Update on Lab Politics

So, last post I told you about a student who is dissatisfied with his project and the lab and his struggles. I had told him that he should consider joining another group.

Since that time, he has had almost two weeks to think about things, and he has decided to stay with us, at least for now. The whole process of dealing with this student has been rather interesting. First, it would be easy for me to ask the student to leave the group or strongly suggest that he join another group, but given what I know of him, that would be the easy way out. I think that his unhappiness stems more from not knowing what he wants than from knowing what he wants and not achieving it in my group. If he joined another group and then later decided that that wasn't he wanted either, I would just be pushing my problems off on some other PI. Mentoring, true mentoring, would be to help this student figure out what he wants and how to achieve it. It is spending time with him and helping him understand the PhD process.

Second, it has surfaced that some of this student's dissatisfaction results from what I like to call the "3rd year valley of death". In your first two years of your PhD you are taking classes, training, and repeating research that others have done. Your adviser and senior students can help. But at some point, usually during the 3rd year, you find that you have advanced beyond all that has been done before, and there may not be *anyone* to ask questions of. You are on your own. As you might expect, experiments typically don't go well at first. But then, as you develop more aptitude, things start to work and suddenly you are defending. The "3rd year valley of death" can be depressing and demoralizing, especially if you don't understand what is happening to you or how it fits into becoming more scientifically mature.

To address these issues, and help this student, we are now meeting weekly. We are going over his work. I am helping him to remove roadblocks. He is not very assertive, so pushing others, especially those senior to him, to get data, equipment time, etc. is difficult. I am trying to teach him how to go about this in a polite yet insistent way. And, it is working. He has said that he is feeling better and things definitely seem to be improving, but...it is taking a lot of my time. On the other hand, this is my job, to teach students to become independent researchers. So even though it would be easier to dismiss the "problem" student, I am doing my best to make the investment and help him become the researcher that I know he can be.

Managing Lab Politics

Update on the lab politics...I have gotten some really good advice over the last few days and it has been extremely helpful. I am facing:

A student wants to leave my group what should I do?

I have a student who wants to do work more extensively in an -ology than we typically do. At first I tried to bend his project to encompass more -ology, but as the project was bent further and further, I realized it no longer fit into our lab.

This is where I got some great advice from others. Your lab is an entity. It has a personality and research focus. The projects that you work on need to make sense within that context. It doesn't make sense for me to let a student work in hard-core -ology if that is not what's best for the group. So I went to the student and said look you are being offered a great project, one that is likely to yield at least one high impact paper, if that is not enough for you, maybe you should leave.

Apart from that specific situation, people don't do good work if they don't want to be there. So if a student wants to leave, they should probably have the opportunity to do so. They won't actually be helping much if they stay and the discord can effect other students as well. Students should follow the course that is best for them and if they believe another group would be better, then they should join it.

I think many students when threatening to leave actually want the adviser to yield in some argument or to recognize the students worth and beg them to stay. That really doesn't help anyone. If you are making a choice because you believe it is the best choice for your group and that particular student, it doesn't make sense to use leaving as a wedge to alter that decision.

Now in this particular case, the student in question has not made up his mind. He was in the lab at an ungodly hour yesterday morning, which is a good sign. I hope that this indicates renewed commitment. Regardless, I have recognized that he needs to work on projects that will best help our group, and if he doesn't like the project that he has been assigned (and agreed to work on over a year ago, no less) then he really *should* look for other options.

Lab Politics

Good news, bad news. The good news is that my lab is finally large and established enough to have lab politics. Bad news is that we have lab politics.

I realize that this is a problem everywhere and just gets worse with the size of the group, but this is my first foray into problems of this type. The problem initiated when one of my students who should have been leaving was unable to get a job because of the poor economy. This forced senior student to have to work with junior student, who was designated to take over the project, for longer than I would like. There seems to be lack of communication about just who is working on what and when, and despite my seemingly clear directions, this is ongoing. I have now taken to weekly meetings with each of them to try and sort out problems before they fester.

Junior student has trouble understanding the "big picture" of the research and also why the project is innovative and how it connects to other work. Jr. Student needs constant reassurance that this work is meaningful and will help career goals. Meanwhile, Sr. student is eager for results and publications, presumably to get a job. Sr. student doesn't always share details of the experiments being conducted until the are optimized. Thus, jr. student loses learning opportunities and wastes time waiting for "optimization." I am now trying to divide tasks out so that each can work independently, but their research is still interconnected, so there is still the possibility of one person waiting on the other for data, materials, etc.

The good news is that this project is really, really exciting, and will probably generate a couple high impact papers. So, if I can just get my students to play together in the sand box...