So, the male candidate for president is caught on tape making sexually vile comments about women. He dismisses the episode as "locker room talk". This response implies that this is the sort of language that you can expect when a couple of guys are comfortably talking to each other while wearing nothing but towels around their waists after a friendly football game.
Well, I don't know if that is what happens in a locker room. I've never been in one. But I do know one thing, I have heard this sort of talk in other places: at work, at a restaurant, at a conference... Just a few examples:
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I'm going to a conference in a few weeks together with some of my postdocs and students. Most of us have been asked by conference organizers to present our works in poster form. But one "unlucky" soul was asked to do an oral presentation. She is terrified and considering not going to the conference, even though it is in beautiful Rome! Who would give up a trip to Rome? I tell you who would! Someone for whom 10 minutes of public speaking feel as pleasant as two hours of tooth drilling at the dentist's office.
Well, I can certainly identify with my student's feelings, as I used to be terrified of public speaking too. Once, just before I was to be introduced for one of the most important presentations that I have ever given, my friend had to come find me hiding in the ladies room. Her pep talk for me was: "you know more about this than anyone else in the room". This clicked with me. I straightened myself up, splashed water on my face and gave a killer presentation. Thanks, Karen! As academic professors, we aim to train people in our fields. We have good intentions, but we make one key mistake: we try to create our trainees in our image, for them to be the younger copies of ourselves. Our job is to train students to follow in our footsteps, even when this may not be the best choice for them.
We help students to get their PhDs, then land postdoctoral positions in the hopes of having them eventually get academic faculty appointments -ideally, a tenure-track one. We create an army of Mini-Me’s ready to continue the same scientific quests that we have been working on, and so we perpetuate the circle of life in academia. Are we setting trainees up for failure? For many new research scientists, the academic career path becomes a series of dead-end postdoctoral positions with little prospects for their own independent academic careers. According to a recent New York Times article, we are training many more research scientist than there are faculty positions. So why are we doing this? I was featured in Nature, vol 533: 429-430, May, 2016 by Alaina Levine. The article is about how you can better utilize your dissertation committee by doing the following : 1) choose a diverse group of committee members who can provide you guidance in different aspects of your thesis research and also advise you on your career goals, 2) communicate individually with each adviser early and often, 3) be honest with your committee members about your career goals, 4) keep committee members informed of your achievements and challenges, 5) realize that you are an asset to your advisers and not a drain or a burden to them. To this last point, I want to add that you should understand that your advisers want you to succeed. They accepted to be on your committee for altruistic reasons and they genuinely want you to do well. But you should also understand that their success as mentors is measured by the level of success that their students achieve. In the article, I am quoted as saying: "Students should remind faculty members whom they invite to serve on their dissertation committee that they are likely to benefit. “One measure of success for professors is the success of their students,” says Dr. Luz Claudio. “When you are up for promotion and tenure, the better your students do, the better you look.” Read the full article here.
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This section will not be visible in live published website. Below are your current settings: Current Number Of Columns are = 1 Expand Posts Area = 1 Gap/Space Between Posts = 8px Blog Post Style = card Use of custom card colors instead of default colors = 1 Blog Post Card Background Color = current color Blog Post Card Shadow Color = current color Blog Post Card Border Color = current color Publish the website and visit your blog page to see the results AuthorDr. Luz Claudio is an environmental health scientist, mother and consultant, originally from Puerto Rico. She is a tenured professor of environmental medicine and public health. Luz recently published her first book: How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper: The Step-by-Step Guide. Dr. Claudio has internship programs and resources for young scientists. Opinions expressed in this blog are solely her own and may not reflect her employer's views. Categories
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