Climbing the Ladder

Posted on December 12, 2013 by Athene Donald

It has been a while since I wrote about the challenges facing those setting out on the academic ladder. Those who, having got past their PhD viva are now starting to progress through the ranks of an Early Career Researcher (ECR) as postdoc or beyond, trying to establish a niche for themselves in the tricky world of departmental politics, fellowship competitions and the like. This post is triggered by various articles I’ve read recently, reminding me of the challenging, scary world these people encounter on a daily basis.

Firstly there was a cri de coeur from a postdoc struggling to find a new position. He states that

‘it seems that the most important relationship in my life, the one I have put above all others — my love for academic research — is falling apart, owing in no small measure to circumstances beyond my control.’

For him, based in the US and working in the life sciences where an expansion of postdoctoral positions has not been matched by any increase in permanent positions, the problem has been compounded by the threat of sequestration due to the mire of US politics. In similar vein, I came across a sad but well-argued piece on Zinemin’s blog who had thought long and hard about the pros and cons of staying on in yet another postdoc and decided on balance sticking with research science just wasn’t worth the battle for her.  She points out that many people advance arguments to justify staying in academia that aren’t really sufficient and may often be self-deluding.

These laments can be paired with a piece I came across on the LSE Impact blogs about the casualization of labour, zero hours contracts and unpaid positions. As with other parts of the economy, where unpaid internships have been common, so the university sector seems to have been heading down the same path. The idea that a university should expect PhD students (in this case in Theology and Religious Studies at Durham) to work for free in order to gain experience is dispiriting. But, as has been seen in journalism, banking, politics and the like, not taking on such positions in order to acquire the skills future employers require can have a high opportunity cost. Nevertheless, I hope it is a move that the academic sector firmly and loudly rejects.

There are too many people chasing too few jobs in academia. That is the long and short of it. So it is worth considering what can make a difference on your CV beyond assuming some formal but unpaid labour of love. A recent post from the US highlighted this point, although in a way that I felt came across as rather smug. Nevertheless, the writer points out that there are ways to distinguish yourself from the crowd and it is worth thinking this through. She obviously felt that some of her colleagues moaned about their lack of success without really looking at why their actions were liable to lead to failure to progress. As GMP put it on her blog

I am smart and I work hard, and most importantly — I am aware of how the successful people around me are, and what games they play, and I try to learn how to play them well, too.

This sentiment strikes me as putting it a little strong. Playing games is not what progression should be about but nevertheless it is naïve to assume that natural brilliance will out simply by virtue of existing.  However it may well be that some people are sufficiently arrogant that they come across (to quote GMP again) as

‘too vain to try and find out what the missing parts were or were too stubborn to implement the needed change’.

She highlights relatively basic skills such as the ability to write and present clearly as ones some people just don’t bother to try to perfect.  I wonder how true this is, although it is undoubtedly the case that some people manage to do better than others. Practice does help, but most people who have passed through my group have tried to work at this. Some clearly find the English tongue harder to get around than others, but I have yet to meet anyone who doesn’t want to be able to deliver a cogent talk or write a paper with punch. I think it is dangerous to assume those who aren’t too brilliant at delivery are failing through laziness.

However, I think there are other aspects of the job not everyone takes as seriously as they might. These include being willing to take on roles, which may not in themselves seem glamorous but which may confer valuable experience. As a local example I could cite postdocs whom I have seen take the lead on organising our annual contribution to Physics at Work. Each year the sector in which I work, Biological and Soft Systems, puts on what is essentially a ‘show and tell’ session for a flood of schoolchildren. Our talk has been well honed over the years, but with every season there are new students who need to be taken through the delivery of it and encouraged to try out their own talents at outreach. The organiser gets no formal kudos, but a lot of respect and it is undoubtedly something to put on the CV. Equally, the research fellow who does a little voluntary (but paid) teaching may feel that that is taking valuable time out from their research; or they may feel (as I feel they should) that being able to demonstrate both experience and commitment in this sphere may count for something as they apply for permanent positions.

