The bog of eternal singlehood: college towns beyond college

As I apply for jobs, many of which, for better or worse, are at academic institutions, I keep having a nagging feeling tugging at the back of my mind, like the tantrum-throwing three year old desperate for that Yo Gabba Gabba doll tears at her parent's arm in aisle 14 of the local Target. This pressing thought which brings me so much strife: I'm just not sure if I can take living in yet another land-grant college town.

Don't get me wrong—there are many great things about living in a college town. Life is generally quite pleasant and quiet, save football weekends. The cost of living is usually fantastic. They also tend to be family friendly, with quaint little farmers' markets and little local restaurants and shops. They also tend to be fairly progressive and open-minded, and support culture and art to a greater extent than you'd expect from such a small population.

Yes, for many people, a college town is a rather idyllic place. There is a specific subpopulation in these college towns, however, for whom the experience becomes utterly hopeless. This subpopulation: those who move to college towns, are not college-aged, and arrive without a significant other. Meet those requirements, and you're basically hosed until you escape. It is the bog of eternal singlehood.

I mean, let's take an honest look at the candidates in the dating pool in a college town for those who already hold one or more higher education degrees:

• College kids: I'm sorry, did you not see the word "kids" there?
• Grad students: Emotionally unstable semi-adults who incorrectly concluded that the panacea to their life problems was to get yet another degree.
• Postdocs: Does the sound of frantic typing as they try to finish their latest lit review during the act of love-making turn you on?
• Junior faculty: Ah, the less youthful, less healthy, more stressed versions of postdocs. Yes, I'm sure you had a good reason behind that choice...
• Staff: They probably arrived there because of a significant other; if they are single at this point, they're looking for an opportunity to flee, not to stay.
• Hipster/Hippie Townies: It's okay, so long as their friends never find out they're sleeping with you. Oh wait, it's a small college town...
• Folk in the surrounding countryside: don't be surprised if you're viewed an over-educated, heathen, pinko socialist who never learned how to do anything actually useful (all of which could be accurate assessments)
• People in the nearest city... five hours away: They're already pairing up with equally smart, young, attractive, better-paid competition that had the foresight to not force the issue of a long-distance relationship on the first date.

As a consolation, you will find great friends, for whom your sad, lonely, single self will serve as a reminder of why they need to stay committed to their own relationships.

With complete seriousness, I've found a tremendous amount of personal growth in the college towns I've inhabited for the past twelve years, and certainly, the quality of friends I've found in them has been unsurpassed. I admit that location is really only one part of the whole romantic equation.

Anyway, we'll see what the future brings. Maybe I'll finally join the young guns in a big ol' city, myself. Or maybe I'll find the the one who breaks the mold. Or maybe it'll just be the status quo, but hey, there are far worse bogs out there!

Driven by the pursuit of proficiency

I am looking for a job, and as this is only the third time in my life job hunting, I have sought advice anywhere I can get it. Like most universities, Virginia Tech has a Career Services office, so I consulted their website to help get things rolling. They suggest beginning with a self-assessment, and the very first item of this self assessment bluntly asks, "What do you want to achieve in your work?" While this question is frustratingly broad, it is fair game; one could expect such a question in an interview, and one certainly must have an answer ready.

I have never felt guided by some vision of how my life should be. I mean, sure, when I was 8, I wanted to fly an F-14 Tomcat and shoot down commie MiGs because that made you a hero, and when I was 13, I wanted to be a Marine Biologist because of National Geographic and NOVA PBS shows, and when I was 18 I wanted to be a physician because that's what all biology majors intend to be. Each one of those were fantasies—spurious projections of the possible me, based on the immature and incomplete value system I held at the moment. When I gave up on the gauntlet of medical school my junior year at UGA, I also gave up pretending I could calculate long term career trajectories. Despite blowing off this central tenant of many a cookie-cutter career book and commencement address, I've thus far avoided becoming a complete and utter catastrophe of a human being, so I continue to make without.

Now I'm a grad student in computational biology—the result of a few simple ingredients: 1) I've enjoyed computer programming since high school, and 2) I've found biology fascinating since the days of reading Zoobooks at the dinner table. I have also loved video games since grade school, but I didn't take the career path of a video game programmer because I didn't feel like I would make a substantial contribution to humankind. In contrast, I quit trying to become a physician—a career in which I would have had a direct and tangible impact on other people's lives—because I saw the competition was better than I was at jumping through the med school application hoops. (I also love playing guitar, but let's be realistic—although I've re-evaluated that option and there are worse things.)

According to motivational speaker Dan Pink, motivation boils down to three needs: mastery, autonomy, and purpose (video below if you are unfamiliar with Pink's theory). From that standpoint, I didn't feel a sense of mastery in my quest to become a physician, and I didn't feel a sense of purpose in my pursuit of game programming, but with a decent grasp of biology and a propensity for programming, computational biology seemed a good fit. Now the question stands, has it been?

