Vulnerability, Strength and Success
I’ve been doing a series of career guidance sessions with my research team, and this past week we talked about how to structure a successful career path as a scientist. As part of that, I gave my thoughts on how to maximize chances of that “success” (traditional definition; getting a decent permanent job as a researcher, and doing a good job at it); without knowingly being a jerk or insincere. This process led me to re-inspect my own career for insights — not that I’ve been on perfect behaviour, but I do routinely reflect on choices I make.
I asked myself, “What does success mean to me?” to see what my answer was today. That led to me writing up this story of my career path, as an example of the twists and turns that can happen in the life of a scientist. I originally intended to share this story just with my team, but then I decided to turn into a full-on blog post, in my ongoing personal quest to open up and share my thoughts and experiences with others. For those who have read my advice to PhD students, there are some commonalities, but plenty of this is new.
Where my last post was partly about publicly exposing vulnerabilities in other scientists, this one is about privately finding one’s own vulnerabilities along with the strengths, and sharing them publicly. The story is about me, but the key points are more about how “success” can evolve in science (N=1 plus anecdotal observations of others).
Growing Up in Grad School
As an undergraduate student, I was clueless about my career until I applied to graduate school a second time. The first time I tried applying, I didn’t even know how to really go about it, or what I wanted to do beyond some sort of biology. Yet to my credit I was curious, creative, a swift learner with a great memory for science, and broadly educated in biology and other fields (thanks, parents and past teachers!). I read and watched “Jurassic Park” and lots of Stephen Jay Gould and Darwin or palaeontology books, and I just tried to actively learn all I could, reading compulsively. I even resolved to quit non-science reading for a few years, and stuck to that. I realized that a research career combining evolution and biomechanics was of interest to me, involving vertebrates and maybe fossils.
I got into grad school in 1995 and had a great project to study how dinosaurs moved, but I felt inadequate compared to my peers. So I dedicated myself even harder to reading and learning. I didn’t pass my first orals (qualifying exam; appraisal/defense) but that helped me to refocus even more resolutely on deep learning, especially to fill gaps in my knowledge of biomechanics methods that I’d later use. During this time I also learned website design and HTML code (mid-90s; early WWW!), working with several others on Berkeley’s UCMP website in my free time. I intensively networked with colleagues via email lists (the long-lived Dinosaur listproc) and at a lot of conferences, trying to figure out how science worked and how to go about my project. That was a powerful initial formative period.
It was a gruelling struggle and I’d had serious health problems (a narrow escape from cancer) around the same time, too. I frequently, throughout the 1990’s, doubted if I could make it in the field. I looked around me and could not see how I could become successful in what I wanted to do (marry biomechanics and evolutionary biology in stronger ways). I was so scared, so uncertain of my own work, that I didn’t know what to do—I had a project but had no clue how to really implement it. So two years passed in semi-paralysis, with little concrete science to show for it, and I gave a lot of *bad* internal seminars in Berkeley’s Friday biomechanics group. However, those bad seminars helped me to become a better speaker. I had a terrible fear of public speaking; on top of having little data, this experience was brutal for me. But I used it as practice, bent to the task of bettering myself.
A change in my career trajectory happened as my research slowly took root. I wrote some book chapters for a dinosaur encyclopedia in 1997, a simple paper describing a little dinosaur in 1998, then another paper on taxonomy published in 1999. [For those wanting to find out what any of these papers I mention are, they are on my Publications page, often with pdfs] These papers at least showed I could finish a research task; when I was younger I’d had some bad habits of not finishing work I started.
I visited a lot of museums and hung out with people there, socializing while learning about diverse fossils and their evolutionary anatomy, implementing what I’d learned from my own dissections and literature studies of living animals. This led to a poster (actually two big posters stacked atop each other; plotting the evolution of the reptilian pelvis and muscles) at a palaeontology meeting (SVP). This poster turned a few heads and I suppose convinced some that I knew something about bone and soft tissue anatomy.