I think there is a real danger in being uncompromising about what you are prepared to do or coming across as overly focussed. Learning new skills is always likely to be of benefit, directly or indirectly, and if all you do is concentrate on your own narrow concerns this narrowness may be seen as representing an unwillingness to grow or a lack of interest in some of the skills academics need. One immediate benefit of trying out new things is you find out your strengths – and weaknesses. Better to become aware of what you should never try again and what you are really rather good at sooner rather than later. If you don’t practice getting your voice heard on some committee whose work you aren’t that bothered about, how will you get your point across when it is something close to your heart? If you don’t try talking to small groups of the public, you won’t know if you should be participating in major talks at your local science festival. And these different experiences will, once again, be beneficial on that CV that may yet represent the passport to a faculty position.

Or, on the other hand, you may discover that nothing will make up for the long hours, the lack of job security, and the unattractive habits of your colleagues. In other words, academic science really isn’t for you; you should stop burying your head in the sand about this and explore the wider world.

 

Posted in Careers, Science Culture | Tagged , , | 16 Comments

On being Feisty and Unconventional

Posted on December 7, 2013 by Athene Donald

Women in science seem to fare less well than men based on practically any measure. The reasons for this are many and various; they are also much discussed yet progress remains slow. To take as a specific example, why are success rates for women applying to the ERC for grants – at all levels and in all domains – lower than for men?  This question was at the heart of the recent ERC Gender Workshop organised by their Gender Balance Working Group, of which I am a member. Many familiar arguments were rehearsed, some new insights were put on the record (and some preconceptions put to rest) and there were some interesting discussions had, both formally and informally. I am sure Isabelle Vernos, the chair of the working group, will be looking to take the ideas that emerged forward for further consideration and equally that some sort of report will be published in due course. In the meantime, this post will consider some further matters I was not able to cover in my first rapid write-up earlier this week.

First, let’s look at one of the well-known ‘facts’ concerning how well the Scandinavian countries look after their women.  The graph below superposes the proportion of women present in the top ranks of scientists in each EU nation and the percentage of ERC Advanced Grants won by women in the same countries. Far from Scandinavia doing well by this measure, despite their success in keeping women in the scientific workforce it can be seen that this is not matched by equal success in winning grants. Why this might be so is a question for Norway and Sweden to consider. Each country may have different reasons underlying how well they do by these metrics but, speaking parochially I was pleased to see the UK’s figures showing that, however miserable the figures of senior women may be in our universities, they are at least performing in line with these numbers.  One outcome of the workshop that might be very positive would be if each country (and its funders) examined its own local practices to see what is good and what is bad, and if those that are doing rather badly in the graph could learn from those that are doing better.

ERC Ad Grant gender by country

To continue with the Scandinavian theme let me turn to the words of the first speaker at the workshop, Curt Rice, a well-known writer about these issues and former Vice Rector at Trømso University. He stressed, as I have done previously, the importance of clear commitment from the top leadership if culture is really to change and, as he pointed out, individual actions will have no long-term effect without such a commitment. You can read his full notes here.  But I would also like to highlight a remark he made, possibly somewhat flippantly, over dinner the night before the workshop. It may not have been meant to be taken totally at face value but I think it has a very significant (and rather frightening) element of truth in it.

Put a single woman in a group of men, he said, and she will feel uncomfortable and awkward. All the women present nodded in agreement. Put a single man in a group of women – as he himself was at that point, which was why the comment arose – and he will feel in charge. The jaws of myself and the other women who heard that remark dropped. It sounded all too plausible. It absolutely ties in with the sorts of studies Virginia Valian covers in her book Why So Slow?  This ‘natural pecking order’ is instilled in so many of us. There are few women who would react as Curt appears naturally to do when in a minority of one, with the possible exception of those well-known female chemists Maggie Thatcher and Angela Merkel. And, for those of us who work in male-dominated fields, this difference in comfort level is likely to affect the way we come across, network or get our voices heard. No one has to make the slightest negative remark or indicate that that lone woman is a lesser being for us unconsciously apparently to feel that way. Culturally that just seems to be how we are brought up. Maybe simply by recognizing that fact we can gain some strength and inner conviction. It is not a sentiment I have ever heard expressed before. I will bear it in mind in the future.

Let me return to the workshop itself. I will highlight remarks from just two more of the talks, which relate to the two adjectives in the title of this post. Teresa Rees, a psychologist and PVC from Cardiff University, was talking (in the light of her many contributions to the Leadership Foundation) about what can make a difference for the next generation. She highlighted their new Aurora Leadership programme specifically designed for women (and which my own university is certainly sponsoring women to attend) as a way of creating a new cohort of ‘feisty women’. Much though I appreciate that sentiment it makes me nervous. The evidence is that women who are feisty and push, for instance by asking for a pay rise, can suffer in a way a man doing exactly the same thing does not. In other words, and as a recent article  put it, you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. Being feisty can come at a price, or it seems to do so currently, although that should not stop us either asking for our due or speaking up wherever and whenever. However, just bringing out the inner feistiness without developing other skills may not achieve what one would hope.

