Done?

As of shortly before 4:30 pm Mountain time, my dissertation is written. The data reflect the most recent analysis, my advisor's final comments have all been addressed, the arduous process of revising my thinking based on one single new reference is complete. I even created a special committee copy, without the pages of of Tables of Contents and such required by the school. It's sitting there, a lovely .pdf of 116 pages (including references), in my dissertation folder. And yet I have not emailed it out. It isn't due until tomorrow, and I can't quite conceive of what it will mean to have submitted my dissertation to my committee. It is the sensation I have had several times since my defense was announced to the department, and people started congratulating me and/or wishing me good luck when we passed in the halls. It doesn't quite seem real. I can't really be this close to being done.

Massive Dissertation Changes, And Advisor Confrontation

The excitement of having a job interview, the stress of deciding, and the thrill of accepting the job offer were just about my entire life for a month, but they didn't change one pesky fact: I still have to finish my dissertation. Oh, the job offer isn't contingent on the PhD, but it does bring a better salary, and I will need my terminal degree if I ever want tenure.

Unfortunately, my dissertation changed dramatically in the six months since I proposed it. Oh, the first three experiments were the same, but what I thought they said was very different, and what to do for a fourth experiment was completely unknown. I spent months trying to figure out what a fourth experiment could be, and could only come up with one idea - which another member of my committee eventually said wouldn't work, or certainly wouldn't be able to argue what I needed it to argue.

The stress of all of this planning, combined with my advisor's absolute perfectionism, seeming inability to let go of what I had proposed, and seeming unwillingness to accept my opinion on the feasibility of success, resulted in an hour-and-a-half video conference, which was emotionally exhausting. In all of that, we really covered three main points:

1) I felt completely out of control of my dissertation, that I was doing nothing but catering to my advisor's opinion of what it should be, and that she dismissed many of my interpretations. It was never the case that I persuaded her to any side or interpretation, it was that I eventually bombarded her with so much data that she convinced herself. I think she still felt, at the end, that this wasn't the case, but she also wound up with plenty of evidence that she left that impression on me, and (true) hints that it also applied to other graduate students as well.

2) My advisor's ongoing insistence on matching what had originally been proposed left me feeling that my entire dissertation hinged on a single experiment. I wouldn't have proposed that way if I had known that to be the case. She eventually got me to see that there were some bigger changes that only made it look like the original final experiment was critical, but I think I got her to see that she had essentially been making my new dissertation seem like it hinged on the final experiment, and that this position was untenable.

3) No single experiment could possibly do everything we were asking of a new fourth experiment. It was supposed to be something that added depth, but could be prefaced in the introduction without knowing the results of the other experiments, and it had to fit in with the earlier experiments without going off in a new direction. In months of trying, I had come up with exactly one idea, which turned out not to work. If there was another experiment that could do this, I wasn't going to come up with it, because I had nothing left.

All of that, and I left ready for a good long nap. But as emotionally exhausting as it was, at least it was productive. My dissertation will proceed along a new plan that I devised, and my advisor modified but agreed to. There will be three experiments, and an entire chapter addressing alternative interpretations of what those experiments show, and why I favor my interpretation. One of these will be backed up from data from a mini-experiment I am currently conducting. And suddenly, the entire dissertation seems manageable. Four chapters with minor revisions, two chapters to write, and she will even cover my tuition if I have to enroll during the summer to have my PhD in hand before my new job starts. It all seems so manageable, I have to wonder what I'm missing.

Job Search Saga: The Decision

I accepted the position I was offered, at the first college that granted me an interview.

And everyone wants to know, how did I decide? I didn't actually wait to hear the reaction from the other college at which I was interviewing. For one thing, I realized that the ongoing stress of making a decision was costing me the glow and excitement of being recognized as a good teacher and wanted for these positions. For another thing, I came to a conclusion about the one thing that was making me hesitant to accept the offer.

The visit couldn't have been more perfect. I liked the people I met with (as well as could be expected from meeting most of them for only half an hour), I liked the town, I liked the building and the setup of the offices and classroom, I liked everything I heard about the courses I could teach and the life of the faculty member. I've asked a few follow-up questions via email, and each one has come in perfectly. Even the fact that it's a 3-year visiting position couldn't detract from the offer. Sure, being offered a tenure-track position straight out of grad school would have been nice, but a lot can happen in 3 years, from economic improvement prompting them to make a tenure-track position to me discovering a wanderlust that has me happy to explore other colleges.