Then in 1998, I did a 4-month visiting scholarship at Brown University with Steve Gatesy that had a big impact on my career: Steve helped me consolidate ideas about how anatomy related to function in dinosaurs, and how to interpret data from living animals (I did my first gait experiments, with guineafowl, which went sort of OK), and I loved Brown University’s EEB department environment. For once, I felt like a grown-up, as people started to listen to what I had to say. In retrospect, I was still just a kid in many other ways. I didn’t really achieve a lot of what Steve asked me to do; I was unfocused, but changing steadily.
In 1999, I gave a talk at SVP that was well received, based on that research with Gatesy, and then I gave it again at SICB. I had a few prominent scientists encouraging me to apply for faculty jobs (e.g., Beth Brainerd was very supportive)– this gave me a new charge of excitement and confidence. I finally began to feel like a real expert in my little area of science. That talk became our 2000 “Abductors, adductors…” paper in Paleobiology, which I still love for its integrative nature and broad, bold (but incompletely answered) questions. Yet when a respected professor at Berkeley told me before my University of Chicago faculty job interview “You act like a deer in the headlights too often,” I knew I had a long journey of self-improvement left. And a lot of that improvement just came with time– and plenty of mistakes.
Momentum continued to build for my career in 2000 as I took my anatomical work into more biomechanical directions and passed my orals. I gave an SVP Romer Prize (best student talk) presentation on my new T. rex biomechanical modelling work, and I won! I felt truly appreciated, not just as an expert but as an emerging young leader in my research area. I’ll never forget the standing ovation at the award announcement in Mexico City—seeing people I saw as famous and amazing get up and cheer for me was such a rush! Then I published two lengthy anatomical papers in Zool J Linn Soc in 2001, which still are my most cited works — even more than some of my subsequent Nature papers.
Evolution: Postdoc to Faculty
Also in 2001, I was awarded a NSF postdoc at Stanford to do exactly what I’d long wanted to do: build detailed biomechanical models of dinosaurs, using the anatomical work I’d done before. That was it: I saw evidence that I had “made it”. But that took about six years; toward the end of my PhD; to truly feel this way most of the time, and in some ways this feeling led to youthful overconfidence and brashness that I had to later try to shed. I feel fortunate that the rest of my career went more smoothly. I doubt I could have endured another six years of struggling as I did during my PhD. But it wasn’t easy, either. During my postdoc I had to force my brain to think like a mechanical engineer’s and that was a difficult mental struggle.
The year 2002 became a wild ride for me.
First, my T. rex “not a fast runner” paper got published in Nature, and I was thrown into the limelight of the news media for two weeks or so. Luckily I was ready for the onslaught — one of my mentors, Bob Full, warned me, “This will be huge. Prepare!” I handled it well and I learned a lot about science communication in the process.
Shortly after that publication, just before my wedding’s bachelor party, I developed terrible leg blood clots and had to cancel my party—but I recovered in time for the wedding, which was a fantastic event on a California clifftop. I enjoyed a good life and seemed healthy again. I kept working hard, I got my second paper accepted at Nature on bouncy-running elephants, and then…
Then I had a stroke, just before that Nature paper got published.
Everything came crashing to a halt and I had to think about what it all meant—these were gigantic life-and-death questions to face at age 31! Luckily, I recovered without much deficit at all, and I regained my momentum with renewed stubborn dedication and grit, although my recover took many months, and took its toll on my psyche. I’ve told this story before in this post about my brain.
I started seeing therapists to talk about my struggles, which was a mixed blessing: I became more aware of my personality flaws, but also more aware of how many of those flaws wouldn’t change. I’m still not sure if that was a good thing but it taught me a lot of humility, which I still revisit today. I also learned to find humour and wonder in the dark times, which colours even this blog.