Maybe if there were more males engaged in gender issues this statement about being damned either way might no longer be true.  The men might recognize the double standards implied by such situations. The relative absence of men at the ERC event, both on the platform and in the audience was remarked upon by Alison Woodward as she summed up at the end of the workshop. In fact nearly all the men present were, I’m pleased to say, members of the Scientific Council, demonstrating their own commitment to addressing these issues.

What about the ‘unconventional’ in the title? This adjective refers to the way applicants to the ERC can write up their CVs.  If, instead of simply progressing linearly from PhD to postdoc to fellow or faculty, an individual has taken some time out  – this could be  a period out of academic science for any of a wide variety of reasons including maternity or paternity leave, other caring responsibilities or a spell in some completely different profession – then this can be described in the applicaton. However, whereas a couple of years in full time training for the Olympics might indeed be seen as ‘unconventional’, personally I don’t feel that a spell at home with a new baby should be described in this way. I think this should be seen as entirely conventional, even if not what everyone does. So, for me, I would hope that it might be possible to rebadge this important aspect of how the track record of applicants is described.

Claarte Vinkenburg, who is leading an ERC study into the careers of applicants (successful and otherwise) that I mentioned before has been highlighting the possible ‘stigma’ attached to those who wish to claim their lives have been affected by issues such as child-bearing. I fear that labelling such as ‘unconventional’ is only likely to increase their fear.  In her talk to the workshop she raised other related issues, notably how it is all too easy to construct a mental image of the ‘ideal’ scientist as someone who has never done anything else, who has no outside interests let alone a family life and who is solely driven by their work. We may know people like this; we may or may not find them interesting people. But I am quite sure we, in this case the ERC, should not feel these are the only ones worthy of our support.

Once preference for such an ‘ideal’ starts to translate into the unconscious thought ‘anyone who deviates from such an ideal should not get funded’, not only are we being prejudiced we are most certainly not likely to end up funding the best science we can. Whether we need to do more to raise awareness of how this subtle idea of a totally-committed and otherwise unencumbered researcher may permeate our thinking I’m not sure, but we certainly should ensure that anyone who doesn’t fit this pattern is not disadvantaged.

As you can tell, the workshop provided much food for thought. The challenge for the working group and the whole Scientific Council is whether we can find actions that may, for instance, help to mitigate the unconscious bias that lurks within us all or whether the knowledge is insufficient to enable us to reach a satisfactory position where excellence really is the only criterion for funding.

Posted in Equality, Uncategorized, Women in Science | Tagged , , , , , | 7 Comments

Women in Science: Why Can’t this Problem be Fixed?

Posted on December 2, 2013 by Athene Donald

The newspapers these days run almost daily stories about sexism and women being disadvantaged in one way or another (plus the occasional response that it is men that are being hit hardest by current circumstances). For women in STEM the issue is manifest, particularly on the physical sciences and engineering side. Not for nothing has the Science and Technology Select Committee recently been taking evidence about the problems.  However we should be careful to distinguish between problems about supply – problems about schools and parental expectations for instance, which may drive girls out of subjects like physics – from problems that apply to those in the workforce who suffer from implicit and explicit bias and other subtle (or not-so-subtle) disadvantages. In the latter category there are many further sub-divisions of problems. This post comes in two parts addressing different aspects of these latter issues.

At the bottom of this post there is a piece I wrote at the request of the Fabian Society for their online publication (it first appeared on November 25th) in the wake of the Select Committee enquiry I mention above. This piece briefly considers what organisations can do to improve their workplace culture and why without improvements the pipeline will go on spewing out talented women from the academic ladder. I know that some people object to this ‘leaky pipeline’ analogy since they see it as implying those who leave have ‘failed’: many may leave for perfectly good reasons of their own which have nothing to do with an inimical working environment or pressures acting against them. However, I worry about those who leave with regret because they are constantly passed over or the obstacles placed in their way are higher than those their contemporary male colleagues have to face. These are the ones who genuinely ‘leak’ in the way I mean the phrase.

