous week. I spent Monday morning in a whirlwind of email activity, so I would be able to say I had "followed up" with various people (mostly other graduate students who had obviously also been taking advantage of the grace period).

In my defense, I did have real progress to report on my comps paper. It's just that I had taken a slow, thoughtful process to the new sections, which involved reading a few papers and letting them germinate in the back of my mind for a week. This looks completely unproductive, but actually makes writing much easier, because the papers have had time to get to know each other before they must be connected on paper. So I spent Friday afternoon churning out the new section, and most of the past few days rearranging the entire comps paper to fit these new arguments. I swear, I don't think more than 3 paragraphs out of 35 pages have been left untouched.

It pains me to admit it, but the revisions are actually growing on me. I have become obsessed with the safety of my work, backing up changes to a flash drive every night and bring it to my bedside table. I am determined to find a way to make this a practical dissertation topic, just to make all this effort worthwhile. I've even, almost, begun to see how the topic could be considered interesting. This hasn't been the case since I proposed my comps some 9 months ago, and marks the real progress. All of which is only possible because I did very little work over the last few weeks, allowing my brain to recover from burnout.

Someone Thinks I'm Accomplished

As I trailed my dad around his office Thursday afternoon, so he could introduce me to the manager helping him with the new company website for which I will be writing content over the next two weeks (I get to add a brief stint as a Technical Writer to my resume, and make enough money to pay for April's conference registration fees), I discovered that I'd given him a whole new realm of bragging rights.

Tuesday afternoon, in my last e-mail check before heading out of town, I discovered the e-mail informing me that the submission of my first real article was "accepted pending minor revisions". I happily informed my dad as we waited for luggage Wednesday evening, and he happily informed everyone at the office who either recognized me or wondered why this tall young woman in jeans was following around their IT person. He couldn't remember the name of the journal, but then, I couldn't really remember the title of the paper (I remember the witty pre-colon part, but not the official post-colon jargon).

It's not quite enough to make up for the comps "passed with conditions", since "accepted with minor revisions" is much the same (the work of trying to coordinate minor changes with 2 co-authors is about the same as the work of trying to rewrite an entire paper by myself). But at least being able to deliver the news in person and hear the bragging makes me feel less of a loser for still being in graduate school and so far from graduating.

Revise and Resubmit

When we submitted my first-ever paper to a second journal, it came back "revise and resubmit", to which a professor in my department offered congratulations. I'm sure I smiled and thanked him, but I was thinking "For what? Is this what my life has come to - Celebrate, because they said your work didn't suck that much?" It took quite a bit of convincing for me to accept that "revise and resubmit" is as good as it gets, because no one gets accepted in the first round. I still don't think it's worth congratulations, though. It may be an encouraging sign, and it's certainly better for morale than a rejection, but what it really means is that thing you hoped you were done with isn't done after all, and it's time to force yourself back into it and go back to work.

I have the same reaction to the end result of my comps defense. There were three possibilities: pass, pass with conditions, and fail. Of the three, the one I dreaded most was "pass with conditions", which would mean not being done at all, but going back and rewriting that paper I had already given so much effort to. Sure, failing would suck, but at least it would be over. Naturally, "with conditions", and with rewrites, is what I got. Do two new literature searches, add two new sections on research the committee has decided would be relevant, and revise the entire paper to fit that research in.

As I returned to my office from the defense, I found two grad students planning on going to a grad school-sponsored happy hour, and I was invited along. I had no idea if I agreed to drown my sorrows or to celebrate. When the other students found out I'd just defended, they tried to convince me I'd done great - my committee members had signed in the "satisfactory" column, and all I have to do is get one person (probably my advisor) to agree that the conditions have been met. Four screwdrivers later, this argument was still not convincing. I won't be spending my semester break completing straightforward projects to get ahead in my work, or planning my dissertation proposal; I'll be spending it reading uninteresting journal articles and revising that [expletive deleted] paper yet again.

I don't care that the changes will let the comps paper serve as an introduction to my dissertation, which the old version just couldn't. At the moment, at least, I'm tempted to just not do it. I just cannot work up any enthusiasm or interest in reading one more paper or writing one more word on this [expletive deleted] assignment. I'm experiencing post-quals slump, and I haven't even finished "quals" yet. Another resurgence of cynicism towards or outright hatred of academia has me seriously considering whether failing comps would actually have been a blessing in disguise.

Mental Preparation for Teaching

Just as I consider doing a bit of my nascent mindfulness practice before going to teach, I see that PhD Comics has its own commentary on the need for mental preparation before teaching. The sad thing is, abandoning hope isn't all that far off from my goals before setting out to teach, mindfulness or no.

The aim is to be in a state where I am no longer personally attached to whether my students enjoy my class, whether they participate or fall asleep, whether I sound like a knowledgable professional or can't avoid saying "uh" and "um" every few sentences. You might say that I'm just getting rid of the stress that makes "what if I do a bad job?" a self-fulfilling prophecy; or you might say I'm abandoning all hope that the class will go well. It's all a matter of perspective.

What Economic Crisis?