The only, only part of the job that made me hesitant was that it was in my less-favored sub-field. Research in that sub-field is hard, especially on a limited budget, in a small town. I've spent much of the past week chewing my lip over the question of whether I could be successful as a researcher in that situation, thinking that it would be so much easier (and cheaper) to be in my preferred sub-field instead.

First, I wondered if I was just being lazy. Then, thinking about the other position in preparing for my phone interviews, I realized that the sub-field aspect was just masking a much more general problem: I was insecure. Some part of me is absolutely terrified that when I am no longer under my advisor's continual guidance, I will cease being anything like a successful researcher; that I will stop being able to design successful experiments, write good posters and journal articles, know where to submit them. It is a terror that applies equally well to any position.

With that terror firmly quenched - or rather, with the firm decision that I would not let the ongoing terror rule my future - the decision was easy. As I wrote to the chair in my acceptance email, I simply cannot imagine a place that would be closer to the ideal I had in mind when I was deciding to apply to liberal arts colleges. There was no reason to turn this down, no possibility that a better offer could come along.

Now, I have that glow and excitement about the future again. And I just have to find a way to keep the dissertation from overwhelming it.

Job Search Saga: The Dilemma In Brief

The second phone interview with the second college had the same effect as the first; here was a cool college, one I could see myself at, so what am I going to do about the offer from the first college? The dilemma came down to this:

College A - Amazing college, seemed perfect in many ways, offer in hand, but for a three-year visiting position in my less-preferred sub-field.

College B - Sounded really good from description of two faculty over the phone, looking for a tenure-track faculty member in my preferred sub-field, but I didn't even know whether I would be invited for an on-campus interview.

Several other graduate students in my lab said they would take the certainty of a job over the stress of waiting to see if there would be a better offer. Normally, that would be my approach as well; if I hadn't be invited to phone interview with College B at the same time I got the job offer from College A, I would have accepted the offer within a few days. As it was, I had to do some hard thinking about the potential downsides of the position.

These potential downsides were two: visiting position, less-preferred sub-field.

The visiting position itself didn't seem to be a downside to me. Three years would give me ample time to get experience, and would give me several years off before I had to think about job applications again. No guarantees were offered, but several of the existing faculty in the department had started on visiting positions, which had eventually been turned into tenure-track. Oh, there would be pressure to be productive, since I would potentially be on the market again in three years, but there would be pressure of being productive enough for tenure anyway, and at least the pressure would keep me from slacking on my research in my first year.

The less-preferred sub-field was certainly a downside. It is actually the sub-field most of my research has been in, but it is much more difficult to gather data, and I hadn't really wanted to get saddled with those headaches when I began my faculty career. I wasn't too worried about selling myself in the other sub-field, which is what all my teaching experience has been in, and I was so looking forward to the less demanding line of research.

So as the days toward my decision deadline approached, I found I was really asking myself a very simple question: Did I think I could make a success of the more difficult line of research, on my own, away from my advisor? Was it worth turning down an excellent teaching college just because my research was going to be harder than I had hoped?

Job Search Saga: An Offer And An(other) Interview

I had been told not to be surprised if I received a job offer within a few days, but I couldn't help but take that advice with a cautionary grain of salt. So I was somewhat surprised, and very elated, to arrive at work, my first day back after the interview, and discover an email with the job offer in my inbox. It had been sent barely 24 hours after my first interview began, had landed in my inbox while I was still on a plane flying home from the interview. I wanted to leap from my chair, to shout the news to all the graduate students in nearby offices. But I continued to sort through the emails received during a full day of travel, while I tried to decide how I would tell my advisor.

What I had not expected, and was both very surprised and somewhat panicked to see, was an email from another college expressing interest in my application and inviting me to do two phone interviews in the coming weeks. Given the current financial environment, all my planning had been focused on getting a single job; I hadn't spared the slightest thought on actually having to make decisions about accepting interviews or accepting offers. It never rains but it pours, and there I was caught outside without an umbrella.

My email to my advisor thus became a slightly panicked request for a meeting, the first time I have ever marked any communication "urgent". I had a job offer I was supposed to decide about within the week, an request to do phone interviews the next week, and no idea how to begin to respond to either. I needed someone to stem the tide of rising stress by first, rekindling the thrill of having been given an offer and another interview request and being wanted, and second, giving me some idea of what to do next.

