I recently came accross this essay about procrastination. I found it quite interresting in general, and in particular it helped me articulate the main issue with my professional situation: I lack much needed time to procrastinate.

I think I view procrastination a little differently from the author of the essay, but in essence, I am in full agreement with his perspective. I believe the key phrase in that essay is the claim that "real work needs two things (...): big chunks of time, and the right mood."

Where I differ from the author is in the belief that, to reach the right mood, you need "bad" procrastination, i.e. what he calls type-A and type-B procrastination: periods of time do "do nothing", aka clean your house or office space, watch TV, goof off on the web, read papers that are only remotely related to your research topic... After a while of "doing nothing", the urge to get some actual work done does build up, but you're not quite ready to commit to the hard tasks yet, so that's the perfect time to "do something less important", such as reply to email, document recent work, admin stuff... And finally, the "right mood" is there, hard work can begin! That's when you need to be able to sit at your desk for hours without being interrupted by meetings, errands, domestic chores. At least, that's how I operate - well, how I used to operate... Because over the past few years, I have not been able to go through all the motions in the game plan. I simply do not have the time. I've been able to either "do nothing" and then "do something less important", or go straight into the "do something less important phase", but I never really make it to the last phase. Or if I do, I have to drop everything after five minutes to rush home. My errands and domestic chores are no longer of the kind that I can throw to the wind and just postpone indefinitely or even for a day. When it's time to pick-up my son from daycare, I can't just decide to let the teachers drop him off at the local police station until I'm ready to take custody of him. When it's time to go shopping, I can't decide that my son can do without proper food or diapers for a few days. I suppose I could decide that I will sleep another day, but that's treacherous when the little one will wake you up at 6 a.m. no matter what.
 
I realize it's a common predicament, but to this day, I have not found the right strategy to make adequate time for procrastination.

I read a few blogs written by academics with great interest as they address issues related to research, student supervision, grant writing, publication, work-life balance and much more. One topic of particular interest is that of women in science, which is often discussed by FSP and GMP among others. As a women in the field of computer science, I have often been in a male-dominated evironment. However, either because I'm lucky or because it happens in too subltle ways to pinpoint, I do not feel that I have been treated differently from my male peers throughout my career, nor have I witnessed blatant gender-differenciated treatment.

That's why I want to report something that happened a few days ago as my lab was going through a round of external evaluation by peers. There was a specific meeting where our branch chief presented the branch research activities over the period and answered questions from the evaluation committee. One question was related to the time to graduation for PhD students. The expected time to graduation in France is 3 years and about 50% of the branch students graduated in 4 years or more, which was a concern to the committee. So they asked why students took so long to graduate. Our branch chief (a male colleague) clearly did not expect the question, and just told them the first thing that came through his mind: the female students tend to go on maternity leave which delays their graduation. In all fairness, the conversation was quickly back on a more professional and accurate track - the committee spokesperson noted that many of the students with the longer time to graduation seemed to have male first names and another colleague came to the rescue to explain that while our research topic is multidisciplinary, many graduate students come to the lab with training in only one of the relevant disciplines, so the first few months of their time at the lab is spent on complementing their training in the other discipline sometimes at the expense of immediate progress on their research. It should also be noted that the colleague who blurted out the unfortunate response is one of the most fair persons that I know, always trying to make everyone feel included and appreciated for their contribution.

Yet, when 25% of a "problem" student cohort (12% of the total student pool) fits a particular women profile, the knee-jerk reaction is to just blame it on the women! While I can understand why he would say that (he was taken by surprised, and he advised at least one of the students who did go on maternity leave so it would be natural to think about that person as a token student), the disastrous notion that "the lab average graduation time is delayed by female students" might be remembered more than the rationale discussion that ensued. So in addition to unfairly blaming former female students, this might also hurt the chances of female applicants to the PhD program.

The harm is done, and brushed off as a funny faux-pas that everyone can laugh about in the hallways for weeks to come.

We have been back for over 6 months now, and yet I still feel completely overwhelmed by... life itself, it seems. At this point, it is hard to pinpoint the problem: is it adapting to a different country, a different position at work, being a parent? Was that too many changes at once?

I am getting nervous as all the important conference deadlines in my field for this year are coming and going and I still don't have anything to submit on my current research - over the past few months, I have been submitting 7 single PI or collaborative grants, which seems like a lot but is apparently only the obvious thing to do, I have experienced some issues with getting work material (also a classic new independant investigator obstacle, I know...) and got a taste of administrative and student-related adventures. Technically, things are starting to fall into place and I can start working properly while waiting for the grant results and new deadlines, *but* it seems there is so much to do and so little time to get it done! In the end, I guess that's the bottom line: I am just not putting in the time anymore. Nor could I do it if I wanted to. Between family duties and local logistics, I am basically in the office between 8:30 am and 5pm and I am so toast in the evening (with the prospect of getting up at 6:30 am!) and having my hands full during the week-end that I am down to the proverbial 40-hour week that my postdoc self would qualify as a walk in the park. While everybody else is going full steam ahead...

