psyc girl tries a new home

Hi Everyone! Long time no blog, am I right?

In the meantime, during my hiatus, I've been working on a new home.

For the foreseeable future, that's where I will be blogging! The archives will follow, eventually.

ch-ch-ch-changes!

So lots is changing chez Psyc Girl, both online and offline.

Offline lots of positive things are going on. I'm beginning to get a grip on my career and what I want it to look like. There are lots of posts outlined and in progress about this.

Online, I am recommitting to the blog. I want to blog more, in a more organized way, with a more organized system. I'm in the process of tidying up the archives and streamlining the blog template.

In the meantime, most of the blog has been moved offline, except these 6 most recent posts. Looking forward to writing for all y'all when I return.

Is there anything in particular you think I should write about, in the new iteration of STFPG?

where the f$@& is academia going?

A female academic I know sent me an email this week: She was in a mixed-gender meeting. Everyone in the room was equals. All of the men were being referred to as "Dr," whereas the women were being called by their first names. I wish I could say I felt surprised.

As this week wrapped up, I felt a lot of academic outrage fatigue. (Side note: I find twitter contributes to this fatigue because it amplifies my exposure to outrage-inducing stories, I'm not sure if this is good or bad or neither).

There was the LaCour scandal (I appreciate how this is now being called the LaCour scandal, not the Green scandal, although certainly Green had a role to play in this). (Also read here, an article that does a better job than I could of discussing what we need to learn from the LaCour scandal). In addition, tenure in Wisconsin is experiencing some serious threats that we should all be quite worried about (in my opinion). (That article also talks about the decrease in tenured positions at the time that administrative positions garnering very large pay checks has increased). There was also this Canadian story that highlights (briefly) the push-pull between teaching and research, and how this can impact graduate students and junior faculty.

And these are just some of the stories of academic outrage - I could write and write and write about the many other injustices going on, but have chosen to focus on this (more on that below). 

This weekend my new partner and I decided to try Arthur Aron's (et al) 1997 procedure for generating closeness. We were both familiar with it (he from a news story, me from graduate school coursework) and thought it was interesting. One of the questions I really struggled with asked what I would like to know if a crystal ball could tell me the truth about myself, life, the future, or anything else. I was really stumped by this (for reasons that aren't relevant to this blog post).

After some thought I said: "I wish I knew if academia was going to change at all. I feel trapped in a system with many problems, overwhelmed with how much I wish would change, and discouraged at effecting any change."

There are many, many aspects of academia I love. Even if you probably wouldn't guess it from reading my blog or listening to me vent. Academia involves a constant quest for knowledge, the opportunity to be a positive influence on students, independence, and opportunities to travel and meet new people. (The first four advantages that come to mind for me).

But there are also so many aspects of academia that I am exhausted by: The sexism (blatant and clear, or subtle every day sexism). The divide between junior and senior professors. Cuts to funding, threats to academic freedom. Poor dissemination of findings. In fighting. Racism. Lack of tolerance for anyone who doesn't fit the mold. A hyper-competitive environment that encourages us to eat each other alive rather than support one another. Abusive supervisors. Reviewers that can't exercise basic human kindness.

I have academic outrage fatigue. I'd love a crystal ball to tell me if change is possible (I suspect that academics have been complaining about these very issues since long before I was born) so I can either continue trying to impact the system I work in, or pack it in and just look after myself. Attempting to change the system is exhausting. I don't quite know how to push this rock uphill while protecting my own well-being, and that feels like a deep personality flaw on my part.  

not every thing is easy for every person

One thing I do that I don't blog about much is read a ton of books tangentially related to academia. These books often inspire ideas and posts, which sometimes get finished and sometimes do not. I've decided to introduce the post label "psyc girl reads a book" and purposefully blog about the things I'm reading more often. 

