Takes a village

I may have mentioned last summer that despite the fact that I was new, I had been assigned an equally new staff person to handle all of my stuff (grant applications, purchases, etc). At this point, I told my assigned mentor that this was probably not a good idea. The blind leading the blind concept. But it continued. Problems ensued - grants getting bounced because things were done wrong. POs not getting paid. Students (and me) not getting paid. Essentially, chaos.

Obviously, I don't want any of these things to happen. And obviously, the staff person is not just assigned to me - she is assigned to a group of profs. While she has made some of these mistakes with the other professors, they have also caught many of the mistakes in time, and rectified them (grant-related mistakes). I haven't been as lucky.

So, now it is May. This has gone on for almost one year. The other professors are looking for the person's head on a plate. I just want to be re-assigned to a more senior person - which may sound like the same thing, but it really isn't. I don't think the person is malicious, I think they just need more time. Granted, the job isn't that difficult and they do seem rather lazy, but at the same time...

Anyway, the point was just to emphasize that your staff is crucial. Just as your grad students and post docs are crucial, your admins and budget analysts and grants and contracts people are just as important. I'm hoping that this whole situation is going to be rectified soon - the head of HR is now involved, so my chair and assigned mentor (who in reality is really powerless) have pretty much been taken out of the equation.

The other profs have been really good about leaving me out of this. They have focused on their issues, which are more than sufficient to get a new person in, without dragging me into this. They are all full profs, so they don't have anything to lose by making a big stink. I obviously do.

I think one reason why there has been such a delay moving forward, at least in the department, is that she was hired by the chair - not transferred into the dept from another dept. So, if she is proven to be ineffective, it falls on our chair. This would be a sign that he made a mistake. Who wants to admit that?

To post doc or Not to post doc

I have lately been on numerous panels. Work life balance. How to get a faculty position. How to prepare a successful packet. How to succeed in a faculty position.

(BTW: The last is my personal favorite - I've been doing this under 1 yr. What do I know about succeeding. I think I asked the other panel members as many questions as the audience asked. I had an advantage - I was sitting next to them.)

However one panel which I haven't been on officially (because there isn't a panel dedicated to it), but which basically becomes a discussion at every other panel is: should you post doc or not. This is a complex question, which is really dependent on the individual. So, I've compiled a short list. This was compiled this morning during a phone conversation, but it was compiled none the less.

Positives (+)/Negatives (-)
+ you need rec letters b/c: a) you didn't work with enough people during your PhD to get 3 "solid" letters for a faculty application, b) you and your thesis advisor hate each other (happens frequently)
+/- you need more publications: this isn't necessarily a good reason, the bar goes up the longer you work, and it necessarily guaranteed that you will get publications
+ need to expand your network
+ want to change fields: plan to do at least a 3yr post-doc
+ you need more skills: this is a valid reason, but don't screw your post doc advisor over - ie only post doc for 1 yr. You cost your post doc advisor a lot of money. Even if you have a fellowship.
+ you and your significant other need to match up (time line wise)
- everyone else post-docs: not true (except in bio/chem/physics/math)
- can't decide between industry and academia: post-doc'ing isn't really going to help in that decision

So, in the end, I don't really have any advice - unless it has to do with rec letters or research field.

But, just the same, everyone keeps asking me for my advice. No one asked me last year. It isn't as though the day I became a prof I was handed the magic book that had all of the secrets to the prof universe.

MIA

Yep - I have been totally MIA for the past several months.

I taught my first course - which was total chaos - but really enjoyed it. I haven't gotten my evaluations back yet, so here's hoping. I may not enjoy it so much in a couple months when they roll in.

Other than that not too much to report - I've gotten a couple grants, which has been...
Awesome...Unexpected...Overwhelming...Thrilling...Exciting...Scary...

Yes, all of the above. Even scary. No one mentions that once you get a grant, you actually have to do the work. This implies hiring more grad students/post docs. Which implies growing your research group. Everyone focuses so much on the difficulty of getting grants, no one warns you what happens post-grant getting.

As such, my group is growing way faster than I had planned. I'm almost in double digits. Counting undergrads, I'm well in the double digits. I have to appear calm and confident to everyone, all of the time. Simultaneously, my mood is alternating between " oh shit, oh shit, oh shit" and "I'm so awesome". The swings are much, much worse than anything I have ever experienced. A some point it will all blur together into some nice balance of "I'm the shit", but that hasn't happened yet.

Anyway, everyone, good luck.

