Arranging a meeting

Thursday 8/23, Me: send email with revisions of manuscript. "Can we meet" etc.

(......)

Boss calls Tuesday 8/28, has 30 minutes to meet. Did not read manuscript. Will call Thurs if he has time to meet.

Wednesday 8/29, Me: send email with revisions of manuscript. "Here are manuscript revisions just in case you didn't get the last one" etc.

Thursday, 8/30... nothing.

Friday 8/31, Boss: I have time to meet this morning. I didn't read your paper. What do you want to meet about?




*blinks*

The best trips are POWER trips!

Once upon a time, in a magical land, there was an investigator (one step up from post-doc). This investigator moved up from post-doc-land very quickly because the bossman put investigator's name on every paper that came out of the lab within a year and a half period. The investigator has their own technician who does all of the work for the investigator. The technician even calls the investigator in the morning to wake them up. At first, as a member of tech staff, this technician helped out other people with little 10-15 minute tasks here or there if they really needed it, since they are a technician and are relatively interested in workplace harmony, working as a team, helping out where it is needed, and so on. The investigator then decides that the technician isn't allowed to help anyone directly outside of the projects that the investigator is involved in (which is to say, about 25-30% of the work happening in this workplace). Then, later, the investigator decides that the technician isn't allowed to help anyone at all, but only work on their specific projects.

(record skip)

What?


Since when is a lab a place where nobody helps each other, where technician staff doesn't help with minimal-effort, 10-minute technician jobs? Only here, folks. Only here. I'm pretty sure that part of working in a large group is helping to get things done when you have spare time and when help is needed. That is how workplaces function.


Icing on the cake? I sent out an interesting email the other day, with an article in the examiner (oh journalists trying to write about science! hah.) about some such thing that was highly relevant to our field. Just a link to the article, saying it was neat, and so on.

The investigator tells me to send them the original journal articles that the piece was based on. Sorry, why? I don't have them. I didn't read them. Are you unable to pubmed that shit yourself? Is it below you to hunt down your own articles? I don't really work much with you, investigator. You told your technician that they weren't allowed to help me when I was in dire straits (insert ten-second clip of 'Sultans of Swing' here) trying to get things done and needed a hand with some inane task for ten minutes. You said that the technician couldn't spare a second of their day (in reality, they might have been bored to death, leaving early, or surfing facebook for pictures of cute girls for the other grad student). Not a single second.

Find your own shit.

I'm not your secretary, and frankly, neither is your technician, even though you'll probably make them do it. 

Addendum to professor BEH's new paper

If you had just published a paper a year ago that used behavioral model A, treatment model B, and drug C... and you just read a paper that used behavioral model A, treatment model B (well, *almost* the same thing), and drug D...

Wouldn't you be annoyed if your paper wasn't referenced? Gee, I sure would.

In fact, BEH's paper doesn't reference any of the studies that use similar behavioral models and treatments. There are a couple out there. Where'd you get the idea for that study... it didn't come from my thesis, did it? The one that you hated so much?

Imagine that.





Politics are bullshit, people. Just because two people don't like each other doesn't mean that one can completely ignore the fact that the other person did something relevant to their interests. Thats half the purpose of a discussion section, folks, to acknowledge other relevant groups and projects in your area.

New developments via professor BEH

Many moons ago, Professor BEH [see: prelim story], who I had several issues with and removed from my committee [and on a side note, is a see you next tuesday and is destroying our department], said they didn't like my  thesis project because it didn't include robust models of behavior, only a less robust, high throughput version (my thesis isn't behavior focused to begin with) that is 'predictive' of every other behavioral model ever. I don't have the several years of time to develop the more robust models, and don't want to take the questionable shortcuts that BEH does when using them. BEH hates the model that I used. HATES it.

Yesterday, I got an article notice in my email. I have pubmed alert me every time there is an article with particular words or authors being published. They all get sent to me on Monday. Good start to the week. Anyway, it is an article using this particular behavioral model that BEH despises.



