[Posted on behalf of Materials Girl]

We’re just getting to know each other, but your resume caught my eye and I might be looking to collaborate… How many papers have you published? What’s the typical impact factor of the journals those papers appear in? Or — to be Google Scholar-forward — what’s your h-index? At what rate do you publish? Are you first or corresponding author? Why should we get to know each other better? Is your CV worth a swipe right?

The potential questions regarding one’s publications are endless, and everyone knows that fateful metric by which a researcher is judged. The “publish or perish” approach to evaluating scientists is inescapable — and particularly of note for younger researchers at the beginning of their careers. As a postdoc working for an untenured professor, publication is of tantamount importance for both me and my PI. Those on the prowl for a job outside of academia, however, might find the importance of publication record to be less obvious. A colleague involved in government-run science/funding (e.g., U.S. Department of Energy) insists that 10–20 papers out of graduate school is the minimum number needed to prove one’s scientific worth and land a decent job. Another had the notion that collaborative, non-first author papers held more value, since institutions typically look for team players.

Naturally, the specifics of a position will dictate the need for a strong publishing record.  Regardless of this importance to a particular employer, however, there is an undeniable, strong community expectation to produce papers. Having a low paper count implies low productivity, but how accurate is it to correlate publication statistics with individual labor/intellect/talent? Out of all the graduate students I’ve encountered, the average number of publications is definitively in the single digits – and could be measured on one hand if only first authorship is considered.

So here’s the question: Is this judgement system realistic? My PhD advisor always insisted that Nature and Science papers would definitely come if I worked hard enough. Not intellect or inspiration — just pure, hard labor. However, sometimes a good publication arises from luck — be it a lucky result or experiment, the luck of being on a good project, the luck of having access to equipment or funding at the right time, etc. Labor and brilliance notwithstanding, even the best researcher may not flourish without a dash of good fortune.

No clear-cut right or wrong answers exist to these matters, and it would be interesting to hear TSC reader opinions. What do you think about scientists judging one another on publishing? How heavily scrutinized should an individual’s publication record be? Do you think that the current system is fair?

[Posted on behalf of Materials Girl]

Mortality is not a concept that many young scholars are in the habit of considering. Indeed, students tend to pay little thought to their health within a frequently frenetic, sleep-deprived, caffeine-powered existence of procrastination and salty ramen (or are those tears?). Self-care was not an issue that I focused on during grad school, or even in the following year of post-graduation burnout. Sure, I dropped 15 lbs in two weeks while preparing for quals — however, starvation, 20 hour workdays and anxiety attacks are neither a healthy nor sustainable lifestyle (and needless to say, that weight came right back)… Only in retrospect have I realized the depth to which I was depressed, hyper-stressed, and overly isolated in The Dungeon – meanwhile medical specialists wondered why my health was so  poor for a normal-looking student in her early/mid 20’s.

Graduate school was possibly the hardest, most strenuous “activity” in my life. Had I been in good mental and physical shape, I could have graduated in half the time. Perhaps even more quickly, had I not been stumbling through a miserable haze of fatigue, stress, and some sort of masochistic pleasure in overexerting myself (and often focusing on teaching instead of research). Even now, it seems miraculous that I went from having sporadic, disparate projects without a clue what was going on to pulling together a coherent dissertation.

Being a postdoc is just a step above being fodder for the graduate school machine. While my position is still in academia and involves work far more hours than I’m paid for, I’ve also learned to focus on myself. Not just on my work/career and scientific responsibilities, but also me: MG the human. MG with both scientific and extracurricular activities. MG who has amazing friends and is reassembling something one might call a life.

Last year was a defining time for me — personally and professionally, mentally and physically. One step in “real adulthood” has been learning to take nights and weekends off, things that normal people do! Grad-student-MG would’ve been wracked with guilt. Mentally-improved-MG adapts by actually working efficiently and not allowing distractions or exhaustion to overtake the day. Physically-improved-MG changed a sedentary lifestyle into working out six days each week and cooking healthy meals. Instead of late-night languishing in the office with flagging productivity, my work is done more effectively before scampering off to mixed martial arts classes. Afterwards, I scamper home to unpack, eat, shower, sleep early, and drag myself out of bed around 6:30am. Wash, rinse, repeat, and — most importantly — enjoy.

