Toxic Academia | Part 9: Semester 6 — pre-climax
If you are new to my posts, welcome to my series. If you’ve seen my series, you’ll probably know that it’s meant to be read sequentially to get some context. If you haven’t read anything before this, that’s ok. I hope everything makes sense, I will try my best. But trust me, you’ll want to read this.
The prior blogs have been somewhat short, taking 2–6 minutes or so to read. This post will be lengthier. This post is the appetizer to the meat and potatoes, the beginning of chaos, and the start of the most traumatic time of my graduate school experience. So far… I’m still in graduate school as I write this, but I can’t imagine it will get much worse.
This story I am about to share over the next few posts is the whole reason I started this blog. I hope it’s entertaining, and I also hope it brings attention to how just absolutely fucked up academia is.
Let’s get into it
It’s Fall 2021. We are stilling working from home some days, and working in person other days. Most meetings and journal clubs are still virtual because of COVID.
This semester, I’m preparing for my qualifying exam. This involves writing up a research proposal in the form of an NIH grant, with three aims to propose for my thesis. The, I have to present my proposal in front of a committee, a group of four professors, and defend my research proposal. We are planning for my exam to happen at the end of the semester.
My lab mate Elizabeth (who is working with me on one of my projects, Project Omega) is starting her second year. During the first week of class, she asks me about a class she’s planning to take this semester which has a reputation of being the most challenging course required for our major. It’s essentially a coding bootcamp, and it’s been known to be challenging even for students who are already proficient at writing code. I took this course two years prior (if you read “Part 2: Getting into grad school”, this is the course I mentioned that brought me to tears) and it involves weekly homework assignments which are pretty time consuming. The code we wrote to complete the assignments gets graded by an autograder, which not only confirms that your code works correctly, but also that it is not copied from previous students who have taken the class. Keep this in mind.
Anyways, Elizabeth asks me if I still have the code for that class. She explains that she knows it’s a really hard class, and that it would be useful to have my code in case she felt lost or stuck on an assignment. Of course I still have the code… but I tell her I don’t. I don’t know Elizabeth that well, and while I’d like to think her intentions were good, I felt that she should be challenged by that class like everybody else. It is just too tempting to cheat with someone else’s code when you get frustrated, plus you learn more by figuring it out yourself. I don’t tell her that, I just say “Sorry, I took that class a few years back, I don’t have it anymore.” She smiles and walks away. All good. Keep this story in your back pocket.
Recently, Elizabeth and I shared our results for our joint project I’m referring to as Project Omega in a formal presentation and received great feedback (I share more about this in “Part 8: Semester 5 — different working styles”). While the results we shared were from using a pilot dataset, we agreed with our PI that the analysis and the results were worth getting a paper out of. So in addition to preparing for my qualifying exam, I will also be working on this paper. At least I have Elizabeth to divide the work with.
I’m given more data to work on. I work in collaboration with a second lab at another college, where I have a Co-PI called Eileen. Eileen is basically my second boss. I already have three ongoing projects with her lab I’ve mentioned:
1.) Project Alpha with Rob, a scientist in Eileen’s lab
2.) Project Beta with Alan, a post-doc in Eileen’s lab
3.) Project Omega with Mike (a post-doc in Eileen’s lab), Alan, and Elizabeth.
I want to point out I have a fourth project with Eileen’s lab, with another post-doc, that I was asked to take on during the summer. I told my PI that I didn’t think I would be able to take on another project as my plate was pretty full, but I was instructed to take it on. So as you can imagine, I was feeling pretty overwhelmed and very stressed. None of the other students in the lab worked on more than two projects simultaneously, so no, this was not the norm.
This semester, we get the remaining data for Project Omega. Until now we had the pilot dataset with a few samples, but now we have built the pipelines to analyze the data and are ready to apply them to the additional samples. We get samples from:
- Healthy Donors (4 samples x 1 time point per donor)
- Mildly sick COVID samples (4 samples x 2 time points per donor)
- Very sick COVID samples (4 samples x 2 time points per donor)
So now, Elizabeth and I will analyze this data, let’s call it Project Mega-Omega.
I’m working on all four of my projects, plus writing the manuscript for Project Omega, plus writing my proposal for my qualifying exam. I’m stressed, exhausted, dehydrated... but this is normal for a PhD student, right?
