Lessons of Grad School #2 - Research

I was sick of seeing the last post so I'm posting a new one. So, here's some more thoughts on things I wished I'd known before I went to grad school.

Be Careful What You Research

For those of you reading this and still, somehow, laboring under the delusion that you can research whatever you want in grad school, let me disillusion you. Or rather, let you know of some possible consequences of your choice.

The Set-Up

I planned to research a specific topic when I went to grad school: The Tea Drinking Habits of Dormice. However, after several years trudging my way through classes, dealing with faculty, and surviving comps I found that this topic no longer interested me. I wanted to change my research to the Chair Switching Behavior of Hares in relation to Dinner Conversation. No biggie, right? You can research whatever you want, yes?

No.

My advisor specialized in dormice, not hares or dinner conversation. Ze actually didn't mind my switching research topics. Most of my fellow grad students work on the lack of time management skills among white rabbits. Chair Switching Behavior was at least different. Ze's excited - or at least mildly interested - in the idea. What more could a grad student ask for? Ze gave me the go ahead to start researching. Awesome. I did the background research, created a whole new research design, and got to work. Proof you can research whatever you want, right?

The Fall-Out

I did it pretty much on my own. I couldn't piggyback on my advisor's grants. Ze wasn't comfortable introducing me to people in the field of Chair Switching Behavior, Hares, or Dinner Conversation since ze didn't work in those fields. So, I had to work to get my work into conferences on my own. I didn't even get decent feedback when my grants were rejected. I didn't get the automatic legitimation that comes from putting your advisor's name on your work as an author. I did it the hard way. This has likely advanced my burnout a bit further than usual. And, to add insult to self-induced injury, I now wouldn't trust my advisor to write me a letter of rec since ze has never worked with me nor observed my teaching. What would ze say, "Didn't bonk?"

Why do I call it self-induced injury? As annoyed as I am with academia, academic culture, the Ivory Tower, the fallacious meritocracy, what-have-you, this particular problem I brought on myself. I knew doing my own research was not the easy road. My advisor even told me that not working on what ze worked on was going to be a harder road. I didn't walk into this one blind. I just didn't think it would be THIS hard. The upside is that even after years of research on the topic, 1) I still think it's interesting and 2) writing my dissertation doesn't put me to sleep nor makes me want to do a self-lobotomy with a plastic spork. I would never get a job with my work on Chair Switching Behavior of Hares in relation to Dinner Conversation. It's considered lunatic fringe in my field. Dormice and White Rabbits are much more in vogue. However, since I'm leaving academia for a variety of other reasons, I'm rather happy with my choice of research.

If all goes well, I'll go out in a blaze of insanity that will one day be deemed ahead of its time and cited a thousand times over on Google scholar. If that happens, please let me know. I'll hopefully have a life by then and won't need to check Google for number of citations for a tenure portfolio. Anyway, these days I'm becoming more interested in the Power Dynamics of Tempestuous Authority Figures on Playing Cards and Chess Pieces - but that's a story for another post...and also a subject that would not get me tenure.

Lessons of Grad School #1

Judging by the general progression of other post-ac blogs, it's about time to start my first serial post. So, I'm going to begin a series of lessons and advice that I've learned the hard way in grad school. Things I wished I'd known before I started. Maybe it'll help someone else not make the same mistakes - they can make all new ones instead!

Lesson #1 - Do Your Research

You say you want to go to grad school because you like to do research? Well prove it! There are three crucial subjects to research before even applying to any graduate program: the field, the department, and grad life in THAT department. I'll admit to knowing none of these things before I started and that may be the biggest mistake I made in grad school. So let's look at these big 3 in a little more depth.

The Field

I'm not talking subject matter or content here. You should already have some of that or you shouldn't be looking at that field in the first place. The research I'm talking about is job-related. What jobs are out there for people in this field with the degree you want? What do those jobs pay? What is the progression to those jobs?

