CU #7: G x E: who's fault is it if I'm an asshat?
Conscious uncoupling from the ivory tower, Part 7
Note: This is the seventh (!) part of a series of essays using the book “Conscious Uncoupling: 5 Steps to a Happily Even After” by Katherine Woodward Thomas to stimulate conversation about academic careers. Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.
I was am a plant biologist. I love plants for what they are and for what they do for the world, but also for what they can teach us about ourselves and our place in the universe. Today, plant biology provides the framing for more conversation around Step 2 of Conscious Uncoupling. I’ll explain the implicative part of the title a bit farther down the page.
As a reminder, see my post from Monday and the conversation in the comments section here. Later in the week, I read with interest this conversation between Josh Doležal and Ginger Lockhart at The Recovering Academic:
There are a lot of fascinating ideas here (you can listen or read the transcript at the link above), but I was particularly struck when Ginger said,
“I picked up a lot of behaviors, especially as a professor, that really made me dislike myself . . .”
I’ve been thinking a lot—or maybe I should say trying not to think—about the ways I let myself and others down as a professor. I was not a great teacher nor a great lab leader, though I like to think that I got better over time at both. I am ashamed of how I behaved sometimes, and, with distance, am just starting to acknowledge ways I could have done things differently.
An example of bad behavior
I always liked having undergraduate researchers in the lab—I’d done a lot of undergraduate research and had loved every minute of it, so I wanted to pass that on. Nothing wrong there—except that, at least early on, I agreed to mentor only undergraduates with great grades. When they applied to the lab, I asked them to send me their CV and really only looked at their GPA. To my mind, this was a great screening process because it made sure that we were getting the smartest students.
There is a lot that is cringeworthy here. Never mind that getting good grades is not the same as being smart, which is also not the same as being good at lab work, which is also not the same as being interested in biology research (especially plant biology!). And of course, there was no correlation between GPA and how engaged students were once they joined.
At least a little of my justification was that I was trying to make things easier on the graduate students and postdocs who would be doing the actual training of undergraduate researchers (their “bench mentors”). But our job wasn’t to extract the best work or highest productivity out of undergraduates. It was to open their minds to the scientific process and the beauty of plant biology.
Is this academia turning me into an asshat?
There were definitely aspects of the job that just weren’t good for me as a person. I started working in labs while in high school and my approach was always to get as much done, as independently as possible. I got uniformly good grades and I knew what interested me. I got a lot of positive reinforcement for these behaviors, so why wouldn’t I use the same metrics to judge UGs in my own lab?
In addition, the weird economics of being a junior PI means that you are both the boss of people in your lab (basically, your promotion and tenure depend on their labor) and their mentor (you are guiding them towards independent intellectual work). Some of the time these two roles are in sync; sometimes they are in direct opposition. This topic probably deserves its own post, but at the extremes we see faculty having lab meetings on Saturday morning in order to get folks into the lab on a weekend (and creating a toxic culture), AND faculty spending precious hours training and supporting students at the expense of writing the grants and papers that would get them tenure. I was never given guidance about how to balance these two roles in ways that are both just and effective.
Is this just me being an asshat?
The thing is, it can’t be all just the pressure of pre-tenure life at an R1 institution. Many—maybe MOST—of my colleagues responded to this pressure in ways that are justice-oriented. They welcome undergraduates and always find ways to squeeze a couple more in (these friendly labs are identified quickly and word spreads fast among undergraduates!). They also manage to prioritize the work that would help their own advancement without being extractive, usually by functioning as a team where everyone is part of a greater good. I feel like my lab group moved closer to this ideal in later years—but only after I got tenure.
Genotype by environment (G x E) interactions
Here is where the plant inspiration comes in. Plant scientists, geneticists, agronomists, ecologists, evolutionary biologists, and crop scientists care about a plant’s genes (its genotype), and the environment it grows in (soil, water, ecosystem), AND the interaction between a plant’s genotype and its environment (G x E interactions). Plants with the same genetic background will behave in different ways depending on their environment. And different plant lines will behave differently in the same environment.
Thanks, plants!
I find it comforting to think that the same might be true for me. It’s not just that I am an egotistical jerk. It’s also not just that academia is broken. It’s that the environment brought out some of my worst personality traits. And, if you are initially successful in the environment, like I was, it’s even harder to look at it critically—or at least there is little incentive to do so.
ASIDE: If you want to learn other things about life from plants and plant biology, you can do no better than Beronda Montgomery’s book, Lessons from Plants)!
Discussion Section
Does this G x E idea resonate with you? Or am I just trying to avoid responsibility for being an egotistical jerk?
What are other examples where the outcome might depend both on the specific environment and on the characteristics of the academic?
"It’s that the environment brought out some of my worst personality traits. And, if you are initially successful in the environment, like I was, it’s even harder to look at it critically—or at least there is little incentive to do so." A pithy and powerful couplet here.
For me, the hyper-competitive environment of graduate school and the job search really made the chip on my shoulder as a first-gen student bigger. It's pretty tough not to feel angry when you realize that a lot depends on secret handshakes and networking. That got a little better when I was able to mentor other first-gen students, but it was startling to discover that academe is not a meritocracy and that the principles from my blue collar upbringing -- work hard, be dependable, embrace hardship -- did not necessarily guarantee results or recognition. I think I often (over)compensated for this lack of fairness by emphasizing publications, awards, and other tangible markers of achievement, even though I knew that there could never be enough lines on the CV. Now I'm wondering if my socialization fits with G in your formula (growing up blue collar isn't a genotype, but I guess by the time you are fully formed, it might as well be). I am also loyal and trusting by nature. If I feel that a person or institution has exploited that loyalty rather than valuing and reciprocating it, that will assuredly bring out my worst. I'm still trying to decide whether this is a matter of tempering my expectations of others and of institutions or whether my instinctively high standards for personal and work relationships are healthy.
Thanks for linking to my podcast, too -- really appreciate that!
It was actually a lawyer who made the connection explicit for me, with a geometry metaphor. Nature and Nurture (or Genes and Environment, as you say here) are like Length and Width in rectangles. If you have an area, you have to have both, by definition. Otherwise it's just a line.