Guess where the work was done and who the first author is?



(this is where I stand up at my desk and yell something like "how you like dem apples" or "eat a dick")

The problem with working in a lab of 15 people is...

...Everyone is an expert on something. And everyone has some piece of necessary knowledge that you require for some particular project. And when you finally get the information you've been waiting over a week for your post-doc give you... the person you need to get information from next is on vacation. Always. These things that, if people were around and had email access, I could take care of in a day, end up taking several weeks.

Why haven't I graduated yet? Because every time I need key information from someone, it takes at least a week to get it. And then another week to get the next piece of information. And then another week...

Example time frame:

Supposed to start method development: March
(Actual start: May. Reason: Bossman wants post-doc to re-validate method)

Supposed to start running samples on new method: May
(Actual start: tentatively, mid-September. Reason: Technician doesn't want to deal with my finicky samples. Make New plan: Find another method. Get information from other people. Take several safety tests. Get approval for specific lab space from safety committee. Design experiment to validate method. Practice runs with new method.)

Supposed to be done with samples: June
(fuck)


I'm sure, somewhere, there is a mathematical formula that relates years working on PhD to number of experts in a lab. I'll just open my math drawer and poke around.

manuscript meeting II

Bossman: "Therefore? You can't use that. You don't say therefore in speaking language. Don't put in in your paper. Take out all of the 'therefores' and 'forthwiths'"

Forthwith? What the fuck is this, a Sherlock Holmes novel? There is no "forthwith" in this paper. Or ever.

Also, I say "therefore" ALL OF THE TIME. I do not, however, say things like "attenuating efficacy," "immunologically distinct populations," or "ensuring individual component additivity," even though those phrases are peppered through this manuscript like red pepper flakes on my motherfucking pizza.

If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn't be called research.

Know whats super fun? When you find ancient, unpublished data that foreshadows your current results. Finding the data is like unearthing an archaeologic treasure. And comparing the similar trends and figuring out the potential cause behind these similar trends is like finding the missing link between homonid species. Or whatever its called, since I'm somewhat biology-deficient.

I knew there was a reason I'm still doing this. It should just rear its head a little more often. And hand me a beer when I figure things out. That'd be great, too.


Also, the post title is stolen (theoretically) from Albert Einstein. I bet he would have wanted a beer after coming up with smart stuff too. Theories and shit.

I think Albert Einstein paved the way for loose hygiene in academia. I mean, have you seen the man's hair? Get real.

Annual safety training

Annual safety training is the bane to everyone's existence. Sometimes it means you have to watch a several-hour series of mostly irrelevant safety training videos made in the mid-1980s. Sometimes it means you spend several hours flipping through a powerpoint with "quiz" slides that crash every ten-to-fifteen minutes.


And sometimes the powerpoint has slides that say things like "If there is exposure to 131-I (a radioactive isotope) greater than 7 mCi, written instructions are necessary" and then a quiz slide immediately after that says "A written directive is necessary for exposure to 131-I at what levels?" But when you choose "greater than 7mCi," you get the question wrong.


And that happens both times you take the test, since the program didn't bother to register your completion the first time around.


 ...What?

An exercise in futility

Ah, the new post-doc (coming soon, in early September) is, in fact, moving in to the other half of the office (which I was kicked out of).

Isn't that great? Thats just great.



Why isn't it happy hour yet?

Things I like to do for fun

Sometimes I read through the references on the papers that I read. Sometimes it's helpful and I find original papers that explain major concepts. Sometimes I just find dumb things and end up reading irrelevant papers by someone with the last name "Batman," because lets be honest, it's Batman.

Getting scooped... by your own lab

Scooped: (noun) 1. When you are currently engaged in a project and results from the same or a similar project are reported by another group before you get your results out. 2. When your project is handed off to another person, prior to your being finished, and without your knowledge. Also see: "FFFFUU-" meme.

