Justin Kiggins's Blog

With yet another indicator of how ill equipped this university is to help graduate students prepare for non-academic careers, I got an email inviting me to a workshop to help grad students learn how to dress themselves.

Here is the description of an upcoming workshop titled “Professional Attire for Your Professional Life!” (note the exclamation mark, indicating that this is going to be a very fun and exciting seminar)

Transitioning from a graduate research assistant (GSR) to the professional world is often bewildering endeavor for many graduate students.  Along with your knowledge and skills an individual’s demeanor and appearance are also qualities that companies and institutions consider when hiring—especially in careers beyond academia.  Graduate students thinking about, or ready, to make this transition can greatly benefit from knowing the basics regarding professional attire and self-presentation.  During this gathering you will learn how and why first impression count, how to “stand out “ by your demeanor and attire,  the critical elements of a “professional” look, including what “formal,” “professional,” and “business casual” attire really mean?

Never mind the fact that there was no reason to make an acronym out of  ”graduate research assistant.” Based on the summary, the questions that this workshop proposes to answer can be easily addressed with a quick Google search for “business casual.” For more advanced studies, all I need to do is pick up a copy of GQ or watch a few episodes of TLC’s “What Not To Wear.”

Perhaps the “Lizzie” episode from Season 8? You know, the one that found a PhD student that gets a makeover? Oh wait, that’s the one where they highlight every stereotypically nerdy thing about her and her clothing, then make her look “sexy” with a new wardrobe.

I have a hard time believing that this workshop will be any less trite and condescending. Information presented in workshop form that can be easily found with a Google search? That would be a waste of my time, but not offensive. The offensive part is that the very office that is supposed to be helping grad students find careers seems to have taken very seriously the joke that grad students have poor personal hygiene and are ignorant of standards of attire.

The thing is, grad students dress like slobs because that is the culture of academia. It is a choice. Walk around a poster session at an academic conference and pay attention to what people are wearing… the formality of one’s attire is inversely proportional to their expertise. The ones in suits? Those are the undergrads attending their first conference. The ones with torn jeans and flip flops? PIs. The grad students make up a gradient between these two extremes.

If you break too far out of this mold, people think that you are hiding something. It’s as risky as giving a research presentation where you actually pay attention to font selection, color schemes, and composition.

An inability to properly dress is not the greatest hurdle to grad students securing jobs in industry.

Recently, Professor Dylan Evans has launched a petition campaign to fight his two-year “close supervision” order which was issued in response to an incident where he approached a female colleague to discuss an academic paper on fellatio in fruit bats. She interpreted this as an unwelcome incident of sexual harassment and filed a formal complaint. As he has been telling the story, the HR department dismissed the complaint. Nonetheless, the president of the university placed him on “close supervision” for two years. Unfortunately, the details of this are solely coming from Dr. Evans, who has launched a petition and a youtube video of select documents and has even made up a twitter hashtag, all portraying this as an academic freedom issue. A full posting of the documents challenges his claim of academic freedom, however.

First, a this is not an issue that random people on the internet should be petitioning. There is quite obviously more going on to the story that a random person like myself doesn’t know about.

Second, Dr. Evans seems to be hiding behind the “but, it’s science” argument, ignoring the fact that science has interpretations that are socially relevant. Indeed, the study in question is meant to highlight that things we consider to be uniquely human are not necessarily so and the the very first line of the study mentions human oral sex. In any normal work environment, it would be considered sexual harassment to approach a colleague of the opposite sex and try to engage in a conversation about fellatio. Would the case have been as easily dismissed if Dr. Evans had presented the YouTube video of bat copulation instead? Heck, just check out the list of “similar videos” for that to see the kind of thing that people associate with bat fellatio. The scientific facts are the same in both the video and the paper, so both would be equally appropriate to show a colleague, right? Undoubtedly, there should be more room for such discussion in academic circles, but one should not be surprised that this act was interpreted as harassment.

Third, most discussion has said that the Prez reprimands him despite that HR did not consider the complaints to be sexual harassment. This seems inconsistent with due process, but I’m not going to sign the stupid petition (which is also inconsistent with due process) because there is likely much more going on and much more history to the reprimand than the immediate complaint. Indeed, a closer reading of the letters Dr. Evans has posted indicates that there were *two* formal complaints made against him, one upheld and one dismissed (regarding the bat paper) and that the disciplinary procedures the president instituted were consistent with this. The complaints were not only about the bat paper, but about repeated discussions of sexual topics, unwelcome compliments, and inappropriate touching. Apparently, Dr. Evans skipped these parts of the complaint on his Youtube video and petition.

Academia allows a lot of BS that other sectors don’t (nepotism, sexism) and allows way more discrimination than would be acceptable in industry or government. I could make a long list of TMI profs who would share inappropriate details about themselves… details which would have them kicked to the curb in an industry setting. It is particularly disconcerting that such discrimination and inappropriateness can be so easily twisted into an “academic freedom” issue, with parties claiming “anti-science.”

