Celebrating Success (Even if Progress is Slow)

Posted on May 16, 2012 by Athene Donald

Last week (the lack of) women in science actually made it onto BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, when Lesley Yellowlees – President-elect of the Royal Society of Chemistry – spoke out about the lack of women in her own and other scientific disciplines. She got much coverage in the media in general that day, in advance of her keynote speech at Science Scotland (currently she is Vice Principal and Head of the College of Science and Engineering at the University of Edinburgh). Her headline message (or at least what was picked out as the headline; one can only assume she did actually say it) was

It’s clear that the UK is half-a-century behind when it comes to advancing the cause of women scientists.

This was the line that stuck in people’s minds, and was picked up by Angela Saini in her Guardian blog. I had dinner with Lesley earlier this spring when I was in Edinburgh, and I appreciate her concern and that this is a matter close to her heart, but I think this statement, catchy though it may be, is neither really accurate nor helpful. Undoubtedly if you make, as she seems to have done, a direct comparison of the numbers of women elected to the National Academy of Sciences this year (24 out of 84) and compare it with the equivalent elections to the UK’s Royal Society (2 out of 44, as I discussed in a recent post), things look spectacularly bad. If those numbers held up year on year it might be an admissible failing on the UK’s part, but I haven’t seen the evidence to suggest that over time the discrepancy is as bad as that. It may be, I just don’t know. Even so, numbers are not the only part that matters. Firstly, the US has – at least at times – operated a policy of affirmative action which enables people to point a finger at female hires hinting that they were appointed only because they were women. As the relatively recent 2010 MIT report stated, there is a

perception that standards for hiring and promotion of women faculty are lower than for male faculty demonstrated,

This leaves women feeling anxious and insecure in unhelpful ways even if the numbers look superficially encouraging. Secondly, as I discussed recently,  there is the USA’s unhelpful attitude towards maternity leave and how this complicates work-life balance and academic progression. Finally, there is the question of how good the quality of the academic working environmentactually is, something that matters hugely too; the book I reviewed recently suggests things aren’t really very good on that front either in US Laboratories. I have found it telling that when I have written blogposts about the Athena Swan awards, commenters from the US have sighed ‘why don’t we have such a scheme here’. So, poor as the UK’s statistics may be, I simply don’t believe we are half a century behind the US. After all, I was a postdoc in the US around 1980 and at that point I was the first female postdoc in my engineering department at Cornell, and the University used affirmative action to create their first faculty position held by a woman anywhere in the Engineering School. No, we’re way ahead of that here and that was only just over 30 years ago; Lesley’s ‘half a century’ is undoubtedly an exaggeration.

Meanwhile, the Athena Swan awards go from strength to strength over here. More and more universities and departments are achieving their benchmarks, and the recent tranche of winners expanded those numbers further. Last week I went to Leeds to speak at their WISET event celebrating both two departmental awards and also a photographic exhibition of portraits of some of their most successful women, from PhD students to professors. It was a joyful evening to congratulate themselves on how far they have got, whilst still remembering how much further there is to go. For my talk, I was asked, amongst other things, to talk about what ‘Utopia’ would look like, once all departments had achieved Athena awards and there was no longer an issue for women in science. Hard though it is to imagine such a world, where there is no gender pay gap, promotion rates for men and women are identical and there are so many excellent female role models the term has disappeared as outdated and unnecessary, I think the key thing would be when everyone appreciated that all individuals are different, not that men and women are different.

One key factor that was very evident at this enjoyable and successful evening (aside from the fact that the Leeds University catering is excellent), was the explicit buy-in from the university’s leadership. Michael Arthur, their VC, was there to make the welcoming speech but stayed not only through the formal part of the evening, but through all the informal part afterwards when people mingled, admired the photographs – and  of course the food. He said to me how valuable it was for him to get opportunities like this to meet some of the junior staff. I know lecturer Sarah Staniland – a nanotechnologist making headlines with her science on magnetic bacteria and who had been a key player in driving the event as a member of the WISET Steering Committee and the originator of my own invitation – had a long chat with him. I think there was even an opportunity for her to pin him down to committing money towards the future of their work; indeed the VC’s parting shot to me was that the evening had cost him £300,000, presumably (if this follows through and was not just an offhand nicety on which to end the evening) to cover resourcing of post(s) to facilitate future departmental awards in the years ahead. Also there, speaking up and pushing things forward, was Dawn Freshwater Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Staff and Organisational Effectiveness, whose responsibility the diversity agenda is. Relatively recently appointed to this post, she has plenty of time ahead in her term of office to drive through major cultural changes – and is clearly determined to do so. This buy in from senior leadership is vital for universities for progress to be made, a subject I have discussed before.