My advisor demonstrated just how supportive she could be by coming through for me, offering to be on Skype for a conference (from her sabbatical location) within half an hour. In this meeting I heard her vicarious thrill at my achievements, and got very soothing guidance about what I could do next. It would be reasonable to ask for an extension on the job offer deadline, up to a week. I could mention the interview when making the request if I thought it would improve my chances of negotiating the offer. It would be reasonable to agree to tell the second college that I had an offer deadline, and ask to do the phone interviews early, to find more about that college as I decided. Meanwhile, I should put together a rough budget of my start-up needs, to determine how much I could do with the package I had been offered, considering a list of the hidden expenses my advisor provided.

I still left that meeting with a hearty dose of excitement, mingled with a dash of panic, but I'm not sure I would be human if I could have been calmed so easily. Whatever decision I was going to make, I had proof now that I was qualified for my chosen career, that I had chosen wisely in choosing that career, that I could fit in as a faculty member on a liberal arts college - and that more than one college thought so. The trick was going to be holding on to that excitement while navigating the stress of simultaneous interviews and decisions.

Job Search Saga: Final Note On Interview Day

What I left out of the description of my whirlwind interview day was the slightly unreal feeling the persisted over the day, as here and there language cropped in that was more in line with "if you accept the job" as opposed to "if we offer you the job". The faculty interviews were all so laid-back, more conversations than interrogations, that I couldn't quite get a handle on what was going on. There were no mentions of other people interviewing, the difficulty of the decision the department was going to make, or even any real questions that made me wonder if they would hire me. I wasn't sure what to expect at an interview, but it certainly wasn't information phrased as "You would be responsible for teaching...", or "Most likely you would be in that office...". It was incredibly unnerving.

This came to a head when the senior faculty member gave me a tour around town before dropping me off at my hotel. His comments were peppered with suggestions about local agencies he could connect me with for research, the best places to live, and included the offer to give me the name of a good real estate agent. Perhaps the jet lag and the long day contributed, but I was feeling quite disoriented by the time we turned to my hotel. I hadn't found a way to ask the chair, or anyone else, when they thought they would make a decision, and I was starting to seriously regret not trying harder to broach the subject. I was trying to get my tired brain to come up with a brilliant way to ask, when matters were taken care of for me.

Here's the deal, he said as we neared my hotel. I've talked with everyone in the department, and they all liked you. Your job talk was great, we can tell you're a wonderful teacher. We have interviewed some other people, and we think you'll fit in fine. Don't be surprised if you get an email in the next few days offering you the job. We're eager to have someone hired, so we'll probably ask for your decision in a week or so. I'm letting you know this now so you have a little time to think about it.

This was too much for my tired, jet-lagged brain. It would be inappropriate to thrill with excitement, it would be inappropriate to give much of a hint about how enthusiastic I would be before seeing the financial terms of the offer...but what would be inappropriate? I'm not sure I contributed much beyond "Ok", some random assurance that I don't linger over my decisions, and a generic nice-to-have-met-you as I exited the car.

I also had no idea what I was supposed to tell people about how my interview went. I'm too paranoid and too cautious to make much of a possibility. I'm too much of a scientist desiring facts and definite data to rely on hearsay. After all, they couldn't have gotten the Provost's opinion, and I had no idea what he thought of me or how much his opinion would weigh, or someone could change their mind or raise doubts at the next department meeting. I was ecstatic, but reserved about sharing it.

On the phone with my father, telling him how my interview went, I kept that final parting statement to myself until he explicitly asked when I was supposed to hear their decision. Stretched out on my huge hotel bed, trying to figure out how I could be so exhausted and so unable to sleep, I decided to keep that potential decision a secret from everyone else, even my advisor; I would simply say that the interview went incredibly well, that I liked the college, that I thought I would hear back soon. It was all very true, and the suggestion of an offer was just too much, too soon, for me to deal with my own reaction, let alone anyone else's.

Job Search Saga: Surprisingly Unstressed

As I prepared myself for my interview, I found myself surprisingly relaxed. I was a little unsure about what to expect, of course, and trawling the Internet to get some idea of what a provost or faculty interview committee might want to know, but I was not on edge the way I was before graduate school interviews, or before conference presentations.