These questions may seem base if you're buying into the whole "noble life of the mind." Two points to keep in mind: 1) the ability to feed oneself post-degree is vitally important and 2) the "life of the mind" is an out-moded concept with no bearing in current academic reality, if it ever existed al all. So, let's talk about what would be awaiting you at the end of grad school.

• You can be a college professor. If this is your dream, I suggest you do two things. First, shadow a professor for a day or two or ask them to candidly tell you about what their life is really like and what they needed to do to get there. And two, look up the stats on how many people in that field go into grad school, how many actually graduate, how many jobs are offered each year, and the liklihood of getting one of those jobs. I'll give you a headstart, 50% or less get jobs as tenured faculty - in the social sciences and humanities it's less.


• You can get a job outside academia. If this is your goal, check and see if you need a master's, doctorate, or professional degree to do that job. If you don't, do NOT take on the debt of grad school. Very few people get funded the whole way these days. If a grad degree is that important to you, do a non-traditional one and pay for it as you go. It then becomes an expensive hobby but you'll have a life on the outside, an identity not tied to your studies, and likely be generally happier and healthier for it.

A special note on salaries: You should never take out more loans than what your salary would be your first year on the job. So, if you discover the job you want pays $45k/year starting, that is your LOAN CAP. Once you hit that number, NO MORE LOANS!

Having some idea where you're going ahead of time can save you a LOT of grief down the road. If the answers you get to these questions do not inspire you to go to grad school, don't despair. If you just want to read more deeply on a subject you love, all you need is a library card. They're cheap (or free!) and you have the freedom to read up on whatever you want. No one can say that about grad school!

The Department

Once you've decided to continue on your grad school quest, you need to pick a department for your studies. There are lots of departments out there with grad programs in whatever field you want to study. So, how do you decide? Here are some questions to ask of every department:

• Do they have people specializing in what you want to study? If you want to study ways to increase crop yields and a department only specializes in zoology and microbiology, you may want to look elsewhere. Find people whose research interests you and check out their departments.


• Does the department have funding for their students and for how long? Grad student debt ranges from astronomical to absurd to soul-crushing. If a department cannot fund all of its incoming grad students RUN! That's no place you want to rack up debt. Ideally, you want a department that will fund you to finish but, at the very least, you need one that will fund you to ABD (All But Dissertation). What type of funding is also good to know but we'll get to that.


• How does the department rank? Academia is NOT a meritocracy. Where you graduate from matters. If you want to be a college professor, you really need to aim for a top 5 department. To the rest of the world, Ivy league looks better than state schools which look better than regionals (give or take whether an alumni of your school is on the hiring committee). Yes, there's a hierarchy. No, it's not fair. But who told you life was fair? Whoever it was, I assure you, they lied. Find them and smack them upside the head with a fish. You'll feel better.

Applying to grad school takes time and money. Narrowing down your list of departments to those that will benefit you the most helps. Such research can also help you get a better grasp of the politics of your chosen field - very important information to have. And if you don't get into one of your top picks, try to avoid settling. Spending 10 years and tens of thousands of dollars to get a degree that no one respects won't help you much in the end. Of course, if your goal is just to get some letters after your name, then by all means choose the cheapest, most convenient, accredited option you can stand and try to have a life and a bit of fun while you're there.

Life in the Department

Now that you've narrowed down the department options, go visit those places. Don't just talk to professors when you're there. Talk to the grad students, old and new ones, away from the profs. Go to lunch or happy hour with them. Get the dirt. You're better off learning it now rather than when you've tied yourself to that department for any length of time. Some important information to try to learn:

• What's it like to work with the professors in the department? At some point you'll have to work with other profs in the department and it helps to know what they're like. This also tends to lead to people dishing about the politics in that department. Do some profs just not get along? Are some not allowed to be in the same room together? These may be signs of a snake pit. You really want to try to avoid those. In a similar vein, do the grad students get along? Do there seem to be factions? Are you shepherded away from some grad students? These are also signs of snake pit behavior. Watch out for fangs.


