You might think that I might be over exaggerating as to how bad my postdoc mentor could possibly be. And of-course I am biased. And I'm sure I could have done better, tried harder, worked longer... At least that's what most of us say to ourselves. I completely switched model systems and research areas from Grad school to the postdoc. Although, I thoroughly enjoyed doing basic science, I realize that it's virtually impossible to get funding these days unless you work on a disease/ disorder at the translational level. So I switched. I was a little nervous, intimidated but I was also ready for a challenge. The first year was a huge struggle mainly because I had to change the way I thought and approached experiments. And the dissections were a killer. But I did get better at it. What used to take me 10 hours, now takes me 6 hours.
I expected a more collaborative environment but 1 postdoc left before I arrived and another was on his way out. There were no students and no one in the lab knew how to do the dissections I took on. So I had to trouble shoot on my own. Each experiment spanned over 3 weeks so by the time I found out one experiment had worked, I had 6 failed ones. It seemed almost impossible to figure out. But I managed to do it... I do remember asking my postdoctoral PI if she could take a look at my dissections and tell me where she thought I was going wrong. She flatly told me, "I wouldn't be able to tell you. I don't know how to do the dissections."
Red flag #1... If you're in a lab that heavily relies on a technique that the PI knows nothing about, run away... don't even waste your time.
She often put my ideas down in the early days. Sure, looking back some of them were probably not the smartest ideas. But I was also learning. About a year on, I started to realize that my lack of confidence wasn't because I didn't know how to do something, but because I didn't know enough to see that my PI was full of bullshit.
Red flag #2...She'd make up 'facts' to base her arguments. I was starting to catch on because every time I would do an experiment, I'd realize her 'facts' were often quite the opposite.
She often proclaimed that she was an excellent molecular biologist. Although I knew how to clone, I hadn't done much in grad school and the cloning technology had changed so much since I was an undergrad that I couldn't say that I was a pro. Well, once she had taken it upon herself to clone the promoter regions of her favorite genes. She worked on them for two months saying that it was a real tough one. At some point, I thought to myself that I ought to do it so that I could brush up my molecular skills. (This gets technical here...) Trusting her cloning strategy, I asked her how she designed her primers so that I could set the appropriate parameters for the PCR reaction (How one makes more DNA from very little). As I asked her questions, I thought to myself "God woman, who the f*** gave you a PhD?" Frustrated, I just redesigned the primers and a week later, I was done. Clone in hand, I told her it worked. She must've felt a little peeved, because she took the same primers and re-did the cloning... or should I say attempted.
Red flag #3...If they go on and on about how good they're at something, one must ask themselves why does it require grandiose declarations?
However, the worst memory I have in this lab was when I was quantifying some data. I needed to normalize the data to account for experiment to experiment variations. I went to her with data sheet and graph in hand to tell her that it had worked. She quizzed me on how I normalized the data and she started yelling at me for being a liar and a cheat. It was humiliating, embarrassing and I was hurt. I was a little confused but thanked her for catching it and went back to my desk. I thought about it more and decided to call my PhD PI and asked him where I went wrong. He concurred with my method and said it was perfectly appropriate. I called another postdoc who was fantastic with such details and he verified the same. Now, I want to note that the stats I performed wasn't terribly complex and pretty basic when it came to statistics. I went back to her and told her that I had the methodology verified and it was a standard practice. She kept quiet and said nothing. No sorry, no back tracking, no re-viewing my data. She just didn't seem interested. Two days later, she comes up to me asking me how to draw error bars on excel (basic graphing software).
Red flag#4... How the hell did she survive in science not knowing how to do basic stats or even know how to graph error bars???
To make a long story short, several red flags later, I gave her my resignation...
I expected a more collaborative environment but 1 postdoc left before I arrived and another was on his way out. There were no students and no one in the lab knew how to do the dissections I took on. So I had to trouble shoot on my own. Each experiment spanned over 3 weeks so by the time I found out one experiment had worked, I had 6 failed ones. It seemed almost impossible to figure out. But I managed to do it... I do remember asking my postdoctoral PI if she could take a look at my dissections and tell me where she thought I was going wrong. She flatly told me, "I wouldn't be able to tell you. I don't know how to do the dissections."
Red flag #1... If you're in a lab that heavily relies on a technique that the PI knows nothing about, run away... don't even waste your time.
She often put my ideas down in the early days. Sure, looking back some of them were probably not the smartest ideas. But I was also learning. About a year on, I started to realize that my lack of confidence wasn't because I didn't know how to do something, but because I didn't know enough to see that my PI was full of bullshit.
Red flag #2...She'd make up 'facts' to base her arguments. I was starting to catch on because every time I would do an experiment, I'd realize her 'facts' were often quite the opposite.
She often proclaimed that she was an excellent molecular biologist. Although I knew how to clone, I hadn't done much in grad school and the cloning technology had changed so much since I was an undergrad that I couldn't say that I was a pro. Well, once she had taken it upon herself to clone the promoter regions of her favorite genes. She worked on them for two months saying that it was a real tough one. At some point, I thought to myself that I ought to do it so that I could brush up my molecular skills. (This gets technical here...) Trusting her cloning strategy, I asked her how she designed her primers so that I could set the appropriate parameters for the PCR reaction (How one makes more DNA from very little). As I asked her questions, I thought to myself "God woman, who the f*** gave you a PhD?" Frustrated, I just redesigned the primers and a week later, I was done. Clone in hand, I told her it worked. She must've felt a little peeved, because she took the same primers and re-did the cloning... or should I say attempted.
Red flag #3...If they go on and on about how good they're at something, one must ask themselves why does it require grandiose declarations?
However, the worst memory I have in this lab was when I was quantifying some data. I needed to normalize the data to account for experiment to experiment variations. I went to her with data sheet and graph in hand to tell her that it had worked. She quizzed me on how I normalized the data and she started yelling at me for being a liar and a cheat. It was humiliating, embarrassing and I was hurt. I was a little confused but thanked her for catching it and went back to my desk. I thought about it more and decided to call my PhD PI and asked him where I went wrong. He concurred with my method and said it was perfectly appropriate. I called another postdoc who was fantastic with such details and he verified the same. Now, I want to note that the stats I performed wasn't terribly complex and pretty basic when it came to statistics. I went back to her and told her that I had the methodology verified and it was a standard practice. She kept quiet and said nothing. No sorry, no back tracking, no re-viewing my data. She just didn't seem interested. Two days later, she comes up to me asking me how to draw error bars on excel (basic graphing software).
Red flag#4... How the hell did she survive in science not knowing how to do basic stats or even know how to graph error bars???
To make a long story short, several red flags later, I gave her my resignation...
No comments:
Post a Comment