job interview dressing advice

I'm not surprised that Isis is the big sister of the science blogosphere, whom people go to for fashion advice for job interviews. She's got some good points, and I'll leave it to the ladies commenting over there and the fashionable academic to give advice on tailoring and suits. Instead, I'll be the girl scout and throw out some more practical advice on interview dressing for women on the circuit this year.

Bring band aids. Even if you're bringing the most comfortable shoes you own, just in case.

Consider the possibility that your luggage will get there after you, either en route to the interview, or on your way home when you have a very short turn around between flights. I had a problem when my airline made me check in my carry-on because the flight was full, and my luggage stayed overnight in Detroit without me, and I was flying to another interview the next day... Think about what your backup interview outfits/shoes/undergarments/luggage might be, try not to book back-to-back interviews, and try to get direct flights. Consider wearing an outfit/shoes on the plane that you could interview in, if necessary. (Though, the interview-ready shoe backfired on me on the very next interview after the lost luggage. I had to run through a very linear airport at break-ankle speed in order to just catch another infernal connection. This point is just up to your consideration, as opposed to the band aids, which are non-negotiable.)

If you're wearing bottoms without functional pockets, consider bringing a wristlet for the times you'll be without your labtop bag/briefcase. I found mine so useful, a neutral coach wristlet might become my standard PhD graduation gift (for females). It's perfect for dinner, it fits your room key, your phone, a lipstick and emergency money (for some reason I always brought this, even though I felt it was very unlikely that the committee would abandon me at the restaurant and I'd need to call a taxi).

This isn't dressing, but bring your own fancy shampoo/conditioner/soap. Choose ones you're sure you love, but that you usually can't afford on your postdoc salary. If you love the smell of l'occitane en provence's verbena, it will make you feel more special and more ready to be charming for 16 straight hours.
Note to friends of those interviewing... travel sized fancy toiletries would be a thoughtful gift.

Of course, feeling sharply dressed is only one small component of being ready to interview. There are many good places on the internet for more complete perspectives on the academic job search including here and here. Everyone says this, but it's really true -- try to have fun with your job interviews. If you are yourself on the interview, and you get the job, you know the department wants you... not the contortion of you that you felt would get you the job. So wear professional clothing you feel comfortable in, and don't second guess yourself on some small expression of your personality: a unique piece of jewelry, a splash of color.

Fixing peer review, part 1

A colleague who knows my strong feelings on peer review sent me a recent article about "the tragedy of the reviewer commons." It doesn't address all my concerns with the peer review process, but it makes a few excellent, concrete suggestions:

"First, have colleagues pre-review your manuscript before submission. This was a time-honoured norm in publishing, but has diminished in recent years. Its decline could be due to increased pressure to publish quickly, competition between colleagues, increases in the numbers of co-authors on papers, and ironically, less time available to comment on our colleagues' papers because we are submitting and resubmitting more of our own papers."

"...journals could require a statement in the cover letter such as 'We confirm that should our study have been previously submitted to another journal, we have taken all reviewers comments into account in revising our manuscript for submission to…', has the merit of increasing author awareness and responsibility, without biasing editors because all submissions, whether or not previously rejected, would have to carry this statement."

"Our experience has been that, when they are chosen appropriately, students and post-docs are very conscientious and thorough in preparing reviews. Moreover, this is a route by which a busy senior scientist can still participate in the review process, and can mentor younger scientists in the craft of writing a good manuscript review."

Amen, my ecological brothers! (The authors are Michael Hochberg, Jonathan Chase, Nicholas Gotelli, Alan Hastings and Shahid Naeem)

I could not agree more with each of these points. As a reviewer I am constantly amazed by the shoddily prepared manuscripts that people submit to journals... and I wonder if authors had to first reveal their draft to their colleagues, who vote on their career advancement, whether the manuscripts would be in better shape even before the internal pre-review.

The authors' second point is remarkably creative, and something I would never have thought of (and something I have not heard anyone else mention). We all have been asked by multiple journals to review the same paper, and when you see that the authors did not revise the manuscript AT ALL in response to your first, rejecting review... it creates resentment. For those of us who take the time to write detailed, constructive reviews, this will offer us a direct recourse. If an author is caught in the act of wantonly ignoring a previous round of review, the reviewer can document this and affect change. Perhaps the authors will be blacklisted at that journal -- a concrete negative effect of not taking advantage of the first round of reviews. However, I do not think all reviewer's comments should affect change in a manuscript, so this policy has to be employed with some common sense by editors. I wouldn't hang up an author for not changing figure formatting that I had previously suggested, but I might talk to an editor about authors who ignored cogent criticism of their statistics.