Just got an email about a workshop for grad students called “Convert your CV into a Resume.” Besides the fact that universities should be offering more than workshops to prepare the vast majority of grad students who won’t be securing a coveted tenure position, the description seems to reflect so many of the problems with the current system.

Interested in pursuing a career in consulting, government, non-profit, policy, finance, academic/student affairs or “industry” in general? Well you will need a concise and dynamic resume and cover letter to peak[sic] any companies’ or institutions’ interest enough to call you for an interview–and résumés often differ drastically from CVs.  This workshop introduces graduate students to the basic but essential strategies and tips for converting a CV into an effective resume. Graduate students are also introduced to the concept of “transferable skills” and given the latest information regarding current industry needs and resume styles.

C’mon academia, grad students are going to need a lot more than a workshop on the latest “resume styles” to land safely after getting kicked out the window of the 92nd floor of the Ivory Tower.

So, I’m a just a few months away from orientation, Boot Camp, and the beginning of my first semester of classes in the Neuroscience Graduate Program at UC San Diego. One of the big decisions that I’ve had to start thinking seriously about is the first-year research rotations. UCSD’s Neuro program requires three laboratory rotations, intended to offer “hands-on” laboratory experience and find a laboratory for dissertation research. Though we’re only allowed to sign up for the first one prior to Boot Camp, choosing that first one has required thinking strategically about all three.

How does one approach a “strategy” for rotations? Well, this is what I’ve been told:

Telescope or magnifying glass? The vertical approach.

Neuroscience is an incredibly diverse field of research, necessitating inquiry at many levels. Research on genes and neurotransmitters happens very differently than research on the visual system which happens very differently than research on the emotional effects of music. Different areas require different backgrounds, knowledge, and use different tools. Since I’ll be developing expertise at a certain level of the field during my dissertation research, the rotations will be an ideal opportunity for me to explore the other levels of neuroscience, allowing me to put the diverse coursework of the program into a laboratory context and understand the methods that are used throughout the field. Further, UCSD requires second year students to develop a project proposal in an field of neuroscience which is unrelated to their dissertation research, so any proficiency which I can build during that first year would be highly useful during my second year.

Filling up the toolbox. The horizontal approach.

The tough part of this vertical approach is that many of the lab techniques and methods that I learn will not be easily transferable to my dissertation research. Patch clamp recording is a different beast from fMRI… they address different questions at completely different levels of the brain and knowing the former would be of limited immediate value for a dissertation focusing on the latter. Further, like many incoming students, I am comfortable and most interested in a particular level of neuroscience and I think I know what kind of research I want to be doing for their dissertation. So why bother learning “useless” methods during the first year when I could be focusing on building a set of techniques which could be incorporated into my later dissertation research? Instead, I could spend my rotations learning laboratory techniques which could be used on the kinds of questions I want to study.

The sample platter

Ultimately, I expect to employ a combination of the “vertical” and the “horizontal.” Regardless, the key thing that I’ve been encouraged repeatedly to remember, whether talking to advisors, professors, or grad students, is that rotations are a testing ground for selecting a dissertation lab. Every rotation lab ought to be a lab that I am interested in entering for my dissertation research.

I initially compiled this list while I was applying for grad schools. It was just a quick email that I sent to a list of other Flinn scholars, hoping that it could be a few words of wisdom for the new ones. Here it is:

I wish I had…

1. started signing up for frequent flyer miles

I don’t know how many miles I’ve flown during my undergrad. maybe a bazillion. study abroad. conferences. visiting friends and family. I should have signed up for a frequent flyer program. Since I did a lot of international flying, it would have been best to go with one (or all) of the alliances… like oneworld, SkyTeam or Star Alliance… or I could have tried to get a credit card that gave frequent flier miles. Whatever way, I wish I could now cash these in to visit friends and grad schools, etc.

2. saved all of my course syllabi in a single file

One of the grad schools I applied to wanted me to organize my entire transcript (all 210+ credit hours of it) based on courses which were most relevant to the program including the textbook used for each course. Technically, I save most of my syllabi because I am (was?) a major pack-rat. But I saved them along with every other unimportant scrap of paper I got from those classes. So when I decided it was time to purge myself of the many boxes of junk from the prior 5.5 years of my college career, I think I discarded most of them. Which made determining the textbook used for the CHM115 course I took in the spring of ’03 exceedingly difficult. The course was not on Blackboard at the time and the instructor had since pulled the info from his own website. The Wayback Machine didn’t even help, since it doesn’t archive PDF files. I wish I had had a single file to go to to see all of my syllabi.

3. actually started a portfolio

because, again, one of my grad school prospects specifically asked for this. and they want it on the internet. I think this is especially true advice for “project” majors–that is, majors where you learn to develop a project with a final result. Art, composition, design, engineering, computer science. The tough part I found when I kindof started freshman year is being able to guess what is relevant. But the cool thing I’ve realized is that it is likely all relevant. Don’t know where to start? Try putting this into google… “<your field> portfolio”. Or try to find portfolios of grad students in your field or related fields.