Today's lab meeting consisted of my post-doc mentor presenting results on a project that started at approximately the same time as my project. My project asks "is A + B better than A alone?" I have spent a little over two years on this project and it compromises about 66% of my thesis. It is a hand-me-down project that spun off from a previous, published project in the lab. Just like the one that compromises the other 33% of my thesis, which was a hand-me-down spin off from the previous grad student's published work. At any rate, the post-doc's project asks the question "is A + B + C better than A alone?" This sort of makes my project irrelevant. If you can add three things together, who cares about two?

Adding to this, the other grad student currently in our lab published a paper with his mentor, an investigator.
[Aside: I should really explain lab hierarchy some time. Consider it to be "coming soon"]
It asked "is A + B better than A alone" for a different drug. Same concept, different target. My post-doc's work is same concept, same target.

To increase the frustration, the A + B project for the different drug indicates success. The A + B + C for the same drug indicates some success, under particular conditions. My work indicates that, well, A + B isn't... worse than A alone. It just isn't ... better. Under particular conditions, of course. Actually, under one set of conditions, A + B is totally worse than A alone. Looks like crap. Turns out combining A and B makes them both look bad. My best set of conditions tells me that A + B has the potential to be better than A alone, perhaps under some other, wholly different set of conditions... but not when I'm doing it.

And the finding that when you change particular conditions of the experiment, the end results change, well... the post-doc saw that too, but with a more aesthetically pleasing and significant difference. Most likely, it'll get published prior to my work, too. And that means that, frankly, people who want to understand why results differ when conditions differ will probably cite her paper instead of mine.

[Aside: my first paper, on the other hand-me-down project, has been cited once. Might have been one of the best days of my life]

To reinforce my joy of sitting in lab meeting, watching my post-doc show everyone essentially the same results that I've known about and not be able to say anything, the several times I tried to chime in with side information, I got railroaded by other investigators who just talked over me.

My only joy, a small piece of schadenfreude (embarrassing, but true), was watching the post-doc tell the bossman that this info will be two papers, and him deciding that it'll be one paper. One giant paper with a zillion figures. I have been on this road before. I have spoken with the post-doc and I am behind her in fighting the good fight for two papers instead of one, but I also know what happens in the end. This is a movie I have seen (lived) before. And all of that data that was presented... half of it will be published and the other half will rot on a hard drive, never to be seen by anyone outside the lab (probably because in five years when someone wants to see it again, they'll never be able to find it). I have mountains of unpublished data. Mountains. Not only is it unpublished, but in all of the thesis defense practice powerpoints I've made (so I started early, thats a good thing, folks)... this unpublished data has been taken out of those, too. I've got a whole population of undesirable, bottom caste data. I'm fighting the good fight here, but after some amount of time, the fight just gets taken right out of you. It'll get published, even if I make some graphs and pin them to a bulletin board in my department and call it good.

Today is great. I hope it ends with a tall, frosty cheap ass beer.

Typical manuscript meeting

Me: Ok, do you have time to meet about the discussion?
Bossman: Yes, tomorrow at 430pm. [weee, a meeting at the very end of the day. thrilling.]


(at meeting)
Me: So lets talk about the discussion.
Bossman: I didn't read it. Here are my comments on the figure legends, abstract, and introduction.
(illegible scrawl on all pages, half of which is crossed out, trails off, or directs several handwritten sentences to be inserted in the same place)



Bossman: Why are you reporting f values? You don't need those.
Me: Actually, X and Y, our resident behavior experts, said they were necessary when reporting on behavioral methods such as this.
Bossman: Oh. Are you sure you can't just leave those out? I don't think you need them.


