An ant sailing towards that distant horizon

I walk out of his office. I am an ant, no--smaller than that--a flea, a tiny thing that no one would notice they’d squished inadvertently.

It starts. He interrupts the lunch I’m eating in front of my computer screen. “Flea (I’m not using my real name here, of course), I need to talk to you,” he says in a fear-inspiring voice that only be mimicked by a man who has scolded his own children after breaking mom’s crystal vase.
I gave him my draft of the paper we’re going to submit. Though that was a week ago, so perhaps this means that he’s finally read the thing. I am #4 in the line for papers being published. I guess he’s pretty tired of editing at this point.
I sit down in his office, trying to stop my heart from exploding out of my chest and my hands from trembling. It can’t be that bad, I think.
“I just don’t understand why it is that you can’t write?”
Me: “Excuse me?”
“I expect this from others who I’ve written papers with whose second language is English, but I expect better from you”.
I retreat into my safety zone in my head. I have had 4 job offers that involve scientific writing, and published an article online last year. It’s ok, I say to myself—you know better than that. Just ignore him.
“What is the problem? You’re always rolling your eyes at me! What have I done to offend you?” He takes off his glasses.
I stop the mental image of me smashing his head into the computer screen. I look at him. Perhaps he’s serious. Maybe he’s ready to listen, I’ve only been telling him for a year now, but yes—this could be the moment.
Me: “Well, I’ve been miserable for over a year now, and you only pay attention to 2 postdoc in the lab, and I’m working all alone on this project.” (Not to mention that I’ve only presented my data 3 times after 3 years of working here)
“Why do you say that I only pay attention to 2 postdocs?”
This favoritism is so obvious, in fact, that I openly joke about it with everyone in the lab, including THE Favorite. I’m not the only one who jokes about it, either.
I tell him why, and then he goes on the attack. First with the excuses. Then it gets personal.

“You know, I’ve done everything for you…. blah blah. And it’s not true that I play favorites… blah blah. That super famous researcher that you wanted to meet with—she’s a shark. And well, she only had time to speak with me and (“Favorite #2”). I already apologized for that.
An aside-- I spoke with Super famous researcher twice, after 2 different seminars she gave in Paris, and she was very interested in speaking with me. The last time we spoke, she offered me the mutant mice that they’ve bred onto a special GFP background for watching movement of stuff in real-time. The lab is already collaborating with her, through Favorite #2, so I don’t know what her being a shark has to do with the argument, except that I guess I’m supposed to be grateful to him for protecting me from her.

I can’t argue with him any more, I won’t win. I can’t win. I never win. Why does it even matter? I’m going to a new job and I don’t have to deal with this any more. I relax, my face muscles go loose and I assume the role of the passive employee.

He waxes prosaic. “You know, when I started in science -“Dr. A.” (a famous researcher back in NY) asked me if they still required students to take English class at Berkley, because my grant proposals were so badly written. And Dr. A helped me out…. I really have tried to find other people to work on this project, you believe me don’t you? I have suffered too, there have been a lot more adjustments and problems and difficulties setting up this department than I anticipated…. I need you to realize that I am working for you too. I support you. We can’t work together like this.”

At this point, my conditioning kicks in (it’s been about a year to a year and a half that I’ve experienced these recurrent episodes in his office) and I say something like, “Well, I’m here in your office trying to write this paper with you aren’t I? After 4 years this story (my research project) deserves to be told.”
He interrupts—“and it WILL be told. Don’t forget that there are other people out there who are following this story. THEY want to know what happens. Even if I were to be hit by a bus tomorrow, the story would continue. It’s bigger than me, even.

You know what you can do? You can read the sentences out aloud to see if they sound good….”

I go back to my happy place, but it’s on a sailboat now, sheets of paper with my figure legends on them are floating by, edited in bold red pen strokes, but I don’t stop to pick them up. I keep on sailing into the sunset.

Postdoc journal: April 3, 2008

The danger of feeling undervalued as a Postdoc is that you start to think: "why bother?"


For instance, if no one notices that I'm responsible for ordering half of the things we need in the lab, then I should start hiding what I need for my experiments and let everyone else fend for themselves, right?

My boss routinely enters the lab and speaks to one of 2 postdocs, rather than stopping by each person's bench. I concede that these 2 are pregnant, and will soon be leaving the lab on maternity leave, but I'll be leaving the lab soon too, as I intend on publishing and getting out of here before the coverslips have dried for my last experiment. Evidently, I have to get knocked up in order to get his attention.

