When it comes to the concept of expertise, there are two types of academics: those who would never claim to be experts in anything that lies outside of the papers they're currently writing
and those who think that being an expert in one thing (e.g. histone deacetylace inhibitors) makes you an expert at everything else (e.g. parenting). You can probably tell which group lies within my crosshairs this evening, but the reality is that I don't think either attitude is healthy.
The first type of "expert" is one I can sympathize with. As an academic, your research becomes more and more focused with time. Eventually it becomes a stretch to say that you're studying an overall concept -- say, malaria, for instance -- when you actually spend your day analyzing the mechanics of flight of satiated female mosquitoes. Because science is constantly evolving, your knowledge of every other aspect of malaria quickly becomes dated, and you wouldn't dare to call yourself an expert on malaria.
To some degree, I fell into this category when I was a grad student and a postdoc. My field owed its existence to current problems facing society, and we used those problems as a justification for funding, yet I wasn't comfortable really discussing that current societal problem because I didn't consider myself qualified.
This is kind of a sad way to be, as it implies either that you don't have a sense of how your work really fits into the real world or that you don't have the confidence to discuss topics that you're not intimately familiar with. Either way, society loses out because you're not sharing your knowledge.
But the academic that's more dangerous is the one who thinks that being an expert in one thing makes him an expert in, well, everything. I started thinking about these toxic experts after I had a email spat with one of these self-aggrandizing windbags last week. Here was the situation:
Our university recently adopted a system of templates for university web pages. They're really nice, and were even vetted by a web designer friend of mine. The goal is to make all of the university's web pages look and feel consistent so that we're sending coherent signals to our visitors. Makes sense. The templates also make building a new website really straightforward. Since I, having basically never built a website, was charged with building one for our new multi-disciplinary initiative, I was relieved to have these templates at my disposal.
Last week, I emailed a few people who need to provide content for the website. And the first comment I get about my weeks of hard work was from Windbag, who didn't like the template. I begged off, explained the university's policy about website styles, etc., thinking I was in the clear. He spat back that no one had consulted him when these templates were being developed, so he doesn't think we should use them.
Uh, right. So we should let the professors decide on how the university presents itself to the world? Better yet, we should just let Windbag decide. He seems to know a lot about nanotechnology, so we should definitely have him make that final decision on what color the navigation bars should be.
Everyone is entitled to an opinion, even crazy Windbag professors. But these "experts" don't seem to recognize the difference between opinion and expertise. In thinking that he was an expert of web design, Windbag was essentially saying that his opinion should be given the same weight as the opinions of the graphic designers and web developers who came up with the templates. Academics like Windbag have a lack of respect for different types of work, for different avenues of research, and for different opinions. On a deeper level, they fail to recognize that the experts in any field have worked hard to become so.
This is a bit of an extreme example -- my jaw literally dropped when I got these emails from Windbag. But the Ivory Tower is crawling with Windbags, some more subtle and some less. These are the creatures who go to talks on topics unrelated to their own research and then harangue and belittle the speaker without having any basis for doing so. Their voices drip equally with impatient condescension whether they're talking about the papers recently published in their field or the relative merits of the Bahamas versus the Florida Keys for sailing.
They're also the creatures who decide to leave academia and are then shocked when people out in the real world aren't clamoring for their knowledge (guilty).
Sunday, July 1, 2007
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
unsticking your job search
Dave Jensen over at ScienceCareers published a nice article this week in his Tooling Up series. The article is entitled The Slightly Irreverent, Shake 'Em Up Job Search, and it's definitely worth a read. The title turns me off because it sounds like he's trying to be cool, but his larger point is that sometimes you have to bend the rules a bit to get past the inhumanity of online job searching.
Scientists aren't generally the most outgoing, personable lot, so online job applications hold a lot of appeal. I'd so much rather email someone than talk on the phone or (yikes!) just go knock on their door and say hello. But only 3-5% of job seekers actually find employment through online ads. So it's probably not a surprise that the 40 or so resumes I submitted electronically during my job search yielded nothing.
Despite not being very fruitful, I think that online job ads are really useful, particularly if you're looking for a way to leave academia. Even just a few hours of online job hunting gave me a sense of what was out there, what sorts of jobs I should be applying for, and what sorts of things employers value (communication skills and demonstrated experience seem to trump all else, including your doctorate).
