Melanie Stefan published a lovely article in Nature back in 2010 (vol 468 pg 467) highlighting that the majority of our efforts often result in 'failures'. This was picked up by other scientists including Johannes Haushofer who published a CV of failures which was publicised in The Guardian (here). I have had many 'failures' (a longer list than some of those I've seen tweeted!) however these have by no means been a waste of time and effort. Every time I write an application I learn something new - often from peers and mentors who help me edit and improve the application or from the reviewers feedback. My favourite research paper for example was adapted and improved through feedback from reviewers over 2 resubmissions (in this case it was to the same journal which was a nice change) and is a definite improvement to the original submission. Here is my summary CV of Failures! Failed Fellowship Applications: For every successful fellowship application I've had on average 3 failed attempts - that's nine failed fellowship applications - each application takes me about 3 months of work. - that's a lot of weekends and evenings! Publication rejections: I've had just one research paper accepted on first submission. Most of my research papers have been resubmitted at least twice before being accepted. One of the biggest lessons I learnt is that sometimes it's ok to question a journal rejection...I had a manuscript resubmitted to the same journal and two of the three reviewers were happy with the corrections, while the 3rd reviewer came up with a list of completely new arguments...the paper was rejected. I should have questioned the decision...as a postdoc at the time I didn't think I had that right (wrong!) and the senior authors on the manuscript have never been supportive for anything so I gave up. - FAIL! - however this was an important lesson to learn! Failed Grants: As a new academic this list is surprisingly short at the moment...I've had a few successes on small grants. I have had bad reviews though. The most recent example was a reviewer who said on the one hand the grant was using too many old-fashioned methods (half the grant is for developing a new technique and plan to use the traditional methods to verify the new method) and the same reviewer said I should stick to 'basic biology'. The other two reviewers applauded the project and acknowledge the value of the techniques and that the project is too fundamental for industry funding which makes it a good project for a research council....Reviewer 1 was exceptionally harsh (my Co-I agreed it was an appallingly bad review). I suspect this will be a common issue with plant physiology in the UK where molecular biologists reign - also a good lesson! Failed studentships: Just the other day I had a rejection for a CASE PhD studentship, Similar to the Failed Grants list, this list will no doubt grow in coming years! Failed awards: As a PhD student I applied for a lot of awards that were unsuccessful (I can't even remember what's in that list!). This list will grow continuously! But so will the lessons I learn and the experience I gain! Those of you working towards an academic career, don't be daunted. It's hard work but it's worth it (well I still think so)! I do think it's comforting to know that others have had failures - feel free to bookmark this page and read it again when you receive a rejection!
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Solanum ovigerum, the Easter white eggplant.
I gave a talk yesterday at the UoN Research Staff Conference on my experience with fellowships and fellowship applications and I thought it might be useful to others so here is a version of that talk. ----BIG DISCLAIMER---The views presented here are based on my own experience of applying. I've never been on a selection panel. For advice from the other side do talk to your administrative support team. Once upon a time in a galaxy not far from here there was a professor who felt their wisdom would help people. “You all need nature papers to be successful getting fellowships.” He pontificated. – To this, one scientist put up their hand – “I don’t have a nature paper but I have had fellowships…”. The professor replied, “well… yes… but no-one gets a senior fellowship without nature papers”. Again the scientist put their hand up, “but I have an interview for a senior fellowship next week and I still don’t have any nature papers”. To which the professor said “yes but I’m surprised they shortlisted you over people with nature papers”. The scientist was me and I got that fellowship. Today I want to tell you my experience with fellowships and my 4 golden rules of applying for fellowships. I’ll give you some general advice about fellowship writing and interviews and I hope this will help you overcome the dark-side in a galaxy full of emperors! Why a Fellowship?Good:
Bad:
Mandy's Golden Rules of FellowshipsRule 1): You have to be in it to win it. It’s true. If you don’t apply you will definitely not get one. Rule 2): You do NOT have to have a nature/science paper to be competitive. Of course it does help and if you are doing work that can get you a Nature or Science paper then of course do it! It also depends a little on the fellowship but I got my Marie Curie Fellowship with one first author article in New Forests (IF 1 ish at the time), one co-author paper which was accepted in Aust J of For research (even lower), one first author submitted to New Forests (but not accepted yet). I then got the Newton Fellowship with my Plant Phys paper from my PhD which is still my highest research paper. Now I have the NRF – No Nature/Science papers in there… Rule 3): You have to be resilient. For every successful fellowship I have on average 3 unsuccessful applications. Rule 4): Ignore discouragers – If I listened to every person who told me ‘oh they’re very competitive, you’ll never get one of them’ I would not be where I am now. Refer to rule 1 (and then privately gloat when you are successful). The story I told at the beginning was by no means the first time I’ve been told I’d never be successful, or that I need nature papers. I’ve learnt to be a selective listener. Take on board constructive advice (that means if someone says they think your project is rubbish, think about how you can make the description more clear, how you can sell it more – but ignore the unhelpful comments like you’re wasting your time applying, you’ll never get it, etc). So you've decided to apply - general advice
Now you've got an interview:
Once you get to this point and you've done your best it depends on the direction of the wind. So go home, relax and know you've given it your best regardless of the decision. - Ok so I've never been able to relax after but I have had both unsuccessful and successful outcomes from interviews now and you learn from each one. I gave it my best on each and there’s nothing more you can do. If unsuccessful, pick yourself back up and see what you can learn for the next one. Ask for feedback…I've never found the feedback all that useful personally but I ask anyway – you never know. The other thing is, the more applications I've put in, the more support I've had from mentors…and I get it now….everyone is busy but when they see someone pick themselves up and try and try again they can see you are motivated and that’s worth investing time in. (I’d venture to say, if you find people are consistently not supporting you, go somewhere else). When successful – Celebrate big time. You now have one year before you need to start again (or two years if it’s a 3 year fellowship). Or even better it’s linked to a more permanent position - now you need to get grants but that’s a story for someone else to tell! Today was the kind of day that makes the bad days worth it. The most exiting moment was having one of the PhD students - Priya- come into my office positively bouncing with this: For the record - it wasn't the chocolate that made it special (although that never hurts!) - It turns out she was awarded the Tri Campus Postgraduate Award for which I nominated her! Very prestigious award and very well deserved! The awards are based on both academic and community contributions and she is extremely active in both areas. Not only that, she does it in the absence of her primary supervisor who left just after she started so she has shown excellent initiative.