The main reason for this unexpected lack of stress was a simple statement by a faculty member giving job search advice: Once they've invited you for an interview, they've acknowledged that you are a qualified teacher; the interview's purpose is only to establish "fit". "Fit", that ephemeral term that tries so hard to be more mature than adolescent angst about "fitting in" but is essentially the same thing, and very important at a small liberal arts colleges. The entire department, all five of them, were going to meet with me to decide if they would enjoy working with me for three years, or if there was some dramatic character conflict, or just in general if I sounded great on paper but was a horror in person. If I were a few years younger, this might have been more stressful than being evaluated on my qualifications, but I was also looking for a great place to work for three years, which made it a question of mutual fit. I was just as concerned with whether I would like working with them as they were concerned with whether they would like working with me, and if someone took an irrational dislike to me then I wouldn't want the job anyway.

With this fact firmly in mind, the interview became fun. It was a free trip to somewhere I'd never been, including meals for three days (the interview and both travel days), at least one of which was guaranteed to be of excellent quality (the dinner with faculty members after the interview). It was a chance to share my research with a group of qualified researchers, who might have good questions or comments about things I could do next. And it would be my first visit ever to a liberal arts college, and my chance to find out more about how they really work, their personality, what I could expect from my chosen career.

Don't get me wrong; I did want to be offered the job, and I would be disappointed if I didn't get it. But knowing that I wasn't really being evaluated, and knowing that I would get so much out of this visit even if I didn't get an offer, kept the excitement so high that the stress didn't have a chance to break through.

Struggling for Motivation: Why Care What Others Think?

I find myself feeling the same toward my dissertation and ultimate defense as I did toward my black belt test several months ago. After years of training, I know exactly what I have learned, what I have accomplished; the only reason to stick around through the final strenuous test is to get an official acknowledgment of what I already know. But I can't quite bring myself to care about that official piece of paper. It'd be nice to have, but I'm not sure it's worth all the hoops I have to jump through to get it. It's just a piece of paper.

When I expressed this lack of caring to my advisor, and to a teaching advisor, the reaction was the same: You might not care about that piece of paper, but other people care! Word for word, both times - other people care. This, to me, is a ridiculous response. Sure, I care what other people think, but only to an extent. As a researcher, I care about what other researchers with expertise in my field think of the quality of my research, but only whether it is well designed, executed, and communicated, not whether it's worthwhile. As a teacher, I care about what my students think of my lessons, but only whether the lessons are effective and engaging, not whether my class is "fun" or "easy". Certainly I care about what other people think, but not enough to bend over backwards for them; not enough to subject myself to six strenuous and unpleasant months doing things I do not enjoy, sacrificing things I do enjoy, for the sake of other people's opinions.

And who are these "other people", really? A tiny, tiny percentage of the population attempts the PhD. Those who do not attempt it, those who attempt it and ultimately decide against it, they might - might- admire me for doing it, but they aren't going to think less of me for not doing something they did not do. So really, the only "other people" who care would be those who have a PhD, and think less of those who don't get one. In an administrative sense, it cuts me out of jobs that only look for the PhD itself as a marker of knowledge and skill; that cuts me out of a number of research jobs I didn't want anyway, and makes it more challenging to get a liberal arts professorship (or impossible, of "ABD considered" is only lip-service), but still leaves plenty of perfectly acceptable and interesting career opportunities open.

I do have my black belt now. So how did I motivate myself through it, and can it help with the dissertation? Well, I didn't make it through my black belt test for the prestige of having that recognized symbol of martial arts prowess. I did it as a challenge to myself, to prove to myself that I could survive the most physically demanding seven hours of my life, that I wouldn't quit when my body started cannibalizing itself for energy. Knowing what I would think of myself if I quit kept me going, except for one moment of semi-despair when the knowledge that I had carpooled to the test and would have to watch the remainder of the test kept me going.

Unfortunately, the dissertation is different than the black belt test in two critical ways. First is the time factor: putting yourself through seven hours of hell is strength, but putting yourself through three to six months of hell is masochism. Second is the criterion for success: Earning my black belt required demonstrating specific skill and convincing a single Master to promote me, but earning my dissertation requires demonstrating "a significant contribution to the literature" and convincing five academics with disparate viewpoints to promote me. I walked into my black belt test knowing that if I stuck it out and did my best I would pass; there is no such guarantee at the dissertation defense.