The problem is that any old schmuck can apply for a job online, and someone has to sort through all of those resumes. Jensen's point is that you have to worm your way in an any way you can in order to make yourself a real person in the eyes of that HR person sorting through applications. His number one suggestion is to call the company, but *don't* call the HR department. Start talking to people in the company -- anyone in the company. Don't even mention that you're applying for a job, as they'll likely just forward you to the HR department.
I think this advice is solid. It's unfortunately hard to swallow, at least for me. I'd like my resume to stand for itself. And I'd like to believe that my experience and qualifications make my resume glow like a beacon of light in that huge stack of resumes. But perhaps the best way to show off your communications skills isn't with a bullet point on your resume but by, well, communicating.
Scientists aren't generally the most outgoing, personable lot, so online job applications hold a lot of appeal. I'd so much rather email someone than talk on the phone or (yikes!) just go knock on their door and say hello. But only 3-5% of job seekers actually find employment through online ads. So it's probably not a surprise that the 40 or so resumes I submitted electronically during my job search yielded nothing.
Despite not being very fruitful, I think that online job ads are really useful, particularly if you're looking for a way to leave academia. Even just a few hours of online job hunting gave me a sense of what was out there, what sorts of jobs I should be applying for, and what sorts of things employers value (communication skills and demonstrated experience seem to trump all else, including your doctorate).
The problem is that any old schmuck can apply for a job online, and someone has to sort through all of those resumes. Jensen's point is that you have to worm your way in an any way you can in order to make yourself a real person in the eyes of that HR person sorting through applications. His number one suggestion is to call the company, but *don't* call the HR department. Start talking to people in the company -- anyone in the company. Don't even mention that you're applying for a job, as they'll likely just forward you to the HR department.
I think this advice is solid. It's unfortunately hard to swallow, at least for me. I'd like my resume to stand for itself. And I'd like to believe that my experience and qualifications make my resume glow like a beacon of light in that huge stack of resumes. But perhaps the best way to show off your communications skills isn't with a bullet point on your resume but by, well, communicating.
Sunday, June 24, 2007
moving and writing
This past week was an interesting one job-wise. I was at the state capital one afternoon with my boss, talking to some folks at a state agency who we'd like to collaborate with and potentially get funding from. The next day I went to a workshop about corporate, foundation, and donor relations that was conducted by our university's foundation. I've heard many academics talk about how the world outside of the Ivory Tower is full of money grubbing misers. It took about 10 minutes for me to realize that the money grubbers are in the tower as well, and that's actually a good thing for the university.
Anyway, both of these experiences deserve their own posts since each was interesting and noteworthy. But my mind is on different, semi-job related things:
1. National Novel Writing Month, aka NaNoWriMo. The goal of NaNoWriMo is to write a novel (175 pages) in one month: November. Unlike most Americans, I don't have any grand ideas for a novel...yet. But NaNoWriMo appeals to me in my gut. I first learned about it last year, on October 30. Though the concept struck a chord with me, I gave myself an out because 2 days to come up with an idea and start writing seemed, well, crazy. But I vowed that I would come up with some ideas and participate this year. I'm under no illusions that anything I could slap together in a month (or two months or two decades) would be any good, but I want to go through the process and to spend a month writing intensely. Academia seems like a potentially good setting for a novel, which is why I referred to NaNoWriMo as semi-job related. The personalities, the incestuousness, and the nomadic lifestyle lend themselves to strong characters and interesting situations. It's also a world I know fairly well, which makes it a safer bet for coming up with a realistic plot. Kind of lame, but it's a starting point.
2. We're trying to figure out where to live. University towns usually have some sort of appeal -- Ann Arbor, Madison, Northampton, and Austin all have it. My university town does not. In the not too distant past, the town was somewhat dangerous, which led most of the university faculty to seek housing outside the town. The town has cleaned up quite a bit and is undergoing massive McGentrification, but still doesn't draw much of the university crowd.
