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Pro tip #4: It takes a village to mentor a person

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You need a mentor.  Scratch that, you need more than one mentor.  Regardless of whether you are a student, a postdoc, a faculty person, a very senior faculty person, a manager, an employee, a parent, you need a village of people to help navigate your way through your career and life.

There are always things you need to learn.  You will always need feedback.  There is no one person who can give you everything you need.  It is important to have your bases covered.

It is often hard to figure out who these people might be for you.  I am truly fortunate to be at a giant university with a huge number of colleagues I trust to go to for advice.  I also reach out to many people outside of my institution.  I have friends I can lean on, and a supportive family.  But it can be very difficult to find your village, to find people you trust.

This is where I give advice to people who should be mentoring you: Hello, Slightly or Very Much More Senior Person: find those people around you who could use some aspect of your accumulated knowledge.  Reach out.  Don’t force any advice, but signal that you are open to talk.  That person may be geographically distant, or down the hall.  Be genuine.  Be open.

Coming back around to you: if you are at a university, there are often pockets of people around you can consult for specific things.  At my university, we have a center for people who want to learn how to teach better.  For students, we have writing centers.  We have therapists.  There are people whose job it is to help you.  The issue with my university is size, in that we have so many centers that it can be difficult to wade through the list and identify the right one, or to even realize that some services exist.

I am constantly finding myself in situations I don’t know how to deal with.  I am always grateful for the people who give me solid advice.

This day’s post is inspired by a number of people who have provided wise counsel at key moments in the past couple of years.  In particular, shout-outs to John Beacom, Julianne Dalcanton, Andrew Heckler, Manoj Kaplinghat, Paul Martini, Todd Thompson, Risa Wechsler, and Beth Willman.  There are many more people to whom I owe debts of gratitude.  Thanks!

Pro tip #3: Keep trying to be a good person

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Science is a human activity.  The universe cares not if we study its splendor.  Humans study facets of the universe because we are curious, and because some of the things we find have great practical value.  Fundamentally, science is done by humans for humans (and perhaps also for our animal and plant friends).  As such, much of making scientific progress involves interaction with fellow beings.

Human strengths and foibles play as much a role in science as in any other context involving more than one human.  This may be a surprise to some people.  A popular stereotype is that science is done by introvert loners who totally shy away from contact with others.  While some scientists fit part of the stereotype (hello, fellow introverts!), this is not actually how we make progress by and large.  It takes a village to investigate the universe.  Humans must interact to perform science.

A popular stereotype some scientists hold about themselves is that they are totally data-driven and objective.  This is not true.  Scientists hold the same types of biases that everyone else has, and are driven by the same emotions as non-scientists.  We have the same kinds of problems, and react to them in the same way, as non-scientists.  We are products of our culture.  We are human.

This means that how we do science is affected by our humanness.  We can act with great kindness to each other, work collaboratively to solve problems, and solve problems that are important to our society as a whole.  But we can also use our humanness to tear each other down.

This tearing down happens a lot, unfortunately, and tends to be aimed at those people who don’t have power.  A lot of bad (whether actively intentionally bad or unintentional badness—if you’re on the receiving end, it really doesn’t matter if the other person “meant” to be bad to you or were unintentionally bad.  Bad is bad) behavior occurs when people fear loss of status, and they take it out on people they perceive as threatening to rise up in the power hierarchy.  So, a lot of in-group/out-group dynamics.

In physics, this has always meant that women and gender minorities, Black and Brown people, those with non-straight sexual orientation, , those coming from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, people with disabilities, people from non-Western countries (with only a few exceptions), and especially people lying at the intersections of those identities, have been kept out.  Or heavily encouraged to leave.  We also see it play out in the academic hierarchy, where faculty act as gatekeepers and power-holders over students.

It will take a major cultural shift and systemic change to change this.  We have to have a new set of values, to not perpetuate bad behavior and instead foster a culture of actual real inclusion.

For me, change starts with myself.  I try to create space for people.  I try to advocate for those who have less power than I.  I try to do better and be better.  I try to create change in my corner of the universe.  I fail often.  I ask for grace, and I try again.  There is a long way to go, but I want to keep being better and making my field better, and hold myself accountable in a results-based framework.  I think about things in terms of research outcomes: intent doesn’t matter if your intent doesn’t match your outcomes.  So, I keep trying.

 

 

Congratulations to Amy Sardone!

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Congratulations to visiting graduate student Amy Sardone on winning an NSF Astronomy & Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellowship!  Amy is currently finishing her PhD at West Virginia University, exploring the cool hydrogen gas content (out to the virial radius!) of nearby galaxies as part of the IMAGINE survey.  She also wrote a really nice paper on the HI content of the mysterious galaxy NGC1052-DF2.  We expect more great things from her.  Congratulations again!

Thoughts on not winning

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Maybe it’s the fact that my PhD is 11 years old as of today, and I’m now considered “mid-career” and not “early career”, but I’m having some Feelings.