And finally, how can we teach our students to become competent reviewers if we don't expose them to the process? Because too many scientists take their own peer reviews so negatively, I don't think that's the best way to teach younger scientists how to critique and improve papers. Plus, younger scientists often take the responsibility of reviewing to heart, and spend inordinate amounts of time on their first reviews, checking references more diligently than the busy senior scientists could have time to do.

These aren't a panacea for the problems of peer reviewing, but I would wholeheartedly endorse both the cultural and official changes to review suggested by Hochberg et al.

knowing when to fold 'em

Quitting a bad situation is often much harder than staying in it, suffering and experiencing incremental daily losses. That's advice that I'm sure can be found in the pages of Glamour, but it is true, and maybe harder to apply in the workplace than in our love lives. After all, most of us hold our shortest jobs longer than we kept our shortest romantic partners around...

Quitting can be seen as failure, as a situation you couldn't deal with, a situation you couldn't suavely turn into a something good for you. That you couldn't cope with the hand you were dealt, or what you signed up for. What's worse, even if you know getting out of a toxic situation ASAP isn't a 'failure', often others view it that way, such as the boss you're quitting, other narrow-minded members of the department, or your extended family.

I have seen many people suffer in academia because they didn't quit a bad situation (a bad advisor, typically). At the time most of them thought that sticking it out wasn't just the inertial path... they thought it was the smartest thing to do. They thought the suffering would be worth the benefits they'd get from working with an asshole bignameprof at FancyPantsU. Why quit a lab and make an 'official' enemy of the advisor? Why waste time starting up a new project in a new lab, when you're only n years away from finishing their PhD, and then you can move into a better lab? What's the worst that could happen... it's not going to get worse than the situation is right now, right?

At least one of my friends felt explicitly trapped, like all his other choices brought significant losses of prestige, status, and potential for the future. Instead of quitting, he started having panic attacks, which (thankfully) cleared up after he graduated...

My reply to their feelings at the time was get out, get out now (sometimes I suggested trying to stay at FancyPantsU in another lab). The following is somewhat informed by hindsight, since they all stayed in their bad situations.

* If you and your advisor have really hit the skids, it's unlikely you will reconstruct a working relationship with him or her. That ship has sailed, get out and start working with someone who will give you a good recommendation letter.

* It takes longer to get a good number of papers when you do your PhD/postdoc in a toxic lab, so you're not losing as much time as you think if you find another lab. Plus, you probably have a more refined idea of what you'd like to study, and you can pick a better lab for your interests. This doesn't apply if you're really just about to leave (less than 12 months? This heavily depends on your life situation), then there is a value to just getting through your remaining time.

* Things can always get worse. You can't bargain with yourself based on exactly how bad things are for you at one exact moment. Imagine how your asshole advisor will react if you get married/pregnant/have a family crisis... if your experiments are equivocal for a year through no fault of your own... if your advisor's spouse gets cancer/alzheimers and your advisor stops showing up for months on end. These situations (all plucked from my and my friends' experiences) try the best of working relationships, and make the bad go to much worse.

But none of my friends chose to quit their bad academic situation. Perhaps I have a skewed circle of friends... but it's not universal because I've quit two bad situations in my academic past.

Neither was easy, but the first quitting was harder. I was quitting in large part because I could not handle a family crisis and the position, and I had to face disappointing people's expectations, for not doing the best/most prestigious thing. It actually had nothing to do with the very nice guy who was supervising me.