He insists that the reason we don't communicate well is because I don't "stop by his office". Well, the only time I've seen him today was when I ran into him in the hall and he asked me where favorite #1 was.

And then there are stories like this, that are just--totally demoralizing.
I found out from favorite #2 that a visiting professor was giving a talk nearby, and my boss had scheduled a special meeting with her, himself, and the favorite postdoc. I asked my boss if I could attend the meeting as well, since I know a postdoc in this lab is working on the same mouse as I am, and we're friends, in fact. He said, "No, I don't want to take the focus away from (#2's) project". I found out that during the meeting my boss discussed not only the project on skin of favorite #2 who attended the meeting, but also the project of favorite #1 which is totally unrelated. My project was not discussed, though it is more closely related to the visiting scientist's interests.

It sounds like he is not interested in my studies at all, doesn't it? But I can't publish this paper without him. There's the rub. And this is how the world of science turns. There is no honor, no fairness, only the motto, "She who publishes first is the better postdoc, it's self-evident".

There. It's done.

How is it when I have a conversation with my mentor, I leave his office feeling that my project is going nowhere, and the reason is because I'm a terrible scientist? Also, it's (still) my fault that I don't meet with him enough, even though most times I have to knock on his door 3 days in a row before I can get his attention. It's not a problem for him that I only give lab meeting once every 6 months and discuss my results nearly exclusively with him (when we can find him that is) rather than in a group of peers. Once every six months, well "that's about right for a group this size", he says.

The trick is how I can convince myself that I'm still a good scientist even if I can't get an experiment to work. Ah there's the rub, if you care, then you can be effected by his jibes. The thing is not to care if you're a terrible scientist, because I don't want to be a scientist anymore. There. It's finally done. I'm completely "degouter" as they say in French which roughly translates to the whole Post Doc Experience has left a bad taste in my mouth.

Considering that my boss is the type of guy who catalogs seemingly endless amounts of scientific information in his head, he can't realize that continually repeating "I just don't understand why that experiment X isn't working!!???" while sighing and making that poopy face he does is not considered constructive criticism, and is not in the remotest way helpful. I don't even want to do science as a hobby anymore. I want to never see my smelly, dirty, little biting, shitting, peeing-all-over-me, jumping inside of my labcoat mice again. No more PCRs to genotype mice that I don't even give a shit what the phenotype of the crosses are anyway. No more comments from my boss about the only experiment he seems to care about, an incredibly complex xenografting scheme, which it took one year for me to have enough mice to even start the experiment.

Did I tell you what this grand thing entails? Well, I need female mutants first off, so if you remember your mendalian genetics, that's 25% that will be mutant if you start with heterozygous mice. Then only half of that 25% will be female, so you're talking 12-13% of mice that are conceived will be what I need. Next I need nude mice that have been ovary-ectomized on hand. I take out uterine tissue from the female mutants and put it inside the kidney capsule of the nude mice. Now that sounds all nice and simple, but this entails anesthetising a mouse, cutting open it's back, finding the kidney, then ever so gently lifting the skin that covers it and puncturing the teeny tiniest of holes in it while still holding the skin in the forceps because now you've gotta put the uterine tissue inside the hole you made. To do this you must transfer the tissue from the forceps of your right hand to a clean-looking part of the kidney (because the tissue is translucent and gets lost in the body cavity if you're not careful), then take the blunted glass rod out of your mouth while still looking in the microscope and holding the skin with forceps in your left hand. Now you take the glass rod and squash the little bit of tissue inside the hole, without puncturing the kidney by the way, or tearing the hole in the skin any bigger, or the tissue will fall out again after the surgery. Got all that? Well now you get to sew some stitches in skin of the IP cavity and find the kidney on the other side and do it again with WT uterine tissue. Are you having fun yet? It takes me the whole day to do this experiment.

But again, even though it's technically challenging and I'm not by nature a very meticulous or patient person, I still just have to keep doing this experiment until it works. I mean, former postdoc M. got it to work, so I must be able to make it work too. Mind you, Dr. M does heart surgery on mice now, and my future career aspirations are to type on a keyboard. Perhaps continuing to push me on this is a slight miscalculation on his part? Is a broken post-doc a useful person to have in the lab?