Breaking stereotypes

One of the things I had to do over Thanksgiving break was write letters for my students. My partner's family had a big reunion last year, so much of this writing happened in the moments when most people were out doing fun things, leaving only the losers with laptops lounging around the fireplace.

One of the letters I had to write was a recommendation for an NSF grant application. One of my fellow losers was an uncle-in-law who is also a professor at an MRU. He was more than happy to look over my letter of recommendation for me, since he had sat on the other side of these NSF grant processes, though in a very different field. One of the comments he made was that I had not emphasized my student's stellar grades. I explained that this was because my student did not have stellar grades, but I had other reasons for believing that this person was an excellent candidate. He paused, gave me some other useful feedback, and then said that he thought it was unlikely that someone without stellar grades would get such a grant, the competition being what it is. He went a step further to posit that he doubted it was possible to be a successful academic without stellar grades as an undergrad.

It was so tempting for me to point out that my undergraduate grades were far from stellar, but I seem to be successful. I forbore on this impulse for reasons of family politics, and because I'm not actually sure if bouncing from postdoc to postdoc, however prestigious  in my mid thirties counts as successful in his book.

Last weekend, I found out that my student got the NSF grant. I am incredibly proud and happy for her. I also really want to call up my uncle-in-law and give him an "in your face" moment. It won't do any good. I must forbear again.

A gift from my father's side

After dinner, my father used to sit in his easy chair and listen to music and watch TV while we kids played in the living room. "Barefoot," he'd regularly call. "Come pluck out my white hairs." I'd run over to him, and he'd move to a position where I could reach better. As the years rolled on, he realized that he was fighting a loosing battle. A decade later, a few of the cousins, with goading from the aunts got his brothers and him to dye their hair. But at this point, all the men in my father's side of the family would do as well to have their few remaining dark hairs pulled out to leave a full field of snow on their heads.

I thought of this sequence of events as I stared, flabbergasted, at four white hair front and center on my head.

"How old are you?" He asked. Shocked, I could not find the wits to politely tell him That should be irrelevant. "28." I answered. "Huh. People often don't want to take post docs who are over 30." Back in the visitor's office, his grad student assured me that he was just trying to be fatherly, and that this mindset was true in his home country.

It doesn't matter I tell myself, staring at the white cluster. I'll be moving to his home country in September, 5 years after that conversation. I put my date of birth in the application, and I got the post doc.

Shocked choruses of "you're old," and "I would have guessed you are much younger" from colleagues who, never deviating from the academic path, entered graduate school at 22 and post docs at 27 fill my head. I respond with a memory of walking home from a friend's house when I lived abroad after college. I was giddy with the realization that I was finally living in a society where my age and waistline did not anti correlate with my desirability in society. At 23, I was devastatingly young, to young to be deemed able to do anything. At 40 a man comes into his own, and stops being one of the younger generation.

Which of these would I give up, I ask myself. The fifth year of undergrad to complete my second major? My years abroad? My year studying something completely different? None of these are worth the possibility of tenure before 40, of being rid of my student status before the greys appear. No, I've made the right decisions. These few years are just a rough patch. Once I am through this, I will wear my experience and my hair proudly.

Mentoring alternative academic paths

One of my summer research students was being honored at an awards dinner last night. We started talking, and she mentioned how she felt like she wasn't going to be able to do well in her current major, and that she was uncertain about graduate school, etc. etc. I found myself, almost against my better judgment advising her to take some time off.

I was saying this for the following (obvious) reasons. Grad school has to be a labor of love. In my biased small N experience, those that enter graduate school as "the next thing to do" don't do as well who come in knowing they love research/their subject matter. Also, she's 20 years old. She knows nothing of the world other than school. There is another life out there.

This was against my better judgment for the following (possibly equally obvious) reason. In many hard sciences, (including my field) taking time of is seen as a sign of weakness (see some wonderful discussions about this lead by Isis and FSP at more senior stages of career) and depending on how long/what she does in her time off it may keep her from accepted into a top tier grad school. This isn't the end of a career by any means, but worth hesitating about. Also, somewhere I've picked up the messaging that as academics, we should be recruiters to our fields, and that encouraging students to do something else is somehow playing against the team interests.

Her family, of course, thinks that she is sooooo smart, and wants her to get a PhD in her current field, and an MBA*.

Thus began my inner conflict about whether or not I should have a conversation with this woman about whose desires should be prioritized when it comes to making medium term life decisions like going to graduate school, or if I should walk away from this powder keg an maintain a professional relationship with her. To make matters worse, later in the awards ceremony, I was discussing my life choices with a tenured colleague, who then started musing about the lost opportunities in his life because he didn't travel or work before entering graduate school.

*10 points if you can guess the country of her parents origin. Partial credit given for being close.