Puppies = Awesome

I think I might be the luckiest postdoc (maybe person) on the planet - instead of sharing my office with another postdoc, I get an adorable puppy as my office mate. Meet Jake, our lab Lab:

Jake posing for the camera

Ok, so he's not really a puppy anymore, but he is quite possibly the sweetest dog ever and I can't stop calling him a puppy. Every afternoon at 3PM we have 'puppy cuddle time', which primarily consists of him lying on my feet and pawing at me until I rub his belly. And he's so damn cute that I can't possibly say no. I cave and rub his belly every single time. 

I think this puppy sharing my office might be the one thing keeping me sane during job application season. Between endless tweaking of cover letters, data analysis, preparing talks, and writing manuscripts, the days have gotten more than a little hectic. Usually by mid afternoon I'm feeling that to-do-list panic, the anxiety that comes when you realize you haven't accomplished half of the things you intended to and the work day is nearly over. Fortunately, that's about the same time Jake starts snoring and twitching in his sleep. Seriously, watch him twitch in his sleep and just try to feel stressed out:

My blood pressure just went down watching this again.

They take cute animals into hospitals and seniors homes to help reduce stress and lift people's spirits, I think we need to start doing this for academics too. Wouldn't grant writing be more fun if you got to take breaks to cuddle an adorable puppy? Yes, yes it would. 

Random Culinary Awesomeness

Since this blog is supposed to be about academic things I normally wouldn't post anything about food here, but last night I made the most awesome dinner and I think it deserves sharing. As justification, I use the argument that cooking is actually science (or, as Hannelore delightfully put it in Questionable Content, "Baking is wonderful! It's like science for hungry people!").

Apron based on this Questionable Content comic

Without further ado, I present you with a picture of the awesomeness I created:

This, my friends, is a roasted stuffed pumpkin. And it was freaking delicious. 

Here are the little guys before baking. You basically cut the top off a small pie pumpkin and clean out all the pumpkin guts. Then you fill it with bread, cheese, cream, and whatever other seasonings and extras you want, put the top back on, and roast it in the oven for 2 hours. You end up with a savory bread-pudding-type stuffing inside a soft, sweet pumpkin shell. AWESOME.

I used a multigrain bread that had lots of sunflower seeds in it, which added a nice texture to the stuffing, along with chunks of gruyere cheese. The cream was seasoned with nutmeg and pepper. 

I will definitely make these again! They are time consuming because of the long roasting, but the actual prep work is pretty easy. I was thinking that next time I might try an herbed goat cheese and maybe add in some cranberries and almond slices. The way they are now they make a pretty impressive meal for vegetarians and non-vegetarians alike, but I bet you could add meat (bacon!) and it would be pretty freaking good.

I saw this recipe on another blog, which you can visit here for better pictures and the full recipe. 

Random Geekiness

These plush toy statistical distributions just made me giddy when I saw them. I was all, "awww, look at the adorable little normal distribution. I  want one of my geeky friends to have a baby just so I can give them as a gift."

And then... I discovered the set of evil distributions. And now I'm thinking, "screw giving them as a gift, I want an Evil Poisson for myself!"

I mean, come on - in a head-to-head (tail-to-tail?) battle who would win?

Student's t

Evil Poisson

                             VS.

  

That Poisson has such an awesome evil face I have to give it to him. However, I don't think anyone could beat the Evil Weibull - he has a monocle:

These (and other) statistical awesomeness from Nausicaa Distribution on Etsy

How to kill a grad student's love of research: Step 3

In two previous posts I talked about how over or under supervision and CV padding were good ways to make your grad students want to run away from academia. Today I want to rant about discuss how unreasonable expectations can totally f--k up the supervisor-student relationship. 

Frustration and disappointment arise when expectations start getting unreasonable or when the student and supervisor have conflicting expectations. I think some examples will help illustrate this nicely:

Supervisor to Student:
Reasonable: "I was reading this paper and I think we should try the analysis method they used. Why don't you have a look at the article and tomorrow we can discuss a plan for our project."
Unreasonable:

Reasonable: "I would really like you to present this work at an upcoming conference. The submission deadline is in a few weeks, why don't you put together an abstract?"

Unreasonable: "You know this project that you only have six subjects for and we have no idea how it's going to turn out? I would like you to write a sufficiently vague abstract to submit for this conference... oh, and the submission deadline is in 3 hours."

Student to Supervisor:
Reasonable: "I'm going home to visit my family for Christmas, but I'll still be checking email while I'm away if you need to get a hold of me."
Unreasonable: "I'm going on vacation for the next three weeks, so you're going to have to finish that revision without me."