It’s OK to not be “the best”.

It’s OK to be who you are.

It’s OK to try to be the best version of you, and not try to be anyone else.

It’s OK to not put your shoulder 100% into things 100% of the time. (Although this is a life lesson I have yet to fully absorb…see the deep circles under my eyes…)

It’s OK if your path takes detours, if it is non-linear, if your endpoint changes with time.

I was a childhood high achiever, dreaming of being “the best”.  Fun fact, and the fact that was really important to me for many years but isn’t really relevant at all to me today, is that I graduated from a flagship public university with two bachelor’s degrees at the age of 19, and started graduate school in a top-tier program immediately thereafter.  I was an ambitious and focused teenager.  Now, many years later, I am definitely not “the best”, and it’s OK.

But still, I would like to win SOMETHING.  No early career awards for me.  It kind of stings, but it is (or will be) OK.  My husband keeps reminding me that I have gotten a boatload of grants, of the type that I can keep applying for after the “early career” phase is over.  The size of my research group reflects my success in negotiating a start-up package (ask me how, if you are curious) and bringing in all those grants.  And yet, it would have been nice to have a shiny “early career” award of some type.  Lucky for me, I am not at one of those places that requires it to get tenure.  I know why I didn’t win anything, for reasons that I am actually totally fine with and understand, and fundamentally wouldn’t have changed because it would have affected my style of doing science.  I’d rather be here without an early career thing and keep doing science my way rather than have tried something else and maybe had a better shot.

But it would have been awfully nice to win SOMETHING.

 

 

Pro tip thought of the day

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Have someone in your professional life who believes in you even when you don’t believe in yourself.  Peers are incredible to keep you going, someone more senior to you can be the oxygen tank that saves your career during the hard times.

#ProfLife #4: Assistant professor vs. grad student years

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I’ve been an assistant professor about as long as I was a grad student.  It’s interesting to reflect on these two high-growth times in my life.

I feel like I have grown and been challenged much more in the past 5+epsilon years (epsilon is starting to approach unity!!!) than during my grad student years.  Part of that is on account of life—as I’ve been learning my professor job, I’ve also been learning how to parent an extremely active and extroverted and intense small child.  But mostly it is the sheer amount of new stuff flung my way at a high baud rate in my work life.  Sometimes I think I need to reserve ~5 hrs/week for the “expected unexpected” things that land in my lap that I somehow need to figure out how to deal with fast and not too shoddily.  I’ve grown, I’ve stretched, I’ve failed (and rebounded) so much.  I’ve learned so many very different things.

That said, in many ways graduate school was much harder, and if I had to choose between reliving my student days or my assistant professor days, I would definitely choose the latter.  I learned a lot as a graduate student, most significantly, how to run my own research program.   But, most of my time in grad school I struggled to the point of near-paralysis with imposter syndrome, and was suffering from untreated and undiagnosed depression.  I was learning how to be an adult.  I didn’t know if I had the “right stuff” for my longed-for career in academia.  I didn’t have the perspective and wisdom that I have now.  I didn’t have the experience to guide me to not sweat the small things or the hard times.

For me, wisdom and experience defeats youthful energy any day.  I’m definitely playing the long game, career-wise, and looking for a more productive and more zen future.

—–

I realized only later, after having mentally mapped out most of this post, that I was a postdoc for a similar amount of time as I was a grad student and a professor as well.  Trust me, there was much growth then, too.  But, like most things university-related, much attention is paid to professors and grad students—keeping track of postdocs is at best an afterthought. 😛 Yikes.  More on that later…

Exciting news for Stacy Kim!

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Stacy Kim, a sixth-year grad student at OSU astronomy who has been working with me since she arrived, was awarded a Presidential Fellowship to support her work until she graduates this summer.  Stacy is a theoretical astrophysicist with a love of computational astrophysics, dark matter, galaxy evolution, protoplanetary disk theory, and cats.  Congratulations, Stacy!!!!  I am so proud of you!

#ProfLife #2: A brief thought on respect

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I’m going to try to write, on occasion, a short post.  A collaborator once referred to me as a “treatise writer”.  There is a place for treatises, and a place for short thoughts.

One of the things I value most about my departments is that I can feel the respect my colleagues have for me.  Moreover, if I ask for help or advice, they are eager to provide it, and without judgment.  They take me seriously.  They care. They inspire me to be the best version of myself.

What does this mean for my work like?  I feel like I can work and not worry what people think of me, or feel like I have to defend my turf, or shore myself up for criticism.  I can just be.  And I feel delighted and inspired to pay it forward.

There are plenty of other contexts where I have not or do not always feel that, which makes me value the respect and helpfulness of my faculty colleagues toward me even more.

How do you know you’re in a good work environment or relationship?  When you feel that it enables and inspires you to be the best version of yourself.  How do you know it’s bad and time to get out?  When you work out of fear, when you’re always watching your back, when you feel downtrodden instead of elevated.