However before my reposting of this published piece I offer some initial thoughts prompted by a workshop organised by the ERC I participated in this morning in Brussels aimed at exploring some of these obstacles and what may be done within the specific context of research funding and funders. I will write more about this meeting at a later date when I’ve had time to digest the discussions and sort through my notes on what was a very stimulating meeting; this is just an initial brief outline of some key facts from the workshop, at which many leading players presented their views. As I have written before, the ERC is greatly concerned by the lower success rate amongst women than men across all domains and at all stages of awards. However, at least they are looking at this problem and trying to work out what they, as a funder, can do. It would be good to have confidence that all funders – research councils or charities alike – are doing as much. I am not convinced that they all monitor their statistics, let alone consider if their own actions could be affecting the outcomes. I hope the ERC’s actions, by being the conscience for European funders whilst still maintaining focus on research excellence, will stimulate other funders to follow suit.

One simple action the ERC will be introducing for the next rounds is unconscious bias training for panels. It is straightforward enough to remind chairs (and indeed all panel members) that we are all, men and women, prone to underrate women. There is plenty of evidence (see e.g. here) to support this statement. If we are reminded of this fact, it is less clear whether we change our behaviour but at least we should be more aware of what we’re doing. If referees routinely give less positive statements about women than about men, using fewer ‘standout’ adjectives as has been suggested, then panels can attempt to take this into account. It is of course fiendishly difficult to do so fairly in practice. Maybe the woman really is less outstanding and, without knowing the individual concerned except through the words of a referee, how do you tell? But the panel members themselves will also be forming judgements of their own and they too need to realise how their own internal schema may be being unconsciously affected by gender. The panel chairs have a particular responsibility here.

Separately from how women may be disadvantaged in their applications by the way so many of us read their paperwork as less worthy and their track records as less brilliant than men, there is a totally different aspect of grant writing that has a strong gender element. This is the area that Londa Schiebinger has been championing for some time, both within Europe and in the US. There may well be an implicit gender question in a research project. It should not be sufficient to put in an excellent grant application that considers (for instance) treatments for cardiovascular disease without spelling out how the efficacy will be judged for men and women; or to overlook the fact that men as well as women suffer from osteoporosis (it is so often described only as a post-menopausal problem) and that what works for one sex may not be the same as for the other.

More broadly, as Londa put it today, there are 3 fixes needed:

  1. Fix the numbers of women (NB this is not the same as fixing the women!)
  2. Fix the Institutions. This is of course where the UK’s Athena Swan awards enters into the equation, and Sarah Dickinson was present to lay out the ideas behind this benchmarking scheme for other European countries to consider.
  3. Fix the knowledge – which is where the need to embed sex and gender in the research design itself is so important.

I would add a fourth ‘fix’ needed, which is to fix the mindsets of those who form judgements be it on grants, on job applicants or on what ‘excellence’ means, for instance for those whose career trajectory may have deviated from the norm.  The issue of ‘unconventional careers’ was discussed by Claarte Vinkenburg who is leading on a project (ERCareers) drilling down into ERC applications to analyse how applicants present their careers and how this affects their success.

The ERC Gender Balance Working Group will no doubt continue to consider what actions they themselves can take or encourage to be incorporated in the new Horizon2020 programme for the ERC. To solve the problems requires a programme of work that has many strands, only some of which are within the ERC’s own control. This morning’s meeting gave much food for thought, recommendations of actions we might be able to enact and a stimulus to continue the dialogue across the globe. More will follow when I am not tied up with the rest of the ERC’s Scientific Council meeting!

 

What follows is the unedited version of a post that first appeared on the Fabian Society’s blog on November 25th 2013 with the title:

‘Why are there still so few women in science?’

The Science and Technology Select Committee  has been considering the position of women in the STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) academic subjects, its primary question being quite simply

Why do numbers of women in STEM academic careers decline further up the career ladder?

along with a few supplementary follow-on questions. Written and oral evidence has been collected and presumably a report will be forthcoming sometime soon. The depressing thing is that, worthy though this enquiry is, the same question has been asked time and time again over at least the last couple of decades. Answers seem in short supply. Or more correctly, answers that have had significant lasting impact seem to be in short supply. There is plenty of evidence (see e.g. this IOP report) to demonstrate the steady attrition rate of women as one moves up the academic ladder. The reasons are complex and multi-facetted, which is precisely why the challenge is so great.