So, good luck to Leeds! But there a few caveats I want to make about those putting applications in for Athena Swan awards based on conversations I have had with various people in various universities.

1 Do not just expect a junior woman to take the lead, because she is a woman. I came across a case recently where a newly appointed lecturer, in post for less than a year, was being asked to spearhead the departmental bid. This is undoubtedly a case of a woman being asked to take on this task with no thought of her as an individual. A new lecturer – male or female – should have establishing their research and teaching as their top priorities. Putting an Athena Swan submission together is time-consuming and requires knowing your way around departmental and university resources and politics. So, to my mind, an ideal person to do this is a senior male – if it is a male doing it, it strengthens the case by signifying the department sees this as a departmental problem, not simply the women’s problem.

2 Even if a department has received an award – of whatever colour – they should continue to consider whether they are doing things as well as they could. Not so long ago I heard of a department with a Silver award, where they still insisted on holding departmental seminars at 5pm, a time inconvenient for many parents (of either gender). A young mother was being taken to task for never attending in ways that made her both uncomfortable and angry.

3 When universities have a few departments with awards, they can – and should – undoubtedly share what they believe is their own best practice. But every department has to work out what their own issues are and a single template cannot fit all; shortcuts of cutting and pasting someone else’s submission cannot be a solution.

So, congratulations to Leeds and other recent Athena Swan award winners. We should celebrate their success, whilst recognizing we have a long way to go even if we are not a full half century behind the UK.

 

Posted in Equality, Science Culture, Women in Science | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

To Confront or Not to Confront

Posted on May 12, 2012 by Athene Donald

Just over a year ago I pressed the ‘publish’ button on a post with some trepidation. I felt I was exposing some inner anxieties that maybe were better not exposed. Your collective response to the post in question ‘I can hear you’re getting emotional’ amazed me. I realised the power of speaking out about situations that made me feel very uncomfortable (wandering hands and sexist verbal put-downs); collectively we could share experiences and bring out into the open things that too often stay under wraps. I am not sure I really learned any tips I felt I personally could utilise for how to deal with inappropriate behaviour – verbal or physical – but it opened my  eyes to a variety of things, including just how ubiquitous such behaviour is, and how it is subtly culturally nuanced which makes it all the harder to discuss and handle.

Many anecdotes came forward in the comments, which smack of the currecent rent furore in the press – those about AA Gill’s comments about Mary Beard’s appearance and about the misogyny pointed in Louise Mensch’s direction, where gender becomes a convenient focus for vitriol – but rather than reproduce those comments from the previous post here, I suggest you go back and look at them yourself if interested. What I want to look at in the present post, building on that earlier one,  is what the best way to deal with inappropriate behaviour is. For me, tempting though it may be to turn on the individual concerned, confront them explicitly with why their behaviour strikes me as offensive, I have never been convinced it is a fruitful strategy even if I were quick-witted enough with a suitably pithy put-down. Furthermore, particularly when the individual is going to continue to cross one’s path regularly, it may be a case of unwisely burning bridges. An alternative strategy that was clearly used by some of the commenters, was trying to turn the offence off light-heartedly with a joke. In other words, the hypothesis was that humour rather than confrontation is an easier/better way to handle someone who is behaving inappropriately.