Behind every speck of data and writing is a person with aspirations and feelings — not just a monkey or nameless face who works in the lab and chugs coffee. As Rebecca Schuman aptly says in The Not-So-Splendid Isolation of Doctoral Study, “One of the biggest mistakes many of us make is to forget that our brilliant brains live inside whole, mortal people — and that those people need taking care of”. We must remember to appreciate not only the research, but also the individuals who discover the science. Respect yourself, take breaks, and never lose sight of who you are. And even if that happens, you can come back. Be mindful and give yourself grace, as a wise friend of mine would say. It makes all the difference in the world.

[Posted on behalf of Materials Girl]

The Materials Girl column was ‘born’ in August 2007 while I was 19 and halfway through undergrad. Back then, it was puzzling that other guest writers never seemed to have time to post. Undergrad was as busy as life got, and it didn’t take THAT long to write, right? Ah, youthful innocence – and whining! Considering my earlier posts, it’s a wonder that Stu and Neil patiently let me gripe instead of slapping me upside the head and pointing out that being an undergrad is relatively easy (#firstworldproblems). Then again, perhaps that clueless-but-learning perspective is part of the reason why they not only chose an undergrad blogger, but also let her keep writing on the Sceptical Chymist through grad school and beyond. For that, I am incredibly grateful – and rather abashed.

This year marks a decade since I graduated high school (and took Stu’s infamous o-chem class)! Clichés aside, the years have flown by and memories have begun blurring, despite the acute instances where time crawled and stress tended to reach extreme peaks. Scrolling through the Materials Girl log shows increasingly long gaps between posts – I’ve become one of those busy, beyond-undergrads whose occupations previously were such a mystery…

Being done with school is sometimes a strange reward. There was comfort in the structure of knowing exactly what path to follow, give or take nebulous major tasks in grad school such as ‘do novel research’ and ‘write a dissertation’. Nowadays, I must admit to feeling a bit of sadistic glee when seeing others undergo the same struggles. Whether it’s spotting undergrads studying the night away in coffee shops, hearing new grad students panic over prelims and qualifying exams, or seeing candidates slave away to prepare a final defense, I can smile and say that they’re all doable tasks (if not painful memories). If I survived, so can they.

Now that I’ve made time/procrastinated sufficiently to draft a new post, it’s back to writing papers and looking for open positions to follow my postdoc. Fingers crossed!

[Posted on behalf of Materials Girl]

Just a few months ago, I was floundering to bring my projects to a reasonable stopping point and unify them into a coherent story (aka: my dissertation). The postdoc in our research group assured me that any self-perceived lack of direction and internal bursts of sheer panic were normal, while our sole PhD alumnus offered advice and described his similar tribulations on the road to graduation. YKW (my advisor) was perpetually ‘busy’ and stuck to his ‘hands off’ strategy, leaving me to forge my own path (and procure my own funding). More than once, I felt completely and utterly lost.

However, only one option existed. Nothing was going to keep me from earning my doctorate, so I pushed past the bouts of fear, anxiety, doubt, anger, and hopelessness. Even when the path was unclear, I set deadlines, sat down, and forced myself to crank out manuscripts. Although half of my projects ended up excluded from the dissertation, I made something out of what previously felt like nothing. I wrote frantically, I set my defense for April 1st (no joke), I made slides like a madwoman, and I finished.

And so, everything now ends, and begins – it is the end of my journey as a graduate student, and the beginning of a real career. Baby steps are still in order, to avoid freaking out about real life and my future. (Do people really know what they want to be when they grow up? At age 27, I’m still wondering). The next step is a postdoc position, which has been waiting for me since last fall and helped motivate the rapid progression toward finishing my PhD. I’ve moved out of sunny SoCal and joined the chemistry department of a small, STEM-focused school that works closely with one of the national labs. Time to return to my roots! Materials are still the basis for my research, but it’s refreshing to be back in an environment where, say, people know what NMR is or think that o-chem is actually fun – not a dreaded undergraduate requisite.