Reasonable: "The journal's deadline for this revision is in three weeks. Do you think we could sit down together sometime this week to discuss the reviewers comments so that I can work on the necessary changes?"
Unreasonable: "If you don't provide me feedback on my manuscript by date X I am going to submit it without you"

In this example, the supervisor can laugh heartily and say, "Like hell you are, that's completely unreasonable. Also, I pay your salary and publication costs." The more serious problem tends to arise when the supervisor's expectations are unreasonable because chances are the student will never speak up about it. No one wants to disappoint their supervisor, and many find it next to impossible to say no to the person that holds their career in their hands.

I have more first-hand experience than I would like with only sleeping a few hours a night and spending entire weekends doing data analysis just so that I could finish all the things my supervisor wanted.  In retrospect, I had a pretty awesome supervisor who would have completely understood that I needed more time to complete a project so that I could get some damn sleep. Somehow, the fear of your most important reference-letter-writer thinking you can't handle the workload wins out and you just live on caffeine and chocolate until the work is done (i.e., when you graduate never).

So, what's the solution?
Ideally, honest communication between the student and supervisor.

My department had a fairly comprehensive graduate student handbook that contained general guidelines for what was expected from students and supervisors. For example, it was suggested that it was reasonable for students to expect feedback on their written work in a timely manner (e.g., within two weeks) but also that it was unreasonable for students to expect major manuscript revisions on short notice and should provide plenty of time (e.g., at least one month) for supervisors to provide reference letters. Good advice. Sadly, almost no one in the department ever read it.

The handbook also suggested that students sit down with their supervisor on a regular basis (e.g, once a semester) to discuss what both parties expected in the coming months and create a written plan or contract for both short-term and long-term goals. The idea that both the student and the supervisor have the opportunity to sit down and honestly discuss their expectations for each other is a good one. The problem? This almost NEVER happens. Typically, students aren't made aware of the fact that they are not meeting their supervisor's expectations until it's too late and very few students feel comfortable telling their supervisor that their expectations are unreasonable. Maybe a safer starting point is more general discussion about what is and isn't reasonable to expect within departments and lab groups that don't focus on a specific individual or pre-existing problem.

Given the power imbalance inherent in the student-supervisor relationship and our tendency as ambitious academics to place unrealistic expectations on ourselves, this is probably not an issue that can be easily solved. But I do hope that when I have a lab full of students (soon, hopefully!) that 1) I am clear about my expectations of them, and 2) I am mindful of how difficult it will be for them to tell me when my expectations are insane and so try to keep my expectations reasonable. I'm sure I will fail miserably at this from time-to-time, but I think it's a good thing to strive for.

Vancouver vs. Durham

I was talking to a friend yesterday and I started feeling very homesick for Vancouver (I miss you Canada!), which got me to thinking about the weird ways that things are different here in North Carolina. There was no huge culture shock, but there were lots of little differences that took some getting used to.

• People laugh at me for how I pronounce words like 'sorry' and 'pasta'. However, I laugh at them every time they say 'route'.
• No one here seems to care about hockey. The do however camp out for days to get basketball tickets. Seriously, days.  
• Everyone gave me a strange look when I referred to street performers as buskers. Is this really a Canadian thing? No one from my lab had heard this word before.
• My collaborators keep removing the u's from my words. Colour, neighbour, behaviour, favourite. No matter how long I am in the US I will never get used to these words not having a 'u' in them.
• This one came as a big shock to me:

Smarties in Canada

Smarties in the USA

• No one in my lab had experienced poutine, nor did they know what butter tarts or nanaimo bars were. I did manage to get a couple of people to try poutine on a conference trip to Montreal, and I plan to force-feed them butter tarts later this week (I don't think they'll put up much of a fight). 
• There are no yam rolls! This may be a west coast/east coast thing, as I have had yam rolls in San Francisco. The do not exist in North Carolina (that I'm aware of, if anyone knows a place I can get some, please tell me!!!). Yam (or sweet potato, if you prefer) in tempura batter, all rolled up in rice. Crunchy and soft, sweet and salty all at the same time, and if they're fresh and the yam is still warm it's the best food ever. Seriously, put trying these on your bucket list.

At a tiny sushi place in Vancouver. Probably the best yam rolls I've ever had.

• However, two of my favourite things in the world, cheese and wine, are far more accessible and affordable in NC. Now, it's not like California where you can buy gallon jugs of vodka in the Rite-Aid, but you can still get good, cheap wine at the grocery store. The quality of the alcohol I consume has increased dramatically since I moved to NC. 

So, pros and cons to both places. At least I can still get good sushi here, apart from yam rolls. But no matter how cheap the liquor is here in the USA, there's no place like home:

View from the Granville St. Bridge, Vancouver