No crying in science, part 2

OK, so obviously there is a lot of crying in science. It's just that whenever I try to come up with a title for a blog post all I can think of are pop culture references, and with "crying" as a theme it's either Tom Hanks' famous line from A League of Their Own--which I've never actually seen, but which is a sort-of reference itself, I think (though calling Virginia Woolf "pop culture" may be ill-advised)--or The Crying Game,   so.

Where was I?

Oh yes, running out of my PI's office in tears. Now, there are some ladies out there who look really pretty when they're crying, like delicate, weeping flowers, but I am not one of those ladies. My eyes puff up like crazy and get thoroughly bloodshot--physiologic responses that take ages to restore themselves.  If I were a damsel in distress, the knights would probably run away in disgust.

While I was waiting for the transformation back to recognizable human to occur, I emailed my graduate advisor; I was still too embarrassed to tell Famous Dude.  I told her the long, sordid story, asking her advice on the whole situation.  It was a rare feeling for me, but at that moment, I just wanted someone to tell me what to do.

My grad advisor is amazing. She got back to me in 20 minutes with names of people she knew who she thought might be good for a short post-doc, and lots of words of encouragement. And not warm squishy "poor baby" encouragement--she knows better than that. She wrote, "Inhibit that stress response and think of all the opportunities that interest you. [Learning] a new method could lead more easily to a job! Let me know what happens--DO NOT GIVE UP!!"

That helped, because my initial instinct was to write to Famous Dude something along the lines of, "I'm soooooooo sorry, but we didn't get the grant. If you think there's any way you could consider the possibility of maybe having me in the lab anyway, I would be eternally grateful!"  Instead, I realized that I had to write to Famous Dude with confidence and with purpose, not humility and desperation.  I said (and I'm paraphrasing, here), look, bad news re: the Foundation.  But this is a good grant, and I think it could be re-purposed for this new R21 FOA I just read about.  I want to write this grant with you as a co-investigator--I think we'd have a very good chance of getting funded. What do you say?

Famous Dude is not sure if he can support me without the Foundation money, and seemed perplexed by the comments from the Foundation review.  One point of issue seemed to be that the Foundation wasn't clear on what Famous Dude's role was in all of this, and they were worried that I didn't necessarily have all the support I needed to carry out the studies I'd proposed.  After emailing back and forth over the course of an hour, we decided that it might be a good idea for Famous Dude to send the Foundation a letter to clarify his full support.

Within 15 minutes I was Bcc'd on this letter, and again, the floodgates opened wide.  This letter, from this man who owes me nothing, was incredible--four solid paragraphs on his commitment to the project, and, more notably, his dedication to my career development.  He called me "an outstanding young scientist" with whom he has "long been impressed," among other nice things.

Between this and my grad advisor's correspondance, I was completely overcome with emotion.  To know, at this time when I am feeling my absolute lowest, that there are people out there who firmly believe in me and are ready and willing to go to bat for me...well, it is more than I felt I deserved.

Unfortunately, Famous Dude's letter fell upon deaf ears. The Foundation sent a brief and dismissive reply, with no indication that resubmission might be possible.  Fuckers.

So, where are we now?

Best case scenario, Famous Dude does his fall budget and is able to find funds for me.  We apply for the R21, get it, and live happily ever after.  This won't be known for at least another month, though, and I can't just sit around making no other plans.  So in the meantime, I need to start looking for another lab for a (hopefully short) second post-doc.  There are several concerns I have about this:

1. I feel like from a career standpoint, if you're going to do a 2nd post-doc, there has to be a real point to it.  In other words, I think I should go somewhere I can learn a brand new technique.  However,

2.  I'm expensive.  I've now had over 5 years of post-doc experience.  Are people going to be willing to hire someone who's not only pricey, but needs to be trained as well? I'd imagine that if someone were going to shell out the dough for an experienced post-doc, they'd want that person because she would be bringing a well-honed skill set to the lab.

3.  I talked to one of our new faculty about possibly joining his lab.  He uses some very cool techniques that would be great for me to learn and his interests broadly overlap with mine, so it seems like a good fit.  He agreed, but he doesn't have enough money.  He also made the interesting point that if I plan on applying for funding, I shouldn't be with a new faculty member like him, I need to be with someone like Famous Dude.  Given how ecstatic my K99 reviewers were over my "Environment" (all 1s!), I think he's probably right.

I'd love all your thoughts and advice, here. I feel like I'm teetering on the edge of either doing something awesome or completely blowing it--like expat postdoc notes in the comments of the last post, I don't want to take any old shitty position.  However, I do need to pay my rent--as you might imagine, living in NY on a post-doc's salary does not allow one to save much of a cushion for times like these.

