You have got to be kidding me!

The other day I was watching TV and an ad came on for an electric bicycle. That's right, a pedal bike that is also electric. You can either pedal it old school style, use power assist so you don't have to pedal so hard or use if full power so you don't have to do anything. Come on, are people really that lazy? What happened to the days of riding a bike being exercise. You know, global warming or war isn't going to end our species. No, the last few people on earth will die because the power goes out and they can't charge their electric bicycle and being so overweight and lacking muscle mass they won't be able to pedal their bike to whatever fast food restaurant to get some deep fried food and they will die of starvation. Seriously, no wonder more and more of the population is becoming progressively more overweight.

Funniest line I've heard in a long time

I was watching Scrubs the other day and this made me laugh out loud...

Elliot: Uh, what's up your caboodle?
Carla: Caboodle?
Elliot: Oh, it's a new word I'm trying out to replace "ass". I have loose morals and I'm living in sin so...still hoping that not being a potty mouth will get me into heaven.

Look out Grissom!

A news crew came by work the other day to do a story about some stuff we do in the lab. Of course they wanted the "working" shots. Working shots for a news story do not involve actual work. I call it Hollywood science. There were many, "Ok, can you do that again? I want to get a wide angle shot". Then there was the pointing at meaningless data on the computer and acting like it was oh so interesting. I had to hold back the laughter. Lucky me, that's the shot that they put in the story. The husband watches it and says, "Trying not to laugh, hey?". Apparently it's more noticeable than I thought. At least they cut out the shot of me looking inquisitively at some solution in a tube like it meant something. I thought for sure that would make it in because the camera guy was taking many various angles of that shot. Honestly, who looks at a solution in a tube that intently? It's not like we have x-ray vision and can see actual mutations in the DNA. Although I suppose on CSI they can. They can also get a centrifuge to analyze their results. That's my favorite - put it in the centrifuge and oh look, a pretty print out with graphs and tables that tells them who the killer is. If only science was that easy. I would like to propose a TV show to the networks that's like 24 but it's forensics in real-time. It would take a whole season just to identify the killer. Then when there are repeats there can be a blurb at the beginning stating the experiment didn't work so episodes 7-9 will be repeated to repeat the experiment in real time. Oddly only my fellow science geek friends find the humor in this.

A PhD outside academia

You've probably noticed I haven't Blogged much lately. That's partly due to my over analyzing what I should blog about and partly due to just being busy/lazy. I've decided I'm just going to blog about whatever strikes my fancy, be it science or not. One idea I've had, though, is to discuss my reasons for getting a PhD but not going into academia. The reasons are varied and long and lengthy, which will probably require a number of blog posts but a recent post on ScienceWoman's blog brought up some issues relevant to why I'm a PhD outside academia.

For one, I never really had a desire to be an academic. Writing grants and doing paperwork all day is not my idea of fun. So why did I do a PhD then? Well, one was pressure from my supervisor and another was solely selfishness. I wanted more from my research project I was working on than simply what I would have achieved with a Master's degree. In the end I was pleased with what I achieved and don't regret doing a PhD.

Secondly, was the desire to balance family and career. I know it's doable in academia but honestly, I want to enjoy my life and not be consumed by my work. I can be a workaholic if left to my own devices and I didn't want that kind of life and end up missing important moments with any future children I'll have.

Another reason I didn't go into academia was due to lack of mentorship/advising. Past posts point out my problems with my supervisor and being that we weren't even at the same university at the end of my degree made it difficult to get any sort of advice or mentoring from him with respect to post-docs and academic positions. Plus, although my experiences with academia were probably not the norm, it did give me a bad taste of that career option.

Lastly was location. My spouse has a job he likes and that he has been at for a while now. To ask him to move so I could do a two year or so post-doc and then move again for a job or possibly another post-doc just didn't make logical sense since I wasn't keen on being an academic anyways.

