Am I suppose to please?

I am fairly collaborative and in general am in the favor of collaboration when it is in mutual interest of both parties.

I had a grant submission that was based on my previous work of 4 years. I wanted to submit a grant based on the preliminary results that I had. Note that the sub-field is different from my graduate adviser and also from my post-doctoral adviser.

Therefore, I gathered all the energy and spent 3 to 4 months of polishing my grant (which was not funded by the way because of one bad review).

Before the submission, I had a senior colleague pointed to me that if I want to submit she is willing to collaborate.  I didn't see a point in collaboration since I had all the expertise and results that were needed. Therefore I went alone.

Ah, just to point out this is the same person who stole one of my idea (that was all mine; was not a result of a discussion) and made a PhD student started working on it (with another collaborator). She is very senior and well funded and has a lot of political power in the department. This is at least what I think.

Now I am getting a cold shoulder on various aspects from her. What I am suppose to do. Do I need to please my senior colleagues so that they don't vote against me in my tenure case? or am I suppose to do what I think is good for me and keep on doing what I do best.

Are academics isolated and alone?

It has been more than 6 months since I started my TT position. For sometime I have been thinking if academics are generally isolated and/or feel alone?

For me I have been feeling this way. For one, I am much younger than other faculty members in the department and there isn't much time (or energy) that I have after my daily grind.

In general I am good with social situations and have very close friends, but none of them are in vicinity and I take a lot of time to make friends. But with the kind of work TT has loaded on my head it seems that I might not have a friend outside ( or inside) work.

It would be interesting to see what other TT people have to say about this.

Students meeting irregularity

I have a PhD student who I meet after every other week. I send him an email that we can meet on this day and time. Then the student will reply and say that we will meet and I set aside a time to meet this student.

This is the second time the student has cancelled the meeting at the last minutes citing different reasons. I am not sure how to deal with this but this does not seem acceptable.

Taking the summer off?

I had to go through a surgery last week. It all went well, the support staff and the surgeon did an excellent job and we all came home the same day. But this post is not about the awesome work that these health professionals do.

This post is about the public perception of an academic.

During the course of the day I was asked several time what I did for a living. I said that I was a professor at University xx.

"Oh that really great, you must be very smart; so you have a summer off? "

"No ! I have a very active research program and I am writing grants, papers and supervising student in the summers; Oh and I am also establishing a new lab which is a real pain the butt"

"Also I am not paid by the department to do all this stuff in the summers"

I didn't say this last line as every one was polite and I wanted to be as well. But all these questions made me think that the pretext of these questions was "Oh you are a professor and you are taking a summer off and still getting paid: how wonderful"

I know that FSP and other have touched on this subject multiple times. I am beginning to see what they were saying.

All in all I am very happy that I got my surgery done; am alive and well and recovering fine. Spending time with my wonderful wife and kid has been awesome in this previous week.

Science outreach Blog

I am thinking about building my outreach activities as the lab grows. One thing that I can do right now is to start a blog about the science we do in the lab. I am thinking about putting a blog entry for each paper that is published from our lab. The blog entry will try to explain in laymen terms the science in the paper, what impacts it has on the society and how cool it is to do STEM research.

The blog will serve as a portal for non-scientists to learn science that is otherwise out of their grasp due to grouchy scientists (like me) writing research papers that no one want to read (or a non-scientist reader may not understand). Apart from adult-learning it will also serve as a way to engage students (undergrad, high school) in STEM research activites and the blog may become an effective tool to recruit high school and undergraduate students.

Ofcourse the blog will be associated with my lab and hence will not be anonymous. Needless to say it will not be posted here.

I am wondering what might be the best place the start the blog of this kind: wordpress? blogspot or some kind of wiki pages or should I just create a html page on my lab webpage and start filling it ( I am not sure if this is a good idea)? Any advice?

Submitting a grant is like lottery ticket?

I had a senior collegue chat with me the other day. He asked me how was I doing and if I had submitted a grant. I said yes I have, and will see what will happen. What I meant was that we will see how good or bad reviews we get and if we will get the award or not depends on that.

He replied...good, but you know submitting a grant is like a lottery ticket. You may win and get the money..or you can just buy another one.

This got me thinking. Is submitting and getting a grant really like a lottery? No matter how much sweat and blood I put in the ideas, the writeup, and awesome preliminary results?

For me I don't want to think that this is true (may be it is you tell me). I want to think that the ideas that I put on the paper are worth something. I do acknowledge that there is an element of luck on which reviewer gets your grant proposal and how much money does the PO has etc. But it certainly does not mean that it is like lottery where a random chance would determine your fund-ability. Does it?

Respect my time

Dear Student,

I am busy. I am busy all the time. That is why, you the student who is not my PhD/MS student and has not been admitted to the program, has to take an appointment to meet me.

If you do not have an appointment (and I have a grant submission deadline) you will have to go back and get an appointment with me and then meet me. Otherwise I will turn you away (even if you traveled for 2 hours).

I am sorry. But my time is more important than your time and if you do not respect my time, I cannot respect yours.

Sincerely,
your professor