Double Standards in the PI Dark Art of Assholery

Jan 10 2012 Published by under Uncategorized

This first blog post of the New Year (whee!), I will be blogging on the idea that women have a special capacity for being hellion bosses. It’s been an idea rattling around and my head and I was reminded of it while I was twitter terrorizing tweeps yesterday (Which is a font of knowledge about my nutella eating habits, fyi. Talk about science? Pssssh).  Because everyone knows under the glitter, sparkles, and pink things wimminz be like, crazy, dawg.

Figure 1: You think He-Man could bring it like this? Boyfriend would be lying on the ground wondering what train hit him.

Line break
Now I’m not arguing that asshole ladypants bosses do not exist, and that there are not women who pull the ladder up behind them, and all that shit. But I would argue in many cases there is a double standard applied to women in power that is not applied to men… the infamous rationalization that women are supposed to give a shit about your problems.

I know, I know, it hurts more when another woman deals with your childbearing, work/life balance, discrimination issues harshly, because presumably she went through the exact same thing. But guess what, to a narcissistic asshole their issues were unfair struggles they survived, and yours are an unfair inconvenience that has nothing to do with them. Sucks, but that’s how it is.  Ladyparts do not confer unto someone instinctual maternal feelings, love for their fellow man, or empathy.

If your only justification for being put out by something a female does identically to a male, is "but she’s a WOMAN, she should UNDERSTAND/BE NICER", you need to reevaluate your thought process. Quite frankly, I see this complaint a LOT when students were too lazy to do their research when selecting a PI and automatically gravitated towards any woman in sight, with the assumption she would obviously have the qualities listed above. Well, fucking surprise because part of equality is allowing a woman to be just as big of a dick as a man and not be judged more harshly for it.

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No-Snitches

Dec 09 2011 Published by under Uncategorized

It is no secret that academia has a ‘no-snitches’ policy…one that is eerily reminiscent of the attitudes of impoverished URMs when faced with providing evidence to violent crimes. This issue, when combined with the total ineptitude of academia’s interpretation of human resources, can lead to situations where bad things happen, but no one wants the blowback from reporting it through official channels. This can be a combination of fearing blackballing within the profession (snitches can never be trusted) and a cynical knowledge that reporting shit rarely results in any official action.

Figure 1: Hermitage has been aware from a young age that snitches sleep in ditches, metaphorical or otherwise

Snitch break!
This issue has been bouncing around in my head for a while due to recent shenanigans where clearly inappropriate shenanigans were had, but due to the situation and context in which it happened, is a total hir-said, hir-said situation. Your cynical D-List Monktress was firmly of the opinion that dwelling on it was a waste of time, while her more idealistic friends were firmly of the ‘Report it! It’s wrong!’ mentality. Ignoring the fact that knowing who to even complain to, and to what purpose, is not always clear, how bad does something have to be before you are compelled to take a stand? Should the criteria be severity, or simply how easy something is to prove? Should you always do the right thing, or should your career come first?

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Teh Emailz

Nov 10 2011 Published by under Uncategorized

Emailing folks can be a situation fraught with anxiety. Written exchanges are intrinsically more challenging than verbal; written words do not convey the inflections of speech and facial expressions that are critical to face-to-face communication. So your favorite D-List Monktress is here to drop some knowledge on your n00b asses.

Proper Salutation
If this is your first time emailing an elder monk, always err on the side of caution and use their proper title (e.g. Hello Prof. So & So, Dear Dr. Bigwig). If they later tell you to call them by their first name, obviously you should comply. However, don’t make the automatic assumption that because they sign their reply email with their first name that you can become more casual. In the age of the internetz automatic signatures are all the rage, and 99% of their emails will be to their fellow peers, not peons like you. Hence, most will not bother to edit their shit for the 1%. If you can’t take the easy way out of addressing a woman as Doctor, Professor, etc do not just assume they are Mrs. That shit’s fucking annoying.

Don’t be too casual
Just because you’ve taken a class with a professor for two semesters in a row doesn’t make you buddies. Just because you have borrowed Secretary Johnson’s stapler every Thursday before orthopedic biomechanics doesn’t mean you can email ‘hey, can you do this thing by Friday? Thanks Janey!’ Asking people to do shit for you in a respectful manner can make things 100x easier than they would be otherwise. And for those of you mewling ‘but that’s their job, why do I need to kiss their ass?’ stfu. I know you’ve spent several times in your life bitching that someone ordered you around like a peon without so much as a please or thank you, so pay that shit forward.

Write every email for elder monk eyes
Why? You may ask, why can’t I jet off a quick email to my boss saying ‘yo, collaborator Y’s samples ran SUPER AWESOME with my Epicsauce Technique’? Because oftentimes, rather than rewrite your info more eloquently so you don’t look like a hippy nerd, your boss or co-worker will forward that shit out to relevant folks with nothing more than an ‘FYI’ slapped on it. Moral of the story: write every email as if it were going to be forwarded to a Relatively Important Person. Consistently sounding sharp over email makes more of a difference than you’d think.

Figure 1: Some people don't speak fluent LOLCats, mmkay?