In the end we ended up staying in the same city and I now have a job I love, free time in the evenings and weekends, and a much happier life with less stress. There is, however, the internal struggle of having a PhD but not being an academic. This is mostly due to the expectation that a PhD will follow that well laid out route of PhD, post-doc, academic faculty and that anything less is consider somewhat of a failure. This is a post for another day though.

It's so pretty!

I picked up my bound copies of my thesis the other day and I must say I'm pretty damn proud to see it all nicely bound in hardcover. I feel it needs a shelf all it's own for display :) Right now my copy is unceremoniously sitting on top of the box that it came in. That is no way to treat years of hard work, stressful nights/days/weekends/months, and a much blood, sweat and tears.

What to blog about?

My blog originally started so I could blow off some steam about grad studies and also to write about the many things that my mind drums up. However, now that I'm officially done grad school I'm not sure what to blog about. This would explain my sporadic posting lately. I don't really want to post much about my job because it requires quite a bit of confidentiality and so blogging about it is not such a good idea. Any thoughts on what my blog should morph into? I'd like it to have some focus.

Done and done

I finally submitted my thesis! Yay! Carrying a box of six copies of my thesis across campus was quite the workout but it's finally done and I'm finally done. I can't wait to see the fancy bound version of my thesis.

How long does it take to print a thesis?

Most would probably say a day, perhaps two. In my case it appears as though I am not that lucky. So far it has been two and a half weeks. That's right, I took my thesis in for printing Dec. 15 thinking that it would be printed plenty of time before Christmas so I could organize it all and submit it to the Faculty of Grad Studies and finally be done. Oh no, apparently I chose the most incompetent place to print my thesis. Ironically they are the place the university gets all their printing done at and they are recommended by the Faculty of Grad Studies. The other ironic thing is their motto is "A tradition of excellence". Ya, not so much.

The thesis printing saga began Dec. 15. I happily took my thesis in to be printed and was told it would take a week due to my colour images. Ideally I would have liked it that day but this printing place is supposed to be very good so I figure what the hey, I'll still get it before Christmas. A week later I'm all excited to pick up the final version of my printed thesis. So I head over to the printing place...

Me: "Hi, I'm here to get my thesis"

Printing dude: "Oh right, I was just going to send that to print"

Me: [confused and somewhat annoyed] "What?"

Printing dude: "Oh don't worry, it will only take 10 minutes"

Me: So if I come back in 10 minutes it will be done?

Printing dude: Yep

So off I go to waste some time. Meanwhile I'm supposed to be at work but I ducked out to get my thesis thinking it wouldn't take too long. I wait 15 minutes for good measure before going back.

Me: Hi again

Printing dude: Hey. Umm... you wanted colour images too, right?

Me: Yes

Printing dude: Umm, ya, I forgot to order those. Are they really important?

Me: [thinking - Damn right they are important. No I just asked for colour prints because I'm crazy like that] Umm, ya they are important.

Printing dude: Oh, ok. What were the page numbers of the colour pages?

Me: There are over 30 colour pages, I don't have all the page numbers memorized. I can email the page numbers to you.

Printing dude: Ya do that. If you send them to me today I can get it printed by Jan. 2. We are closed during Christmas and all so that's the earliest you can get them.

Me: So they will be ready Jan. 2 for sure?

Printing dude: Yep. Hey, I wrote down you wanted 5 and 1 but I couldn't remember if you wanted 5 copies on thesis quality paper and one on regular paper or the other way around.

Me: I wanted five on thesis paper and one on regular paper.

Printing dude: Ya I didn't remember so I did 5 copies on each so now you have 10 copies of your thesis. I'll only charge you for 5 though.

Me: [thinking - damn right you will]

Me: Alright, so I'll email those page numbers to you and I'll pick up the colour copies Jan 2.

Printing dude: Sounds good.

