…this is your brain on grad school, year six.
I’m freakin’ out. Big time. No other way to put it, no fancy words or metaphors to gussy it up into something complicated or unique or even understandable.
Starting about six months ago, in conversations with my non-grad school folk (eg. parents, college friends, running buddies) I calmly predicted this storm with naïvely confident statements like, “You know, this last year is going to be pretty tough. Gotta find a job, finish a paper, finish my research and defend my work in the spring. It’s going to be stressful, but when else is it going to be more stressful than in my last year of Ph.D. research? I’ve just got to stay focused and get to work, there’s no point in complaining…”
To myself, circa six months ago, I now say:
Ha!
Ha ha haaaa!
Hee heeeeee heee ho ho ho.
Hee hee.
Heh.
Right. Stay focused and get to work, my left toe. That’s a load of meadow muffins. Over the last few weeks, this façade of calm resolve as deteriorated as the pile of ‘must-do-but-never-done-before’ tasks mounts into a teetering column over my head.
TIM-BERRRRRRR!
I think it started with my committee meeting on July 12th. It was supposed to be another meeting like those I’d held in years three and four. I’d stand up at the front of the small conference room with my laser pointer and 15 PowerPoint slides of data and my committee members, Craig, Walther, Jorge and Susan, would sit around the table quietly munching on the strawberries and ginger snaps I’d supplied per tradition. At the end of the meeting, Walther would mumble something I wouldn’t quite make out, Jorge would rap the table once with his knuckles and declare “Good!” and Susan would slip out quickly, probably still wondering why she was even on my committee since I don’t work on membrane trafficking in yeast.
But this year was different. Walther began mumbling early - I had foolishly presented a piece of data that should have been kept under wraps. It was meant only as a lead-in to another point but Walther latched onto it like a bloodhound. After interrupting me for the fifth time with some tangential comment, Walther was shushed by Jorge, and the battle to keep Walther under control and my meeting on track began to take shape.
About an hour later, sweaty and exhausted, I found myself making a rather lame effort to bring the meeting to a close. I knew my advisor wanted me to finish up by asking if I could stop my work later this fall and start to write without another meeting. This is the ‘write-up’ meeting, the Holy Grail of thesis committee meetings for every grad student. But Walther’s plentiful suggestions made that sort of finale seem dismissive of his comments and disrespectful. The five of us stared at each other in silence for a few minutes while I searched for a way out before Craig grudgingly took charge and the meeting came to an end with an indecisive whimper.
Since then, each well-planned week has devolved into a mess of half-finished experiments and three more ‘must-do’s’ that aren’t even close to done despite the long list of tasks accomplished. Abstracts have been written and conferences registered for, papers have been reviewed and comments written up (‘reject! reject!’), Friday department meeting was given (and yet another spat between Jorge and Walther overcome).
But somehow along the way, I also found myself writing a chapter on Legionella cell biology for a book that’s due “as soon as you can get it done.” And since someone upstairs clearly wants me to suffer for my sins, I have also chosen this moment to cave to the pressure of advisor and colleagues, to overcome silly but still semi-paralyzing insecurity about my future, and to start sending out cover letters and CVs in search of postdoctoral positions.
And then, today at 11 a.m. when I’d almost completed my first actual scientific experiment in weeks, the phone rang and was handed to me, the caller asking to speak to “Eva Marie.”
“That’s odd,” I commented to no one in particular. “The only place my full name shows up these days is on my CV.”
As I took the receiver, I glanced at the caller ID on the lab phone.
Area code 650.
Could it be? Seriously? Please NO!!
It had been less than 24 hours since I’d e-mailed John Boothroyd, professor and venerable mucky muck at Stanford University. Dr. Toxoplasma himself. It had taken me a full hour to compose a brief, three paragraph e-mail stating my name, research history and general reasons for interest in his very cool, very important lab. After clicking the send button, I proceeded to totally spaz out in the Medical School library stacks. Quietly, of course.
So was he actually CALLING me? What happened to the blissful detachment of e-mail? I mean, I’d heard he was into formality and rules and all, but I wasn’t even close to prepared to dish science with this guy.
Me: “Hello.”
Area 650: “Hi Eva, this is Steve Shak calling.”
Me: “Oh. Yes.”
(Mental hard drive scans and scans, searching frantically for the file explaining this man’s existence.)
Me: “OH! Hi! Uh… yes. Thanks so much for calling.”