I was reminded of this discussion when reading the book Coping with Minority Status (edited by Fabrizio Butera and John M Levine) recently.  The relevant chapter, Managing the Message by Swim, Gervais, Pearson and Stanger, specifically looked at the consequences of different methods of dealing with verbal discrimination – sometimes in the context of sexist remarks, but other situations (such as racist ones) too. Now this is a book written by serious psychologists; their analyses are not based on anecdote but on controlled studies, where subjects try out different courses of action under specified circumstances. I leave it to others to judge how well this mimics the sorts of situations I alluded to in my earlier post, or whether the conclusions based on ‘lab-work’ can easily be carried across to the lab. But, with those caveats in mind, here is what they conclude if an individual tries to confront a perpetrator.

Three strategies for handling the situation were explored, closely mimicking the different strategies commenters proposed: ignoring the remark completely, making a joke about it, or directly confronting it. The analysis considered how the perpetrator reacted as a result of these strategies, specifically looking at how ‘competent’ and ‘likeable’ the confronter was perceived to be as a result of their actions. The news is not all good.  Although the confrontation may have had an impact on the perpetrator, reducing the likelihood they will repeat similar remarks, it was also likely to change their perception of the person doing the confronting. In other words, as women in this position have often intuitively felt, there is a cost associated with ‘making a fuss’. Those who tried to turn the remarks off with a joke, were felt to be less competent, whereas those who directly confronted the situation were seen as less likeable and viewed with hostility.

All confronters were seen as more complaining and less likeable than if individuals did nothing. Telling a joke decreased the likelihood of these negative impressions, but those who told jokes were seen as less competent than those who made more direct confrontations. Although the joke could possibly have other effects that would help prejudice reduction, such as conveying that the perpetrator has strayed past a prescriptive norm, the light-hearted nature of the joke may make this violation seem trivial. In contrast, those who made more direct responses were seen as more competent than those who told jokes. Yet direct confronters were seen as more complaining and less likeable than those who made a joke.

So there’s the informed position, which rather confirms many people’s fears that you can’t win if put in this position by a colleague. When faced with some personal attack, or at least infringement, you have a split second decision to make, which roughly can be represented as: do I want to be seen as likeable or competent or is it simply not worth making a fuss? In practice, such a cost-benefit analysis will be the last thing on one’s mind, and how one reacts will depend on everything else going on around one. But, if the behaviour is persistent, then possibly it is more useful to take time to consider what strategy is most beneficial. It is also interesting to note in the book that it is clear each of us has a very different threshold as to what provokes us, based on prior social interactions and support systems (in other words one’s self-identity), another point that the earlier post discussion made very clear.

There we have it. The limited anecdotal information provoked in the comments by my description of my failure to cope with inappropriate behaviour directed at me, has a formal mirror and place in the psychology literature. I am not sure it helps me work out strategies, but it is always good to go beyond anecdote. Nevertheless, I am pleased to say that in the year that has passed since my original post, I haven’t had to deal with any extreme situations where the tips you collectively passed on could be put to the test. Indeed, I notice that men (always men I think) sometimes seem as if they’re about to pat me on the arm and then visibly back off. Perhaps I now ooze noli me tangere so strongly they wouldn’t dare, even in situations where it wouldn’t have caused me any offence. However, my own personal experiences do not give me optimism the world has radically changed, so much as I may have done. A year older, a year tougher and perhaps those wanting to harass are finding easier victims – the young and less secure – to target. I would love to believe that wasn’t true, but….

Posted in Equality, Women in Science | Tagged , , | 6 Comments

Collini and Science

Posted on May 6, 2012 by Athene Donald

A couple of months ago Stefan Collini published his book ‘What are Universities for?’ to much interest. This book was reviewed in many places including here on OT by Erika Cule, although overall the reviews were pretty mixed. Peter Conrad for one, was less than enthusiastic in the Observer, concluding

What universities are emphatically not for is to subsidise the self-pity of those they employ.

I tend to get around to reading books long after they’ve faded from the best-seller lists, and it would be pointless to add belatedly another review to the myriad already out there written by a variety of distinguished scholars (I use this word advisedly, as I’ll expand on below). However I would like to chip in with my thoughts specifically on Collini’s attitude towards science and scientists, which I found rather dispiriting.