The latest PhD comic might explain why I don't see a financial crisis and oppose the bailout bill. After all, I have less than a thousand dollars in stock-based savings (quite lot less than a thousand than I had a few weeks ago, I do admit), I'm nowhere near to graduating and needing a new job. I have plenty of reason to take the extremely long view, which says the Great Depression only lasted a few decades and I have four or more to go before retirement.

On the other hand, it's also possible that trying to live on a graduate student budget with a minimum in student loans means that I have a greater appreciation for fiscal responsibility than most 20-somethings or Congress in general. I'm trying to accept arguments that letting go of credit can't happen at once, but it can be very hard to see why people despair of lost credit cards and mortgages when I've manged to live fine (in my single, childless, practically lifeless academic way) on a relatively meager budget with no reliance on and minimal use of credit.

That minimal use of credit does include student loans. I'm trying to figure out if that makes me a hypocrite or not. But student loans, and whether or not they're worth it, are a complex and lengthy matter for an entirely different post.

"Expected" Graduation Date

I don't really need a reminder about the impossibility of predicting an end to graduate school. I think about the technical requirement of gathering a dissertation's worth of research in a year and a half (from defense of comps to expected graduation date) and want to laugh hysterically. But I really don't want to be in higher education for 10 years straight, so it must be done. Somehow. I anticipate a heavy recruitment of undergraduate labor...

First Day of Class

Suddenly it seems a lot more crowded. The undergrads have returned. An entire summer of a near-deserted campus and uncrowded streets always makes me forget what it's like when 20,000-odd undergrads innundate the town. I've gone from being one of a half-dozen bikes at the spacious bike racks to barely finding a spot to squeeze my bike in.

For me, the "first week of class" is almost meaningless. I don't TA this semester, there are no meetings or colloquiua this week, one of my classes is attending a colloquium series (and writing a paper on it), and the other only meets once a week. There's a certain temptation to hide in my office and only being forced to recognize the presence of undergrads when classes change and the stairwells are suddenly jam-packed and ringing with noise.

The Writing Never Ends

I wrote incessantly in high school, in notebooks ranging from letter-size to a little tiny thing I kept in my back pocket should inspiration strike. The challenge back then was in finishing a story. I might start a dozen at once, with no particular plot in mind, and just write aimlessly but interestedly until the interest was lost. There's a very real limit on how much time you can spend trying to write the same thing before it becomes more burden than pleasure.

Fast forward to graduate school. The same problem still applies, only now it applies to more scientific than science fiction endeavors. There's a little thrill when the challenge is handed down: put this experiment in parent-friendly terms for our newsletter, put that experiment in easily comprehended but thoroughly scientific terms for publication. But the same problem as high school applies: there has to be an end product.

You might think experiments would be very conducive to this, because the plot is all there: introduction, method, results, conclusion. With word limits, even, to keep you on track. The plot is anchored by the methods, so the rest can't get too far away from you (although there are certainly plenty of re-analysis and re-interpretations to extend the process quite a bit). And yet...The process still never seems to end.

The problem with the experiment is that now you aren't in control. There are your co-authors, for example. This calls for extensive, sentence-by-sentence, "what if we said...let's change this...". The tweaking process is very helpful, making for a much better paper than the early drafts. Once three people have gone through 20 iterations (I'm not exaggerating. I have all the drafts saved), however, interest in writing has already begun to wane. Dramatically. You want that paper done, the .doc file cast aside permanently in favor of the immutable .pdf.

And then, once the co-authors have been pleased, there's formatting for submission, and rejection, and formatting for submission somewhere else, and NOW there's an editor and two reviewers calling for further modifications. You thought you were done - but no! Now three people have called for a minor change here, an expansion there, convince me you don't need another experiment...all of which have to be addressed in yet another round of drafts.

I should be thrilled to get a revise-and-resubmit response; it's the most favorable of any reaction to my submissions thus far (unless you count the committee passing my master's thesis, of course). My immediate reaction was - hey, that's pretty good! Nice reviews, so we didn't explain that too well, alright. And then I started putting together the list of things we would need to change. By the time I informed the co-authors, I was ready to start banging my head against my desk: I. do. not. want. to. work. on. this. any. more. My head is hardened by many years of martial arts; surely it can handle ten bangs on a cheap plywood desk?

I had the same problem with my master's thesis - too many revisions, get it the hell away from me now! But that had a firm deadline, and rather lower standards than official publication. I did it for the degree, and continued progress towards the next degree, but I'm not sure I can do it just to have my name published.

Graduate School Is Not My Entire Life...I Spend More Time Sleeping

The second achievement of my obsessive time-keeping experiment was to demonstrate exactly how much time each week I have been dedicating to graduate school, specifically my research and my comps paper. This could alternatively be described as "not as much as I should" and "exactly as much as I feel like". The actual number is around 25 hours per week.

Keep in mind that this is time actually spent working on a task, not time spent in the lab but surfing the internet. Still, the number seems a bit sparse, given the usual informal expectations of graduate student time commitments; hence, "not as much as I should". I can come up with various excuses - no time-consuming data analyses to run, assorted stalls in attempts to spend time collecting data, no summer classes - that would explain how the summer has been an aberration. The reality, though, is that time spent is "exactly as much as I feel like".