Meanwhile I'm pissed off beyond belief that I waited a week for nothing and now I have to go back in a few weeks to get the colour copies. I lug the 10 copies of my thesis back to work and my arms almost die due to the weight of the box. As I'm looking through my thesis I notice that all my images on the thesis quality paper have this gray box around the images. This doesn't appear on the regular paper copies. When I email the guy the colour page numbers I mention this gray box thing. He emails me back and says it's because he was in a hurry when he printed my thesis so he sent it to some printer that printed gray boxes around my images. Ya no kidding you were in a hurry. You forgot about printing my thesis until I showed up. He said he would re-print the thesis quality paper ones on a different printer and that those would be ready Jan. 2. I email him back and say, "Ok. If for some reason you don't get everything printed by Jan. 2 please call me".

Today I wait until late afternoon to give the guy plenty of time to get everything printed. I head over to the print place yet again to pick up my thesis.

Me: Hi

Printing dude: Hey, you're here to get your colour prints?

Me: Yes [a bit confused as to why he never mentioned the thesis re-printing as well]

Printing dude: Ok, here are the colour prints

Me: And the re-printing on the thesis quality paper?

Printing dude: Oh right, ya I haven't done that yet.

Me: [big sigh] Ok. I need to have my thesis submitted this week so I need those copies.

Printing dude: Oh no problem. I'll print them later today and you can pick them up tomorrow.

Me: Tomorrow for sure?

Printing dude: Yep, first thing tomorrow.

Me: [pissed off beyond belief that I have to come back yet again] So there are 6 copies of the colour prints?

Printing dude: Umm... I think so. I haven't had a chance to check.

Me: [thinking - this is your freaking job!]

Printing dude: First day back after Christmas is alway busy.

Me: [thinking - yet whenever I walk in here you are always on the computer so how busy can you be?]

Printing dude: This has been quite the ordeal hey?

Me: Yes [thinking - ya because you are an idiot]

Printing dude: Well here are your colour prints anyways. I didn't get a price for them yet but I can figure that out and let you know tomorrow. Did you want to take them now or get them tomorrow.

Me: I'll take them now [thinking - because if I don't you'll probably lose them or give them to someone else]

Printing dude: Ya you probably want to sort them into your thesis

Me: Umm... right. [ya into my imaginary copies of my thesis since you neglected, yet again, to print everything]

So now I get to make yet another trip to the printing place to pick up my thesis printing. Or so he tells me. I've learned to not expect my printing to be done when I'm told so I'll be surprised if it's done tomorrow and it's done right. And I thought the thesis defense would be the hardest part. That was a breeze compared to dealing with the incompetence of the printing place. I think their "tradition of excellence" ended when they hired this dude.

That's Dr. ScienceGeek to you!

Yay!!!! The defense is done!!! I passed!!!

Now for the details...
The day before my defense I had a bit of a breakdown. I went to the University to practice my talk one last time and pick up the projector I would need for the next day. I ended up getting the crappiest projector and my images looked awful. I had a bit of a breakdown due to my images not showing up right and how this was supposed to be my time to shine yet my presentation looked like crap. The next morning I got to the University bright and early and tracked down a much better projector. Things were much better after that. Although I was dead tired because I had the crappiest sleep ever.

The presentation went quite well. I was a bit nervous but not too bad. I probably would have been less nervous had I not found out two minutes before my presentation that the person I would be having an interview for a post doc position the following week was coming to my talk.

After the presentation a fellow grad student friend of mine comes up and says, "Man you've done a lot of work since I last talked to you about your project". That was nice to hear since this particular grad student is a workaholic who makes every other grad student look bad. Of course I got all the "nice talk", "congrats", "good luck" comments as well.