 

Pro tip #2: Vision

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I hope you read my post on the importance of writing.  This post is a follow-on, focusing on the most important piece of writing you will do to get your next job (or next student position in college or grad school): your application essay/statement.

For academic positions, your job application is a proposal, a proposal about you and the science you want to do.  My #1 first tip is to read Julianne Dalcanton’s unsolicited advice on how to craft a grant or observing proposal.  We’ll be using her core principles to break things down.  Read it?  Good. We’ll start from there, with a bit of framing first.

What hiring and admissions committees are looking for is vision.  What do I mean by vision?  I mean, an excellent proposal about yourself and your science which demonstrates the

  1. importance,
  2. feasibility, and
  3. efficiency

of your plan for doing science and adding to your community.  You want to sell a committee on a big-picture future that involves you and the science you do, and a path to get there that is compelling and doable.  It’s the Dalcanton approach to writing a successful grant proposal, but a proposal about you.

Importance means that you’ve identified a big broad problem, identified a barrier to progress in the field, and found some way to break through that barrier.  Importance also means that you’ve identified a vision for the type of scientist and educator that you think the field and that institution need, and the values that you think matter.  If you’re applying to grad school in STEM, you are almost certainly not going to be in a position where you’ve identified The Thing in research that’s prevented progress in some field.  For grad school applicants, you should show that you’ve identified broad subjects that are interesting to you, demonstrate that you know why they’re interesting to people other than yourself, and that you have some sense that you know what it’s going to take to make an impact in the fields in which you have interest. But if you are applying for postdocs or faculty positions, you need to show that you understand the broad context of your field, that you have really identified a niche where you can move things forward, and explain it in a way that a non-specialist can understand and get really excited about.

Feasibility means you have a well-defined path forward to breaking your identified barrier to progress and achieving science/education/career nirvana.  Demonstrate that you have a plan, that the steps make sense, that you’ve SWOT’ed it out (identified Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats).

Efficiency means that you identified your plan and yourself as the best/robust/fastest (choose your combination of metrics for success) path to solving the problem you identified, to achieve the goals you identified as important.

Having read hundreds (if not thousands) of applications and proposals, my observation is that the majority of the problems are with step #1, importance, and with step #3, efficiency.  Most people are pretty good at #2, feasibility, in the sense that they know what they want to do, can describe a calculation and measurement pretty well, and have a well-defined definition of success.  The front-end problem is usually that a good introductory section on importance is missing, and a concluding statement (or even introductory–I always address this on page 1) on efficiency.  The usual issue is that people will dive into discussing a set of calculations or measurements, without explaining their broader context (for either the science or field/institution), showing the reader why these action items are the critical ones to do to make progress, that this set of tasks (and your vision for the field/institution) is the key to solving the problem best/most robustly/fastest, and that it can really only happen because of YOU.

Most postdoc applications are focused almost entirely on scientific research, but grad and faculty applications typically need to cover much more ground.  For grad applications, you need to explain the story of yourself, and why a particular department should be chomping at the bit to make an offer to you.  For faculty applications, you want to sell a vision of yourself as a good faculty colleague and mentor.  You can identify a problem you see at an institution (or your field), and propose a plan to fix it.  You can describe the legacy you want to leave in the students you will advise or teach.  You can describe your values when it comes to education or research, and how that institution will benefit and grow from having you and your values in residence.

In the words of my PhD advisor, no one is going to care about your career as much as you do, so make sure to bring your A game for your job applications.  You have to make the case to the grad program, postdoc institution, or faculty search committee that you would be indispensable to them.  Ask not what that institution and field can do for you, but ask them to imagine just how much greater that institution and field would be by having you there for the long haul.

As an aside, let me tell you about the importance of Julianne Dalcanton on my own career, aside from telling me (and the whole world) how to think about writing a proposal.  I was an undergraduate at the University of Washington in the late 90’s/early 2000’s.  As was typical of the time (and sadly, also now–the numbers haven’t really changed), I encountered VERY few women in my physics classes, especially in instructor/TA/mentoring roles.  I had one TA during my freshman year who was a woman, and she always took time to talk with me.  She was great. I didn’t take a STEM class from a woman professor till the second half of my junior year.  That year, I took two astronomy classes from two great woman professors: Paula Szkody and Julianne Dalcanton.  I was just so surprised at the time to take classes from someone who wasn’t a man.  I learned a LOT about stars from Paula, which I especially appreciate now as I mull over problems that involve the types of variable stars she taught me about.  Julianne was  impactful for my career because she worked on the kinds of problems that I imagined myself working on one day, and also because she was not much older than I (as in, most of my professors before that point were at least as old as my parents).  I admired her approach to science, in addition to her choices of specific problems.  In her, I could see my future.  Ever since, her career choices have inspired me to be more bold with mine, to take chances on new directions, and not be afraid to tackle ambitious projects.  Thanks!