If I don't feel like working in the evening, I don't work. It doesn't matter if I slept in, and only spent 4 hours of work on graduate school so far today. I have no deadlines; even meetings with my advisor have become "sign up if you want one". I have no significant other breathing down my neck to get on with it already, no parents demanding surcease from tuition payments. The only thing making sure work gets done is my own interest in getting it done.

This provides some excellent perspective. Sometimes it feels as if graduate school eats up my entire life; days where I stay at the office until 7:30, going home only to eat dinner at the desk while continuing to work (last Tuesday, I believe). The constant nag of assorted deadlines, imagined pressures, "I should be doing...", and doing work on the weekends makes it feel like the workload never ends. The workload might never end, and my subjective perceptions might be off, but I'm obviously very good at not spending excessive amounts of time on grad school.

Or, I'm obviously very good at not spending sufficient amounts of time on grad school...but that's all a matter of opinion. There is no exact number for time on task (our lab coordinator does have to keep such track of time, and the random conversations with undergraduates never seem to be made up elsewhere).

There is a lot to be said for working more efficiently, not longer. On the other hand, if I were truly a driven grad student, I wouldn't take that efficiency as a cue to take a break; I'd take it as a cue to excel and get the Nobel prize or get published in Science. Reflections on whether I will start spending more time on work come later.

Back to the Daily Grind

One of my siblings, taking a week-long vacation from the wage-slave grind to coincide with my week-long vacation from...not that much work at all, really...informed me that the vacation was a test of sorts, to see if getting a break from a six-day work week of customer service would make her job any more tolerable. If not, she would seriously start looking for another job. I would not say that I returned to the lab with any great enthusiasm, but I'm certainly in better shape than that. My somewhat leisurely return to work has more to do with needing to catch up on a week's worth of Internet browsing than with any reluctance on my part, since I didn't even maintain the pretense of taking the laptop with me.

It's not just the Internet browsing, of course. It's the fact that my annual vacation is arranged around my birthday. I am now 25. I need a new plan. I have begun implementing the new plan, as tenuous as it is. It occupies more of my thoughts than research at the moment, but the pressure of a meeting with my advisor - specifically, the fact that the meeting is themed "that huge critical point of your comps paper" - should help turn things around quickly.

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.

What A Difference A Year Makes

Let's reiterate the "you didn't really think I could do this, did you?" nature of end-of-year progress report/plans with a side-by-side comparison.

Now:

"Following completion of the doctoral degree, I plan to continue in the academic field. I prefer to enter a teaching-focused university, where I will teach during the school year with options to continue research either during the summer or on the side. Depending on the level of experience I gain with future TA positions, I may seek one- or two-year terms as Instructors to replace professors on sabbatical before I attempt to get a relatively permanent position as an assistant professor. I prefer to take on a teaching position where I will be able to teach [my field] and statistics, and where I can focus on teaching critical thinking and writing skills. I also prefer to take a position east of the Mississippi, in order to be within easier traveling distance of my immediate family."

Then:

"Following completion of the doctoral degree, I plan to continue in the academic field. I will seek employment as a postdoctoral researcher, preferably doing work that is related to my graduate research but branches off into new theoretical territory or skills. Ideally I would complete two two-year postdoctoral positions. At least one of these would continue in [my field], although a second may [be related field]. I have no strong geographic or technical constraints regarding where these postdoctoral positions are, although I would probably not actively search for positions in the Southeast. I prefer to complete two positions to allow more variety in travel before starting a relatively permanent position as an assistant professor. I will most likely seek positions with an emphasis on teaching and mentoring rather than research exclusively, as I have found my work mentoring individual undergraduates to be some of the most satisfying in my graduate career thus far and expect I will feel as strongly about teaching when I have more in-depth experience."

Justify Yourself

The end of the school year brings with it the department's request for my Education Plan and CV. What have I done this year, and what do I plan to do next year?

This means, among other things, that I need to go back to last year's justification essay and see whether I actually accomplished the planned accomplishments. On a basic level, I know this to be true. This is because on a basic level, last year's plan was "get a master's degree and start working on comps". On a more detailed level, the "you didn't really think I could do this, did you?" seems possible.

The only problem I have with my education plan is that I get no credit for what I tried to do. I got rejected from a conference, from a workshop, from a fellowship, from a paper submission, but at least I tried, unlike past years when I just worked on classes and data collection. Trying is progress that is not indicated on my progress report. Perhaps I was getting the benefit of the doubt in previous years, if they (wrongly) assumed I had unmentioned unsuccessful attempts at enhancing my CV, but being unable to count these attempts - even as failures - makes the past year feel like more of wasted time than actually listing the litany of rejections would.

I doubt the department really cares, beyond "got master's, check; proposed comps, check; took time to answer our short-essay questions, check". The only thing they're likely to care about is if I say flat out I have no intention of entering academia or doing research for a living, at which point they might wonder what they've spent so much money on me for.

The only way this will work is if I write down all the same period non-academic accomplishments and plans at the same time. There's no point in examining only one aspect of my life to see if the past year was worth remembering.