This summer, we're living in a sublet that's in town and walking distance to my office. Being a short walk away from work is fantastic, but the town makes me sad. Come September we have to move, and we're trying to figure out where to go. We've been scoping out this area and the nearest big city, where my boyfriend will be working. There's no absolutely ideal situation, so we're choosing from a few acceptable options, knowing that there are up and down sides to each one.
In my head, these two topics -- housing and NaNoWriMo -- have become linked, as if our decisions about where to live are part of a larger story I could write that says something meaningful about relationships and modern life. Realistically, I think I'm just trying to create a story about moving and transitions that will help me to figure out what to do. But if that story can fuel a month of writing in November, so much the better.
Anyway, both of these experiences deserve their own posts since each was interesting and noteworthy. But my mind is on different, semi-job related things:
1. National Novel Writing Month, aka NaNoWriMo. The goal of NaNoWriMo is to write a novel (175 pages) in one month: November. Unlike most Americans, I don't have any grand ideas for a novel...yet. But NaNoWriMo appeals to me in my gut. I first learned about it last year, on October 30. Though the concept struck a chord with me, I gave myself an out because 2 days to come up with an idea and start writing seemed, well, crazy. But I vowed that I would come up with some ideas and participate this year. I'm under no illusions that anything I could slap together in a month (or two months or two decades) would be any good, but I want to go through the process and to spend a month writing intensely. Academia seems like a potentially good setting for a novel, which is why I referred to NaNoWriMo as semi-job related. The personalities, the incestuousness, and the nomadic lifestyle lend themselves to strong characters and interesting situations. It's also a world I know fairly well, which makes it a safer bet for coming up with a realistic plot. Kind of lame, but it's a starting point.
2. We're trying to figure out where to live. University towns usually have some sort of appeal -- Ann Arbor, Madison, Northampton, and Austin all have it. My university town does not. In the not too distant past, the town was somewhat dangerous, which led most of the university faculty to seek housing outside the town. The town has cleaned up quite a bit and is undergoing massive McGentrification, but still doesn't draw much of the university crowd.
This summer, we're living in a sublet that's in town and walking distance to my office. Being a short walk away from work is fantastic, but the town makes me sad. Come September we have to move, and we're trying to figure out where to go. We've been scoping out this area and the nearest big city, where my boyfriend will be working. There's no absolutely ideal situation, so we're choosing from a few acceptable options, knowing that there are up and down sides to each one.
In my head, these two topics -- housing and NaNoWriMo -- have become linked, as if our decisions about where to live are part of a larger story I could write that says something meaningful about relationships and modern life. Realistically, I think I'm just trying to create a story about moving and transitions that will help me to figure out what to do. But if that story can fuel a month of writing in November, so much the better.
Thursday, June 21, 2007
baby? or rent?
I had lunch today with two women in my department, both of whom have two kids in the 7-13 age range. After giving them a brief update on the status of my move, how I'm settling in, etc., the topic quickly turned to summer camps. More specifically, what to do with your kids during the summer while you're working*?
I was having a rough day in the halls of the Ivory Tower, so I nearly offered to quit my job and babysit for these four kids for the summer. I'm looking forward to having kids of my own someday, but until today I hadn't really stopped to think about the actual costs of having a childcare. So let's do some simple math.
One of these mothers puts her kids in a fantastic day camp that's run by our university for the summer. It sounds like a blast -- field trips, daily swimming, art projects -- and the it runs from 7am to 6pm daily. For faculty members, the camp is a steal at $300 per kid per week. That works out to 55 hours of childcare per week at just $5.45/hour. But for two kids, that comes to $2400/month, which is exactly double what I'm paying in rent for my apartment here.
The second mother also sends her kids to camps during the summer...but she has a nanny who drives them to and from camp and watches the kids on non-camp days. I suppose there's no tactful way to find out what she's paying, but my guess is that it is more than $300/week.
The summer is the real killer. Once the little money suckers are in school, it's probably just a few hours a day during the school year. Again, a little math.
Back when I was in junior high I babysat for my neighbor's daughter, who envisioned herself a 10-year old Bette Midler. The tasks were pretty straightforward, which was good because I was only 13. I met her at the bus stop, walked her home, fixed a snack, and clapped at her every rendition of "The Rose." At $5/hour, 3 hours/day, 5 days/week, it was a total racket. Maybe the parents saw it that way as well -- $75/week for childcare seems pretty reasonable. But then again, they were leaving their little prima donna with someone who couldn't even drive yet.