It would be naïve to think that the only issue is the problem of taking time out for maternity leave and finding affordable childcare, although solving the prevalent practical problem of local good nurseries could do no harm. Academic life, once one has a permanent position, is relatively flexible but unfortunately the average age of obtaining such a tenured position has systematically increased (for men and women). This means that the job insecurity and short term contracts endured by many early career researchers are ever more likely to coincide with the time when they may want to start a family. Many women feel this is too high and uncertain a price to pay and so get out of the competitive world of academia. Additionally, if an academic woman has a fellow academic as a partner, finding jobs (let alone permanent positions) for both in the same city can be a further major obstacle.

Those are the very obvious and practical problems. But there are many more subtle and cultural issues I personally believe are just as important. When drawing up a shortlist for a position, does a department simply look for people who look like them, their own unconscious biases thereby restricting the diversity of those whom they interview and subsequently appoint? A recent study has reinforced earlier findings that CV’s labelled with a woman’s name fare less well than those identified as male even when they are identical.  Worse, since many institutions will have photographs on the walls of their successful ‘old boys’, who will typically be male, then women entering the building may feel a sinking feeling of being ‘different’ and actually underperform due to the well-researched problem of ‘stereotype threat‘. The working environment may continue to reinforce male, typically competitive if not actually laddish, culture.  Many women will simply not want to battle on against job insecurity in a climate like that however gifted they may be.

Of course there are moves to counter such negatives. The Athena Swan awards (at bronze, silver and gold levels) recognize universities and STEM departments that are taking stock of their position around gender and pro-actively working to improve the working environment.  More and more departments are getting involved in this scheme and it is to be hoped that there will be tangible and quantitative measures of the scheme’s success in the near future: there are many examples of good practice which should in time feed through to improved numbers.

Nevertheless, the cultural expectation that a scientist is male, reinforced daily through print and visual media, is deeply ingrained. Our schools too often perpetuate that myth, encouraging girls to go on work experience in a hairdressers or retail outlets, and sending the boys to garages or factories to broaden their minds. Cultural conditioning seems to start almost from birth in the toys we buy for our children and the subliminal messages we collectively give. This cultural stereotyping may well be the hardest obstacles of all to overcome.

 

Posted in Equality, Women in Science | Tagged , , , , , | 4 Comments

Where’s an Industrial Policy When You Want One?

Posted on November 27, 2013 by Athene Donald

A little while ago I had the pleasure of hosting the visit of Chukka Umunna (Shadow Business Minister)  to the University of Cambridge to discuss the UK’s industrial strategy or, perhaps more accurately, its lack thereof.  Over a sandwich lunch a number of us from the University debated and explored where our country has got to and what might improve the current rather woeful situation, whichever party was in power. The days of there being Government laboratories carrying out valuable research which ultimately benefitted both the public and Government (notably defence-related) are long gone, with few of the ones I grew up with surviving, (labs such as RSRE Malvern which contributed so much to the development of liquid crystalline displays) now either wound up or at least privatised and turned into a very different kind of animal. That was certainly the fate of the Malvern lab.

When I started out there were still many major blue chip companies in the UK with thriving research laboratories. My own experience with such companies focussed largely on ICI (the old Imperial Chemical Industries), who funded a number of students of mine through CASE awards and even fully funded several three year postdoc positions over the years in different areas.  However ICI first split into two, when Zeneca (now AstraZeneca) was hived off to form a new pharmaceutical and agrochemical business; then slowly it got further split and consumed until all that was left (essentially the Dulux paint business) was taken over by Akzo Nobel. Little of the original research activity is left in the UK. During past years I also interacted with Rowntrees/Nestle (all research moved to mainland Europe from the original site in York) and BP (moved from Sunbury-on-Thames to Europe and the US). Anglo-Dutch Unilever, another company I’ve worked with, does still maintain a significant UK research effort although it regularly seems to be restructured, as does Schlumberger which is not a UK company although still with a major UK research facility situated just a few fields away from where I work.

Why have these companies either vanished or shed their UK research base? In the case of ICI the original move to split into two was in large part driven by an ultimately unsuccessful hostile takeover bid by Hanson, a company which thrived on what amounted to asset stripping. Hanson certainly regularly made money out of its many acquisitions but not by pushing research or any long-term strategy. The demerger of Zeneca was an attempt to make the company less attractive to other would be sharks but in doing so the original ICI company was irreparably damaged. It limped on for another 15 years or so, but it was a shadow of its former self, no longer the ‘bellwether of the British economy’, as it was once described.