I just finished reading this book: Multipliers: How The Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter, which was recommended to me by a friend. I really like the premise of the book (how to be the kind of leader who maximizes everyone's potentially, basically) and the fact that the authors have conducted their own research, which lends some street cred to the book in my view. I did not, however, completely love the book - I found the stories distracting after a while (I'm lazy, give me the details) and I was overwhelmed by the sheer number of recommendations. However, the authors note multiple times in the book that it would be crazy and overwhelming to implement all of the interventions they discuss.

In their chapter on being a talent magnet (a good start to being a Multiplier), the authors mention the concept of "native genius," which I found quite intriguing. According to Wiseman, "a native genius is something that people do, not only exceptionally well, but absolutely naturally. They do it easily (without extra effort) and freely (without condition)" (p. 47) This is something you do that comes naturally, doesn't require a herculean effort on your part, and without need for reward (according to the authors. That's what they mean by "without condition"). Furthermore, native genius might come so easily no one realizes they have this talent or skill that is even remotely special.

This concept was recently presented to me by someone else (but I didn't then have the label for it). In conversation, the person I was chatting with informed me that he believed I had some type of innate talent for some aspects of my professional life, because I managed to do quite easily and with little effort things that other people found quite challenging or impossible. The examples were my ability to organize my time and set goals.

"Those things aren't even hard," was my response. Now that I've read Multipliers, I'm realizing that "this isn't even that hard" might be a phrase that indicates a native genius skill.

Sometimes Often Pretty much constantly, I (and ECB as well) get frustrated by the things that I find incredibly easy that other people around me can't seem to do. I don't understand why they can't do "the simplest things." I realize now that my "simple things" might be someone else's impossibility or complete nightmare. Likewise, there are lots of things I suck at (organizing schedules for multiple people is one of them, for example) that other people I work with find relatively easy. I'm in awe of them - my brain can't seem to wrap itself around a task that others can do.

What to do with this concept? Two things, in my opinion:

First, as Multipliers recommends, observe those who work under us, find their native genius, and create opportunities for them. I think this could be especially helpful for a lab or team, where ostensibly each member likely has different native geniuses and you could likely maximize the team's output, happiness, and cohesiveness by developing everyone's (hopefully) complementing native geniuses.

Second, use the concept of native genius to dig deep for patience and empathy. When I'm incredibly frustrated that the people around me can't seem to do what I can do, I hope I am now able to remind myself that my native genius does not equal their native genius, and to also remember they they will have their own native genius that might be something I actually find impossible.

be the three bullet point full professor (a bit)

Peer reviews are really important to me (See this previous post for some reasons why). In many academic niches they really make the (academic) world go round and so it is important that we do them, do them well (enough), and do them in a timely manner. (It's also important we do them without being an asshole, but I'm going to tell myself all of my blog readers already know how to do that, because you are nice, kind, and supportive people).

This doesn't mean that I necessarily enjoy doing peer reviews or that I don't find them to be a pain in the ass. Mostly for reasons related to me consistently forgetting to put time in my calendar to do them (but also sometimes because I get sick of reading the same terrible manuscript that I've rejected over and over again).

Recently I sat down at a cafe to review a manuscript that had made its way to me a second time because of the first R&R decision from the editor. The first thing I decided to do was read through the other reviews and the response letter from the authors to gauge how well they had responded to my comments and the comments of the other three reviewers.

There was my review, about a page long. There were the reviews of Reviewer 2, same length. Reviewer 3 wrote about 2 pages of comments, which I thought was a bit long but they seemed reasonable and justified.

Then I got to Reviewer 4.

Reviewer 4's entire review was three bullet points long. 

(and no, it wasn't "this paper is so amazing you should accept it")

This epitomizes for me how I'm feeling about work these days. I'm the one-page professor, who feels guilty for not doing a "better job." I'm surrounded with three-bullet point professors who probably don't feel guilty at all (in my mind). And in my crankiness I see nothing but benefits from being the three bullet point professor: More time for research and grant writing. Less stress. Not taking home work to do late at night.

Note: All of those benefits might not even be true, I know this.

I'm so tired out these days. Work is requiring a lot of effort. So Be The Three Bullet Point Professor (at least a bit) is, for now, my new motto for productivity.