Collini is a colleague of mine, in so far as he is Professor of Intellectual History and English Literature in the University of Cambridge. I have, however, never knowingly met him within the University so I have no first-hand knowledge of the man and I can only judge his attitude towards me and those of my ilk – viz, scientists – by the tone of his book. And, much though I can applaud many of the sentiments he expresses about the current assault on education as a public good, I do take grave exception to the constantly rather snide allusions and comments made about scientists in the book. For Collini it would seem that science, because it can be applicable, is also impure and in some senses almost unworthy of its place in a university. He makes a constant point of separating out ‘scholars’ from ‘scientists’ as if he is separating the sheep and the goats, or the wheat from the chaff.  In which case he clearly equates me with the chaff. I find this disappointing. We are all in this together – a point he himself makes – and universities would be the weaker if either the humanities or the sciences were somehow suddenly to be seen as dispensable.

I wrote some time ago about how I feel the long-standing tension between the humanities and science originally arose in part on class grounds.  I feel this sentiment lurks throughout the book, with the constant implication that humanities scholars sit on higher ground than us mere scientifically-motivated mortals. We only try to make sense of the ‘physical world’, as opposed to the aspirations of the humanities scholars who tackle the so-called ‘human world’ in Collini’s lexicon. I suspect this argument is made more convincing in Collini’s eyes because of all the current anxiety about so-called impact in the context of the REF.  This is a subject which absorbs a whole chapter of the book, which is a reproduction of what he wrote on the subject in 2009. Many scientists are just as disturbed by some of the ideas underlying impact as Collini and his colleagues and, again, it does no one any favours for him to get huffy because some portion of the work in the sciences undeniably satisfies the simplest interpretation of impact, which is that there is demonstrable contribution to our economy or healthcare. Nevertheless, it is worth bearing in mind that by the end of the 2010 Impact Pilot study, the English panel seemed much more relaxed about the agreed metrics that had been devised than the Physics panel, on which I sat and which continued to express nervousness.

Throughout the book Collini makes it clear that he feels the scientists have it easy in the current REF climate, because their research can be readily shown to have some quantifiable economic value. (although, as scientists know, this isn’t always the case). We then get rehearsed the standard arguments about how you can’t put value on Shakespeare et al and an implicit ‘so it isn’t fair’. Furthermore, that science is upon occasion useful for curing disease, or designing a better widget, is somehow conveyed to be slightly distasteful. Finally, that the sciences get more money for their research (and he makes no attempt to assess what a sensible unit cost of a science project compared with a humanities project might be) is put across as favouring them unduly. That all disciplines should in some sense get the same money, regardless of the actual cost, strikes me as bizarre.

The familiar arguments – which these points touch on – about ‘the two cultures’ of science and humanities long predates CP Snow’s Rede Lecture here in Cambridge, as I spelled out in my earlier post. But Collini has something curious to say about this apparent division, which exemplifies my fears about his attitude:

We should not, however, allow this observation about the differences in the public purchase of arguments about the sciences and the humanities to lead us to endorse or reinstate any version of the two cultures’ dichotomy. It is not simply that there is no coherent intellectual basis for this conventional distinction – not in method or subject-matter or purpose – but also, more importantly here, that scholars and scientists share more, and have a greater interest in common where the role of universities is concerned, than the hackneyed contrast tends to suggest. Indeed, as a rough rule of thumb one may say that the more distinguished the scientists are at their science, the more readily they acknowledge the shared character of intellectual enquiry and the more willing they are to make common cause with their colleagues in the humanities against various ways of talking (or measuring) that misrepresent this. ‘Two cultures’ talk has its main current home, as it had its origins, among those who find some kind of cultural insecurity about their identities as scientists or among those who administer science rather than doing it (the two groups are not mutually exclusive). ……In London, the British Academy and the Royal Society are next-door neighbours in the same handsome Regency terrace, with some sharing of their facilities – a neatly symbolic expression both of the traditional version of the divide and of their joint standing and interest.