The future is no clearer to me, but it is brighter (and significantly snowier!). Call me Dr. MG. The journey wasn’t impossible after all.

Editor’s note: This post was written in November 2014, near the start of the current school year.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

With graduation looming ahead (and a birthday this past Halloween), I have been pondering the great and terrible question of: What do I want to be when I grow up? Or, in more adult terms, what are my career aspirations? The short answer is that I have no clue. My younger self thought that I’d have everything figured out by the ripe old age of 27 — but alas, no.

Being a student has given me the luxury of relative stability and persistent short-term ‘career’ goals. Aside from research, grad student duties/hurdles have a distinct end: classes wrap up with finals every term, preliminary exams are a one-day ordeal (or two, for the unlucky; more, for the unworthy), and heaven help you if the 2 hour qualifying exam is failed. Once I step out of academia’s familiar bubble, life becomes significantly bigger and less defined. ‘Find a job’ is a simple instruction, but one that inevitably comes with countless questions and hours of searching (plus rejection and re-searching). It can even be daunting to choose between the broad categories of industry, academia, or government careers.

Before hyperventilation sets in, it helps to consider that I know several things. Literally, I’ve learned a handful of things about science and engineering. More figuratively, I have a few notions of what my future aspirations might be. My years as a student, TA, and graduate researcher have taught me much — in addition to pointing out the fact that I know just a miniscule iota of THINGS in general. I have an unshakable love for science, dabbling in the lab, and teaching/mentoring. Consolidating these into a clear path is the unfamiliar part, as is finding job postings that match the particular skill set I’ve acquired. (Not to worry, I’m told, just rely on networking and employer flexibility.) Status and wealth mean little to me. My drive is to do something scientifically interesting, and to do it well — provided there’s a good dash of challenge and relevance to the betterment of society. Good goals, I think, but still vague overall.

Owing to an unusually wide range of research projects and ensuing exposure to many experimental techniques, my CV might be summarized as ‘jack-of-all-trades and potential master-of-some’ or ‘not an idiot; eager to learn more’ (if you’ll excuse my traditionally morbid sense of humor). For now this is leading me to pursue jobs of various shape/form/size, while unsure of what I’d truly like to do.

Returning to the notion of having things figured out or not, I’ve lately been seeking out my ‘elders’ in various disciplines to discuss their career paths. Regardless of age, background, or position in life, there seems to be an underlying current of chance. Few individuals with STEM jobs have followed a predetermined path, or had specific goals for each step of their careers — they just pursued opportunities as they arose.

This gives me hope. Knowing my capabilities is groundwork for the future, even if the exact trajectory is in question. Major life changes are fast approaching, and all of us antsy doctoral candidates should revel in what’s ahead instead of dreading the unknown. Onwards, and upwards! (And now, back to writing things that aren’t blog posts.)

[Posted on behalf of Materials Girl]

Teaching has been part of my graduate-student experience since the very beginning. For better or for worse, my department is happy to hire newcomers as teaching assistants (TAs) during their first terms as grad students. After 14 quarters encompassing a wide variety of undergraduate courses, I have now maxed out on the school of engineering’s allowance for TAing. This fall will be the first term where I have absolutely ZERO classes to take or teach. It feels surreal, and a bit sad. (Even sadder if my advisor runs out of funding to pay me, but that’s a whole different set of issues…) Since age 4, I have been ‘in school’ and always had classes of some sort. Twenty-two years later, the change is very noticeable. In particular, I find myself actually having proper time to focus on research, instead of having half my week appropriated to classroom-related work.

Here, TA duties generally consist of teaching a weekly discussion or laboratory session, grading, holding office hours, responding to barrages of emails near due dates, and more grading. The experience has been as rewarding and unique as the variety of students I’ve encountered. Teaching — if it is done properly — forces us to disseminate (and reiterate) information with particular clarity (and patience), while grading hones attention-to-detail and writing skills. I’ve enjoyed not only gaining valuable skills (and regaining forgotten information), but also interacting with students and seeing them flourish.

