Mentoring for Postdocs
Ignoring words of wisdom from someone who has been in the same trenches you’re in now is idiotic at best. Anyone who either is currently, or who is hopeful of someday being, in a postdoc situation, should read the two posts Female Science Professor has up about postdocs and the mentoring they should receive (but which she herself did not):
When I was a postdoc, I was just happy to get through a day without being groped (by an emeritus professor), excluded from using the research facilities I needed (by technical staff), yelled at (by office staff), unnerved (by a large male grad student who frequently expressed the opinion that ‘girls like to be hit’), insulted (by one of a wide range of people), or the target of a scary lab prank (by one particular technician). The concept of ‘postdoc mentoring’ was not even a gleam in anyone’s eye. I did my work and got out of there as soon as I had the opportunity. More…
I would ask the obvious “Why would anyone put themselves through that particular circle of hell?“ question, but her professional life seems to have gone in the direction she wanted, so it all worked out in the end.
First of all, she’s a female in the physical sciences, which isn’t the easiest place for a girl to be. My favorite physics prof (who is not FSP) told me she was the only female in her department while getting her degree in the 1970s and she had absolutely nothing good to say about the experience except that it made her such a cranky bad-ass that she didn’t put up with any sh*t ever from any student. Second of all, she has a full professorship at a research university.
All of which is awesome for her. There may even be some sort of holy grail involvement with a career moment like that. Or maybe it just means she’ll never get a decent parking spot again, she’ll never win the lottery, and she will never get to play for the NBA. On the up side, she’ll also never be struck by lightning, so there’s that.
Posted by Alexa Harrington
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At the risk of sounding callous, I am not surprised. PostDocs are Soylent Green.
I was fortunate enough to get an M.S. in 1972 at the height of the nerd unemployment period so I switched over to full time employment and part time graduate school. After matriculation I had a job and did not have to do a postdoc or six.
The problem is that a lot of graduate students want an academic career and quite ignore the statistics. As a result, the postdoc system serves as a buffer between graduate school and an academic post. And since the buffer gets more added each year than there are removed, the value of those in the buffer is small to vanishing.
I am not sure mentoring will either occur or be successful. My experience and observation of mentoring is that it has to be informal to work. Formal mentoring systems degenerate into irrelevant metrics and ineffectuality. If anything what these folks need is some realistic career counseling and the application of their own rationality to reality.
I shall resist making the comparison to those ‘talent’ search television programs.