OMG NIH WTF?

There are many beautiful features of NYC that inspire feelings of awe and wonder in me; the Brooklyn Bridge, the view of midtown from the north side of the Central Park Reservoir, and the bourbon wall at Char No. 4 in Carroll Gardens are a few examples. But on the rare occasions that I get out to the mountains, it’s a whole other kind of awe. America is so pretty sometimes!

So I was out in the mountains this week for a small meeting, the focus of which was about as close as you can get to my exact specific interests. It was so awesome.  So much nature-y and science-y goodness!  Plus, I knew a ton of folks there—some friends from grad school, some acquaintances I’d met at previous meetings over the years—I felt like I was with my people, you know?

I learned so much and had so many great conversations, and I’m returning to New York just bursting with ideas for experiments.  It’s a nice feeling to want to get back to lab.  I also learned something VERY INTERESTING from my roommate re: the flexibility of NIH funding policies.

As we were introducing ourselves and getting to know each other, I mentioned that I’d unsuccessfully applied for a K99 award.  When she asked me whether I’d resubmitted, I lamented that by the time the following due date rolled around, I’d passed the 5-year postdoc mark, making me ineligible. 

“Oh no,” she said, “a guy in my lab was in the exact same boat as you with an unscored proposal and had passed the 5-year mark as well.  But he appealed to be allowed to resubmit on the grounds that he’d started the process before the 5-year mark, and they let him and it got funded!” 

Well! I’m sure you can imagine my response to that!

I mean, WTF, NIH?  It explicitly says in the K99-R00 FAQ that

Investigators who have more than 5 years of postdoctoral research training experience at the time of initial application or subsequent resubmission(s) are not eligible.

I might be crazy, but what this suggests to me is that you cannot resubmit if you have over 5 years post-doc experience?  I’m of course totally happy for this guy who found a way to make it all happen, but obviously if I’d thought there was any wiggle room in what is an exceptionally straightforward rule of eligibility, I’d have done the same thing!  There are many instances where a well-argued appeal makes sense, but I feel like in this case, it should either be a rule or not, you know?

Look, I know this post reeks of sour grapes, and I know that life isn't fair, and that complaining rarely achieves much beyond annoying the people listening to you (sorry guys!). But sometimes you just gotta vent, and I mean, isn't that what the interwebz are for?   

Notes from Experimental Biology

I think it's safe to say that I've probably eaten more Baja Fresh in a 30-hr period than any normal-sized person ever should.  But it was that or Sbarro, so...   .

Anyway, carnitas overdose aside, I had a very nice trip to Anaheim.  When I wasn't compulsively checking the PC-compatibility of my Mac-designed presentation or arguing with my circadian clock about what time it was, I bounced around the exhibits and talks, spending a solid amount of time in the Career Resources Center.  And I gotta say, the EB CRC kicked the SfN CRC's ass so much it wasn't even funny! There were at least 3 or 4 workshops going on at any given time between 8 am and 4 pm, plus a job board, plus a private area for interviews, plus people who would critique your CV.  In addition to the expected topics like "how to write a great cover letter," "the NIH peer review process," and "how to give a dynamic talk" (hot damn was that one packed!  You'd think it had never occurred to anyone to label their x- and y-axes before, the way they were all scribbling furiously), there were some unconventional (and, it should be noted, poorly attended) workshops as well.

I went to the "social media and career development" workshop because I am kind of a crazy social media junky, and was curious to hear how all of my internet friends could help me get a job.  Sadly, I was not impressed.  I mean, here was this guy, trying to explain Twitter to people, and he hadn't thought to put a screen shot of a Twitter feed in his presentation?  People (especially in the scientific community, it seems) are absolutely clueless about what Twitter is for besides reading about what Ashton Kutcher ate for lunch, and hearing nothing but "well you see, you follow people and see their tweets, and people who follow you see your tweets" is not all that helpful.

Oh, how did my talk go?  I think it went pretty well.  I was a little nervous, and kept saying "channels" when I meant "receptors," but I think in general I was clear and told a good story.  I'll admit, though, it was not the easiest thing in the world to present my former advisor's data.  It's not that I didn't know it well enough or anything, it's just that on a certain level I couldn't own the work the way I can my own.  There was a mediated discussion after all four parts of the symposium were finished, and I pretty much completely BS'd my way through my answer to what was, frankly, a not-all-that-answerable question (DrugMonkey, I truly hope you'd left by that point!)

The best part of the whole meeting, though, was a long chat I had after my talk with one of my contemporaries, a post-doc who left my lab for a second post-doc just before I arrived, and who's just accepted a TT job offer.  We talked lots of science, and then some jobby stuff, about which he had some interesting things to say.  First, he's currently in one of the departments that had an opening I applied to, and he said that they got 1200 applications for that position, and that the people who got interviews had 7-8 years of post-doc experience.  So I'm thrilled to hear that the 7-8 year post-doc is the new 4-5 year post-doc--just like 35 is the new 25, yes?  Along those lines, he also said something very wise.  He said "Look, if you get a job tomorrow, it's not going to be as good as the job you'd get in a year or two."  This is totally true, and made me feel significantly better about my situation.  Do I want the job that awesome-ish me could get now, or the job that super-awesome me could get after a couple more fancy papers?  Door number 2, please!

Finally, when I asked him how he thought I fielded that discussion question, he said "I think it was an appropriately verbose and evasive answer, given the question."  Hahahaha!! I am going to be such a good scientist!!