At the end of each class, students are requested to write anonymous evaluations of their instructors. In addition to a list of questions, the final section is left open to all comments. Although these ‘evals’ are meant to help us improve the course and our teaching, mine have largely consisted of jumbled and amusing comments such as: ‘Fair grading is the best! Give me a good grade please. Just kidding, but seriously can you read this?’ Some of my friends have received more technical or extensive reviews, particularly those in the chemistry department — perhaps engineering undergrads are just less wordy.

Originally I considered sharing my funniest evaluations, but they all take a backseat to this one: ‘Dis gurl da baws. It don’t take no TEM to see you fine gurl.’ (from a student in a class on nanoscience and nanotechnology which, among other things, covered characterization). Most of the reviews are humbling and positive. Additionally there’s the occasional amusing student who gripes about ‘harsh grading’ or finds my serious-TA mode ‘scary’ (I’ve since eased up on being extra serious while in front of a class). Instead of rambling further on the joys and pains of the experience, though, I shall simply summarize by quoting another evaluation:

‘Here’s a smiley face. :)’

[Posted on behalf of Materials Girl]

At the beginning of grad school I was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, ready to tackle the challenges of being a Master’s student. I went to bed early, then eagerly got up in the morning to continue working. I even won a few awards, thanks in part to jumping into a good research topic. Unfortunately, my youthful fire was extinguished within two years, and wasn’t boosted after deciding to stay for a PhD. Additionally, I was unexpectedly bumped to entirely new projects almost annually — it’s been a challenge to settle on a thesis topic. When the new school year started a few months back, other students in my cohort had similar feelings of stagnation with their research. We’re all getting angsty about graduation (and funding!). Maybe the fifth year’s the charm for us?

Outside of school, fellow students from my undergrad internship [at chemistry R&D division of big company] have taken an amazing array of routes. Recently we had a giant chat on Facebook, catching up on what we’ve done in the past 6 (?!) years and where we’re headed. Our paths include:

– Materials Engineering PhD at U. of Illinois, turned ME Master’s, followed by a Master’s in Teaching of Chemistry. Goal: Teaching middle- or high-school chemistry.
– Law school at Stanford. Goal: Practicing intellectual property.
– Medical school, followed by cardiothoracic surgery in Detroit. Goal: Critical care.
– Psychology PhD at Cornell, turned Master’s. Goal: Working with animal shelters, or teaching math.
– Chemical Engineering PhD at Princeton. Goal: Undecided, with mention of the “3rd year -black hole”.
– Med school prereqs, followed by Teach For America, followed by programming jobs, followed by management at MIT, followed by entrepreneurship. Goal: ??

The rest of us PhD-pursuers are scattered around the likes of Caltech, Cornell, and Berkeley, pursuing research in chemistry, biochemistry, and/or materials. None of us feel strongly inclined towards staying in academia, and some are decidedly against it. (However I’ve seen people go the industry route, then within months are headed back to universities). Two of the bunch are set to graduate next year, and the rest are more in the “??” category. Regardless of our waffling, I’m proud to be part of such a talented group! Seeing the diversity (and number of grad school switcheroos) of my fellows gives me hope. We’re still young, and just at the beginning of our careers. There are still places to go, mistakes to make, and careers to choose — and maybe re-choose!

For readers who’ve gone all the way through the PhD path, where are you now? Was it what you imagined while in school? What words of wisdom would you give a bunch of mid-20-year-old kids?

Note: post updated on the day of posting to include a few minor edits.

[Posted on behalf of Materials Girl]

Four hours into my first transatlantic flight, I have crazy cabin fever that won’t be helped by the usual narcoleptic tendencies (apparently my superpower of passing out is limited to talks/reading). Flights were a rare novelty in my younger days. Now, with some age and a few conferences under my belt, I wonder how frequent travellers manage to keep their sanity and knees intact in such cramped quarters. In lieu of cartwheeling down the aisles, I’ll be wiggling toes and catching up on blogging!