• What is the funding like in the department? Is it more TAs or RAs? Do they take a lot of time? Some TAs and RAs don't take time and you get paid for doing very little. Others will have so much work that you'll be filing grievances with your grad union right and left, if you have a grad union there. You should ask about that too. Does the department guarantee funding for any specific length of time? Do they deliver on that guarantee? My department claims they fund everyone for 4 years but I've only received funding for last summer - 8 years into my program. The rest of my funding I've had to find on my own.


• What is it like to work with your potential advisor? I cannot stress this one enough. You're initially signing on to work with this person for nearly a decade. You better learn something about that life before you apply. Is s/he reasonable both in their requests of your labor and their advice? Does s/he provide a lot of opportunities for research? With funding? Is s/he a decent human being? Ethical? You may not want to ask some of these questions outright, unless you either are that comfortable with the grad students or you get the feeling they're warranted.
  
  There are two types of danger signs when talking with grad students that should set your hair on end and your fight running in the opposite direction: 1) If grad students either damn their professor(s) with faint praise or they are clearly hiding something or hedging what they're saying (very deliberate word choice is a clue). 2) They tell you outright s/he is evil, despotic, or otherwise unreasonable. If grad students have reached the point of #2, they are so fed up with their advisor's dictates that they are willing to risk you babbling something incriminatory should you happen to see that advisor again. This is a bad sign. You cannot change an advisor. They are no fixer-uppers. These behaviors are a sign of abusive relationships. Take head.

So, here's the beginning of things I really wished I had known about grad school ahead of time. I'm not saying people shouldn't go to grad school - only that you should know what you're getting into if you choose to do so. Despite my love of living a wild and unpredictable life, it does on occasion pay to look before you leap.

Diving for Icebergs

Icebergs have always freaked me out. You can only 10% of an iceberg above the surface. The rest is beneath the surface and you can only tell what's there either by diving into frigid water...or running into it a la the Titanic. The same principle applies to most of human society. You really only see 10% of what's going on. The other 90% takes a bit of diving. Unless, of course, you prefer the collision method in which case, I suggest you stock up on life boats.


The first step, according to pretty much every book, blog, and website about career transition, is to identify why you want to change careers. Using a variety of metaphors and anecdotes, many strongly urge diving below the surface to see the rest of the iceberg - before you run into it. What are the real reasons for wanting to change careers? The big ones? The small ones? Do they matter? So, let me tell you about my iceberg.

As I said in my first post, I decided I didn't want to be a professor because I had seen how a professor lives I wanted something else. That's the 10%. Here's the rest:

The people I distrust most are those who want to improve our lives but have only one course of action. -Frank Herbert

1. I want a different life. Many faculty are often accused of having only one goal, one measure of success for a Ph.D.: a tenure-track faculty job. I thought the same thing long before I ever met college faculty. The faculty are not to blame. It's the kool-aid. Many of the newer faculty haven't yet succumbed to the kool-aid. They will at least admit that there are few jobs, you have to work like a dog to get them and to keep them, and getting a job is not entirely the result of merit. Does that count as progress on the system?

As I mentioned in my first post, my advisor told me honestly about the job market early on. I thought that I still wanted to be a professor, so off I went. Several years down the road, I realized what all was needed to succeed as a professor, a good one. You need to be able to come up with original research that will be funded by grant agencies, preferably ones with lots of money. Your research must be published, published, published. This research should preferably lead to projects for lots of grad students whom you're mentoring to become professors like you. It's helpful if you're also a good, engaging teacher but that's not essential. You also need to sit on committees: university committees, department committees, student committees. You need to be active in your field, including sitting on committees there too. You should also be chairing sections in conferences. All this and you should be doing outreach with the community too. You must be willing to make your work your life.