Project Mega-Omega
When I first got the raw data from Project Mega-Omega, I actually got it over the summer. There are three kinds of data obtained for this projectL
- Data Type 1: worked on by Mike
- Data Type 2: worked on my me
- Data Type 3: worked on by Elizabeth
When I get the raw data for Data Type 2, I noticed something is wrong. Alan, a post-doc in Eileen’s lab, was the one who processed the samples and sent them off to get the raw data generated, so I discuss the issues with him. The raw data is a bunch of empty files — it’s clear that something wrong happened with the raw data generation. Alan tells me that oh, the company that generated the raw data messed everything up, and he will send in the back up samples. Essentially when Alan does the experiment, he has a volume of liquid that contains some biology which is sent to generate the raw data. Less than half of the volume is needed, so thankfully, Alan had some additional liquid that he could send in and have done correctly. During this fall semester, this is fixed (hooray!) so I start on the analysis.
Just when you thought my plate was maxed out:
This semester, I am participating in a program which involves mentoring a high school student in research, and two of my lab mates are doing the program too (Elizabeth is one of them). I got assigned to my student (let’s call him Andrew) over the summer, and had been training him in preparation to diving into his own project. I got lucky with my mentee, we work very well together and he is very driven and has a high work ethic. Elizabeth tells me privately that she is struggling a lot with her student, and I pass her along the training materials and resources I pulled together for Andrew, hoping to help.
With so many things going on, I failed to realize that the high schoolers in this program are required to submit monthly reports to the program coordinators. Around November all of the mentors participating in the program meet with the program coordinators in a group meeting, such to check in and provide a space to get some feedback or advice. The program coordinator asks me if I’ve been helping Andrew write his monthly reports, and embarrassingly, I say no, and that I didn’t even know that they were a thing. The program coordinator responds “Wow! I was wondering because they’re really great. He’s been doing those all by himself?” Yep, honestly this kid was really great. Elizabeth chimes in and mentions that her student has been doing really amazing too, and that she’ll probably even write up a manuscript.
Another requirement of this program is that the students participate in a competitive science fair. Andrew has been doing such a great job, and I have been so proud of his progress and ability to work independently. I’m really just here to guide him, so I don’t feel like I need to micromanage him. I speak with Elizabeth about the science fair and how she’s feeling about it, since her student is still having some struggles with the research. She says “I don’t care what it takes, I’m going to make sure XX wins.” Okay, didn’t realize you were so competitive. Isn’t this supposed to be about the high school students?
The Manuscript
Elizabeth is not helping me write our manuscript. I’m juggling so many things but I try to be empathetic because she’s taking that really hard class this semester. So I write up my portions of the manuscript, work on the figures relevant to my own analysis, and leave space for her to add her part. Week after week, our PI asks me why Elizabeth has not contributed to the manuscript. I shrug, there’s only so much I can do, it’s not like I can force her to do it. Plus, she has stopped responding to my emails. I just assume she’s busy and stressed like me.
After several weeks, our PI meets with me one-on-one and tells me I need to write up Elizabeth’s part of the manuscript. At this point I have been done with my portion and just waiting on her for weeks, and honestly I am just willing to do whatever it takes to get this done and out of the way since I have so much other work to do. I meet her in the hallway, and I explain to her that our PI has asked me to write up her portion. I explain that I’m really sorry, but we just have to keep things moving along, and of course I’m happy to still share co-first authorship with her (essentially, give her half the credit). Understandably, she cries and is very upset. She says she feels like she has let us down, and that actually, she doesn’t even want to be a part of the manuscript anymore. Before I can respond she runs to the bathroom. Ugh, I feel awful.
I write up her portion of the manuscript. I noticed a couple of mistakes in her analysis — nothing big, but it did require new figures to be made. Since Elizabeth had not been responsive to emails or contributed to the project all semester, I decided to just remake the figures myself. I figured I’d just have the whole first draft done, and then share it with Elizabeth and our PI. I explain the changes in an email so that Elizabeth isn’t caught off guard (and also in case she wanted to discuss the changes). I never heard back from Elizabeth on the draft.
Qualifying Exam
It’s almost the end of the semester. Which means, it’s time for my qualifying exam. Thankfully, I don’t have much to report here other than the fact that I was very stressed out and I passed. Gotta take the wins when I can.
Over winter break, my PI and I continue working on Project Omega’s draft. No response from Elizabeth. She probably just had a stressful semester, I can understand if she wants to take a break. I’m sure we will continue next semester.
Next semester is the climax. Stayed tuned.
XX Rosie Frank