Winter Break Escape

My Christmas tradition is rejoicing in the academic lifestyle that sends me home for three weeks, while those around me, the ones who have "real" jobs, are hard at work. I didn't even ask my advisor if I could have time off, I simply booked a flight to the home of my ancestors (or my father, at any rate), and prepared to enjoy my warmer, snow-free surroundings. I have not analyzed data, I have not worked on my dissertation, I haven't even dealt with many emails, as my advisor is too busy dealing with her own cold and the colds of her two sons to keep up with the usual rate of requesting information she's seen before and insisting "we" should follow-up on things.

Next week I may pay for this time off, as I simultaneously attempt to put together the fourth chapter of my dissertation (on the third experiment) and devise a fourth experiment that my advisor might actually sign off on. But for now, I am luxuriating in the freedom from research. I just need to recharge enough to last one more semester.

When Advisors Shouldn't Try to Advise

Once upon a time, my advisor met weekly with her undergraduate honors thesis students. The meetings were only half the time devoted to her graduate students, but they were consistent. She helped them choose their projects, decide what to do when problems arose, analyze data, and write.

Then she realized that she had graduate students who could do this for her. The transition started gradually and ended abruptly; suddenly, she met with the graduate students, and the graduate students met with the undergrads, and never did the faculty and undergraduates see each other.

One of my thesis students has been working with me since she was a senior in high school. She picked up one of my side projects - one I would like to do if only that dissertation didn't get in the way. "Our" faculty advisor helped me brainstorm the project, but has been uninvolved since then. She has not met individually with my thesis student. She has not emailed her. She has not responded to my student's emails, beyond instructions on how those emails should be done better. She did not attend my student's lab meeting presentation at the halfway point of data collection.

And now, suddenly, out of the blue, she emailed my student asking why she didn't do *this* instead, where "this" is a plan we had specifically decided against in that lab meeting, and my advisor had implicitly condoned. If the thesis time constraints were really that important.

Which means I sent a very careful but adamant email reminding the advisor that a decision had been made at lab meeting, that if she had any problems with that decision she should have said it then, and explaining exactly how tight the constraints were.

I did not say that she had no business interfering in my mentoring relationship with my student, or butting into a project she has had nothing to do with for almost a year. But I really, really wanted to.

The Dissertation Proposal...Take 2

High on the list of things I never thought I would do a second time: Write a dissertation proposal. Not that the original experience was anywhere near as scarring as, say, my comprehensive exam, but neither was it a joyous experience I yearned to repeat.

But, Experiment 4 of my dissertation is killing me. For assorted technological and practical issues, I have given up hope on it working - and did so just as reviews came back declaring Experiment 4 to be absolutely vital for our interpretation of other dissertation findings. My advisor didn't want to let the experiment go. I told her that the experiment was toxic, and that I would sooner pursue an alternate career than get it to work. I was only slightly exaggerating when I said I was starting to think longingly of a career at McDonald's.

Our compromise: She will back me on changing the experiment, if I can restructure the dissertation so the research seems motivated but the current Experiment 4 doesn't seem so obviously necessary. I am to write her a dissertation proposal, which she will approve (or not), and which I can then send to the rest of my committee so they at least have a "heads up!" that the dissertation has changed before I plop it into their inboxes.

It is a good compromise, and it's not like I had much else I would have been doing for the next few weeks anyway. (The original plan was to write later chapters of the dissertation, but the motivation was no longer there). If I get frustrated, I can console myself with the knowledge that at least this time I only have to convince one person, not five.

Ready to Escape

I struggle with my advisor about whether I will defend by April, to graduate in May, or by July, to graduate in August. She thinks my dissertation will be better if I wait (an extra few months to get the data in). Perhaps she's right, but I want out. I dislike this project, I am frustrated by my collaborators, and I have things I want to do over the summer. I am even starting to like the alternative careers/life plans I've come up with if my committee decrees my April defense not good enough.

Dissertation Stress: How Good Does the Research Have To Be?

The first chapter of my dissertation, the introduction, is written. The next three chapters, one each for the first three experiments, are drafted - data collected, results written, and only in need of refinement. So why do I feel so stressed out, and so unsure about whether I'll be ready to defend and graduate this year?