Bossman: Your sentence here should be more like "A-B-C-D-E"
Me: (writes down "A-B-C-D-E")
(two weeks later)
Bossman: This sentence, "A-B-C-D-E," it doesn't flow and it doesn't explain anything/Get rid of it/You need to clarify/It isn't the direction we want to go with this/It's wrong.
Me: (*blinks*)

The math drawer

Here is a thing about science that just grinds my gears. The media loves to sensationalize science. There is a PhD comic titled "The Science News Cycle" that hits this home. An experiment finds that concept "X" is significant, but barely, at a p = 0.05 significance (which is essentially arbitrary anyway, and on the bare verge of being relevant), and under ridiculous conditions that would never occur in any setting outside of a tightly controlled lab bench. Through some number of steps, this ends up being reported at a newspaper not remotely nearby, and written by a journalist who knows nothing about science and only did a search on wikipedia. What is the title of the article? It always ends up something like "X KILLS!" or "CAN X PREVENT CANCER?" or my personal (and relevant) favorite, "X: THE NEXT STEP IN GOVERNMENT REQUIRED HEALTHCARE."

Context is the key, here, but people don't understand the concept of context. They just want the headline. Its a whole life of TL;DR. I think these people are the reason that your hair dryer says specifically not to use while taking a bath.

Are you fucking serious? People believe this shit! And people continue to send around forwarded emails from some non-entity at "Johns Hopkins" or some school that people have actually heard of, even if the whole email is something that some crazy fucker completely made up while sitting on the bus one day. You know, one of those "maple bark cures cancer" bullshit reads.

But whats even worse? When scientists are doing it themselves.

My roommate and I have an occasional habit of watching "Nova" or "How the Earth was made" after several drinks or such. He's an astrophysicist. I don't understand his work, nor do I pretend to. He talks about his research, which involved building this giant laser, and all I hear is "SHARKS WITH FRICKIN LASERS." Actually, we've lived in the same house for a couple of years now and just recently I've begun to understand what he does. There have been some shows on Nova that revolve around concepts very similar to his thesis work, and feature prominent theoretical physicists (by which I mean their work is theory-based, rather than observation-based, not that they are "physicists" with air quotation marks or something). In one of the scenes where a physicist is discussing how he came up with one of his grand ideas, the reenactment of the scene has a shadowy figure opening a drawer on a desk. When the drawer opens, math flies out. Math symbols! And formulas! Flying out of a desk drawer! It sort of resembles the crazy fractal "internet" from the movie "Hackers" (which I fucking love).

I really hope that people watching this don't believe that theories come about in such a manner. Although, frankly, I wish I had a math drawer.

[Aside: I chose my path in undergrad because it required the least amount of math possible.]

Need to calculate something? Oh wait, I'll just open my math drawer. Boo-yah. Done.

Thus began "the math drawer" as a euphemism for an impossibly quick solution to completely irrelevant problems. Also, now I have a background with flying math, which presumably came out of the internet's math drawer.

I'd hate to see what would come out of "the science drawer" if that were opened up on some other episode of "Nova."

Backlog: The research staff office

The research staff office coffeemaker died today. It went out with a figurative bang, leaving a soundless explosion of coffee grounds and water everywhere. Sad, sad day.

Unlike most grad students, who have a computer at their lab bench, we have offices on one floor, wet lab space on another floor, and other lab things on two additional, different floors. (imagine the hassle when I come in for a weekend project) And we're off campus. By several miles. And it took my boss four years to decide that I should get to have my own computer, instead of destroying my 5-year old personal laptop on the bus/bike every day or attempting to resurrect a 1998 zombie powermac on OS 10.5 that couldn't read PDFs. You know, PDFs... the format that journals come in when they're online? Yeah, that went real well. I also got the bossman's hand-me-down 7-year old desktop mac once, too. He fried one of the two harddrives and never emptied the trash. It took awhile to trash about 100,000 files. He also left everything on it, so there was no space left on the functional harddrive. I did find out that he really likes Vivaldi, though. Not terribly surprising.

