Tuesday, September 9, 2014

On Being a PI (Book Review---At the Helm)

(This is a book review I recently published on a forum.)


“Scientists are notorious for being unable to say ‘No!’ and are very poor managers of their (limited) time. This leads progressively to an over-burdened, over-worked, harassed and distracted individual who has no time for lab or family.” (Caveman 2000)



1. The missing training with a well-trained scientist

So far I have recruited four undergrads who volunteered to work for 8-10 hours per week in my presently-empty lab. During interviews I told them, “You set your own schedule, but once you’ve decided on it, please try to stick to it. You’re welcome to bring homework to the lab if there isn’t much to do.” Having flexible hours is one of the biggest advantages of working in academia. The reason for me to be strict came from past experience working in my advisors’ labs. That is, for unpaid undergrads, except a few highly motivated, once they are used to not showing up, you’ll see them less and less often over time.

This is one example of what new PIs do---they make decisions and establish styles based on previous observations of what have or have not worked for their advisors. With extensive training in almost every aspect of academia, they have never been trained on how to be a PI. Although replicating the labs they have worked in can be an effective strategy in some situations, sooner or later they will run into challenges, because they are in a new institution, with different student qualities, and most importantly, what have been proven to be golden doctrines in an established lab with an experienced PI may fail a starter.

This book focuses on all kinds of issues that are likely to be encountered in the early stage of a PI’s career. I especially appreciate the fact that the opinions are not from a single source. For most of the topics that are covered, the author, Kathy Barker, has interviewed dozens of successful PIs throughout the country. Some of the arguments are contradictory to one another, because there isn’t supposed to be a universal answer. Given your skills, personality, and the environment, you choose your style and come up with your own solutions. As mentioned above, beginners tend to imagine there is an ideal way of surviving every situation, and they often resort to memories of their mentors. With the many options listed in the book, you may gain more freedom when designing your career, and the author tries not to make judgments on your preferences. There are questions with no answers, just to bring up your attention on the issues. Even if you have no idea what you would do facing those situations, learning the questions in advance can be a great help. “There are occasions when you have to rush, but more than often, composure is what people want the most from their leader.” (The Starlight Fortress)

Note that this isn’t a book that is meant to please you, i.e., to make you feel good about yourself (nor is the career as a PI in general, to be fair). It will point out mistakes you have made, and may even forecast the regrets you are going to have later according to others’ experience. You will read about issues you wish you’d never run into in your entire career, but bear in mind that the intention of the book is to be preventive; living through an imagined crisis is, after all, easier than handling it in real life. In the worst case when things do happen, it can be comforting to know that you aren’t the sole individual in the world who is suffering from an imprudent hire, or crying over the permanent loss of experimental data.

2. The guts to say “No”

Recently someone on this forum complained about being frequently occupied with various administrative duties and left with only scattered time slots for research. We really can’t afford that to happen! A PI should never grant others the right to take charge of his schedule. I work at an institution where everyone uses Google Calendar that allows colleagues or students to see one another’s schedules (they know you’ll be busy at a certain time without knowing the exact details). It’s easy for people to assume that, for any blank period on your calendar, you’ll be available at that time and they can just pop up or send you a Calendar Invitation to schedule something.  A colleague once shared his schedule with me, and I saw that he even put down “12 pm, lunch” on every single day! Poor guy, I thought.

A request can be difficult to decline if we indeed have an open slot, not one with which we forgot to note an event. However, having nothing scheduled does not mean you are obligated to fulfill someone’s request. Especially if that chunk of time has been intended for you to read papers or write grants or visit your lab, it’s actually not an open time slot and you should say no. Find another time, and if the meeting doesn’t demand much thinking, find a time with which you can’t do intellectual things anyway. If we can’t control our own time, how are we going to be the masters of our labs?

Speaking of time management, we all have some ideas about priorities, about sticking to our plans, but why do we still struggle for more time to do what we really want to do? The book categorizes a PI’s common activities into four categories.
1) Urgent and important, such as grant deadlines, personal (e.g., health) or professional (e.g., tenure) crises, equipment problems (e.g., broken machines).
2) Not urgent but important, such as reading papers, lab meetings, thinking and planning.
3) Urgent but not important, such as certain phone calls or mails, administrative meetings or duties.
4) Not urgent and not important, which can include a lot of things.