According to PayScale, the going rate for a babysitter in my part of the world these days is $8-10/hour. So after school daycare for 15 hours/week would cost about $600/month, or exactly half of my current monthly rent.
So for two kids, we're looking at a total of $5400 during the school year and $7200 for the summer. Grand total = $12,600.
I suspect that this estimate is on the low side for those pre-preschool years, and on the high side for the high school years. But according to the National Child Care Information Center, I'm not too far off.
Is this worth it? Not being a parent myself, I'm not sure. Perhaps it's the price you pay to stay sane and part of the adult working world. And maybe if you absolutely love what you do, you'd pay twice as much. But what if you just *like* your job? In that case, there's no way to know for sure whether you want to keep working or drop out until the kids arrive.
This topic is way to rich to cover in a single post, huh? It will be a long while before my boyfriend and I actually have to make decisions about childcare, and a long while before we have to answer the question "Is this worth it?" Until then, I'll try to glean as much information as I can from the successful women around me.
*Families around the world have been thinking about this for decades, I'm know, so I won't even pretend to be original in this post.
I was having a rough day in the halls of the Ivory Tower, so I nearly offered to quit my job and babysit for these four kids for the summer. I'm looking forward to having kids of my own someday, but until today I hadn't really stopped to think about the actual costs of having a childcare. So let's do some simple math.
One of these mothers puts her kids in a fantastic day camp that's run by our university for the summer. It sounds like a blast -- field trips, daily swimming, art projects -- and the it runs from 7am to 6pm daily. For faculty members, the camp is a steal at $300 per kid per week. That works out to 55 hours of childcare per week at just $5.45/hour. But for two kids, that comes to $2400/month, which is exactly double what I'm paying in rent for my apartment here.
The second mother also sends her kids to camps during the summer...but she has a nanny who drives them to and from camp and watches the kids on non-camp days. I suppose there's no tactful way to find out what she's paying, but my guess is that it is more than $300/week.
The summer is the real killer. Once the little money suckers are in school, it's probably just a few hours a day during the school year. Again, a little math.
Back when I was in junior high I babysat for my neighbor's daughter, who envisioned herself a 10-year old Bette Midler. The tasks were pretty straightforward, which was good because I was only 13. I met her at the bus stop, walked her home, fixed a snack, and clapped at her every rendition of "The Rose." At $5/hour, 3 hours/day, 5 days/week, it was a total racket. Maybe the parents saw it that way as well -- $75/week for childcare seems pretty reasonable. But then again, they were leaving their little prima donna with someone who couldn't even drive yet.
According to PayScale, the going rate for a babysitter in my part of the world these days is $8-10/hour. So after school daycare for 15 hours/week would cost about $600/month, or exactly half of my current monthly rent.
So for two kids, we're looking at a total of $5400 during the school year and $7200 for the summer. Grand total = $12,600.
I suspect that this estimate is on the low side for those pre-preschool years, and on the high side for the high school years. But according to the National Child Care Information Center, I'm not too far off.
Is this worth it? Not being a parent myself, I'm not sure. Perhaps it's the price you pay to stay sane and part of the adult working world. And maybe if you absolutely love what you do, you'd pay twice as much. But what if you just *like* your job? In that case, there's no way to know for sure whether you want to keep working or drop out until the kids arrive.
This topic is way to rich to cover in a single post, huh? It will be a long while before my boyfriend and I actually have to make decisions about childcare, and a long while before we have to answer the question "Is this worth it?" Until then, I'll try to glean as much information as I can from the successful women around me.
*Families around the world have been thinking about this for decades, I'm know, so I won't even pretend to be original in this post.
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
looking for that special microbe?
In case Perlmutter's wife leaves him, maybe he can find a new symbiotic relationship here:
http://sciconnect.com/
http://sciconnect.com/
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
you think you're soooo special
In the past week or so it has begun to sink in: I'm once again surrounded by weirdo academics. I suppose that this shouldn't be shocking since, after all, I work at a university. But there's a air of arrogance and self-entitlement that many academics carry around that I had kind of forgotten about.