Sitting, as it were, on the other side of the divide, there are a number of implicit assumptions and issues that trouble me in this paragraph. Here you see an explicit version of Collini’s careful distinction between scientists and scholars. I understand why Collini feels that what he and his colleagues do is not research and should more properly be described as scholarship; indeed in essence he devotes a whole chapter of his book to defending this position. But either we are collectively scholars and researchers, or else we are humanities and STEM people. His distinction seems perverse and conveys, to me at least, a sense of superiority on behalf of the humanities. But then, that’s probably just because I’m a poor undistinguished scientist suffering from cultural insecurity! That single sentence in the paragraph above, containing its veiled contempt for us, is in itself a wonderful way of putting us down, albeit I suspect he may not even be aware that that is implicitly what he is doing. I don’t think he can imagine being on the receiving end of that sentence in reverse.  But by saying we have ‘a great[er] interest in common’, and are ‘willing to make common cause’ he appears to express the fact that we scientists are meant to be the ones doing the moving to join those righteously placed in the humanities. In practice, I think the science community overall is much more likely to make space in their lives for poetry, art or music than many humanities scholars would for astronomy, geology or zoology – let alone the 2nd law of thermodynamics, the familiar example that CP Snow tossed about.

So, Collini is right to ask the question what are universities for, and right to point out in just how many ways the government is asking the impossible of us, and trying to turn us collectively into something that is almost certainly undesirable for the well-being of future generations whilst simultaneously gambling with the education of the present one. But that really is no excuse for operating the implicit divide and rule between disciplines that he seems to have contrived to do, whilst claiming to do the opposite. A wasted opportunity for speaking with a collective voice.

Posted in Book Review, Education | Tagged , , , | 28 Comments

Conferences and Courage

Posted on May 2, 2012 by Athene Donald

Exactly a year ago I wrote about the annual High Polymer Research Group Conference, held at the edge of the Peak District. Over the years I have watched it transform from an inward-looking cliquey organisation, where I initially sat right at the edge – a rare physicist amongst the chemists, an even rarer woman amongst the blokes – to a welcoming, inclusive and interdisciplinary meeting with an average age at least 20 years less than when I started out (unfortunately the same cannot be said of my own age!).  Now being one of the older attendees, I hope I do my bit (in accord with the wise words written recently about good behaviour at conferences by Rosie Redfield) to ensure each year’s newcomers don’t feel left out, and those scientists at an earlier stage of their careers can use late night chats in the bar to pick my brains if they feel so inclined and reckon they’re worth picking.  I’ve even been using this meeting to discuss Athena Swan awards.

Having previously served on the organisation committee, I know that the organisers are very mindful of the gender composition of both speakers and audience (it is an invitation only conference). This year around 25% of the speakers were women. Not bad, given the community from which the participants can be drawn. The percentage of women in the audience is probably a tiny bit higher, but not much, but is increasing year on year due to determination of the committee to seek out the less familiar female potential attendees. But this year, having read the plea Dorothy Bishop put out on her blog for women to speak up at conferences, I have been looking at the dynamics with different eyes. She felt that too often at conference talks and seminars, women were reluctant to open their mouths, unwilling to utter in case they made a fool of themselves, preferring to wait till everyone else had left to have a private word with the speaker. She says

There’s no point in encouraging men to listen to women’s voices if the women never speak up. If you are one of those silent women, I urge you to make an effort to overcome your bashfulness. You’ll find it less terrifying than you imagine, and it gets easier with practice. Don’t ask questions just for the sake of it, but when a speaker sparks off an interesting thought, a challenging question, or just a need for clarification, speak out. We need to change the culture here so that the next generation of women feel at ease in engaging in verbal academic debate.

Now in principle I agree with Dorothy, but I find in this case that I have a lot of sympathy with those bashful women who prefer not to quiz the speaker publicly. Not that I am usually regarded as silent – in committees or other kinds of meetings – but I do tend to be ‘bashful’ when it comes to the conference/seminar scene; it is one of the few situations where – still – I can feel the flight or fight reaction setting in. So, I have a lot of sympathy for other individuals – female or male – who feel the same way. It doesn’t always stop me chipping in, but I probably do it less than might be expected.

I’m sure most people will be familiar with those smart and confident people who preface their questions with ‘I’m afraid I’m being very stupid but…’ and then jump right into the heart of the matter with some percipient and pertinent question. Most seminar speakers should quail when the question begins that way, although just occasionally the person is indeed being very stupid. However, the people who I recall doing this with style and dangerous disingenuousness are two previous heads of my own department. One of them used to compound their apparent innocence by seemingly being asleep through much of the seminar.