Finally, thanks again to everyone who commented and sent nice messages--on the blog, twitter, or via email--I'm so grateful to have such a caring and supportive group of readers!

There's no crying in science!!?? (part 1)

Like 28% of iPhone users, I popped on the interwebs before getting out of bed Thursday morning. I was greeted by an email from the Foundation telling me that they would not be funding my proposal.  The proposal that they asked me to write, and were very enthusiastic about in general.  The proposal that would allow me to work with Famous Dude, crank out a high profile paper or two, and score a sweet TT job in another year or so (that easy!!!!).  We really thought this grant was going to be funded.

Instead of a done deal, it's simply done--all of those hopes dashed by a reviewer who seemingly did not actually read the grant.  Yeah, I know everybody says that when they get their summary statements, but seriously--how else do you explain criticisms like "it is not clear to us how many animals will be studied and what is the number of rats per experiment," when the first line of each Aim's methods states, for example, "Sixty male Sprague Dawley rats will be used for this experiment?"

The rejection has a lot of ramifications that are really quite serious in the context of my very near and very distant future.  Not only does it mean that I most likely can't go work with Famous Dude, but it may mean that I will be unemployed in a few months. For the purposes of actually getting out of bed, though, I flicked the old denial switch to "on" and went about my usual morning activities: kitty medicine, Luna Bar, gym clothes, subway.

Once in lab, however, reality set in as I repeatedly fielded "how are you's" and "what's new's" from my lab mates (we are a friendly bunch!).  Unlike Famous Dude, I have a terrible poker face, so it wasn't long before I was reaching for the Kimwipes. Per usual, my lab peeps were super supportive and awesome and agreed that the reviewer comments were probably written by the Foundation CEO's pomeranian.

When I broke the news to PI, he was extremely surprised, but had few words of comfort.  He did, however, have many words of discomfort, most of which served to inform me that the grant I'm currently on would definitely run out sometime this fall. I listened to him, pressing firmly on the bridge of my nose, willing the tears back inside their ducts. It was of little use. When there was nothing else to say, I quickly thanked PI and ran out of his office before I completely lost it.

It is as if the floor has dropped out from under me. In 2-3 months I will lose my job, my health insurance, my productivity...all at a point in my career when I really need to be working.  It is terrifying.

There is more to this story, of the not-necessarily-solving-any-problems-but-uplifting-nonetheless variety. But this is quite long already, so I'll leave it there, for now...

I need a montage!

Getting back into the swing of things after a meeting is never the smoothest of transitions, but this week's post-Experimental Biology re-entry has been especially bumpy.  I returned to a stack of exams to grade, an experiment to finish, a lecture to prepare, and general feelings of uneasiness about my future.  The exams took fucking forever longer than I'd have liked, and then my stupid control experiment (the only thing I need before writing it up) produced nothing measurable, so I have to troubleshoot and do it again.  Waahh.

Whatever, I do it again, not a big deal.  What is a big deal is that I also met with my boss this week, and for the first time we out-loud acknowledged what we've been ignoring for a while now: there is no definite funding for my project after the summer.  This means that there's no funding for me unless I want to switch to working on the lab's main project, which is significantly different from what I've been doing so far.   Now, not only do I not want to be on that project, but I don't think it would be a good move, career-wise.  This is the time I'm supposed to be defining myself, doing work that's explicitly my own; on this project I'd literally be just a set of hands.

So there's that!  You might say I've got some shit to figure out.  Do I look for a new lab that's doing things more in sync with my interests?  Suck it up and help out with my current lab's big project for a bit while I apply for grants of my own (many thanks to Drug Monkey's Twitter advice and link re: R vs K awards)?  Give up completely?

Whenever people in the movies reach that pivotal point at which they go from feeling beat-down to getting their act together to accomplish their Big Goal, there's a montage to demonstrate the person's journey from beat-down-ness to awesomeness.  A particularly on-point commentary on this phenomenon can be found in the near-classic film Team America: World Police



I feel like I need a montage.  In my montage, you'll see me alternately: having thoughtful sciencey discussions with potential future collaborators in downtown cafes; pipetting; typing late at night (to demonstrate lateness, you'll see J come over to me at my desk, kiss me on the forehead, and stumble sleepily off to bed, shaking his head in disbelief at how hard I'm working); looking at beautiful fluorescent things in a microscope; hitting "submit manuscript" with a satisfied and accomplished look on my face; etc!