Sure, there are the big egos and big heads. And there are the eternally awkward conversations -- I recently met one of my colleagues who introduced himself as "very dynamic" before he talked at me for a solid five minutes. Whew. But the thing I had forgotten about is how many academics act like they have the most difficult and demanding jobs in the world, as if they're the only ones working more than forty hours per week.
Exhibit A: A piece published yesterday on Chronicle.com. The article is about how in "mixed couples" -- meaning one academic, one non-academic, lest you thought that academics and non-academics were the same species -- the non-academics might be preventing their academic partners from reaching their full potential.
The author, David Perlmutter*, gives a number of reasons why your non-academic partner might be "sinking your career," all of which revolve around not fully comprehending how academia works. From the arduous tenure process to having to work at home after 5pm, the academics have it so rough and the non-academics simply don't know how to help their partners succeed. Perlmutter's article reeks of academic martyrdom.
My favorite part is when Perlmutter coaches his colleague's non-academic spouse on "the particular nature of the sacrifices we need to make and that our loved ones need to accept." We all make sacrifices, and we all need to figure out how to support our partner's needs and goals. Aside from accepting that their academic husbands will probably start sleeping with their graduate students in a few years, academic sacrifices are completely unexceptional.
As I write this, my programmer (read: non-academic) boyfriend is working. It's 11:30pm, and he'll likely be up for another six hours, making this his second all-nighter this week.
My mother is a high school teacher who comes home every day after an eight hour day with a stack of poorly written essays to grade.
News flash! There are people working really hard outside of the Ivory Tower! In fact, roughly 30% of Americans work more than forty hours per week, and most of those people can't go home in the middle of the day and work from sun porches drinking iced tea.
I'm not sure why academics tend to feel like they're the only ones whose jobs are demanding. Perhaps they have to make themselves feel relevant somehow, since what they're so focused on so often isn't.
* Perlmutter is a dean at a journalism school, and yet he managed to write the worst piece I've ever read on Chronicle's website.
Sure, there are the big egos and big heads. And there are the eternally awkward conversations -- I recently met one of my colleagues who introduced himself as "very dynamic" before he talked at me for a solid five minutes. Whew. But the thing I had forgotten about is how many academics act like they have the most difficult and demanding jobs in the world, as if they're the only ones working more than forty hours per week.
Exhibit A: A piece published yesterday on Chronicle.com. The article is about how in "mixed couples" -- meaning one academic, one non-academic, lest you thought that academics and non-academics were the same species -- the non-academics might be preventing their academic partners from reaching their full potential.
The author, David Perlmutter*, gives a number of reasons why your non-academic partner might be "sinking your career," all of which revolve around not fully comprehending how academia works. From the arduous tenure process to having to work at home after 5pm, the academics have it so rough and the non-academics simply don't know how to help their partners succeed. Perlmutter's article reeks of academic martyrdom.
My favorite part is when Perlmutter coaches his colleague's non-academic spouse on "the particular nature of the sacrifices we need to make and that our loved ones need to accept." We all make sacrifices, and we all need to figure out how to support our partner's needs and goals. Aside from accepting that their academic husbands will probably start sleeping with their graduate students in a few years, academic sacrifices are completely unexceptional.
As I write this, my programmer (read: non-academic) boyfriend is working. It's 11:30pm, and he'll likely be up for another six hours, making this his second all-nighter this week.
My mother is a high school teacher who comes home every day after an eight hour day with a stack of poorly written essays to grade.
News flash! There are people working really hard outside of the Ivory Tower! In fact, roughly 30% of Americans work more than forty hours per week, and most of those people can't go home in the middle of the day and work from sun porches drinking iced tea.
I'm not sure why academics tend to feel like they're the only ones whose jobs are demanding. Perhaps they have to make themselves feel relevant somehow, since what they're so focused on so often isn't.
* Perlmutter is a dean at a journalism school, and yet he managed to write the worst piece I've ever read on Chronicle's website.
Friday, June 8, 2007
what do i do all day?
Today marked the end of my fourth week at my new job, so I thought it would be a good time to describe what I've been doing. Doing this without revealing my identity will be an interesting challenge.