Change and adaptation are underlying features of graduate school. I’ve recently been learning this as a new PhD student, particularly with YouKnowWho (YKW) recently ‘suggesting’ an entirely new thesis subject. It appears that the previous funding source was not renewed, thus I’ve been reassigned — ending the promise to graduate using my Master’s research. Not to say that this hasn’t happened before or that I’m entirely surprised, but this is more serious than tossing new ideas to a Master’s student (whose thesis would likely not receive a thorough read). My newest projects have me changing material systems entirely, from semiconductors to metal-ceramics. Yikes.

So here I am, starting over with vague guidelines and no background. Is this my fault for not having specific goals/interest for my own research? I’m not sure. Thus far, I’ve gone along with YKW’s various ideas and had enough curiosity to work hard at them, but without finding any specific passions. YKW’s method has been to suggest general topics and then have me find something ‘interesting’ to study. Sometimes I get an itemized list of suggestions; sometimes a caveat is at the end reminding me that some/all of them may not work, in which case I must find another route. Lately it’s been baffling, and I’m sitting on this plane still wondering what YKW actually wants — all the while heading to another country for collaborative research on the new project. (I’ve long since given up on asking YKW about anything other than random details, as questions tend to result in “it’s your job to figure it out”.)

It has taken time for me to realize how directionless my research has been. In the past I’ve gotten by through various amounts of labour and good fortune, but I need to find a proper focus. My loyalty to the group (and reluctance to scrap three years of work) keeps me here. So, I’m buckling down for the long haul, all the while wondering how normal this situation is for students. To anyone still reading — what was your graduate experience like, as far as choosing/pursuing projects goes?

[Posted on behalf of Materials Girl]

Late last year during the fall term, YouKnowWho dropped a small bomb on my plans: I could write a dissertation using the work for my intended Master’s thesis. What?! In previous bids he had simply asked me to stay for a PhD to work on some project, whereas now there was the claim that I could finish in just another year. (I assume this means two more, bringing the total to a reasonable five years.) It was then the time for waffling. On one hand, staying would save a large amount of time and effort – no need to retake classes, create new networks, and familiarize myself with a different academic system. On the other hand, I had always planned to relocate sometime in the future to do my PhD. Also, although my search for specific jobs was coming up nil, a [very big] company had found my resume in their online bank and decided that I should work for them (after flying me in for some quick interviews) – but their tempting offer was contingent on graduating in the spring. I was conflicted.

Now that I think about it, turning down the job would feel akin to breaking up with a serious boyfriend. Would I ever get another offer or would I be reduced to a penniless, lonely miscreant forced to move into my parents’ basement while honing my skills as a barista? Was anyone else going to pick me from the sizable crowd of contenders? Did I actually possess the skill for a good position or was I deluding myself in assessing my value? The potential outcomes plagued me for months, during which time I turned down [very big company’s] offer in order to ruminate further. This should’ve been a hint that deep down I had already made up my mind, but it wasn’t until the end of winter break that I steeled myself for the long haul. I was going to stay.

So in January, I found myself on the road to oral preliminary exams in the materials science & engineering department – something mere months prior I had never dreamed of (and had gleefully ignored every term as a Master’s student). The pressure for me to pass was enormous, more so than the inherent nature of the exams. Not only did I want to avoid the mortification of retaking them, but also the required time to finish a Master’s was running dangerously low. If I spent the rest of the school year studying for the maximum two attempts at prelims, no time would be left to graduate if I failed both – thus leaving me in some horrible purgatory of no degree after three years laboring in grad school. To say the least, it was a very sobering thought and serious business.