Right. Not Dr. Boothroyd. This is Dr. Shak. I’d almost forgotten about this must-do I’d ticked off earlier in the week:
‘Send Bim stuff for connection at Genomic Health in Redwood City.’
I’d sent my little CV off, sure that some H.R. plebe at Genomic Health would put it in a file along with those of other almost Ph.D.’s they might consider contacting as a last resort. I didn’t actually think that Dr. Shak, former Chief Medical Officer of Genentech and founder of Genomic Health, would call me personally to discuss career options. (In case you’ve never heard of it, Genentech is like the Coca-Cola of modern era biotech. The very idea of Genentech is intimidating to me, let alone conversation with a former bigwig of said company.)
Me: “Right. Okay, so yeah…”
At which point, Dr. Shak took pity on an obviously startled grad student and proceeded to gently walk me through several well-illustrated points of advice he had for me about choosing and developing a career in 21st century biomedical science. If memory serves, my responses and questions were at some points coherent and at others, much like the unintelligible drivel I’d produced when the phone call began. Whatever information I managed to convey, I was deeply grateful when the phone call was over. Tattered nerves rendered fragile by ordeal of sending out CV now utterly blown to bits by reality of actually talking to someone from out there in The Big World After of Grad School.
I’ve recovered a little since then. Strategies to regain composure have included taking a long lunch and hiding under my iPod for the remainder of the day. I feel pretty silly, actually. Every year, thousands of grad students around the country face this process of leaving the protective bubble of their pre-doctoral labs. Write-up thesis committee meetings are held, last experiments are completed and CVs are formatted and attached to any number of awkward cover letters.
When attempting something potentially tricky, like running a half marathon or getting a Ph.D., I have usually derived a fair amount of relief from knowing that so many of come before me and have succeeded with flying colors. But now I think, I can no longer cheat and attain inner peace by relative association. I think I may have to amend my talking points when chatting with my non-grad school pals:
“Yeah, uh, this year is pretty much the year to lose it. To fly apart at the seams and see what shape I take when I pull myself together again to pack up Etta and drive across country when it’s all over. I’ll probably get some stuff done, but I bet there’ll be more that slips away. I’ll probably make a complete ass of myself at least twice. Should be kinda cool though, when it’s over, and somebody actually calls me Dr. Campodonico.”
Starting about six months ago, in conversations with my non-grad school folk (eg. parents, college friends, running buddies) I calmly predicted this storm with naïvely confident statements like, “You know, this last year is going to be pretty tough. Gotta find a job, finish a paper, finish my research and defend my work in the spring. It’s going to be stressful, but when else is it going to be more stressful than in my last year of Ph.D. research? I’ve just got to stay focused and get to work, there’s no point in complaining…”
To myself, circa six months ago, I now say:
Ha!
Ha ha haaaa!
Hee heeeeee heee ho ho ho.
Hee hee.
Heh.
Right. Stay focused and get to work, my left toe. That’s a load of meadow muffins. Over the last few weeks, this façade of calm resolve as deteriorated as the pile of ‘must-do-but-never-done-before’ tasks mounts into a teetering column over my head.
TIM-BERRRRRRR!
I think it started with my committee meeting on July 12th. It was supposed to be another meeting like those I’d held in years three and four. I’d stand up at the front of the small conference room with my laser pointer and 15 PowerPoint slides of data and my committee members, Craig, Walther, Jorge and Susan, would sit around the table quietly munching on the strawberries and ginger snaps I’d supplied per tradition. At the end of the meeting, Walther would mumble something I wouldn’t quite make out, Jorge would rap the table once with his knuckles and declare “Good!” and Susan would slip out quickly, probably still wondering why she was even on my committee since I don’t work on membrane trafficking in yeast.
But this year was different. Walther began mumbling early - I had foolishly presented a piece of data that should have been kept under wraps. It was meant only as a lead-in to another point but Walther latched onto it like a bloodhound. After interrupting me for the fifth time with some tangential comment, Walther was shushed by Jorge, and the battle to keep Walther under control and my meeting on track began to take shape.
About an hour later, sweaty and exhausted, I found myself making a rather lame effort to bring the meeting to a close. I knew my advisor wanted me to finish up by asking if I could stop my work later this fall and start to write without another meeting. This is the ‘write-up’ meeting, the Holy Grail of thesis committee meetings for every grad student. But Walther’s plentiful suggestions made that sort of finale seem dismissive of his comments and disrespectful. The five of us stared at each other in silence for a few minutes while I searched for a way out before Craig grudgingly took charge and the meeting came to an end with an indecisive whimper.