So, I have to come to terms with the fact that in the grand scheme of life it is not a big deal to skip a couple of conference deadlines, and that "every body else" is not necessarily without qualms. This post in partcular resonated with me, as well as this other post on work-life balance and on a less personnal level, this post about the emerging requirements for reseachers. In fact, I even recently saw a workshop at a major conference proposing a discussion of the challenges new independant investigators face: moving on from working on your own research project to in addition get funded, hire students and other collaborators, set up a lab, and so on.

For today, it was confirmed that I achieved the single most difficult goal in my career: I got offered a permanent position at a national research institution in France. Pinch me now! 

Besides being extatic and excited, there are two things that I want to write about today, because they will be worth remembering. The first one is that I still don't know how the hell I got there (a.k.a. PTSD) and the second one is that now that I am here, I will make it my mission to improve the life of research position applicants (a.k.a. beware, search committees). 

Batrachian models of disease

So, how did you do it? That's always the question you want to ask role models and people who got where you want to be in the hope to understand their success and emulate it. It feels pretty anticlimatic to confess that I don't have a clue.

It may have something to do with the fact that my application is not entirely shabby (objectively, my yearly publication level over the past 6 or 7 years has been consistently meeting the requirements of the French national evaluation agency for *a four year period*), but I was turned down from similar jobs, and people with seemingly less achievements got in. It may have to do with practice - I did fail a good three, four similar interviews this year alone before apparently "getting it". It may have to do with the precious help of colleagues and family reviewing and critiquing my project and presentation slides (many thanks!!). It may even have to do with the wrath of ennemies bullying me in the failed interviews, pushing me to prepare better answers and making me reach the "whatever" point that took the stress away.

The wait for that final and successful interview was excruciatingly long, long enough to overhear committee members on a coffee break praise a presentation they just had from an applicant working on batrachian models of disease. I kid you not. Batrachian models of disease. I just had to laugh out loud at the silliness of it all. My research is so far from batrachian models of disease, that I would not know a bloody batrachian if it kicked me in the face, animal model or regular beast. And yet, they picked me (and my batrachian free research topic)! So it did work out somehow, but it is essential to be well aware that it might have tanked just as beautifully. The whole application process is such an ordeal that I can't say I feel undeserving, I'm just pleasantly surprised.

Have mercy on the applicants!

It did work out in the end, so of course it was worth the effort. But there is such a fine line between success and failure that really, is it worth it? Should it be that hard to get a job offer? And in the end is that really how a country should be recruiting permanent staff? Considering that some places will fly (i.e. cover all travel expenses) applicants (yes, multiple applicants) to a 2-year position to have the opportunity to adequately discuss the potential collaboration, I am left dumbfounded by French practices. While I understand all the legal requirements that formally bound the process, there is some wiggle room, there always is. And I don't understand why hiring committee choose to blatantly walk away from legal opportunities to ease the applicants' financial, logistic and personnal burden. At the very least, videoconferencing should be offered as an alternative to flying 3,000 miles or more for a 25 minute interview. Seriously. So

if - or rather , let's be bold, when I get the opportunity to have a say in the matter, I shall remember this day and try to make a difference. 

On that note, I'll go toast to new beginnings at Rumba Cafe, my all time DC favorite and temple of the pink, sparkly and fruity!

Je decouvre par mes collegues et amies que les gynecos recommandent unanimement un regime absolument draconien pendant la grossesse. Ainsi, la consommation de caffeine serait prohibee sur la base d'une serie d'etudes dont la plus recente, parue dans Am J Obstet Gynecol une revue d'obstetrique, indique tiedement qu'il serait prudent de reduire ou d'arreter les apports en caffeine pendant la grossesse. ("…it may be prudent to stop or reduce caffeine intake during pregnancy.").

En regardant de plus pres sur PubMed, on trouve rapidement un commentaire dans le meme journal qui retorque qu'en fait, rien ne permet de conclure: "To date, the literature is still inconclusive regarding the influence of caffeine on miscarriage."

Au moins deux autres articles recents critiquent les conclusions des etudes sur le sujet, dont la methodologie ne permettrait simplement pas de conclure dans un sens ou dans l'autre (en particulier  parce qu'il est difficile de separer le facteur "caffeine" d'autres facteurs de risque bien plus influents pour les fausse-couches, tels que l'age, le fait de fumer ou de consommer de l'alcool pendant la grossesse) - mais bon, par precaution on va plutot dire que c'est dangereux que le contraire.

Par ailleurs, sur la base de ces fameuses etudes, Sante Canada preconise de limiter les apports de caffeine pendant la grossesse a 300mg par jour maximum, ce qui d'apres leur tableau d'equivalence correspond a 2.5 litres de the vert par jour - pas de quoi se priver beaucoup quand meme.

En clair, ce pataques me rapelle quelque chose (cliquer sur la planche pour la voir en grand chez PhD comics):