On to the defense...
That part I wasn't nervous about at all. I was quite nervous a few days before but the projector freakout made me worry less about the defense and more about my talk. Plus, I enjoy sitting down with a bunch of scientists and talking the talk. It also helped that the first few comments out of my examiners mouths were, "I really enjoyed your thesis", "Your thesis is very well written", "Your thesis is very well organized". I knew after those comments that the actual defense was more of a formality than anything. My external examiner (who conference called it) was probably the toughest examiner. She is closest to my field so that was expected. Although one of her first questions was quite difficult but I found it sort of a useless question. She was picking on some term I used in one sentence in my thesis. Oh well. Overall there weren't any really tough questions in my defense. There were some I didn't know the answer to or drew a blank but those questions were more broad science questions than thesis related questions. Such as, how do you make a transgenic animal that has a missense mutation in a gene. I totally blanked. I also enjoyed when they put my supervisor on the spot by asking him a question. I'm not sure how that happened but I enjoyed watching him squirm for once. I know, I'm mean. Based on Sheepish's examiner archetypes I would say I had an examining committee consisting of an Insider, an Outsider, a Freethinker, and an Examiner. It was a pretty good combination, I thought.

Then onto the deliberation, of course. That didn't last too long thankfully. When they called me back in the Chair of my defense gave me a thumbs up so I knew it was all good. In hindsight, I actually enjoyed the defense. Besides the external and internal/external, these are researchers that have been with me since almost the beginning, some even before the beginning. It was nice to have them congratulate me. They seemed to be beaming too. I suppose it is a happy time for them as well to see you succeed.

After the defense I went out for lunch with my supervisor and then home for a nap before the celebratory dinner. I was so tired. I never got that nap though. I was visiting with my family who came for my defense and then I got a call and got offered a position that I interviewed for a while back. After that I was too excited to sleep. A PhD and a job all in one day! It was a huge stress relief. I did still go for the post-doc interview today though. I'll post more on that later. It's getting late, I'm tired, and my show is on soon. Oh the joys of being done the defense, now I can watch all the TV shows I've been putting off or feeling guilty when I do watch them.

T-minus 2 days!

My supervisor got into town yesterday so this morning we went over my thesis presentation. Within about two minutes he was starting to do the head bob, which at first I figured, whatever, he might be tired from traveling and whatnot. Midway through the presentation he was in full on sleep mode complete with a bit of snoring. Lovely, just lovely. The sleeping supervisor flustered me a bit but I soldiered on with the talk, essentially talking to the pictures of former deans up on the wall of the conference room. Seriously though, when your grad student is doing their practice talk to get feedback from you and you are the only person in the room besides the student who is giving the talk at least have the courtesy to stay away! Drink some coffee, walk around, whatever but don't go into full on snore mode. At the end of the talk I asked him how long it was since I forgot to time it. He told me it was about 40 minutes. I was going to ask whether that included naps or not but I bit my tongue. At least on Friday I'll have other people to focus on who won't be asleep like my supervisor so hopefully I won't get as flustered. And people wonder why I have such a jaded view of academia.

Coming out of hiding

3 days! Man, that ticker gives me a bit of an anxiety attack seeing it. As expected, I've been pretty busy preparing for my defense. This is what prompted this post. I've been reviewing things for the past few days and wanted to brush up on the theory behind the yeast two-hybrid assay since that will probably come up in my defense when I talk about future directions of analyzing binding partners of my protein of interest. As I was searching on the web I came across The Science Creative Quarterly, which has a lovely description of yeast two-hybrid complete with pretty pictures, if you are interested. Of course, as always happens when I'm searching on the web I got sidetracked and came across another article on The Science Creative Quarterly entitled "Dave Ng is both a scientist and someone who writes nasty reviews on books he hasn't actually read". Of course I had to check it out, which by the way cracked me up. There are other humorous articles (and probably some more sciencey ones) on that website which I'm planning to check out, after the defense of course. Oh and the SCQ is Canadian to boot!

Where does the time go?

Yes I've been quite sporatic in my posting lately. That snail ticker gives me a mini-anxiety attack everytime I see it so I've been avoiding my blog. I have got a lot done lately...