[Aside: I did find out once that he used to like Pink Floyd (and still has on vinyl?) and smoke dope. I long with every fiber of my being to see proof of this... human-ness]

When I first moved to this office, I had a cube in a corner. Next to an elevator shaft, where the animal noises from the floor above us would ricochet down. It was very hot in that corner. There was a technician and two post-docs here, as well. Half of the office was an office supply graveyard, the other half was our domain. After perhaps six to nine months, one of the post-docs and I cleaned all of the garbage, cube walls, broken chairs, desks, and file cabinets out of the side room. We went down to the basement office storage area and brought up desks, chairs, supplies, and bulletin boards and set up our own little area. I had a window. A year later, that post-doc left the lab before her grant was up because she hated it so much. She was my mentor. Emphasis on the "was" portion.

Shortly after, the bossman suggested I move down to the wet lab space, where there is a side office attached where the previous grad student had their things stationed. I couldn't do it, though, because I'm literally allergic to my work, and it'd have been a complete nightmare. Also, there are no windows.

Then I was notified that we weren't paying for that "half" of the staff office, and I'd have to move my desk out because some other group was planning to move in. I fought tooth and nail to not go back to the corner. In the end, I set my desk up right between the two halves. Directly in front of the office door, secretary style, my only option to still be near a window. Now the window is on my right side instead of me facing it. And I'm the goddamn office secretary, getting up and opening the door for everyone who comes in looking for someone/free food/a different office (even when the fucking door is unlocked - try the handle first, you bunch of lazy fuckers).

[Aside: Bossman has also decided I'm the office "librarian," and everyone gives me their journals to organize when they're done reading them. Did I mention that everyone here with a PhD is a dude (except the newer post-doc) and everyone on the tech staff (except the one who is leaving shortly) is a chick?]

So now I have this awkward space and my sort-of window. The window floods every time we get a good, hard rain. The sill floods and it rains on my desk. Its been two, two and a half years at this spot, and facilities still has not bothered to come up and fix it. They don't care that my area floods, or that it rains inside. Neither does the bossman. So I have to check the weather everyday. I have a labcoat hanging from the ceiling tiles to prevent the rain from coming too far onto my desk. I have to cover my desk with a fleece that I leave here to protect the papers and such on it.

Currently, we're in a personnel boom here in the lab. We usually have about 12 people in the lab total. We're definitely moving past that, lately. We're on the upswing. Right now, in the research staff office, we've got two grad students, the newer post-doc (my new mentor, thank god), a technician on his way out, his replacement technician (who I think is really rad), a technician who is slightly more than a technician (completed a masters but never defended their masters thesis), and two undergrads. We've got another post-doc coming into the office this summer, but we're maxed out on space on this side of the office. The undergrads even have to share a desk/chair, as well as technician leaving and replacement technician. Is the incoming post-doc going to get space on the other side of the office? Meaning I had to move my desk and all of my shit for no reason? Stay tuned. I'll be sure to be bitter about it.

Meanwhile... all of our shit is on that other side of the office, which no one ever moved in to. It has turned into an equipment graveyard, with 40-year-old behavioral equipment, eight dead macs, three dead printers, a shitload of chairs, file cabinets, shelving units, and a conference table. And the files of technicians who have left long, long ago. It is turning right back into the trash pile that long-gone post-doc and I cleaned out several years ago.

The circle of office life, unending.

[Aside end note: New technician just stole a coffeemaker from some cabinet in the lunch room. See why I like her? She doesn't cower like most people here.]

Writing a paper... and trying to graduate

I'm writing a first-author manuscript right now. It's my second one. This is a typical encounter with my boss:

Bossman - You really need to get moving with that manuscript. It needs to be turned around and sent out.
K - Did you read the discussion that I sent you (three weeks ago)?
Bossman - No. I'm busy.

[Aside: He reads the other grad student's paper [who started a year after me], he reads the papers of the other investigators, he writes his grants, he plans studies with other lab members. Does he have the time to read six double-spaced pages? No. Its six double-spaced pages. For fucks sake, you could read that while taking a shit. Skim it. Whatever.]