Since then, each well-planned week has devolved into a mess of half-finished experiments and three more ‘must-do’s’ that aren’t even close to done despite the long list of tasks accomplished. Abstracts have been written and conferences registered for, papers have been reviewed and comments written up (‘reject! reject!’), Friday department meeting was given (and yet another spat between Jorge and Walther overcome).
But somehow along the way, I also found myself writing a chapter on Legionella cell biology for a book that’s due “as soon as you can get it done.” And since someone upstairs clearly wants me to suffer for my sins, I have also chosen this moment to cave to the pressure of advisor and colleagues, to overcome silly but still semi-paralyzing insecurity about my future, and to start sending out cover letters and CVs in search of postdoctoral positions.
And then, today at 11 a.m. when I’d almost completed my first actual scientific experiment in weeks, the phone rang and was handed to me, the caller asking to speak to “Eva Marie.”
“That’s odd,” I commented to no one in particular. “The only place my full name shows up these days is on my CV.”
As I took the receiver, I glanced at the caller ID on the lab phone.
Area code 650.
Could it be? Seriously? Please NO!!
It had been less than 24 hours since I’d e-mailed John Boothroyd, professor and venerable mucky muck at Stanford University. Dr. Toxoplasma himself. It had taken me a full hour to compose a brief, three paragraph e-mail stating my name, research history and general reasons for interest in his very cool, very important lab. After clicking the send button, I proceeded to totally spaz out in the Medical School library stacks. Quietly, of course.
So was he actually CALLING me? What happened to the blissful detachment of e-mail? I mean, I’d heard he was into formality and rules and all, but I wasn’t even close to prepared to dish science with this guy.
Me: “Hello.”
Area 650: “Hi Eva, this is Steve Shak calling.”
Me: “Oh. Yes.”
(Mental hard drive scans and scans, searching frantically for the file explaining this man’s existence.)
Me: “OH! Hi! Uh… yes. Thanks so much for calling.”
Right. Not Dr. Boothroyd. This is Dr. Shak. I’d almost forgotten about this must-do I’d ticked off earlier in the week:
‘Send Bim stuff for connection at Genomic Health in Redwood City.’
I’d sent my little CV off, sure that some H.R. plebe at Genomic Health would put it in a file along with those of other almost Ph.D.’s they might consider contacting as a last resort. I didn’t actually think that Dr. Shak, former Chief Medical Officer of Genentech and founder of Genomic Health, would call me personally to discuss career options. (In case you’ve never heard of it, Genentech is like the Coca-Cola of modern era biotech. The very idea of Genentech is intimidating to me, let alone conversation with a former bigwig of said company.)
Me: “Right. Okay, so yeah…”
At which point, Dr. Shak took pity on an obviously startled grad student and proceeded to gently walk me through several well-illustrated points of advice he had for me about choosing and developing a career in 21st century biomedical science. If memory serves, my responses and questions were at some points coherent and at others, much like the unintelligible drivel I’d produced when the phone call began. Whatever information I managed to convey, I was deeply grateful when the phone call was over. Tattered nerves rendered fragile by ordeal of sending out CV now utterly blown to bits by reality of actually talking to someone from out there in The Big World After of Grad School.
I’ve recovered a little since then. Strategies to regain composure have included taking a long lunch and hiding under my iPod for the remainder of the day. I feel pretty silly, actually. Every year, thousands of grad students around the country face this process of leaving the protective bubble of their pre-doctoral labs. Write-up thesis committee meetings are held, last experiments are completed and CVs are formatted and attached to any number of awkward cover letters.
When attempting something potentially tricky, like running a half marathon or getting a Ph.D., I have usually derived a fair amount of relief from knowing that so many of come before me and have succeeded with flying colors. But now I think, I can no longer cheat and attain inner peace by relative association. I think I may have to amend my talking points when chatting with my non-grad school pals:
“Yeah, uh, this year is pretty much the year to lose it. To fly apart at the seams and see what shape I take when I pull myself together again to pack up Etta and drive across country when it’s all over. I’ll probably get some stuff done, but I bet there’ll be more that slips away. I’ll probably make a complete ass of myself at least twice. Should be kinda cool though, when it’s over, and somebody actually calls me Dr. Campodonico.”
posted by Eva Marie at 6:26 PM
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