• I printed out my thesis and handed it out to all my committee members. I must say I was quite pleased to see my thesis on paper. Up to that point it had all been on computer. I was sitting there hole punching it all nicely and putting the thesis in binders for my committee. The husband comes home and I show him my thesis all nicely in a binder. We talk for about 15 minutes about whatever at which point he mentions that I haven't put my thesis down since he walked in the door. I told him it's my baby.
• I've finished my thesis presentation and have a kick ass acknowledgements slide. I knew all those cell images that weren't worthy of going in an actual figure would be useful at some point even if it's only science geek art. Now I just have to figure out what I want to say for each slide.
• I've done a bit of reading and reviewing. I just can't get into it. I read this lengthy review yesterday that just came out. It is a nice recap of the area of research I'm in but I found it so boring. I think that was because nothing was new to me. I guess that's a good thing. At least I know the info that is directly relevant to my area of research.
  

So what's left to do before D-day...

• fine tune my presentation and practice, practice, practice. Also, go over my presentation with my supervisor. My friend loaned me his fancy laser pointer/slide advancer dohickey so I'll look like a pro.
• read, review, read some more. I like to be overprepared.
• play 20 questions with my supervisor. He asks me whatever he can think of that my examiners might touch on to see if I actually know it. He seems to enjoy the 20 questions just a bit too much in my opinion. And really it's more like 100 questions than 20 questions.
  
• read my thesis many, many times.

By the way, Science Woman's thesis stats post reminded me of one stat I forgot for mine...
The last word - disease

What a pleasant ending.

A few random thoughts...

• I handed in my preliminary acceptance of my thesis forms from my committee today. My date is now set in stone. Eeek.

• I talked to my supervisor today about what I need to know for my defense. This turned in to question period in which I told him that this is just a "what do I need to know" conversation not a twenty questions conversation. That one will come in a few weeks.

• My supervisor told me I tend to be defensive when answering questions and that's not a good thing at a thesis defense. Unfortunately, I don't even realize I do it. However, this is coming from the guy who thought I hated him because I apparently glared at him throughout an undergrad course he taught. I told him that was my "trying not to fall asleep" face. My solution to the defensiveness is to answer all questions with a smile like they do on Miss America. Oh and to start each question with, "My research goal is to promote world peace". Seriously though, I'll have to work on the defensiveness.

• I accepted the invitation to review that manuscript. I figured why not. I think it will be interesting (I don't call myself Science Geek for no reason). I got an auto-reply email from the editor saying he is out of the office until Monday. I was pleased about that because by then I should have my thesis printed and out to my examining committee.

• I really need to get more sleep. I've been like a zombie lately. So much to do, so little time.
  

Bad timing

I got an email the other day inviting me to review an article for one of the journals in my field. I was quite surprised. I figured that maybe my supervisor recommended me thinking I don't have enough to do with my defense being in a month. I sent him an email asking if he recommended me and he said he didn't. That was even more shocking. So someone has been keeping their eye on me or something to know my area of expertise and request that I review their paper. The other odd thing is that the conclusions they make in their paper are very similar to one of the unpublished chapters in my thesis, yet on a different gene. It's a bit eerie that they would request me as a reviewer on a topic so close to a chapter in my thesis when the only person who had read my thesis at that point was my supervisor. I also think it's odd that I would be requested as a reviewer since I'm still a grad student, abeit almost a PhD. I would really like to review the paper because I've never been requested to review a paper but I'm just worried I don't have the time. How long does it take to review a paper anyways? The email says they need the completed review back in two weeks so it wouldn't take longer than two weeks but how much time of those two weeks would it take?

Boy have I been busy

Things are really moving along now. I initially picked a snail for the countdown thing because it felt like finishing my PhD was taking forever but now that snail is really making his way to the end of the pencil in a hurry.

I've been meaning to update my blog more often but just haven't had the time. The formatting of my thesis took way longer than I expected. I managed to make friends with Microsoft Word though so it would do my table of contents and my lists of figure legends and tables for me. Every so often it likes to try to anger me though but for the most part we get along. I've figured out it's quirks. I still don't like when Word tries to read your mind though and format things how it thinks you want it. It's a freaking software program not a psychic!

I sent my thesis to my committee today for the preliminary read before it goes to the external. That was exciting but I'm still worried there may be some glaring errors in it like where I typed some comment saying [change this, it makes no sense]. Oh well, things can still be changed before the final defense version goes to everyone.