Research-intensive companies like ICI simply don’t seem to exist in the UK any more. BP, which once had an explicit blue skies research unit, killed it off 20+ years ago. This all means that the emphasis on UK research seems firmly based in our university laboratories, with a huge shift in relative levels of funding between non-academic and academic research over recent decades. Our poor innovative capacity is frequently lamented and academic scientists are often lambasted for not being more entrepreneurial. Yet these charges directed at academia are far from fair: let us hope the dreaded, if now completed, REF exercise with its Impact Case Studies, makes that clear to government critics.

Many academics have taken out patents, set up spin-outs and attempted to develop their brainchildren. Few succeed. The lack of this ‘middle ground’ of government or industrial development laboratories hinders the process; simultaneously the UK market does not make it easy for young companies to thrive. This is not a healthy ecosystem. For every ARM or what was Autonomy (both Cambridge-based companies which did make it big) there will be hundreds if not thousands that sink without trace. Our financial markets make it hard, driven as they are by pension funds and the like with short-term goals, and our would-be investors (such as venture capitalists) are nervous and under-resourced. It is a bleak world in which to try to give birth to a future industrial giant.

I am no expert in industrial policy. I found the lunchtime discussion fascinating because a huge range of technical issues around getting this right were lightly touched upon and elucidated. With the government introducing sector industrial policies which don’t align readily with the Eight Great Technologies they are simultaneously pushing, one can readily see there may be a lack of coherent thinking in Whitehall. It’s a bitty landscape but with systemic failures: how do you overcome these obstacles? If one thinks in terms of a value chain, starting at the academic’s door, how can you integrate all the necessary steps, make sure there are the necessary skilled people to serve this chain and that companies of all sizes are appropriately incorporated? These are far from trivial challenges. Of course government has eschewed even admitting to the need for an industrial strategy for many years so we should be encouraged to see both Government and opposition starting to talk about the issues and making tentative, if as-yet incoherent, steps towards identifying such a strategy.

If you want a tightly argued case about where we, as a country, have gone so lamentably wrong in the past 30 odd years and what crumbs of hope there might be for the future, I would encourage you to read a recent policy report  published by the Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute (SPERI) and written by my former Cambridge colleague (and physics professor) Richard  Jones. Richard’s PVC role at Sheffield incorporates the Innovation brief, as well as Research, and on his personal blog  he has been exploring where and how our current system got so broke over the past several years. In particular I would point you to his posts ‘Good capitalism, bad capitalism and turning science into economic benefit‘ , ‘Slouching Towards an Industrial Policy‘ and ‘Innovation policy and long term economic growth in the UK – a story in four graphs‘ if you don’t feel like reading his full analysis in the SPERI report.  But the SPERI report is a tour-de-force, particularly if you want handy numbers to reinforce your own arguments and a clear narrative to flesh out your suspicions about why the UK has slipped so far behind its competitors.

Already picked up on the Guardian Economics pages, it is to be hoped politicians of all complexions will turn to the report and digest its contents so that the future may look less bleak on this front than in the immediate past.

Posted in Science Culture, Science Funding | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Courage, Inadequacy and Taking the Plunge

Posted on November 22, 2013 by Athene Donald

It’s almost two years since I wrote about the dangers of looking at people you respect through rose-tinted glasses. That post was prompted by a relatively junior scientist losing their nerve after they had directly challenged something I’d said and then feeling they had a need to apologise to me for their apparent temerity. I hope they have since come to realise that when someone is wrong, whoever that someone is, a challenge (politely done of course) is entirely in order.

I am reminded of that post by a recent encounter which was summed up by the other person involved in the tweet ‘Even plucked up the courage to introduce myself to the awesome Athene Donald‘. Now it is very flattering to be termed awesome, a word I can’t personally imagine using about anyone – I’m not the right generation for it to be in my lexicon – but I hate the thought that somehow my ‘awesomeness’ is equivalent, for this person and maybe for others, to making me scary to approach. And I must be scary, because if I’m not why would they need to ‘pluck up courage’? Since I had never met this person before, the scariness must arise simply from status. Yet amongst scientists, status should be earned by what you bring to the party not merely by seniority. It is not as if the person saying this was a teenager; they are a full professor at another university. They have much clout of their own yet somehow they felt it took courage to approach me. I think that is very sad (but read on).

