Somedays, life doesn't suck

Posting has been particularly sporadic recently, as I've been spending more time than usual coding. It's amazing how much creative energy this really takes. I've also had a great time working with the undergraduate on my project. Ze's super motivated and picks things up quickly. I will be sad to lose hir this summer. However, ze will be transitioning to an experimental group, and I do think the exposure to a wider variety of types of research before graduate school is highly beneficial. Plus, this experimental group is run by SuperFamousDude, which will look a lot better on grad school applications.

But for the next few weeks, we get to finish going over all the results and figuring out what needs to be done to polish them up for inclusion in a manuscript.

I also have delicious tea, the sun is out, and I found the Query Scholar extension for Chrome by way of @highlyanne . I may even decide to eat lunch not at my desk.

A Brief PI Rant

Dear PI:

Communication is much more effective when it is a two-way street. You complain that we don't keep you informed about what we're doing, and that we need to show you more intermediate data. Well, how do you propose we do that? Emails are largely unread, Dropbox is doing diddly-squat and we meet once a month for 30 minutes during which you often get fixated on one detail of something trivial (like, say, my font choice on a purely internal document). Do you want daily telegrams? Smoke signals? Voicemail? I'm running out of ways to convey information to you. Finding you in person doesn't work, and since you are teaching a grad class this semester, you don't have set office hours I can use to ambush you.

Furthermore, quit getting mad that we don't always communicate with other group members about things we had no idea they were even doing. There are 2 postdocs and 7 graduate students and 2 undergrads working on 12 different projects. It's a good day when I remember everything I'm supposed to be working on, let alone what everyone else is doing.

We're not going to be offended that you have to travel for presentations and review panels and whatnot, but please, at least tell us when you aren't going to be around so we don't waste time looking for you?

Thanks,
The people you allegedly advise/supervise

Learning from (Negative) Examples

My advisor is a brilliant scientist, but he's not such a brilliant manager. So I'm trying to figure out what I can learn *not* to do from his example, in addition to all the things I'm learning to do as a graduate student.  Here are some of my initial thoughts:

1) Don't take more than 6 months to give any feedback on a paper. Students would rather get a paper with angry red ink demanding we re-write entire sections than wait while you polish the language.

2) Don't assume students know what they're supposed to be working on if you don't tell them directly. Corollary: don't assume students know about deadline just because they happened at the same time last year. A year ago is a much longer time to a graduate student than you, and we don't get emails reminding us of upcoming grant reviews unless *you* send them.

3) Announce when positive things happen. Land a grant? Announce it! A paper got accepted, even if the student graduated? Announce it! A big celebration isn't needed, but let us know.

4) When disasters happen, make time to meet with the affected students, or else they get really jittery.

5) If you're going to be super busy or traveling, let students know so they don't spend all day trying to hunt you down when you're out of town. We shouldn't be asking undergrads for copies of their syllabi to know when you have scheduled absences.

6) Never, ever submit conference abstracts with a student as a co-author (i.e, the person expected to generate the data) unless a)the data already exists or b) you warn the student that they need to produce this data *at the time of abstract submission* (not 4 weeks before the presentation...)

What have you learned by bad example?

Lone Ranger?

Having an undergraduate working with me has been a great experience so far. But it's made me think about how things work in my research group, or how they don't really work. Because he's working very closely on one of my projects, I have a very good idea of what his data should look like, and can help with troubleshooting. Much like in writing, sometimes, you just need someone else to spot your typos. Unfortunately, there's almost no overlap across projects in my group. There's no one who can take a glance at my simulations and spot a syntax error in my input file, or remember when they got the same error code. 

In theory, our advisor would be close enough to projects to help with these types of problems, but the reality is that most of us are left to fend for ourselves. You certainly learn more by struggling through to solve problems, but there's a point at which it overwhelms the ability to get anything done. It also makes brainstorming more limited. Collaborating is not something I'm learning how to do right now. 

I'm a little jealous of some of the other groups in my department, who work much more closely with one another. They seem to be less dependent on their advisors. On the other hand, when the equipment goes down, no one is getting any work done. Maybe the grass always looks greener from a distance. 

Luck and Research

Recently, an undergrad joined my research project, and I really feel that I won the lottery with this one. His project was supposed to be fairly straightforward, but we've been running into some unexpected obstacles, liking needing to rebuild executables. However, this morning he said that he's sort of glad things aren't working, because he feels that he's learning so much more this way. I am seriously lucky to have him working with me.

There are days when it seems that half (or most) of research depends on luck. Persistence is also important, but if you get lucky every nth time, it pays off to stick with it for at least n+1 times.

Of course, you still need to know how to take advantage of luck when it comes your way.

Productivity?

There are days when I get things done. There are days when I get completely different things done. And then there's the days where I realize everything I've done is wrong and I have to redo it. Arrggg...

Yay research?