I called him out on it in front of the post-doc who mentors me (because bossman sure doesn't - he's not even a PhD, he's an MD). He calls Friday evening to ask if the version dated 7-23-12 is the most recent. This was last Friday. August 10th. Well, bossman, I haven't been able to move forward on it since 7-23-12 because you haven't OK'ed those edits. So YES, that IS the most recent version. If bossman wasn't such a micromanager (to the finest details), we'd be done with this shit. But we're not. In fact, I'm still one experiment short on that paper, because post-doc left in mid-June for the summer and bossman wouldn't let me move forward on developing a method for that particular experiment until post-doc returned, which was this past Tuesday.

Remember that training grant ticking time bomb? I run out of funding in this coming March. My to-do list looks like this:

1. Develop method which is mostly unnecessary because we have several other functional methods. This should take three weeks of hard work, but will take six+ weeks of frustration as bossman doesn't have time to meet but won't let us move on until he's OK'ed the finest details of each little pilot study we do to perfect this method.
2. Use method to get some data from previous samples. This should take two weeks of hard work. In reality, will probably take six weeks. This information has to go into the paper that I'm writing.
3. Design and start 12-week experiment based on data from #2.
4. Write up results from #3, hope someone wants to throw it in their paper because it isn't enough on its own, and I've already got mountains of unpublished and never-gonna-be-published data.
5. Write thesis, which bossman thinks should start at a minimum of six months out. [Lets see, Aug-Sept-Oct-Nov-Dec-Jan-Feb...fuck]
6. Figure out how to open ninth-story window at my desk. Jump out of window.


I reminded bossman that he said he wouldn't pay for me after March and everything had to be completed when I defend (none of this defending and finishing the thesis or manuscripts or shit afterward). He was surprised. I was not. I went to the liquor store after that meeting. Unfortunately, they didn't have anything strong enough to erase my graduate career from my mind.

Have I been writing my thesis lately? No. I do have a timeline. And I did write up a four-page outline for my introduction, though. And I have a general outline of what needs to go into each chapter. I think thats a good starting point. Bossman likes to write the discussion first, but I don't see the point in writing a discussion when you don't have the data. Writing a theoretical discussion is an exercise in futility, much like the past several years. Writing a discussion without having all of the data is like going to watch a movie premiere after standing in line for two days for the opening showing, and then finding out that they haven't actually finished writing the last 45 minutes, and instead, people from the audience are going to get on stage and make shit up. Except not in a funny sort of manner.

Also, I have to start looking for a job. That'll be another entry. But here's a hint: I'm done with this shit.



Fin.

Backlog: Prelims

Prelims: (noun) 1. A set of written and oral examinations that all grad students ever must experience midway through their graduate tenure, determining whether or not they are ready to switch gears from focusing on coursework to focusing on thesis research. 2. Here, a written NRSA (pre-doctoral grant; see "training grant"), a full seminar in front of the department on your current work and upcoming ideas, and a closed-door deathmatch with your thesis committee after the seminar. 3. Why grad students end up at the hospital getting their stomach pumped about 12 hours after passing prelims. 4. How I got a prescription for Lorazepam (an anxiolytic/anti-anxiety drug).

See also: "Preliminary exams," "Qualification exams," "Quals"


I'm a shining example of how prelims should NOT go. No, really. It is my biggest claim to fame in my department. We'll just say this right away: I failed. I failed my prelim. No one ever in my department has failed their prelim. At least not in the past several years, and according to relative folklore. I failed for several reasons, the least of which was my own unpreparedness. Here is what happened in a somewhat chronological manner:

1. I formed the worst possible thesis committee in the history of thesis committees. I put the experts on my committee. I found the people who were the best, brightest, most well-published possible options for the several topics my thesis focuses on. And man, was that fucking dumb. Are you putting together a committee soon? Don't put experts on it, put people who like you on it. Thats how you pass things.

2. I wrote a decently written NRSA and sent it out on my department's due date, after my boss told me it was fine to send out. Several days later, the bossman tells me it was terrible and how dare I send that to people, unfinished and total crap. I communicate several times with my committee over the next few months. I schedule my prelim very early in the fall to allow me to register for thesis credits, which are cheap and cost my boss and training grant less tuition. I spend a lot of time reading journals and textbooks.

