Toxic Academia | Part 8: Semester 5 — different working styles.
It’s Summer 2021. This summer we are finally feeling more confident in eating out at restaurants and being in public again — masked of course. If you remember my previous blogs we usually have an annual lab symposium, which we do in person this summer. However, I want to focus on another situation which stands out to me instead.
I’m very busy, with three main projects:
1.) Project Alpha — the first project
2.) Project Beta — the second project
3.) Project Omega — the third project
Project Omega is a pilot project which involves creating the pipelines to analyze three types of data with my lab mate a new PhD student I’m calling Elizabeth, and Mike, a post-doc scientist in our collaborator’s lab. Another post-doc in our collaborator’s lab named Alan has been working with me on Project Beta (and respecting the boundaries I’ve had to make in the beginning, read more in “Part 4: Semester 1 — do I need to disclaim I’m married to avoid inappropriate contact?”) in addition to running the experiments for Project Omega to get more samples.
Elizabeth and I have made a lot of progress, and have extensively analyzed the data for Project Omega, enough for a formal presentation we’re asked to give at the end of the summer. This is a really good sign — it shows that our PI recognizes the progress we’ve made and is ready for us to share our work to other scientists in our field for feedback. The type of data I’ve been in charge of for this project is new to the field, so getting feedback from other experts is really important.
Elizabeth and I work on our joint presentation on Google slides so we can make edits simultaneously. I quickly learn that she and I have very different working styles. Mine is very much “make too many slides a week in advance, practice for a few days and remove the unnecessary slides.” Elizabeth’s method is… well, pulling an all nighter. Okay. Look you do your part and I’ll do mine, maybe it would be better to practice together and confirm the content and the lengths of each other’s talking points, but I don’t want to micromanage so I just go with it.
A quick point — because of COVID, most lab updates and and presentations have been largely virtual. This is nice in many aspects, but it also delays developing important communication and presentation skills.
Anyways, the day has come where Elizabeth and I are meant to present our work in a formal setting in front of several professors, scientists, post docs and students. It’s the biggest presentation I’ve ever given. Elizabeth and I plan to arrive early to make sure everything is set up. I quickly check our slides in the morning, and I see that she hasn’t finished making hers. Okay, it’s fine, I’m sure she’ll get them done by the afternoon.
I wait all morning for Elizabeth but she still isn’t here. I decide to go to the lecture hall we are presenting in without waiting for her, and arrive about 25 minutes before presenting to make sure the projectors are able to show our slides correctly. It’s a hybrid presentation, so IT support helps set up the room cameras and makes sure anyone viewing online can see everything correctly. Elizabeth still isn’t here, time is ticking, and I’m starting to get nervous.
Ten minutes before we present, the audience starts trickling in. It’s technically summer, but it’s right before the fall semester, so this is the first of the seminar series after everyone has come back from vacation. That being said, the room is very full. My heart is pounding, time is ticking, and Elizabeth still isn’t here. What the heck. Finally, two minutes before we start, Elizabeth runs in out of breath and apologizing. No time to talk about it, we set up the final set of slides (which I haven’t been able to review) and begin our presentation.
Elizabeth gives the introduction and background, and is sounding very robotic — I look at the screen and… is she reading from a script? She is reading from a script. Word for word. I don’t know about you, but at this point being almost a year into a PhD, I would have thought she was past that. Maybe I’m being too judgmental, everyone has a different style. I just continue to smile and wait until it’s my turn to talk.
I share my analysis and custom pipeline, and we get really great responses from the audience once our presentation is over. Okay, I can relax now. Although Elizabeth’s work style really stressed me out, we did it. Whatever works.
We’re walking back to lab and she hugs me. She apologizes for being late, and I let it go, because all I can think about now is the fact that it’s over.
XX Rosie Frank