We admit that urgent and important things (Cat-A, grants, etc) have to be dealt with seriously in a timely manner. We don’t ignore urgent but unimportant duties (Cat-C, meetings, etc.), however reluctant or resentful we might be in carrying out the tasks. What matters is that, with only that many hours every day, plans that are important but time insensitive (Cat-B, reading papers, etc.) often get pushed aside. Sometimes Cat-B can even yield to Cat-D, such as sitting on meaningless committees or listening to gossips, mainly because we are unable to say no (another reason may be that Cat-B doesn’t pay off immediately). You could argue that we aren’t machines; what the fun of life is if we aren’t allowed to relax. That’s absolutely true when you have the leisure to dissipate, but not when little time is left for research.

We have probably all met a few businessmen-typed PIs. If you ask them about their current schedule, they have meetings every day, and two incoming grant deadlines.  Check back two months later, the same thing. This may work for a senior PI whose lab has several postdocs or scientists, each being responsible for his own project, attending conferences and keeping up with literature. In other words, the PI has well-trained people who are doing the Cat-B for him, and all he needs to do is pay for the publications. For a new PI with at most a technician and a few students who count on him to write programs and papers for them, this can be suicidal. Under the current funding situation, we are often advised to “keep sending proposals out”. Well, yes and no. Why should any organization fund you if you no longer advance in science?

The book especially urges beginner PIs to spend adequate time thinking and planning. It can be tormenting not to have publishable data for the first year or two, and the quickest way to circumvent the problem is continue on your previous projects---“to tie up loose ends, to bolster earlier conclusions with still more evidence, and to explore side issues” (Vermeij 1997). Different opinions are offered here. Some think that having a productive project as soon as possible is all that matters; you can always explore new ideas later. Others caution on this strategy because once you have something going, you are less willing to take a risk in a new area that may involve investments in new equipment and endless trial and error.

Whichever path you adopt, be sure to think carefully and don’t rush into actions. I once came across a quote related to novel writing. “One of the problems we have as writers is we don't take ourselves seriously while writing; being serious is setting aside a time and saying if it comes, good; if it doesn’t come, good, I’ll just sit here.” (Maya Angelou) So instead of putting down “12 pm, lunch” on my calendar, I have reserved a whole afternoon every week marked with “Cat-B”. I’ll go all the way to protect that sacred time, and if on a particular day, for some reason, I couldn’t read papers or write computer programs or create research plans, I’ll just sit there.

Note that sometimes we have to say no to offers that appear to be attractive but do not essentially agree with our best interest. After I had recruited the undergrads, I was called for a meeting with the Director of the Graduate Program in our college. He encouraged me to take a couple of Master’s students by promising full tuition coverage. Had I not read the book, I might have considered it. At the moment I have enough to worry about my own future. The last thing I want is the responsibility of another person’s future. I don’t feel too bad to engage the undergrads in cleaning and shelving, but I would be sleep-deprived knowing that, in a year or two, the Master’s students will need something for their theses. On this forum we have also read stories about the regrets a PI can have by taking Ph.D. students that have been offered “for free”. After spending a tremendous amount of time and energy in training a student, a PI may end up in a fruitless mentorship. The frustration to both the PI and the student can be painful, although it may bring excitement to other lab members as they speculate “Is he going to fire her?”

All right, there is a fine line between selling a book and pirating its content, and I should probably stop here. If I have to give a negative comment, I’d say that the arrangement of the topics can be improved. For example, the section on Working with a Secretary / Administrative Assistant appears quite early in the book. Maybe it’s just my field, but I’ve never met a PI who has the luxury of hiring a full-time secretary to work solely for him. When fifty pages later I saw the prudence one needs to have in evaluating candidates, I had already finished my hiring process.

A final message. It’s not rare to come across negative or passive attitudes from PIs on this forum, evidenced by complaints of losing interests in research, or statements that being a PI is just another job to pay the bills. There can be various reasons for it to happen (some are listed in the book), but I hope people realize that it is to their own benefit to stay motivated with their projects, because research is more productive if we genuinely care about it, and life is more gratifying when we feel proud of what we do (this applies to any type of job). Off topic here, over the years I’ve noticed a trend of “devalulization” (I know this isn’t a real word) among certain Chinese, here and in China, towards arts, science, and faith. Does it look smart or cool if a person appears to care nothing about spiritual things, I wonder. But it’s a personal choice. To me, being a PI is about enjoying the fun of science despite funding pressures, setting realistic goals without forgoing your wildest dreams, hanging on a little longer after others have all quit.

About being yourself and yourself alone.


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Comments highly appreciated! - Fiona