I've watched Priya since the first year of her PhD when I was the senior post-doc in the lab and (at the risk of sounding patronising) I'm so proud of what she has achieved! There will be news articles which I'll share too when they come out. My other (far less exciting) good moment is that a newsy short summary of our review has just gone online at the Atlas of Science: http://atlasofscience.org/advantageous-adventitious-roots-ecology-economy-and-our-existence/ Always a good exercise to distil out the key point of why we wrote something for a more general audience! Since it was International Women't Day yesterday, I thought I should make a few comments on my own experience.
First and foremost: Thanks to all the women and men who in the past have stood up and shouted about equal rights. Thanks to these people, my own career progression has been a lot smoother than it might have been even just a few years before. My own experience has been fairly oblivious to the gender imbalance until fairly recently thanks to my fantastic parents who encouraged me in whatever interested me (during school and my first attempt at university in aerospace engineering and then to a Science Degree which has led me to where I am now). I also had wonderful mentors at university, both women and men and having this support based on my work ethic and not my gender meant I 'grew up' (well whether I grew up at all is debatable but let's pretend for a moment) protected from doubting my ability based on my gender. I worked in forestry after my degree as a minority (in age as well as gender) and it never crossed my mind thanks to the wonderful people I worked with there, many of who I'm still in contact with. Now I don't want to suggest there aren't still problems in Australia, because I know there are. However my eye-opening occurred after I left Australia. Since then I've listened to some academics (who thankfully are a minority in my experience) carry on about how 'despite being surrounded by women scientists' they have still been successful in their careers. Or who have rolled their eyes when women professors are speaking. More commonly I've come across the other extreme which in my opinion is harder to deal with and that is unconscious bias. How do you slap people who say things like how they want to support the female new academics? Clearly they mean well, but what about supporting new academics and leave out the gender? These kind of comments are patronising and insulting. It's the same as saying 'because you're female you're not as good as your male counterparts so as a man I'll help you make it'. This is a massive issue and I think we (men and women) need to point it out more when we notice it occurring. Thankfully there are only a few people in my work sphere that are like this and the rest are supportive of everyone - including me, but not exclusively me. My goal is to become a good mentor and leader. If that means female students or staff look up to me, that's great! But if it means both female and male students or staff look up to me then I'll have succeeded! To borrow and adapt an X-men quote, in the past perhaps 'Female and proud' would have been necessary but I argue that in 2016 we should be 'human and proud!' or more specifically: "Scientist and Proud!" http://www.plantphysiol.org/content/170/2/603.abstract
Let us know what you think! For those of you already following my blog I applaud your keenness and to keep you interested I'd recommend you read and follow the great Tobias Baskin. I had the great pleasure to get to know Tobias during his year long stay with us here at Nottingham. I learnt a lot from him and I'm sure he has something to offer each of you!
http://blogs.umass.edu/baskin To those who have been following my old blog, I will be converting that to an outreach/teaching focussed resource with links and information for students, teachers, and university people involved in outreach. - that won't happen overnight, but it will happen! ;)
http://amandarasmussen.blogspot.co.uk/p/home.html So I finally got around to finalising most of the details for my webpage (definitely a good Friday job! - although I seem to have a lot of those and not enough Fridays!) and now it's live!
I hope you enjoy reading about what my lab does and if you have any questions feel free to get in touch! Glasshouse experiment The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia Welcome to part 2 of my travel blog. For the last month I have been based at The University of Queensland in the lab of Professor Susanne Schmidt conducting an experiment looking at uptake of nitrogen by different root types in maize. The plants grew for 6 weeks either on high N (Fig 1A) or low N (Fig 1B) and then one seminal root and one crown root was fed 15N for 30 minutes after which time the root was rinsed, dried down, weighed, ground, and then a 3 mg sample of each root was sent to UC Davis for 15N quantification. The fresh and dry weights of the remaining root system and shoots were also recorded. The root-to-shoot ratio is in Fig 1C and it’s nice to see the text book response with the high nitrogen-fed plants having more shoot mass than root mass, while the low nitrogen-fed plants were the reverse. The glasshouse harvest was not trivial with temperatures between 35 and 40°C by 11 am when each day’s work was completed. I have to thank the fantastic team of people in the Schmidt group (Fig 2B) who’s positive attitudes made it not just productive but also a fun experience! In particular I’d like to thank Nicole Robinson and Richard Brackin who are the tireless post-docs in Prof. Schmidt’s team who helped me with every step! Next part of my journey – Malaysia Campus |
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May 2023
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