Number of Grants

So, FSP wrote a post about the appropriate number of grants to file. And she put it as 5-6 a year. As I have had 5 grants denied in the last 2 months alone - and I'll get to this in a minute - I have to disagree. I'm going to go with the number of "as many as is humanly possible to file and still do a reasonably good job". This number will of course vary with your teaching load and how fast you can write.

Also, the number of relevant announcements ebbs and flows - in the summer/early fall, there were more announcements than there were in November, and right now I'm in an upswing again. But, again, I'm not about to not-submit just so I can get some sleep. But, I'm not going to waste my time submitting to a not-relevant announcement either.

So, about the 5 rejections. 3 were for NSF grants. I've officially been rejected from NSF. I'm not really all that upset, which is kind of funny. I got a couple "goods" and a couple "excellents", but apparently, you have to get all "excellents" to get funded. As I was never a straight A student, except for one semester in second grade, I really don't see this happening. Maybe this is my being pessimistic, but it just seems like (probabilistically) it isn't going to happen - 5 reviewers all thinking "she's excellent!". Not likely. And I didn't really get any useful feedback saying what I could do next time. Maybe I won't be submitting to NSF again anytime soon...

The other two rejections - one was a Young Investigator and one was an NIH. NIH - they said what I could do next time - focus on a specific disease. And the YI - well, those are beauty contests, basically.

So, right now, I'm working on three different ones, all due in January. I was working on two, which is a kind of comfortable number. But then a program manager called and asked me to submit. This normally wouldn't be a problem - adding one - but this one happens to be a group submission (me plus a couple other people). So I had to pull together a team. Again, normally not a big deal - but the holidays change things. Everything becomes choatic.

It isn't us (the PIs) who are the problem. It is the budget and admin people. We have to get budgets approved, which means we have to get our budgets approved. And apparently pulling together a budget is akin to balancing the federal budget. So, my other two have been put on hold (as I'm the only PI on those), and now I'm working on forcing this larger one through the budget people. And there is cost-sharing involved.

Well, Happy Holidays to everyone.

Roller Coaster...

Friday was an incredible exhausting day. It started out in neutral, so to speak. I had to call a bunch of granting agencies/foundations and leave messages/speak with assistants to arrange phone calls with program managers for next week. I managed to successfully orchestrate that, so I was pretty proud of myself.

I was chairing a student symposium for the department which was from 10am-3pm, and there were industry judges and both an oral and poster session. So, at 9:30, I left my office and went over to the hall where it was. (Note, extensive planning had been done in the weeks leading up to this to enable me to just "show up"). I brought the judge's gifts with me (and they were awesome, by the way). So, from 10-3, I got to meet with undergraduate/graduate students, which I really enjoy, and learn about a lot of research going on in my department - which was also useful. And we had Halloween cupcakes. This was one of the admin assistant's ideas - which I strongly supported - and they were great.

Around 2:30, we announced the winners of the symposium (presentations and posters) and one of my students won the poster contest, which was awesome!

And, about 10 minutes later, I got an email from DARPA, saying that my grant (which I submitted in August) had been positively reviewed, and would now enter into contract negotiations - ie, I got a grant! I am planning a party for my group for next Friday.

At this point, I think it was a good thing I had on heels (which I never wear and therefore, they make me virtually immobile), because they kept me from jumping up and down and screaming.

After the whole symposium wound down, I went back to my office, and shot off a bunch of emails (namely to my post-doc advisors about the DARPA grant). Then my department chair called.

As back story: When I arrived, I had one person filing my grants (who was awesome). Then the chair hired a new person - who knows less than I do, if that is possible. I asked to keep the first person. (Let's call this person AP - for awesome person. We can call the second person CP - for crappy person.) Apparently, CP's job was to file grants for everyone in my building to let AP file grants for everyone in the other building. AP couldn't handle both buildings - which I completely believe. Therefore, I had to use CP.

AP has been doing this forever and would semi-proof read my grants - make sure I hadn't forgotten something obvious, like an equipment justification section, or make sure I wasn't asking for an obscene amount of money in comparison to other other grants recently awarded. This is stuff I didn't even think of (the latter) or know how to write (the former). Now that I know to do this, I will. But AP's experience is really helpful.

AP thought this was unfair (a new professor working with a new grants manager - essentially the blind leading the blind), and continued to file my grants. My chair found out, and got pissed. I requested to meet with him (in person) to discuss this next week. He opted to call - conference with everyone - at 5pm on Friday. Not surprisingly, it turned nasty. I'll just stop here.