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Self-reflection is for newbs

Oct 19 2011 Published by under Uncategorized

I recently attended an 'elevator pitch'  workshop that was super awesome. I'm sure my minions and muffins already know that the concept of the elevator pitch is to explain who you are, why you're awesome, and why the person you're talking to should be interested in your awesomeness. Your humble monktress totally rocks at explaining what she does and what it is awesome, and thought she had this exercise in teh bag. Then the nice elevator pitch lady looked me straight in the eye and said 'I can get anyone to do that stuff. Why are you special?'

Your D-List monktress immediately harrumphed that you could not get anyone to do that stuff because it is totes super hard and awesome but then ElevatorPitchLady slapped my ass back down again, insisting I tell her what about me makes me special, not just the techniques I know.

And I was super stumped. And then I groused some more and the exercise was over. I'm still pondering the answer to this questions, so in the meantime I am curious about what my reader's think about themselves. So childrens, let's join hands and form a circle while sharing what makes us special.

Except not mushily because I might have to puke on every single one of you*.

* my puritanical mind thinks reflecting on such things is total bullshitte.
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On when your data's an asshole

Jul 22 2011 Published by under Uncategorized

Today, I will ruminate on an issue even your favorite D-List Monktress struggles with… taking your experiments personally. As in, all bad results are a personal affront to your abilities as a researcher, and ever goof is proof that you should just cut your losses and become a magician’s assistant.

Unfortunately, failure is an integral part of the scientific process. Even more unfortunately, I do not handle long-term failure well AT ALL. It had gotten to the point I would intentionally schedule experiments in the dead of night when there were no witnesses to my infantile rages. The final result was I was sleep-deprived, I was stressed, and my fists looked like a bare-knuckle boxer’s from my punching walls, tables, and various other hard surfaces.

 
Figure 1: I wish I could Mangekyo Sharingan my results sometimes

Line break karate chop!

Clearly something had to change, because your D-List Monktress does not have an adamantium endoskeleton and walls are really fucking hard. So I ran around trying to find something that would help detach me from the outcome of my work. And I finally figured out two things (neither of which are yoga or deep breathing): exercise, and telling myself it wasn’t my fault.

Exercise became a reward system for me, and was a constructive way to deal with frustration. It became some sort of physiological side experiment in contrast to my thesis project, hey my srs business experiment didn’t work but I totally picked up heavier shit than I did the day before! The euphoria of your body being able to do things it wasn’t able to before can help buoy you through shit data. And exercise apparently makes you less likely to die and stuff, so it’s a win-win situation.

In addition to exercise was my cheesy mantra that it wasn’t my fault. All I could do was prepare everything to the best of my ability, and whatever happened, happened. This of course sounds fantastic in theory but usually goes to shit when you are in the weeds trying to get through an epicfail experiment. There are still times when I literally need to get up, walk away for a moment and repeat my mantra, before coming back to the task at hand.

I am certainly not perfect, but I no longer swear for several minutes at a time when something goes awry, nor do I punch hard surfaces*.  Hopefully my tale shall make my fellow data ragers feel not so alone, and maybe get some tips on how to get over that shit. Any of my minions and muffins have stories and/or advice to share?

 *No, that does not mean I punch people instead now. Harrumph.
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It's the Best Job in the World

Mar 08 2011 Published by under Uncategorized

Word on the STEM straße is that the Nerd Borg is shrinking at an unacceptable rate and that we must brainwash more young and gullible potential-laden youths into joining our illustrious Order. We hold retreats and workshops, enter classrooms to show demos, and make super kewl websites to convince the kiddies that Science is Aweshum!11!!!1!

Figure 1: But he promised there was candy in Sciencelandia, and I never had to grow up to be stuffy Industry Peon! Especially if you figure out the magical magicks of Telomeres!1!!

Breaka-a-a-a-a-a-a-a

But I’m growing increasingly concerned with the happy sing-along-song and dance a lot of academics seem to do when speaking to older students (e.g. undergraduates). We have presumably evolved beyond kindergarten-style presentation of career options, where Everything is Perfect and Exciting All the Time, yet I find that is not the case when many scientists deliver their spiel. Time and time again I observe our Academic Career Salesfolks displaying willful obstinance to admitting drawbacks about the job. No, the money never matters if you do what you love. You might work hard sometimes, but if you truly love your science it will be fun. Gender/race/sexual orientation doesn’t matter, your work will speak for itself. Science is all about collaboration, there’s no politics like in business or industry.

I’ve mentioned before that being disillusioned that Academia is not Science Rave Funtime 24/7 is kind of ridiculous. However, can we really blame young n00bs for being woefully unprepared if the overwhelming volume of information we provide them is unbalanced and unrealistic? I was lucky enough to work in a number of different laboratories before finally entering the STEM Order officially, so I knew how to filter the bullshit. But what about kids who haven’t had the same opportunities? What about students who don’t have mentors who are knowledgeable enough, or willing, to divulge the uglier aspects of our line of work? How can we roll our eyes at the masses of n00bs who ‘can’t hack it’ and leave utterly disillusioned with Academia when we’re enthusiastically contributing to the problem?

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