3. The weekend prior to my prelim, I find out that most of my committee has not yet read my prelim, but OK'ed it anyway. Years later, I find out that this is just how it is. Nobody reads anything, ever, except the one time you don't expect them to, but that is a separate story. The bossman is out of town for the week or two prior to my prelim and is unable to help me prepare. He gives me a set of questions that we expect to be asked, and I am able to answer almost all of them.

4. I give my prelim seminar and do an awesome job. Some questions I can't answer, and I defer to the bossman and the number 2 guy in my lab (who acts as the buffer zone between bossman and everyone else). Generally concepts that aren't relevant to my thesis or are unanswerable. Everyone gets questions with no answer. Its a test in bullshitting and confidence. Always be confident, even if you're telling the audience that ferrets have wings.

5. During the closed door session, there are several questions I can not answer. Mainly because they're all relevant to the coursework I just started for that semester. They're the questions from my out-of-department thesis committee members. I had to finish my department-mandatory coursework (the first two years) before being able to take outside courses, due to ridiculous scheduling conflicts. Pretty standard. Professor PK understands this, is friendly and helpful, understands the chasm of issues between bossman and I, and is generally the only person I enjoy having on my committee. she likes me, sees potential, and wants me to move on. Professor BEH is a see-you-next-tuesday. A flake who never responds to emails, doesn't like my project, doesn't want to be on my committee, and hates my boss. All things I learned after putting BEH on my committee. BEH is also out-of-department. Professor NSC is in department, and thinks I should understand his field better. Eh, thats legit. I'm starting a relevant course. Also thinks I should know several concepts irrelevant to my thesis and outside of my department. Professor IMM is my chair. He's a nice guy. Unfortunately, he has no backbone and no idea what he's doing. I answer most of his questions except a completely irrelevant one. Bossman asks absolutely none of the questions that he wanted me to know. Asks things, gets angry and sour when I can't answer them or require clarification because I didn't understand his train of thought. Professor PK is concerned and moderates. This experience takes three hours. I get sent out, and they take 45 minutes to make a decision.

6. The decision: Chair says I don't get a clear pass. Ok, then I get a pass with reservations? Seems legit, I'll be a lot better off after this semester. I'll learn some stuff and we can meet again so I can prove it. Oh, no, says chair, that isn't it either. So I fail? Well, no.

[Aside: There are three options in our department: Clear Pass, Pass with reservations (eg. do things X, Y, and Z, and then you pass), or Fail. There are no other options and you do not get to make up your own options]

So I pass? No. So I fail? Well, no, not that either. Well, then that is a fail. Later, I learn that it probably looks bad if people fail in our department, so they didn't want to call it that. I then learn that "no decision" is an option in BEH's department (which is not mine). BEH wanted to leave for a meeting but wouldn't agree to any sort of pass, and forced this faux option. Chair, with their lack of backbone, decides this is fine, although not legal in our department. NSC, a member of the graduate committee for our department, finally read my NRSA and then tells me I did it wrong, stole people's data, and should be removed from the department. Bossman sits back and watches. I think I'm in an alternate universe. NSC didn't like the way I referenced the data done by people before me in the lab that acted as the "parent" projects for my studies. Apparently stating that it was done by other people in the lab and referencing their published works was not making it clear enough that the data was not my own. NSC decides I stole data and tried to pass it off as my own, grounds to be removed from the program.

I bust my ass for my program. I've been on every committee ever, I've formed new committees, I've led recruitment for several years, I've been ridiculously involved with making it better. The director of graduate studies (the DGS, aka the student's defender) has to step in and change the committee's decision to a pass with reservations. This gossip spreads like wildfire and people look at me funny for a long time after this.

Middle school ain't got nuthin' on departmental gossip. There is more red tape, nepotism, and garbage politics in graduate programs than anyone would expect. The bullshit is neck high.