Now that the thesis is done (for the most part) I figured I'd do some thesis stats...

• Number of pages in whole thesis: 232
• Number of pages in the body of the thesis (not the table of contents, etc.): 214 - I figured that was important to point out because as my friend pointed out to me that the total of the digits adds up to lucky number 7!
• Most references in one chapter: 115 (in the intro). I joked with my supervisor that I wanted to break 100 in the intro not thinking that it would actually happen
• Number of figures in thesis: 48
• Number of tables: just 1
• Most figures in one chapter: 14 (in chapter 5)
  
• Number of times I used words that annoy my supervisor (hee, hee):
• As such: 16
• Being that: 7
• Therefore: 21
• However: 29

In one of my chapter edits my supervisor wrote in all capital letters highlighted yellow "I really hate when you use the words "as such" and "being that". I did remove a number of those words but a few won't hurt. He has also told me before that I use "therefore" and "however" way too many times. Honestly I thought the numbers of annoying words would be higher.

So now what is left to do before the defense:

• make my oral presentation
• read over the thesis a few more times to make sure there are no glaring errors
• brush up on some things I should know for my defense
  
• print out versions of my thesis for my committee members
• have a margarita to celebrate my thesis going out for preliminary review

Hmm... what else?

Well paint me green and call me a frog!

I have a defense date!!! Holy crap! I never thought this day would come. Ok, I knew it would but it always seemed like it was so far off. Now I gotta get me a fancy ticker for my blog to count down the days and to also give me a bit of an anxiety attack everytime I come to my blog to procrastinate. First though I need to finish the last few revisions and send my whole thesis off to my supervisor for final approval before giving it to my committee. Eeek. I feel the stress already. I've been kinda lacks for the last while since my supervisor seemed to be taking forever to set everything up so I figured why bust my butt to get everything done when he isn't. Now, however, I need to get my butt back in gear.

Things seem to be finally moving along

I found out today that the department put forward the request for my external examiner to the Faculty of Grad Studies. Yay! I only had to bug my supervisor about getting that done for two months now. I hope this means things will get moving along and I'll be defending soon. Now just to get a date set.

I've realized I really liked working from home when I was writing my thesis over the summer. However it was kind of lonely and it's nice to be back around the university more regularly. Although I blame the influx of students this month for my cold, which is still lingering and really starting to annoy me.

Speaking of the thesis, I am so sick of revisions. It's to the point that sentences are just getting re-worded and they end up meaning the same thing. Recently my supervisor came up with this idea for a new figure he thought would be good to add. It required me to do some analysis on my data, boring analysis by the way and statistics! Ugh. It turns out it wasn't so bad. I think that is partially because it wasn't more revisions and I actually made a figure, which is more exciting than re-wording sentences. I thought my supervisor was just being picky when he asked for me to add this figure but now that it's done I must agree it really adds to the chapter. I guess he is right some of the time.

On a totally unrelated topic, I want to change my Blogger template and add an image for the header in the new template instead of whatever is there. I've figured out how to add the image but my problem is that the title and description of my blog is still there and I want to remove it. My image has the title and description of my blog on it so I don't need the blogger one that shows up. Anyone know how to remove the title? Thanks.

The problems with grad studies - part II

Now that I'm finally getting over the cold that kicked my ass, as I lovingly refer to it, I figured I'd post part II of the problems with grad studies. It was either that or work on the revisions of a chapter my supervisor initially said was great and then when he re-read it he shredded it to bits. Umm... I'll take door #1.