The other major hurdle to prelims was my undergraduate background. (In)organic chemistry has distinctly different curricula from that of any engineering major. Being in materials eased the pain to a degree, although topics such as mechanical properties and diffusion were still foreign to me. Between TAing, classes, and Lab Mom duties, I stayed buried [or at least attempted to] in heavy textbooks.* Never before had I experienced such prolonged, excruciating pain in the form of studying. (Call me a bad student with no attention span, but despite sleeping through most classes I’ve learned to earn good grades after studying only days before tests. Blame the apnea?) I formed a study group with other prelim-takers from a hodgepodge of backgrounds: the physics guy knew his electrical properties beautifully, the two from chemical engineering were comfortable with thermodynamics & diffusion, the one from materials had already learned everything, etc. The group helped a bit despite our sessions being exhausting and relatively short – and sometimes spent pondering how to bribe each professor to pass us, or if it’d help to bring a bottle of vodka (or a revolver) during the actual exams. Our weekly sessions of questions, griping, and even laughter were a little reminder that I wasn’t alone in a traumatic world of stress and cramming. As it is with the rest of my grad student family, we ultimately helped each other through the blood, sweat, and tears.

*Countless thanks goes to the friends who lent me their books and support. Hopefully the cookies I’ve baked have repaid them.

To cut a long story short, after two months of studying I took prelims and PASSED. (!!!) No second attempt, no earth-shattering reprimands from professors who find me an inadequate candidate, and just about no dishonor. I am officially on the road to being Dr. MG, as well as starting to act somewhat human again. So it’s probably a good time to get back to writing those papers for YKW (which will eventually turn into the dreaded dissertation)… Gulp.

[Posted on behalf of Materials Girl]

Many moons ago, Stu mentioned the following to me via email: “…the last paragraph of this post is (a) quite funny – ‘secret professor tunnels’ and (b) I thought it might inspire a blog post about seeing professors out of context from the viewpoint of an undergrad.” Disregarding the fact that I am no longer an undergrad, I’ve had several notable run-ins with professors outside of the classroom.

My most surprising out-of-classroom experience took place at a small Japanese grocery store, which I visited infrequently since it required a cumbersome bus ride from campus. On this day, I was happily minding my own business of sniffing unfamiliar pastries and reading strange labels (UFO brand ramen? collagen sheets?). While I was thus employed in a cramped aisle, a bothersome individual decided to block my way out. Imagine my surprise upon looking up to see my very European organic lab instructor from year one! Never before had I seen him outside the chemistry building, answering a mountain of emails in his office or running between labs to identify mystery compounds in students’ beakers and curtail impending explosions (courtesy of those who failed to properly vent their glassware). He chuckled and in his thick accent asked what I was “up to” – a question that I directed right back to him, being apparently out of his element in the market… Turns out, our overworked, exacting, talkative, lovably cantankerous*, and irreplaceable prof got hitched to a nice Asian lady from so and so. Who’da thunk.
*Other students may vehemently disagree with me on this point, considering the heavy workload and strict grading in his mandatory classes.

The most amusing meeting occurred last year outside a certain campus eatery around lunchtime, as I passed by one of my senior year inorganic profs. He caught my eye, paused for a microsecond of recollection, then exclaimed, “Shouldn’t you have graduated by now?!” Having been just one in a sea of faces for a single term, I was rather surprised that he remembered me. However I quickly procured a grin (with less impishness than his) and explained that I’d defected to the MSE department for grad school. My memory fails here, but I expect that he gave me slight admonition for the departure from chemistry.

Perhaps this incident is less amusing than the aforementioned professor himself. This is someone who brought pizza to our final and promised extra points to all who turned in papers that were free from grease stains. (Of course, this resulted in 30 or 40 chem majors munching on cold pies after finishing the exam.) The first problem on the final made reference to duck excrement, in context of projectile length and standard deviation… While I am not an advocate of the theme, having recently forbidden one of my students to use “poop” in the title of his term paper, I appreciated the reflection on his great sense of humor – a quality I’ve found in very few educators. On top of that, he was a fantastic -if not snarky- teacher and a source of anything from sound academic advice to genuine encouragement. My hat goes off this venerable professor. I hope he knows how much we still love him and recollect stories from his class.

This last story technically didn’t occur outside of the classroom, but I can’t resist a quick deviation to quote an o-chem prof’s explanation of backside attack: “If you kick my butt, my arms fly up!” And with that quote for the ages, dear readers, I leave you to contemplate your own stories of professorial glee – I’d love to hear them!