Then there is another class of frequent questioners who are determined that their voice should be heard, come what may. You can count on them to jump in, whether their question is deep or merely about trivial methodological detail along the lines of ‘can you explain what size vial you used’ sort of thing. They are the show-offs, the people trying to prove they’re smart by being vocal. If no one else has any questions this can save the organiser the embarrassment of a totally silent audience, but otherwise this person is little more than an exhibitionist nuisance. Of course there are the genuinely thoughtful who also have lots of questions to ask. Keenly interested in everything, they really do want to know more, and more and more and so keep asking questions. In general they are likely to spark off lively debate. But how many women would I feel I could name who fitted into any of these categories. Very few. So Dorothy clearly has a point.

Why do I myself prefer to keep quiet? Sometimes it is because I assume that I am being thick, or that maybe I dropped off at the vital moment when the bit I fail to get was being beautifully explained or that everyone else had learned it at GCSE and I had somehow failed to pick it up.  I think these are the sort of ‘excuses’ with which Dorothy would have no truck. Maybe these are the excuses of the coward, who is simply trying to hide, but they can feel very real.  At other times I feel, although my question is reasonable perhaps it is just about detail that the rest of the audience won’t care to know, and so can safely be left aside (unless no one else is asking questions at all, in which case it is useful to have up one’s sleeve to save that awkward empty space when the organiser looks round the audience in increasing desperation to see if anyone had paid any attention at all). But when I feel on top of the subject but puzzled, or when I want to tie the work in with something else or someone else’s data then, yes, I’ll pipe up. I can even recall once, at this very same conference I’m currently attending but some years ago, the person sitting next to me saying ‘don’t be too harsh with your question’ when the speaker really didn’t know their stuff and was rather obviously making a hash of a topic close to my own heart. I hope I managed to phrase my question then sufficiently tactfully that the debate was opened up without too much of my incredulity about the work being brutally set out.

So ladies, indeed people, speak up when the situation warrants it and shut up when it doesn’t. And if asking public questions really isn’t your forte, as long as you speak up elsewhere, don’t berate yourself too harshly. If, on the other hand, you have never found your voice in any situation, then you have a problem that you need to address – and fast.

Aside During the conference I put out a tweet remarking that the evening session one day had been particularly good and ‘all the better for having 2 women speakers and a female chair’, for which I was taken to task. I stand by what I said. This was not to denigrate any of the male speakers, or to imply individually the women were better. But having a session – presumably by chance – at which all the participants were women should just serve to remind people that it is both possible to find excellent women to showcase and that when you do the conference continues to thrive. For the younger women in the audience such visible role models too can only be beneficial. Clearly issues around any sort of ‘positive discromination’ are complex, and I have written about this before here and here. But a visual (and audible) reminder to the community, that too easily can think male is the norm, has its advantages. If there was a conference where females were in the significant majority, I would stick up for a session showcasing men in just the same way!

Posted in Science Culture, Women in Science | Tagged , , | 13 Comments

How Many Arms do you Have?

Posted on April 27, 2012 by Athene Donald

I was amused  by the throwaway comment Bettany Hughes made in her recent TV programme Divine Women  about the Hindu Goddess Kali’s many arms being ideal for multitasking. Academics of all ages would benefit from growing a few more limbs, since so often it seems our jobs require us to tackle several different strands of activity simultaneously.  The well-known portrait of Dorothy Hodgkin by Maggi Hambling (hanging, I believe in the National Portrait Gallery) seems to reflect a similar message, with 4 hands apparently reflecting her ability to do many things at once (just think how useful that would be for doubling the number of emails one could deal with). However, it was hinted to me by one of her family once that actually the multiple hands reflected the artist’s frustration that the sitter would not sit still! I shall soon find out just how challenging such long periods of pseudo-inertia really are, having agreed to have my own portrait painted by Tess Barnes who is currently involved in a major project painting female scientists.  She has already painted many ‘high profile’ women, as her collection Women of Substance shows.