The one big problem with grad studies is the student-supervisor relationship. The short version is, when it's good, things are great but when it's bad it could mean the demise of your PhD. A former grad student colleague of mine described the relationship between grad student and supervisor as "the most important relationship behind that of the one you have with your spouse and your parents". Come to think of it, she might have just said spouse. In any event, you work closely with your supervisor, they are your mentor (usually) and they essentially hold your PhD degree in their hands. At times it can seem like they are holding it hostage. Therefore, it is essential that the supervisor you choose (and yes it is your choice) to work with plays a huge role in your success as a PhD student. Most people going into their PhD know the importance of the supervisor in their success and some universities have even adopted the grad student rotation idea where new grad students do a short rotation in the labs they are interested in in order to choose the one that fits them best. Oh, they make it seem all so easy. The problem is supervisors know how to wine and dine the students they want. I call it the honeymoon period. Whether it's during a rotation or after you have started in their lab as their grad student, supervisors will make it seem like they are the best thing since sliced bread. Things can and do change.

Now don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that all supervisors are bad. There are some good ones out there and then there are those other one. The problem arises when you get one of those other ones or your seemingly wonderful supervisor ends up becoming one of those other ones. Then what? Well, let me tell you, from personal experience there is no then what. Sure, departments and universities will make you think that you have options when you are having problems with your supervisor but really it's all just talk. What's that? You say your department's chair of grad studies handles student-supervisor problems and your university has a grad student obudsperson? Hold a moment while I chuckle....

Okay, to be fair, yes at times these services do help, however, you do risk pissing off your supervisor by complaining to someone in the department or at the university level about the problems with your supervisor. And yes, they can mediate discussions between you and your supervisor to come to a mutual understanding but in the end you are the one that has to face your supervisor the next day and most likely they won't be too pleased knowing that you think they suck. Also, keep in mind that you need your supervisor to sign off on your thesis in the end. There's a fine line between resolving conflict and creating underlying turmoil when it comes to dealing with your supervisor.

However, what I want to get at here is beyond mediation and discussion. The bottom line is your supervisor has final say in whether or not you get your degree and even if he/she is being completely ridiculous in their demands or whatever, no one can make them do anything. In the end you are at the mercy of your supervisor. Sure you have the option to go to a different lab or even quit but either way you are at square one and have to start all over again. The reason why is due to intellectual property rights. Your supervisor's grants paid for your research, and/or your salary, and/or the space and equipment you used to conduct that research. This means they own your data. And because you did the work and analyzed the data you also have a stake in the intellectual property rights, which is why, by rights, your supervisor can't publish your work without your name on it. So the problem with switching labs is you need your supervisor's approval if you want to continue on with that project. Ya, like that's going to happen being that you left their lab because you had problems with them. As well, no other prof is really going to want to take you on. The reason being is you're there for, oh lets say 5-6 years, but your supervisor and the other prof have to work together for, oh perhaps another 10-15 years or more. You are just a drop in their bucket and they (and the department) don't want to end up with bad blood between profs due to one grad student. So in the end, you're the one that gets screwed. Either you put up with your supervisor and their crazy demands or procrastination on setting your defense date or you quit. Yep, those are your options. I once asked the grad student obudsperson about student-supervisor relationships and if you couldn't resolve your conflict with your supervisor were quitting or just sucking it up your only options. After a long pause she lowered her and quietly said, "yes". Oh now that's encouraging!

So after my long blabbering on, what I'm getting at is that this old school idea of grad students being solely reliant on their supervisor for their PhD is ridiculous. This is also the root cause of grad students being taken advantage of. Supervisors know grad students are at their mercy so they dangle that degree in front of your face and get you to do many mundane tasks that aren't at all related to grad school - can you get my mail? here's $10, can you go grab me a sandwich and a pop? can you photocopy these for me?. I'm sure many grad students have wondered the same thing I have at some point, is this grad school or personal assistant training?

As for a solution, so far I don't have one. Intellectual property rights leave grad students stuck between a rock and a hard place.

The problems with grad studies - part I

I'm sure there are many problems with grad studies, I have two in mind hence the "part I" in the title. Some may say I'm just a bitter grad student at the end of her program but I like to look at it as the rose coloured glasses have finally come off. All the hype professors tell you about how great a PhD is and how academic research is so flexible and that you can follow whatever your heart desires seems so wonderful in the beginning but the honeymoon phase is over.