I finished that earlier post of mine with the words

Choose your role models, your heroines and your heroes wisely, and dispense with them – or better turn them into valued colleagues – once the time is ripe, which may be sooner than you think.

That sentiment ties in very closely with that expressed in a recent article in the THE  in which Tom Palaima writes about the importance and value of mentors. He says

Indeed my mentor … was first an intellectual father figure, reserved, with traces of awkward kindness and human playfulness. By slow degrees he became a friend and, during visits or travels, a relaxed and delightful companion.

When one sets out on one’s career, it is of course probable that everyone seems scarily ‘better’ than you, simply because they have more experience and almost certainly more confidence. But it is worth pausing to think what better means. Your would-be mentors have to earn your trust just as much you have to earn your place in their sphere. Not everyone is cut out to be the wonderful kind of person Palaima describes in his moving piece. But, if you are lucky enough to find such a person it is important that, as you yourself mature, so does your relationship with them. It can be hard to do this and, in some circumstances, may be impossible because of who you both are and how the early interactions evolved.

Striking up an acquaintance you hope may mature into something more with people whose reputation you know and admire is both easier and harder. Harder, as the tweet that prompted this post highlights, because you are starting from a standing start. Easier, because there are no prior and hierarchical relationship difficulties to overcome.  However, looking way beyond academia these difficulties are equally present.

This was brought home to me by a write-up of the speed-dating event for girls I participated in and described in an earlier post, written by ‘Mrs Moneypenny’ in the Financial Times. Mrs Moneypenny, who is actually Heather McGregor, is clearly not immune to impostor syndrome. (By the way, this is a topic I keep meaning to write a further post about but haven’t quite got around to it yet; maybe soon!) She wrote

I am also reluctant to mention my girlfriends by name, and to admit how inadequate I feel next to them

– the girlfriends in question being the rest of us who were there with her to head up the speed-dating. So here is a woman writing a column for the Financial Times who has also, I believe, set up various companies and she still feels inadequate. The problem with feeling inadequate is that it means (amongst many other things), as the earlier tweet said, one requires courage to break the ice and strike up a conversation.

Mrs Moneypenny makes it clear she had no trouble talking to the schoolchildren. I doubt if any of us present did. But she didn’t talk to me: nor I to her for the same reason. I didn’t know her and I felt awkward. My impression, probably incorrect, was that many of the other women knew each other and I felt the odd one out being a scientist. I could talk to Bettany Hughes, because she was an academic and we shared some common background (and Barbara Stocking I’d met in Cambridge previously so that was easy), but these formidable women who had set up companies, ran EasyJet or dreamed up Mumsnet – no they were out of my league and I felt uncomfortable.

Do you see where I’m going with this? It is easy for me to think of the tweeter I met recently, why should they be scared of ‘little ol’ me’. In reality though, just like Mrs Moneypenny, I am quite capable of not having the nerve to address strangers myself in a strange situation, even those I’m essentially sharing a platform with, because what they’ve done seems so impressive compared with my own life. This, I’m afraid, is a case of do what I say not what I do. We all can be intimidated by unfamiliar people, the more so if you know something about them by repute and admire them. And yet each of us is probably internally quaking as likely as not.

I will finish with a story my mother used to tell me. The message will be correct although the exact facts may have got garbled over the years in my mind. During the war, as a teenager, she acted as an informal general factotum for an organisation that oversaw leading musicians travel around the country giving concerts. She hefted double basses around, carried coats and pointed the Great and Good musicians of the day towards the facilities. One day she was responsible for looking after the great pianist and accompanist Gerald Moore.  After his recital she remarked, very tentatively how much she’d enjoyed it but said he must get bored of hearing such praise. ‘No performer can ever have too much praise‘ was his response. You can see how this fits in with the general picture. Everyone (well almost everyone; there must be the odd exception) is secretly feeling their performance – for which read lecture, paper, contribution to a committee meeting or whatever – may not have been up to snuff and kind, appreciative words will always be well received.

It seems to me it is all too easy to assume that others have perfect sang froid in every situation, always know exactly what to do and don’t need your support, enthusiasm or just general friendliness. I believe that the opposite is more likely to be the case. We should all take heart and ‘pluck up courage’ to talk to others – those more junior and more senior – and recognize that so many of us are likely to be inwardly feeling out of our depth or just plain shy.

 

 

 

 

 

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