Oh and also there'll be a shot of me teaching as students look on, totally engaged and totally not checking facebook.  Today I gave my first bona fide lecture that I put together myself completely from scratch, and even though I was very stressed out when I was making it last night at 2 am (this is the way you professors do things, yes?), I think it went very well.  The professor in charge of the class seemed really happy with my decisions on what to include, and when I was up there talking I remember thinking at one point, "Wow!  People are actually writing down the things that I'm saying!"  I mean, obviously this happens at meetings or whatever all the time, but for some reason this felt different.  I was molding young minds!

ANYway...yeah.  To conclude, montages are totally motivational and I really need to get pumped up here.  It's going to be an interesting couple of months...

Extreme Makeover: Blog and Grant edition

While y'all were down in NC this weekend at ScienceOnline2010, meeting each other IRL and watching videos of duck penises**, I was home in rainy New York with an icky cold and a grant to revise.  Naturally, I found it the perfect opportunity to teach myself a little HTML/CSS and start watching Lost.  Inspired by Biochem Belle and her blog's fancy new look, I checked out BTemplates for something that felt more like me than the standard Blogger template.  I found one that I almost liked completely called "Extreme Georgia," and then through lots of trial and error figured out how to tweak the font and colors to better suit my liking.  HTML is the sort of thing I imagine is actually super easy if you have even the tiniest smidgen of baseline knowledge, but with zero, I assure you, it is quite boggling.  But persevere I did, and as you can see, OTM:FTTT is now different, but similar.  Didn't want to freak anyone out; did want to incorporate my favorite font (Futura--coincidentally, same font as Lost logo!).

With that and 10 hours of fuselage, polar bears, and SECRETS SECRETS OMG SO MANY SECRETS!!!! under my belt, it was time to turn my 20-page, 5-year K99 proposal into a 2-page, 2-year NARSAD proposal.  This is not just a little fat-trimming here, we're talking major surgery:  face lift, eye job, tummy tuck, lipo--the works.  I had to pick out the sexiest parts of the K99 and sculpt them into a perfect, tight little package of hot science that could feasibly be done in two years.  Not an easy task, no indeed (how excellent is this expression, btw? I was so confused when I first heard it, back when the SfN meeting used to be in New Orleans). 

Now, I could have just gone and taken Specific Aim 1 from the K99 and called it a day, but let's be honest:  Specific Aim 1 is the boring Specific Aim.  Oh sure, it sets things up, lays the groundwork for things to come, but as a self-contained idea is often lacking in hotness.  If I'm going to get some clinically-relevant, high-impact-style data out of this grant, I've gotta go straight to the money shot: Specific Aim 3.  Luckily, my proposal was not set up such that I needed definitive answers from the first two Aims in order to do the third, so I didn't need to re-work things too much.

But two pages, man, that is KILLER.  I think the last time I had to write a two-page anything was in my freshman writing course, which occurred during the Clinton administration (first term).  Add in the fact that I'm restricted to just 10 citations, and I basically have to find someone who's done my exact experiments already so as to keep my methods as succinct as possible. 

Painful though it may have been, I think writing this grant was a great exercise.  When you're so constricted, you're forced to be clear and to the point, rather than blathering on about the entire history of your field and how monumentally important your research is.  Your ideas need to speak for themselves, rather than you speaking for your ideas.  This is going to prove incredibly useful the next time I apply for a grant from NIH, which recently cut the page limit of its grant applications in half, much to the chagrin of long-winded scientists everywhere.  But for me, 6 or 12 pages is going to feel downright luxurious!

**Hot damn did you love those duck penises!  Twitter was so full of your tweets during Carl Zimmer's presentation I'm amazed "duck penis" wasn't a bona fide trending topic.  For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, click the "duck" link at the top, and scroll down to the video.  It just might blow your mind.

Summary Statement Summary

I had been told that it would take at least 6 weeks for my K99 Summary Statement (a composite of the reviewers' comments) to come, but instead it took 6 days.  I suppose that if there's one thing that can be said for the NIH, it's that they're certainly efficient when it comes to bringing the bad news. 

Buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut...........

It wasn't really all bad news.  At all.  I mean, yes, of course, the grant was still unscored, but I feel much better about why.  As it turns out, Comrade PhysioProf was mostly right--the major problem was my publication record, which is decent but not awesome, and lacking with respect to a glamour journal paper. This is an unfortunate result of a certain journal taking three months and then four months and then two months to get back to me with reviews for what will be my second peer-reviewed post-doc paper, a labor of love that contains over three years of work.  But I don't need to explain this to you; I should have explained it to my study section. 