I've been thinking about the numerous problems with academia for a while now. This is part of the drive behind my search for a non-academic career. A recent article in The Scientist titled Are We Training Too Many Scientists? reminded me of one of my bigger complaints with PhD training. The article goes into the statistics behind the number of PhD granted and the number of post docs and how the numbers have risen drastically, yet the number of tenure-track academic research positions have not kept pace. This leaves a lot of highly skilled and highly educated scientists at a loss of what to do next. Now I'm not going to focus or speculate why the numbers are different and how we could fix them. No, that article reminded me of my frustrations with leaving the Ivory Tower and obtaining a career outside academia. Besides the gasps and the comments like "well what are you going to do then?", "but you can't direct your own research there", "isn't it time you started having babies anyways?" (that one especially annoys me) very few people have had any advice on what jobs there are for those with PhDs who don't want to go into academia. For a while there I was getting so frustrated and stressed about how I took so many years of schooling and yet had limited career choices beside academia. This, however, is not true. Upon further investigation and speaking with a career counselor I realized I did have numerous option. However, I never realized these options existed until I actively searched them out. In academia your mentors are professors, usually your supervisor. These people live and breath academic research and to do anything else, in their mind, is somehow considered lesser. I realize mentoring a grad student is like raising a child. You want to teach them as best as you can and see them succeed. The problem is that most academics only see success as obtaining a tenure-track position. As such, they don't really counsel you in alternative career options. It could be that they aren't familiar with them or that they don't want to open all those other doors for you for fear that you will take the time and money they invested in you and do something that is considered, by them, to be of a lower standing. However, all schooling, whether it's a Bachelor's degree or a PhD, is about training people for their future careers. Why in the case of a PhD does that career have to focus on academia?

With the decrease in tenure-track positions and increase in number of PhD graduates you would think that training or career counseling in areas outside academia would be beneficial to universities. Potential PhD students wouldn't see a PhD as a dead end degree and many of those recent PhD graduates would not be so disgruntled and give up on science altogether. As I mentioned, I did seek out career counseling. Although it was through the university I still had to pay for it and it wasn't soley focused on science. It was just general career counseling. It was helpful although it would have been much more helpful to have career counseling focused on jobs you can obtain with a PhD in science. I've found that most of my knowledge on careers outside academia has been self-taught since the university has limited resources in that area.

A PhD program shouldn't just center on getting the degree but should include career counseling and specific courses to prepare you for a career, whether that be in academia or outside academia. This idea of [B.Sc. + M.Sc. + Ph.D. + Post-doc = tenure-track position] is outdated. Academia needs to change with the times and better prepare the students they are training so that when they graduate they can enter into successful careers in a broad range of areas and not just tenure-track or unemployment.

Damn writer's block

Why does this always happen to me? Whether it's a paper, a report, or my thesis, whenever I'm so close to the end I get writer's block. For my thesis I have about four pages of general conclusions left to write and I'm stuck. My main problem is I don't want to be repetitive. My thesis chapters are written as papers so each chapter has it's own conclusion; however, the thesis needs it own general conclusion. Every time I write something in the general conclusions I realize I've already said that in some other chapter. It's getting really annoying. Yesterday I tried the theory of just write even if it's crap. That usually works for me but this time not so much. I re-read that page today and it is not good. I just want to get these last few pages done but it's agonizing!

On a related note, my supervisor still is skirting the issue with respect to setting a defense date and an external examiner. I think that is contributing to my lack of effort in finishing the last few pages of my thesis. In my mind, I wonder why I'm putting so much effort in when he wants to put off my defense for months. I will spare you my endless complaints about my supervisor and defending because I could go on forever. The short version is that I'm sick of him prolonging and dragging this out so I'm going to talk to the chair of my department about my options. We'll see how that goes. This is the main reason I haven't updated my blog lately. I've been very bitter and as my mother always says, "If you don't have something nice to say, don't say anything at all". I'm still bitter but I've managed to rein it in somewhat to appear cheery on the outside.