It all comes down to the final experiment. Data collection progresses slowly, for reasons not all in my control; it will certainly extend to January, and might extend to February - giving me only a month or less to write up that experiment and the general discussion. So whenever I think about the dissertation, I focus on the question of how demanding my committee will be. Will three successful experiments, and a reasonable attempt at the fourth, be enough? Or will they insist that the fourth experiment must also be of publishable quality?

Last year, one of the students declared that she was not at all worried about her defense because she already had a post-doc offer in hand, and none of the faculty were going to hold her back. I suppose that if I don't have a job offer myself, I shouldn't care if I need an extra year to pull off the final experiment, but I can't stand the thought of failing my defense. Surely three of four successful experiments should be good enough; but do I really want to graduate as just "good enough"?

Job Search: Waiting for Word

Two months after I sent in my first job application packet, the earliest posted "review of applications will begin..." date has passed. Of the 10 jobs to which I have applied, 3 are now reviewing the applications - at least, according to their job announcements they are. That means it's time to really start wondering when, or if, I'll hear anything.

I suppose I should be grateful that one of my letter writers didn't get around to writing my letters before these first deadlines. I can revert to the "they aren't reviewing my application yet" mentality, and not feel worried because the delay isn't my fault (except insofar as I should have been nagging him to write the letters). It wouldn't be bad to delay this new stress a month, until the next batch of application deadlines pass.

I do wish I had some idea when I would find out. If I don't hear within a month of the review beginning, should I decide I'm not one of their top candidates, and write the job off? Or is it two months, or even three? Will these committees even be sticking to the announced review date, or delaying somewhat, in the nature of committees - and faculty in particular - everywhere? At what point is it worthwhile following up with someone at these colleges?

Thus far, the only thing I have received is an assortment of e-mail and snail-mail letters acknowledging my application. This has accomplished two things: One, it has reinforced the frustration of relying on my letter writers to complete my applications for me in a timely manner (when the form letters tell me what I need to complete my application). Two, it has started me worrying about those colleges who haven't acknowledged my application, when I had done so well in deliberately not worrying about packets getting lost in the mail or the administrative offices.

I have promised myself I will not start freaking out about my job prospects until January. It's only a week after the first review should have begun, and already I'm wondering more than I should. It's going to be a long three months.

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.

On the Job Market?

At various career workshops I've attended in the past few months, certain questions are standard: What do you intend to do once you have your PhD? How confident are you that you can get this job? The answers are just as standard: I want an academic job, and I'm not confident at all - because of the economy.

About a week or so ago, this despair made the New York Times. And the general sensation that the job market will be tough was laid out in stark statements.

Public universities are bracing for severe cuts as state legislatures grapple with yawning deficits. At the same time, even the wealthiest private colleges have seen their endowments sink and donations slacken since the financial crisis.

As much as I, personally, love the concept of a trim and balanced budget, I, as an academic, see it as cutting of my job prospects. I might apply for several dozen jobs and be lucky to get a single interview. And could I possibly handle the uncertainty of being given a job "pending funding approval"?

Staying in grad school isn't really an option either. First, because I want out; second, because my advisor's funding (and the department's) is just as tenuous. She may or may not be able to put up funding for one more year.

I'm certain I'll find some job - some of the people getting laid off are no doubt taking the change to finish some college degrees or take extra courses to bolster their resumes, and may be heading to community college to do it. But if I start teaching at a community college, could I ever advance away from there? It might be better than doing nothing for a year, or doing something completely unrelated to academia, but it might be hard to compete with people coming straight out of the more prestigious schools. I just have no idea.

Knowing When To Quit

Slightly over a year ago, my advisor and her former post-doc realized that there was an error in a published paper. They insisted that the finding was valid, especially since the error was found in the process of replicating the results; I insisted that the statistical significance of the results had changed to the extent that the paper would never have gotten published, and the editor should be informed. This was incredibly stupid of me.

It wasn't stupid to think that the editor should be told; I stand by that bit of ethics. But it was definitely stupid to think that I could get two professors to admit they were wrong. We got a letter to the editor drafted - and then it had to be a brief report, so they could explain all the interesting reasons they were wrong. And then my advisor sat on the draft for five months, until I demanded to at least give the *#@%A thing a due date so it wouldn't always be the lowest priority. And the the due date came - and went. My advisor has a grant deadline. Our co-author has "a number of pressing deadlines". Having a due date doesn't even give them an artificial sense of urgency.