Interview with a new-hire

I opened my inbox recently to find a mass email from someone I'd known in grad school.  He was in a different program and I wouldn't say we were good friends, but if life is a Venn diagram--and oh, it is--our circles most definitely overlapped.  I hadn't spoken to him since I left, but it seems he's done very well for himself in that time, because the purpose of the email was to notify apparently everyone on the planet that he'd just taken a faculty position at a very Classy Institution here in the city.  I had two thoughts:

1.  Three words, dude.  Blind. Carbon. Copy.  Perhaps you're familiar?
2.  I have got to pick this guy's brain.

So I sent him a quick email congratulating him on his new job and asking if we could grab coffee so I could grill him on his techniques and strategies for successfully navigating the current market.  He happily agreed, and we met up yesterday at the local Pain Quotidien for a little tartine and tenure-track talk. 

The first piece of advice he offered was, "Be sure to have multiple offers, so you have some negotiating leverage."  First, not last.  I cleared my throat and asked if we might back up a few steps?  As it turns out, his story is quite awesome, and his path somewhat unconventional.  Apparently he hadn't been planning on looking for jobs until this current cycle, but last spring he was invited to give a job talk at one of NYCs Classy Institutions.  When that went well, he thought it might be a good idea to shop himself around a bit, so he asked friends and friends of friends if they knew of any departments that were also looking, sent out a few CVs, gave a few more talks, and here he is, just a few months later, an Assistant Professor with what I understand to be a ridiculously kick ass start-up package.

Now, this guy is a real superstar.  His research is achingly (and I mean achingly) sexy, and he has genuine expertise in very specific and powerful techniques.  He was surprisingly modest, attributing his success partly to being in the right place at the right time with respect to his post-doc work.  This may be true, but I think that he also recognized that he was in the right place at the right time, and knew how to take advantage of that. 

But additionally, he must have had some good interviewing skills, so I asked him about that.  He said that everyone is going to ask you where you see yourself in five years, so to be very, very prepared to answer that in as concrete terms as possible--meaning, knowing exactly what sciencey questions you want to have answered, what techniques you'll use, how that will set you up for work further down the line...etc.  You have to have your life all planned out, essentially.  No biggie.  This is fine for me, actually; since the research proposal part of my K99 application was well-received, I in fact do have a 5-year research plan that I know well and am excited to talk about.

When I got home, I checked the job boards and there was a new one:  THE job.  The ad said something like, "we have two open faculty positions in the area of Dr Becca's Big Ideas." I mean really, it's like they read my K99 proposal and created the job (two of them!) just for me.  I am so excited to apply for this job I almost can't sit still.  The ad states that I have up to 4 pages to describe my research, which is a lot, and means I can really hash out my plans.  I am going to wow the pants off that search committee! 

PS--are you dying from how clever the title of this post is?  I'm really patting myself on the back, here.

Week in Review

It's been quite a week.

After a rough Saturday night processing the fact that my K-99 was in the bottom half of the applicant pool, I was feeling better Sunday.  I screamed myself hoarse at the NYC marathon (and really, there is little that does a better job of making your problems seem insignificant than when there are thousands of people--especially those who are older than your parents and/or missing limbs--streaming by you who are Running. Twenty-six. Miles.), and then came home to cook all afternoon for a mini dinner party J and I were having that night.  I love entertaining, and there's something about all the prep work for a party that I love almost as much as the party itself, so I was a happy camper chopping veggies and whatnot for a couple of hours.

Monday, though, the wounds were opened fresh again when I went to lab and had to tell everyone what had happened with the grant.  It was hard because of course people wanted to talk about it, when really talking about it is the last thing I wanted to do, because there's nothing talking can do but make me angry and sad.  Had I been more forward thinking I'd have had a t-shirt made that read "The grant's been triaged; can we talk about baseball?"  Instead, I fielded sympathetic looks all day, and while I adore my lab-mates, I despise the feeling of people feeling sorry for me.

Things brightened on Wednesday, when THE YANKEES WON THE WORLD SERIES!!!!!!!!  I feel like I've been waiting forever for this, because I only started going to games regularly in 2002.  I actually had tickets to game 7 had it happened, but I was genuinely happy that it didn't have to.  And if there's anything that can make you forget your troubles for a while, it's throwing your arms around strangers and singing "New York, New York" at the top of your lungs while champagne is passed around.  Yesterday J and I played hooky and went down to the ticker tape parade, and while there were way too many people for us to get anywhere near the parade, we did see a lot of ticker tape paper floating through the buildings downtown, which was very beautiful.

 With respect to my career (this is what this blog's supposed to be about, no?), Thursday was the best day and here's why:  I went to hear a visiting speaker, and the speaker turned out to be someone from my graduate program!  She had been in her 4th or 5th year when I started so I didn't know her too well, but now she is a bona fide Assistant Professor at a super Classy Institution!  Her work is so sexy it hurts (in a good way) and it was just so incredibly inspiring to see someone from my generation be so successful.  What's more, she is still the very down-to-earth and nice person I remember her being, so it's encouraging to know that one doesn't have to become an aggressive bitch in order to make it as a woman in science.

So I'm back on the horse, as they say!  I have more applications to send out this week, and thanks to Candid Engineer's excellent synopsis of what she learned at the  Negotiating the Ideal Faculty Position (NIFP) workshop and DrdrA's comprehensive guide to applying for faculty jobs, I think I've tweaked my cover letter and research statement for the better.  Onward and upward!