The second quitting was changing advisors after my first year of grad school. I had been told that the way to pick a grad program was to pick the person I wanted to work with, go work with them, and follow them if they leave that school. Well, I came to a certain university to work with a well-known female professor, and I did not enjoy that lab environment, and would not have thrived there. My apologies for the vague description... but she and I get along fine now that I don't work for her, so I'm not going to give too many identifying/entertaining details. Initially, I felt I would have to change institutions, and was worried that it was another gamble... what if I couldn't get along with the next advisor? Would I then move *again*? As many were aware I was feeling this way, I was gently approached by a younger professor with whom I was friendly, and I decided to stay and join his lab. I was very, very nervous about confronting my professor, and telling her I wanted to change advisors, but it was just one awkward conversation. And maybe a few slightly awkward months. She was completely professional, though clearly surprised. It was an unequivocally good decision. Through the grapevine, I have heard that she thinks I'm a decent scientist, she and I are friendly at meetings (and that's not an act, at least from my side), and I remained friends with the members of her lab. And that friendly professor became my wonderful PhD advisor.

My bad first PhD year was not as bad as the situations of those I know who suffered through their PhD. At least it hadn't gotten that bad yet, but I had more of a desire to act than they did. I think this was mostly because I'd quit something before (and hadn't been blackballed/struck with lightening), and because I'd had an amazing undergraduate advisor who had showed me what a mentor is/can be.

My best friend dragged herself through a PhD in a lab she should have quit years earlier. Despite graduating her, her asshole advisor has told lies about her to colleagues, won't write her letters, and always seems surprised to see her at meetings -- didn't I destroy your career? why are you still here? While I am amazed to see that the asshole advisor is being worn down, and has started admitting that she will have a career after all, my friend shouldn't have to deal with these ridiculous, extra obstacles to getting a TT job. She has experienced far more negatives to her science and to her career path from staying with a bad advisor than she would have experienced by changing labs. But she is stubborn, she is driven, and her science is very, very hot, so she's going to make it.

There's a lot of advice out there, of people telling others it's time to walk away... but fewer stories of how quitting can work out, or how staying in a bad situation takes more years from your life than leaving would. If people know of others, please link to them in the comments.

"I love bacteria."

Several of my oldest friends are writing application essays right now. One is writing his research statement for tenure-track positions, one is applying to PhD programs, and one is applying to become a New York City teaching fellow. Of course, I think each of my friends will be great at the position to which he is applying, and I've happily been reading and editing their essays. I've especially been enjoying seeing which of my changes each of them likes and which alterations they can't stand.

But I'm far from the only one with application essays on the brain. FSP has opened up a contest for egregious parodies of graduate school application essays. I've been poking around on the internet looking for advice on essay writing for my PhD-bound friend, and have found some interesting things:

1. There are places you can pay to edit your graduate school application essays. This shouldn't have surprised me, but it's nice, in a way, to know I'm still this naive.

2. The typical, generic and earnest advice I expected to find. However, there were some interesting sections in these, like "What if I don’t have any unique experiences or qualities?" and some that were written in more relaxed tones. One site offered free example essays as a loss-leader, I suppose, for the "pre-written," "model" papers they sell.

3. Overall, the science blogs focus on other aspects of applying to grad school (being very very careful when selecting an advisor, etc), though FSP gives some excellent practical dos and don'ts of grad school application essays.

I remember that starting my graduate school application essay was very problematic. I was blocked on it for weeks. In the end I said %$*^ it, and started the essay "I love bacteria." And I went on to explain what I thought was cool, attractive, intensely important about microbiology for the rest of the first paragraph, then I wrote about my research experience, and finished with a paragraph about whom I would have liked to work with in each department. Overall, it was very conventional, but my honest and blunt introduction did have some consequences; I was identified by people at several interviews as "ohhhh, the girl who loves bacteria." But there's no such thing as bad publicity for one's application... right?

Since then, I have learned a few things about how to start writing introductions. Besides the ubiquitous and useful "start writing now, polish/cut later," I've found I often write an entirely superfluous, too-much-background paragraph that precedes a perfectly reasonable introductory paragraph in my drafts. Sometimes this superfluous paragraph is very well-written, but it doesn't really need to be there. This was pointed out by one of my oldest advisors, when I was writing my research statements last year, and I now see this problem in many things I write. If I took the time to look back, maybe even in my blog posts . But I also have been able to see this in other people's writing -- including in one of my friends' application essays. So that's my contribution to the application essay resources on the intertubes... check and see if your second paragraph actually is a decent introduction in and of itself.

Mostly, though, I'm happy to be at a stage in my life/career where I have a lot more direction and purpose to the starts of my essays (cough, grants), and no one expects me to start with "My life's purpose came to me as I was hiking though the French Alps three summers ago..." Except Female Science Professor, of course.