From the standpoint of fulfilling the need for purposeful work, I have to say I have certainly experienced a boost in motivation after switching research groups, due in large part to shifting the biological subject from bacteria to in vitro liver tissue culture systems, which has more immediate implications for human health—a subject which still motivates me.

Considering proficiency, though, I feel very uncertain about my path in research. My RSS feeds continue to fill up with table-of-contents from journals faster than I can screen them for interesting abstracts. Also, although I don't reading through literature in the field as much as before, I still just dislike doing it. I think this indicates a major obstacle to a career in research because it breaks the virtuous cycle of positive feedback: what we like, we do more of, so we get better at it, which makes us like it more and do more of it, which makes us better at it, and so on.

It's not clear I've grown much as a presenter, either, though it's not for lack of opportunities. I've given at least one presentation a month, sometimes several, mostly to my two research groups, but with some conference and departmental talks, as well. While I've gotten better at recognizing the work pattern that goes into preparing a presentation, I don't feel I've been able to reduce the time it takes to prepare them, and while I feel I've improved in delivery technique, I feel disappointed at how little I've improved given the amount of time I've invested. This said, I have discovered I enjoy delivering a presentation for which I've prepared adequately, which I attribute to the performance aspect.

If we take a look at the most important currency in academia, publications, I'm far from flush, with one co-authorship on a book chapter, one second-authorship on a collaboration paper, and one first-authorship on an original research article (Open Access, yay!). I'm working on another paper currently, and should begin another one prior to defending in June. It's not a sparse record, but it's unremarkable. If I have learned anything from The Dip, it's that I want to do remarkable work.

I really want to become proficient, but after nine years of working in academic research from undergrad, to research tech, to grad student, I feel it's escaping me in this pursuit. My research experience feels like long periods of slogging, largely devoid of any feedback, let alone positive feedback (which is rare and fleeting). I want a research experience that breaks that mold, but I'm willing to accept I might not find one, and I'm becoming more enthusiastic about switching tracks to a career where I can make a genuine success of myself. I want that virtuous cycle of positive feedback. I want to get excited and make things!

So, to the future interviewer who asks, "What do you want to achieve in your work?" I answer this: "I want to achieve remarkable proficiency." Why settle for less? Life is short; let's find a way to become awesome while we still can.

Tips Interviewing prospective bioinformatics graduate students

Interviewing a prospective bioinformatics graduate student? Here are a few tips.

1. Keep your lab's research web page up to date. The key to getting a good student comes before the interview begins.
2. Know a bit about the prospective student. You can expect the prospective student to know a bit about your work (so long as you fulfill tip 1). You should take an interest and know something about the prospective student you're interviewing. This sets a very positive tone to the interview and makes the student feel welcome and comfortable. I had excellent interviews with professors who took the time to read the dossier the application committee made of me. (If your application committee does not prepare such dossiers, make certain it does next year.) As an addendum, if you know a colleague at a prospective student's previous place of education, feel free to ask if the student knows the colleague, but do not expect them to say yes.
3. Talk about your research first. Sure, the student who is really motivated will have already read your research web page. (See 1.) Regardless of preparedness, however, most prospective students will still feel nervous going into your office and sitting with you for the first few minutes. Ease the tension and break the ice by talking about your own work before having them talk about theirs. If you allow that buffer time of several minutes for the prospective student to calm down, the interview will go much better for both of you. From personal experience, my best interviews started this way. I felt most welcome by professors who could also articulate exactly what areas they hoped a grad student could step in and help. If you allow that buffer time of several minutes for the prospective student to calm down, the interview will go much better for both of you.
4. Don't ask the prospective student to code a particular function in <insert favorite programming language>. A prospective student can take offense at such a request. It shows a distrust in the skills they claim to have and immediately puts the prospective student on the defensive. Also consider the pointlessness in the exercise, which places an overemphasis on coding skills. In my experience thus far, programming is but a small part of a bioinformatics Ph.D. It is a skill that can be improved with remedial courses and Q&A among fellow grad students. Instead, focus on asking questions that probe what really matters: the student's interest in learning and self-motivation. If the student has a particular interest in programming, then sure, let the conversation wander in that direction. (For instance, Prof. Paul Magwene and I had a kindred-spirit talk about our love of Python.) In general, though, take a student's word that they program in the languages they claim, and if they don't program at all let them know that they'll need to take remedial courses to learn and check that their reaction is positive to this.
5. Ask the student about his or her research. The only way you'll really get a sense for the student's propensity for research is asking about his or her previous experiences in it. The more specific your questions about the student's research, the better. (See 2.) An example of a terrible question would be, "What was the greatest challenge in your research project?" An example of an good question would be, "It sounds like you worked with several different phylogenetic models. Were the resulting trees similar, though?" The former question is too open-ended (much like my most hated question of "Where do you see yourself in five years?" [Note: Best answer, "In the mirror, of course."]) The latter is specific but still leaves room for the student to explain his or her findings.

I'd like to thank the Biogang on FriendFeed for inspiring this post.