When the Levee Breaks

Plug it as best you can and keep going.

This is probably the best, and only advice I would have to give to an emerging scientist. This is also the most valuable lesson I have learned over the years from my various mentors. I don't think it was explicitly stated as such, and certainly not in the words of Led Zeppelin, but it was a strong message I got.

I did my Ph.D. in a fairly unusual situation. I was one of very very few students where I was, in a very postdoc-heavy environment. Some of the labs in Ph.D. place didn't had only postdocs and technicians. It was an intimidating environment in the beginning, especially when I was a mousy first-year. But what happened over they years is that I ended up having a plethora of mentors.

I learned how to do FACS from one postdoc, dissect mice from another, inject mice from yet another. I developed a deep respect for "bullshit detectors" and a strong seminar habit (which I really don't get enough of here), learned to ask "Why?" instead of "How?". I learned to think ahead, to plan for figures, to never run out of mice. I learned how to deflect tantrums, how to stand up for myself, how to speak at conferences, all from my Ph.D. advisor and various postdoc mentors. I didn't really have any interaction with student peers, didn't have a student milieu, but it turned out to be a phenomenal experience overall.

Not that it was all happy days and everybody being helpful. But when times were hard and feelings were hurt, the people I really admire kept going. They put their heads down, ignored their feelings of being neglected by the boss, ignored ridicule from other lab members (yes, ridicule) and kept working, and working smart. That's the best thing to do- let the work speak for itself. Don't let yourself drown when the levees break. Swim.

Some of the nicest people were the most useless as mentors and some of the most seemingly curmudgeonly the best mentors. The hard lessons are not learned easily. The mentors I have the most respect for now, in retrospect, are those who told it like it was. Directness can be unpalatable, but it is the only way to clarity, scientific and otherwise.

Another thing I feel strongly about is that you have to pass mentoring on. If you have been treated well, you have to treat people well. If you have not, you have to be extra vigilant not to take it out on people who you will be mentoring. Everyone starts somewhere and impatience is absolutely incompatible with mentoring. This may be seem obvious, yet it is surprisingly easy to forget.

Its easy to resent time taken away from experiments, its easy to be annoyed by constant interruptions, I certainly am. That doesn't mean that one should indulge that annoyance.

So as a mentor, I want to be direct, firm, hopefully gentle, accessible. But most of all, I would like to be constructively critical, and pass on the importance of a bullshit detector. Let's see.

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