Overcoming challenges

I made a mistake for this carnival - I read some other posts and got tounge tied... they were very good! But I will try and make something out of this subject.

So, how did I overcome one of the big challenges in science and what might that have been.

Well, I remember the day after my world had fallen apart the first time* saying to a friend, “I thought the hardest part of being a graduate student was going to be the actual science, not the politics around it. And not my feelings about myself and my selfworth”. Truly though, it turned out that half-way through my graduate studies the funding was drying up.... the lab, who had had more than 10 people when I started was slowly decreasing and my first publication was still nowhere in sight. I had gotten stuck looking at a protein and did not know yet that it is imperative that you set out “I can look at this problem for X months and then we evaluate and reconsider”. Since I was on my own in this, I had tried this and that and then some more this and some more that and I knew that when (any sane person will think “if”) I found the lovely ligand my paper would be there... and since I needed two first authors at least to graduate (the rules at the time) I really had to get my first one after halftime.

So, I wasn’t really prepared for the talk with my Advisor - maybe you should move on and leave this since it is not working!? I didn’t see the other things surrounding us as the Department and the Uni was short on money, and my group the most... fellow scientists who had worked together for more than 15 years had to quit and leave the lab... and there I thought I was going to stay. I was a graduate student and had put my first two years in the lab and had worked really hard... but no publishable results yet.

Well, after an initial though of throwing all my samples out of the freezer, kicking the computer to the floor and scream “WTF! You can all go to hell!”, I regrouped (cried my eyes out for a day or two and had support from my very best friends) and did what I had to do; I decided to fight for my graduate position. After meeting with Head of the Department, other professors and working every day for two months with what I had and making a plan on “how I would be able to graduate within 2 years”. In order to do this I met with some professors I knew since earlier, bounced of ideas with them. Asked if they thought it was possible and realistic?! And what I could use as leverage and how to deal with people in general in a situation like this. I think what I learned the most of those discussions was that someone on the outside will see the situation much more clearly and will help you distinguish between “It’s about you” and “It’s about them” and”It’s about the science”;which, when being a small graduate student who wants to be able to graduate since, it is very hard to start over again after two years is very very crucial to know.

How it ended? After I presented my plan (complete with some hints that “Professor X and Y thought this would be a good idea and angle to look at”) I got not only a “Green light for proceeding” but also “the Department will help pay for your trip to that important conference this summer”. I guess the only lingering thing was that I didn’t feel that I really trusted my place in the Department as well as my Advisor for a while....

Some time after this, as in nowadays, I don’t think it was that different from what happenes in many labs... with many graduate students.. but I learned that I needed to look out for me - noone else will do that for you (might have been something I should’ve known when I started but in any event, I knew it then) and that there are many things you can do if you just keep on having some contacts.

Overall, I think I can summarize the experience in a few points:
Noone will look out for you but you
It is important to have other people than your Mentor/Advisor that knows you and your research (it would have been so much harder to fight the whole thing if I didn’t have three other profesors and the Dean on my side)
You can try and perform much more than you think to start with but most of all.... think really hard if it is worth it, the fighting, since by far the most comments I got at the time was “really, can’t you just quit. It would be so easy and then you can find something else to do”. Even when most people knew I “always wanted to finish”.

My thoughts today? That I should’ve asked for guidence a bit earlier but most of all - the important thing is not to win but to not give up and leave a situation when you are not ready. And to have an eye out for “situations” and realise that it is not always (very seldom actually) about you but rather a bunch of things that collide and will affect you.

And even when you go through situations like these, there is a way to restore the relationship with your Advisor and keep in contact and bounce ideas and so on when you are a post doc. I guess it could be renamed “no being bitter but seeing history as a learning point” and wanting to go forward, rather than staying in the past?

With that, I will end this and hope that it made sense.


*second time was when I started my post-doc but that is not for today... but I learned something out of that too.