Last year, the my university started an institute focusing on a major problem that is facing society. Let's say that problem is obesity. The institute is sort of an umbrella organization for all of the faculty members who are studying obesity at the university. There are people from purely scientific disciplines who might be looking at obesity by studying neurohormones and genetics, but there are also sociologists who aim to understand obesity by looking at the way that we as a society interact with our food. Throw in a few economists for good measure.
This fictional Obesity Institute has a number of goals. One is simply to facilitate interdisciplinary research on obesity, essentially to make it easier for the scientists and the social scientists to work together. Another is to develop new undergraduate and graduate courses at the university on obesity (as viewed from many perspectives). A third is to provide information about obesity to communities, businesses, and policy makers throughout the state.
The founders of this institute have a very broad vision and lots of great ideas. But both are full-time professors at the university, so they don't have a lot of time to spare. That's where I come in. I was hired as the coordinator for this institute, which means that I am trying to take those very broad visions and make them happen.
Over the past few weeks, I've had a few different tasks. The first is to figure out who all these obesity researchers are and what they're doing. So I've become the queen of meetings (this week's count: 7). Having been an obesity scientist myself, I'm very familiar with the science research. But the sociological and economic research is totally new to me, and it's really exciting. As I meet with everyone, I'm figuring out what they need from this institute. Is it money? Is it more interaction with their colleagues from other departments? Is it more graduate students?
The second task I've had is to act as a representative of the institute at several one-day conferences. These have been on topics that are of interest to all three of us that are working in the institute, but the two founders don't really have the time to participate because they're working on their own narrow obesity research.
Finally, I've been building a website for the institute. I've never done such a thing before, but it's coming together nicely. It's one of those projects that has its fair share of grunt work (html coding) but also its fair share of interesting tasks, such as writing all of the content.
Then there are a bunch of other little things -- researching funding opportunities, attending workshops on the university's donor and foundation relations practices, talking with informal K-12 educators on developing new obesity outreach programs, etc.
As time goes on, I suspect that the job will become less administrative. Right now it's a bit like a small startup company -- everyone takes out the trash.
Last year, the my university started an institute focusing on a major problem that is facing society. Let's say that problem is obesity. The institute is sort of an umbrella organization for all of the faculty members who are studying obesity at the university. There are people from purely scientific disciplines who might be looking at obesity by studying neurohormones and genetics, but there are also sociologists who aim to understand obesity by looking at the way that we as a society interact with our food. Throw in a few economists for good measure.
This fictional Obesity Institute has a number of goals. One is simply to facilitate interdisciplinary research on obesity, essentially to make it easier for the scientists and the social scientists to work together. Another is to develop new undergraduate and graduate courses at the university on obesity (as viewed from many perspectives). A third is to provide information about obesity to communities, businesses, and policy makers throughout the state.
The founders of this institute have a very broad vision and lots of great ideas. But both are full-time professors at the university, so they don't have a lot of time to spare. That's where I come in. I was hired as the coordinator for this institute, which means that I am trying to take those very broad visions and make them happen.
Over the past few weeks, I've had a few different tasks. The first is to figure out who all these obesity researchers are and what they're doing. So I've become the queen of meetings (this week's count: 7). Having been an obesity scientist myself, I'm very familiar with the science research. But the sociological and economic research is totally new to me, and it's really exciting. As I meet with everyone, I'm figuring out what they need from this institute. Is it money? Is it more interaction with their colleagues from other departments? Is it more graduate students?
The second task I've had is to act as a representative of the institute at several one-day conferences. These have been on topics that are of interest to all three of us that are working in the institute, but the two founders don't really have the time to participate because they're working on their own narrow obesity research.
Finally, I've been building a website for the institute. I've never done such a thing before, but it's coming together nicely. It's one of those projects that has its fair share of grunt work (html coding) but also its fair share of interesting tasks, such as writing all of the content.
Then there are a bunch of other little things -- researching funding opportunities, attending workshops on the university's donor and foundation relations practices, talking with informal K-12 educators on developing new obesity outreach programs, etc.
As time goes on, I suspect that the job will become less administrative. Right now it's a bit like a small startup company -- everyone takes out the trash.
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