Briefly, the scoring works like this:  I'm graded by three different reviewers on a scale of 1-9 with 1 being the best in five different areas:

Candidate (that's me!)
Training Plan (the myriad essays I wrote about my career goals and my plans for achieving them)
Research Plan (the actual experiments I proposed)
Mentors (how prepared my mentor is to help guide me to independence)
Environment (how Classy is my Institution? Does it have the resources to help me get my work done?)

I received pretty much equal parts 1s, 2s, 3s, 4s, and 5s, with the biggest issues aside from my publishing being a not completely well-thought out Training Plan, and a concern that my proposed research for the independent phase of the award would not be significantly different from that of my mentors (I disagree with this).  My Mentors and Environment are completely kick-ass, so high scores in those sections were expected, but the reviewers also seemed to like my Research Plan quite a bit, which made me so, so happy.  I am a good science thinker!!!  I'm going to share with you the best quote:

"The strength of these experiments lies in the hypothesis, the ability of the candidate to conduct the studies, and the elegant and appropriate approach to answer the question at hand."


Fuck. Yeah.  There is probably no word scientists want to hear other people use to describe their work more than the word "elegant" (except, perhaps, "fundable"). This is a great compliment, and was a nice little ego boost yesterday because I really do love the proposal, and am very proud of the ideas in it.

My biggest mistake in how I handled the application was not giving myself enough time to write it.  By, like, several years.  It's funny, when I received the email three years ago from NIH congratulating me on being awarded an NRSA grant, it included a note suggesting I start applying for the K99.  I was like, are they crazy??  I just got a grant, why would I apply for another one????  I'mma go do me some experiments!!  So I did some experiments and time went by, and then all of a sudden my NRSA was almost up!  With just under a month until the deadline, I began to work on the K99.  Totally fine, I thought, I can crank this out in 25 days.  But then I learned that the grants and contracts office at my Classy Institution needed everything in 2 weeks in advance, completely polished and finished.  Oh.

First I had a heart attack, and then I LOCKED IN and wrote the damn thing in ten days.  I would have just put it off to the next cycle, but at that point I would have been right on the cusp of not being eligible, and I didn't want to risk it.  It's really no surprise, then, that there were parts of my application that weren't as perfectly put together as they needed to be, though I thought that for ten days' writing, it was pretty impressive.  However, NOBODY CARES.  It had to be a perfect application and it wasn't even close, and that is nobody's fault but mine.

So, some lessons learned, and advice to those of you who anticipate applying for a K99:

1.  START EARLY.  Like now.  And talk to people--your PI, other PIs in your group, PIs outside of your Classy Institution.  Get many many perspectives on your proposal, and go through multiple rounds of proofreading--different people will catch different mistakes (no one caught that I apparently neglected to state the age of my animals, which is just stupid).

2. Devote a substantial amount of time to your Career Development/Training Plan statements; these are a big deal, and were one of my weaknesses.  It's not enough to say "I want my own lab where I can study all of these totally fascinating things." You have to explain how you're going to get there, plus how you're going to develop all other kinds of PI-type skills, like grant and manuscript writing, teaching, lab management, etc.  Your mentor's statement should include points about how he or she will help you do these things. What's frustrating is that I know I could have done a much better job with these had I been more responsible about when I started working on the application.

3.  Know your weaknesses, and actively defend or explain them.  Obviously, I was aware that my publication record was not impressive, but instead of acknowledging that, I naively hoped that my fancy pedigree and cool science would override the blemish.  In retrospect, I should have included a statement somewhere explaining the nature of the work I've been doing (giant, comprehensive, long-term studies), and why I don't have as many big publications as you might expect of someone who's been a post-doc in my lab for as long as I have.  Something like that may not have made all the difference, but I think it would have helped.

Well, that sucked.

Did you hear that whooshing noise earlier today?  That was the sound of my ego, deflating faster than the Heene balloon.

My K99 application came back unscored.  I don't want to whine about it too much because I know this is something that happens to many people, even people who go on to be (or are) successful scientists, but frankly, I feel like I've been slapped in the face.

I'm embarrassed, indignant, and sad.   I don't feel sorry for myself, but I'm frustrated that I so severely misjudged how strong my application was.  As I wrote about previously, I thought I was pretty hot stuff, and it's scary to think I may be far from it.

I've never been one for wallowing, though--it's ugly and unproductive.  I contacted my Program Officer and there's nothing I can do but wait for my summary statement, which will hopefully give me some insight into the reviewers' major issues.   Until then, I've just got to keep doing what I was doing before this grant was something that mattered--getting my work done and applying for jobs.  Tonight I'll be bummed, but J's making tacos and the Yankees are winning, so I suppose life isn't all bad.