Then at 5:30, I had a meeting with a professor in another department to discuss teaching - this professor has won lots of awards in teaching and volunteered to meet with anyone who wanted advice. He asked how my experience was going so far. I said it was okay. He asked how I liked my department administration. It was like he read my mind - bizarre. I pseudo-lied, and said I liked my division - I love my dean. And, as this prof is smart, he said what I couldn't say - that my chair is a grumpy ass, but his term is also limited. So, as long as I get along with the dean (whose term isn't limited), then I should focus on that, and somewhat ignore the chair (obviously not ignore - but keep my eyes on what is really important). We are meeting again next week to actually talk about teaching.

Well, a lot of other stuff is also going on, which is probably obvious as my blogging is getting more and more sporatic. But I felt like I needed to at least give a feeling for the rapid emotional roller coaster that occurs in a single day. The ups are much much higher, and the downs are much more pronounced than when I was a grad student or post doc. So the total swing is just more exhausting. I'm sure I'll develop a coping mechanism of some sort, but I'm just not sure what it is going to be or when it is going to kick in.

Grant writing

So, it is official. I suck at proposal writing. I got back my first set of "summary statements" from an NIH grant that I submitted. They basically said "go find a mentor - the science is solid, but your proposal is unintelligible, so we can't fund this piece of crap". Perhaps it was phrased a little better (in fact, the reviewers spent 5 pages reinforcing the concept of all the ways in which my proposal was unintelligible), but that was the gist.

They did give some helpful comments, which I will use in re-writing my proposal. And I knew that this one(s) was a piece of crap. I submitted three proposals in June to three different NIH sections on three different topics. I had never written an NIH proposal before, so I basically had no clue what I was doing. I wrote another one a month or so ago with another (much more senior) professor, and I learned a lot. However, based on the significant differences between that proposal and the ones I submitted in June, I could pretty much assume that none of those were going anywhere.

All of that being said... Waiting for these rejections was almost like waiting to go to the dentist and have your wisdom teeth pulled. You know what's coming, but it still sucks when it actually happens. Especially reading the 5 pages of comments saying things like "if you had only written more background information, then I would have recommended this for funding" and "the PI clearly has a strong track record in this field, therefore, while I believe she can successfully perform the research, she can not write proposals and therefore I can not recommend this for funding" and so forth...

In any case, the main thing I learned: put in as much background as humanly possible. This really showed in the reviews. Both with the specific comments about the lack of background information and the resulting confusion. Also make sure to use the phrase "As the PI has previously shown..." (or similar words) as many times as possible. And make sure the short paragraph in the grant itself about me (a semi-bio) is extremely flattering. These last two things I have problems with. I tend to have problems writing these types of things (especially the latter). I'm going to get my husband to do it. He has no problems. Also, it is easier to write complimentary statements about other people than it is about yourself.

And I wrote his resume last night.

Absent

So, I have spent the last 10 days in multiple cities and time zones and being uber-social. While my husband claims I am an extrovert, I say I'm just a really good actress. Oscar-worthy.

The first round was in DC with granting agencies and program managers trying to figure out what they really wanted. Their announcements say one thing, but what they really want to fund can be a little different. But finding out what they really want, can make a big difference. But it is a trip like any other: airplane, hotel, food, etc. All to get 30 minutes of face time with a program manager. After the first meeting, I've found that PM's are much more receptive to follow-up phone calls. But for initial contact, they really like meeting you.

Then I went onto a conference, gave a talk, got the typical "your talk was really impressive. I was really surprised." Um, not really sure how to take this. Now, I just say thanks, and walk away. I used to press the person to actually explain what they meant - try to make them feel uncomfortable and actually admit that they thought I was going to give a crappy talk because I'm short and female. Now, it just isn't worth the effort.

After that, I want to a "school" retreat. School = everyone in my "division", not the whole university/college. This was fun and stressful. Everyone was there, even the dean, and there were a lot of people I had never met before, so many names came at me very fast. And I'm really, really bad with names.

Then onto another conference. One more talk. Again, the "you gave a good talk and I'm surprised" comment. Yes, I know. I look like I'm 18. I'm not. One of these days, I'm just going to lose it. Let's just hope it is post-tenure.

But, now I'm back, and my students are extremely happy. I spent all of yesterday in the lab with them. And I'm hoping to spend part of this afternoon and all day tomorrow in the lab (if they are there tomorrow, it is their choice). But the lab is 99% done, and I want to have it completely done by Monday. I feel responsible for it not being done. If I had been here over the past 10 days or so, it would be done. So I feel really bad for delaying my student's research progress.

Oh, and I had three grants not go through and a young investigator award (YFA/YIA) not go through. Oh well. That's life. But I filed two more grants last week (they had the same due date), and next week I'll file at least one more, and another YFA/YIA.