As a result, a work-life balance, particularly in the first few years is highly unlikely. Hopefully, you like your job. As much as I like my research, and as much as I enjoy teaching, I'm not willing to make the sacrifices needed to be a professor. I want a life to call my own. I want to spend time with my significant other and my dog. I want hobbies. I want to see my family. I respect those who choose to be professors, but I am not one of them. I want a different life.

No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path. -Buddha

2. I want to control my destiny. The academic job market is an interesting place. Many claim it is based solely on meritocracy. This is a lie. If it were true, you can hire someone based solely on paperwork and that doesn't work in any field. A meritocracy is good in theory; however, human psychology renders it an unattainable utopia...or a sure road to a dystopia depending on one's viewpoint and grasp of history.

On the academic job market, positions are listed for various places around the country. There are not many. Your best chance at a job requires you to apply to any and all you may have a chance at. Limiting yourself to some desired geographic area(s) will severely limit your options. So you don't get much of a say in where you live.

The academic job market is also a weirdly passive place. You send out your applications. These usually entail 2-3 page cover letters, long CVs detailing your entire grad school and post-doc life, a teaching philosophy, potential syllabi, etc. And then you wait. There's little to no follow-up. You just wait. If the department is polite, they'll may send you a really nice rejection letter, or any rejection letter. Usually you get nothing. If you're lucky, you'll get an interview that lasts 3 days where you have to be on and functioning for nearly the whole 72 hours. I've always been a bit disturbed that the highest compliment that can be paid to a job search committee is that its process is humane.

I wanted more control than this. I wanted to choose where I live. I want to know that my success or failure is my own doing. It should never be placed in the hands of others who may never meet me, may never speak to me, may judge me, my worth, and my potential based on little more than paperwork and their perception of my department and faculty. In the academic job market, my future could potentially be tied to strangers' perceptions of other people. I cannot live that way. I have to know that my path is decided by me. Not by the geography of any given year's job market. Not by granting agencies. Not by the reviews of an ever more apathetic student body. By me. Only me. I know that the environment one lives in, professionally, personally, etc. is not entirely under one's control. However, that is only the raw material you work with, not who your are. My success or failure should be based on my will, my desire, and my effort. I need to control my destiny.

The first quality that is needed is audacity. -Winston Churchill

3. I need hope. The last few years have been rough. I've come to accept that I've been battling depression...and losing. Having been depressed before, I recognized the signs but couldn't find the source. As the possibilities of finding a life outside of academia began to emerge, my depression lessened. As a scientist, this evidence led me to conclude that trying to force myself into an academic life was causing my depression. Somewhere in my mind, my heart, I must have known that the contortions needed to get a job in academia would cost me too much. My personality doesn't subordinate itself to others' desires particularly well.

The beginning of this journey has already taught me much. It showed me how much I gave up to survive the last 9 years. I used to be willful and wild. I could feel myself losing this, diminishing, in order to survive. But this is not surviving. You must live life with your whole heart. You cannot live a half life. You cannot lock part of yourself away. Never let anyone tell you that you are not good enough as you are. That you are too much. Too strong. If that means you must chew through the leash and knock over the fence to be free. Do it. Try not to set the barn on fire but if that's your only option - let it burn.

So, I have decided to return to myself. I will not be the same person I was. Grad school has changed me. But I still remember the better parts of me. I'm going back to get them - and to find a new path. I no longer wake up dreading each day. I've stopped thinking about my more self-destructive tendencies. I have hope again. I didn't know that I had lost that. I didn't know how much I needed it. I need hope and I've found it in the sheer possibilities outside of academia.


It's not going to be easy. Change never is. But it will be fun. A new adventure. A chance at a new life. One I can be proud of. One I can live with. As me. How cool is that? Stay tuned. This is going to be one wacky trip up the rabbit hole!

You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself in any direction you choose. You're on your own, and you know what you know. And you are the guy [or gal] who'll decide where to go. - Dr. Seuss