I find myself faced with the options of continuing to drag them, kicking and screaming, into telling the editor they made a mistake, or giving up. I chose to give up. The alternative is just too stressful; I've spent a year trying to convince them to do the right thing, and I don't have anything left to fight with. Their reputations matter more than their science, and there's nothing I can do to change that.

Frankly, I don't think our research is important enough that it matters, and we did replicate the results. My advisor and her former post-doc can survive with their reputations intact, in everyone's eyes but mine - and, after all, why should they care about the opinion of a lowly graduate student?

As for me, I have one more year here. Fighting with my advisor over this will only hurt my career prospects. I just need to get the dissertation done, get the PhD, and get out. If I have to publish my dissertation results - well, at least my advisor is likely to be interested in those. And then I'll never work with her again.

No-Work Weekend, All-Work Week

Last weekend I took the entire weekend off guilt-free, because I had absolutely nothing to do; my e-mail inboxes were empty, any research tasks were in the hands of collaborators, and I was three weeks ahead in my lab planning. I had a normal life for two and a half days.

This weekend, I still kind of took the weekend off, but with plenty of guilt. There were any number of things I could have been doing, should have been doing, but I was seduced by a sale on the "Chuck" Season 1 DVD, and couldn't quite pry myself away from my TV. I still got something (one, tiny thing) done, and I'm not behind - but I'm not ahead any more, either.

Much as I said in my response to ScienceWoman's poll on taking time off between semesters, and in the graduate school survival kit I gave to a friend, I refuse to stress out about my failure to get work done. I have no home life, and can make up for it by just working 10- to 15-hour weekdays. And even if I don't make it up, there's no point fretting about it now.

Still, I do need to develop a strategy for getting work done on days when I have no meetings or classes or any reason to leave the apartment. That's the downside to a studio apartment; it's impossible to have one productivity area set aside.

Countdown to the End of the Semester

Welcome to the last week of class. In the next week, I have only 2 things that truly need to get done: 1) write a 7-9 page term paper for my thankfully nothing-to-do-with-my-major class, and 2) grade 21 research proposals. The term paper is due Friday or Saturday (my professor is lax, as he should be, since it's been over a month since I turned in the last paper and I still haven't gotten it back); the graded papers have to be finished by Monday afternoon so I can offload them to my students at their final exam.

Looking back at the semester does not make me feel in any way successful. Let's review.

Study #1 - At my advisor's insistence, I continued to collect data on a project after the initial data analysis revealed that the manipulation wasn't work. Final data analysis shows exactly the same pattern, and the additional data points didn't make anything more significant than it had been. This project is a complete wash for anything except doing a follow-up, and I probably won't do that because it doesn't fit into my dissertation.

Study #2 - The downside to collaborating with my advisor and her husband is that they both go on baby leave at the same time. Delays in getting responses to emails and a shortage of programming resources in our lab means that I barely managed to program the experiment, and am squeaking out a minuscule amount of pilot data before the semester ends.

Study #3 - My senior thesis student collected all the data for this project. The follow-up to an early (under revision) project is mixed; the replication is only marginally significant (pending massaging of data), but the expansion is significant in ways we don't know how to interpret yet. The thesis data (another of my ideas, with my student's help) turned out to be a wash, just like every other research project I've conceived myself (except my master's, which was just unpublishable).

Comps - Completed the review paper, reading approximately 150 journal articles, writing 10,000+ words (final draft), and answering every question I outlined in my proposal. My committee decided that I should have asked two additional questions, and instructed me to add these questions - which essentially means reorganizing and probably rewriting the entire thing.

Corrections Draft - My advisor has been sitting on this for almost four months, so I have been unable to make any progress. I'm close to losing my faith in research ethics over this; we found out that the published results were inaccurate almost 10 months ago, and still haven't told anyone. I set a firm deadline for getting revisions back, lest I lose all self-respect.

And...that's my semester. There was teaching a class, and some "lead" teaching activities, and helping out my thesis student - but as far as my "real" activities, demanded for research, the only thing I've managed to completed (Study #3) was really completed by an undergrad; I've just had to do the data analysis. I can't even count my two accepted conference posters, because they were submitted in the summer, and it just took this long to get the acceptances.

Yet another semester at graduate school, with nothing to show for it.

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.