Since then, I've excelled at my committee meetings. NSC moved away and was replaced by the current DGS, who does nothing relevant to my project. I fought for two years to remove BEH from my committee because my project is no longer relevant to her interests. Success was recent.

Now the only person who trips me up at my committee meetings and gets sour even when I answer questions to committee members satisfaction... is the bossman. He didn't even show up to one of my committee meetings, (OK, he was away on family business). My committee is generally satisfied with my progress. PK offers to help me out often.

Moral of this story? Choose your committee wisely. And your DGS is your greatest ally.

Backlog: Rotations

Once upon a time, I picked a grad school out of a hat. Actually, I had a spreadsheet with a couple dozen columns and weights on everything from whether or not the current students had DSM-IV-quality alcohol dependencies to whether or not people got shot on mass transit routes. Ok, not really, but pretty close. I manage to be both neurotically organized and a hot mess at all times.

I started here with a particular PI (principal investigator/professor/boss) in mind. I like to refer to him as the bossman. The bossman did not initially have space to let me rotate. For the new-to-science readers, rotations are 6-8+ week "trial runs" that fresh, green grad students do upon joining a department. The number of rotations and incarceration time length vary, but everyone does a few turns. I rotated in lab A, led by someone I've learned that I despise working under but enjoy working with (great colleague, terrible boss). I worked with animals. It was terrible. I decided not to work with animals. I rotated in lab B, led by someone I ended up putting on my committee and hating. I did cell work and did the same thing every day in lab B. I decided I never wanted to do cell work again.

After groveling, I landed a rotation in the bossman's lab. The current grad student was finishing some time soon, relatively reclusive, and gave me what I found later to be terrible information. I started a project that could in no way be finished in any amount of time remotely near 8 weeks. After 8 weeks, I had no data and was only, perhaps, 3 weeks into my project. This should have been a sign, but it wasn't. The bossman told me I could join the lab if I could find funding, although our department funds students for their first two years (this is key information here). Since every other human entity in that lab had been on this particular training grant which was well-suited by our work, I lucked out and got a spot on it, too.

Training Grant: (noun) 1. A 5-year pre- or post-doctoral fellowship which requires some moderate grant subject-specific coursework but pays your tuition and goverment-decided stipend (your boss covers the gap between what the government thinks you should make and what your department's minimum stipend is). 2. Money that seems free, but totally fucks up your taxes later. 3. A way for several people to decide what you should be doing with your projects, future career, and overall life.

Bossman, in his infinite wisdom, started me on that training grant after one year of department funding, even though I had an additional year to use up. The day that grant started paying me, my PhD-ological clock started ticking. After 5 years, you can not get another pre-doctoral fellowship from the government. The department does not give you the money you didn't use at the beginning. Theoretically its the bossman's responsibility to pay me after that, but since he didn't write me into any of his grants, he won't pay for me either. So the clock really started ticking, and early on.

[Aside: I see you humanities PhDs out there with your incredulous "It took me eight years to finish! And I was happy about it! What the fuck is your problem?" steam coming out of your ears. Science PhDs don't take eight years. Life is different on the biological side. Also, my department doesn't have an undergrad component, so we don't have to TA. However, we can't TA, even if we can't find funding, because we'd be stealing other department's positions. Sharp double-edged sword, that one is.]

Introduction

I'm what we call an "advanced" graduate student. One of those grad students who is on the verge of becoming an example in their department. You know, the one who is the last person left from their entry year. By at least a year. When grad students that joined in years after you begin defending and you don't have a thesis outline yet, it's a bad sign.

This is a blog about what happens when you start trying to graduate. Its a prison break, of sorts. There is a lot of strategy, timing, sweet-talking, and good behavior necessary. There is even a meeting with a panel of people who decide if you've been on good behavior long enough to potentially be let out.

I'll post a series of backlogs to give you a background of my graduate experience. If nothing else, I've learned that there is always some asshole who is having a more awful, pathetic, or heinous time in grad school than you. Always.

Right now?

I'm just trying to graduate.