Dorothy Hodgkin by Maggi Hambling

But to return to the topic of academic multitasking, we are required to do such diverse things, and somehow acquire proficiency in some of these with essentially zero training.  As a student you are given a project and, unless you are very unlucky, some guidance as to where to start, the techniques to use and perhaps even a friendly postdoc to run to if the equipment breaks. You can take control in many cases, choose whether to head off in this or that direction and you should fairly rapidly develop the innate skills to know when an unexpected result is merely artefactual, as opposed to genuinely novel and exciting and so potentially opening up new vistas. So far, so good.  Your job is to do research and, eventually, to produce a thesis as a labour of love, ideally accompanied by a handful of papers and a few conference presentations, be they oral or poster. Thus your acquired skills should include: technical lab–work in your chosen field, scientific writing and presentation-giving.  Possibly you’ve also been able to teach in a practical class or to a small group of undergraduates. Your supervisor is, one hopes, there to look over your shoulder to encourage and exhort and – again with luck – stop you falling into bad ways or dead ends.

Stick around longer in the academic world and as a postdoc you may acquire a new string to your bow:  supervising research students, albeit probably informally. Perhaps your organisation runs courses to help with such supervision, but I don’t think they are very common. Most people learn as they go along, basing their technique (almost certainly) on their own experiences which may, or may not be relevant. However this is a nice soft way to start since you are unlikely to have sole responsibility and it would be uncommon for this to act as more than a welcome diversion from your own research. Multitasking is still not really necessary (unless you’re trying to multitask a variety of simultaneous experiments, but that’s not really what I have in mind).

No, it’s when you get to be an independent researcher or junior faculty that things become critical. By the time you are a lecturer/assistant professor, you will need to be doing several very different activities in parallel: writing grant proposals, for which paper-writing is not necessarily an adequate preparation as the rules of engagement are somewhat different (many institutions do seem to provide courses on this, though often not going beyond how to fill the forms in); teaching, probably in the form of standing up in front of lecture theatres full of less than enthusiastic students – but you can only do this once you’ve spent many a long day (or possibly night) writing the material up into some form suitable for delivery; and taking on and supervising  research students  – which requires first dreaming up projects and then attracting students and funding too. Interspersed with that you probably simultaneously also have to pick up good interview skills – to make sure you choose your PhD students wisely, for instance – avoiding leading or closed questions. You may also be stuck on a committee or two and wish to become an effective voice there too.

It can all be quite scary and possibly the only saving grace is that you are trying to learn so much at once that you don’t have time to reflect on just how difficult and draining each of the tasks individually is, let alone in total.  But chickens can come home to roost when you get the questionnaires back at the end of that lecture course, or the grant funders are so churlish as not to award you that grant, upon which you expended so much TLC during its gestation. Such setbacks are inevitable, coping with them is likely to be a severe test. And all the time there is that nasty feeling that your more senior colleagues are observing –and judging -  your performance. Testing times, when energy levels may sink but there is no let-up in the need to juggle multiple balls in the air.

I can only feel glad (although perhaps apologetic too) that I set out when I did on this precarious path, because I am quite convinced that the stresses, the multiple demands on new lecturers/fellows are significantly worse than they were in the past. Academia has become more of an industry and less of a profession, driven by government dreams of accountability at least in part. But if you are feeling down it Is worth remembering that there are colleagues around who can help and provide support, reminding you that initial lack of success is unsurprising – be it in teaching, grants or whatever -  and that all of us fail, still, at least some of the time.  All one can hope is that one doesn’t fail all the time. My first individual grant failed; my last one did too with a churlish email sent at some insane time of the night from our Research Councils ‘shared services centre’ only last week.  Clearly in between I have had occasional success, and for any individual receiving the sharp end of rejection it is well to remember Robert the Bruce.

So multitasking is an inevitable if unenviable component of the modern academic profession. The only thing to do is embrace it, practice being more effective at it, stiffen one’s backbone as the negative scenarios pan out, and celebrate the intermittent successes  – both your own and those of your colleagues.

Posted in Science Culture | Tagged , , | 18 Comments