In winter of 2003 I went to a biomechanics symposium in Calgary, invited by British colleague Alan Wilson. Later that spring, Alan encouraged me to apply for an RVC faculty job (“you’ll at least get an interview and a free trip to London”), which I said no to (vet school and England move didn’t seem right to me), but later changed my mind after thinking it over.
I got the RVC job offer the day before my actual job talk (luckily colleague David Polly warned me that things like this happened fast in the UK, unlike the months of negotiation in the USA!). I made the move in November 2003 and the rest was hard work, despite plenty of mistakes and lessons learned, that paid off a lot career-wise. If I hadn’t taken that job I’d have been unemployed, and I had postdoc fellowships and faculty job applications that got rejected in 2002-2003, so I was no stranger to rejection. It all could have gone so differently…
But it wasn’t a smooth odyssey either—there were family and financial struggles, and I was thousands of miles away while my mother succumbed to Alzheimer’s and my father swiftly fell victim to cancer, and I never was 100% healthy and strong after my troubles in 2002. Even in the late 2000’s, I felt inadequate and once confided to a colleague something like “I still feel like a postdoc here. I’m a faculty member and I don’t feel like I’ve succeeded.”
Since then, I’ve achieved some security that has at last washed that feeling away. That was a gradual process, but I think the key moment I realized that “I’ll be OK now” was in 2010 when I got the call, while on holiday in Wales (at the time touring Caernarfon Castle), informing me that my promotion to full Professor was being approved. It was an anticlimactic moment because that promotion process took 1 year, but it still felt great. It felt like success. I’ll never earn the “best scientist ever” award, so I am content. I don’t feel I have something big left to prove to myself in my career, so I can focus on other things now. It “only” took 15 or so years…
Ten Lessons Learned
When I look back on this experience and try to glean general lessons, my thoughts are:
1) Socializing matters so much for a scientific career. “Networking” isn’t a smarmy or supercilious approach, either; in fact, that insincerity can backfire and really hurt one’s reputation. I made a lot of friends early on — some of my best friends today are scientist colleagues. Many of these have turned into collaborators. Making friends in science is a win-win situation. Interacting with fellow scientists is one of the things I have always enjoyed most about science. Never has it been clearer to me how important the human element of science is. Diplomacy is a skill I never expected to use much in science, but I learned it through a lot of experience, and now I treasure it.
2) Developing a thicker skin is essential, but being vulnerable helps, too. Acting impervious just makes you seem inhuman and isolates you. Struggling is natural and helped me endure the tough times that came along with the good times, often in sharp transition. Science is freaking hard as a career. Even with all the hard work, nothing is guaranteed. Whether you’re weathering peer review critiques, politics, or health or other “life problems”, you need strength, whether it comes from inside you or from those around you. Embrace that you won’t be perfect but strive to do your best despite that. Regret failures briefly (be real with yourself), learn from them and then move on.
3) Reading the literature can be extremely valuable. So many of my ideas came from obsessive reading in diverse fields, and tying together diverse ideas or finding overlooked/unsolved questions and new ways to investigate them. I can’t understand why some scientists intentionally don’t try to read the literature (and encourage their students to follow this practice!), even though it is inevitable to fall behind the literature; you will always miss relevant stuff. I think it can only help to try to keep up that scholarly habit, and it is our debt to past scientists as well as our expectation of future ones—otherwise why publish?
4) I wish I learned even more skills when I was younger. It is so hard to find time and energy now to learn new approaches. This inevitably leads to a researcher becoming steadily less of a master of research methods and data to more of a manager of research. So I am thankful for having the wisdom accumulated via trial and error experiences to keep me relevant and useful to my awesome team. That sharing of wisdom and experience is becoming more and more enjoyable to me now.
5) Did I “succeed” via hard work or coincidence? Well, both—and more! I wouldn’t have gotten here without the hard work, but I look back and I see a lot of chance events that seemed innocent at the time, but some turned out to be deeply formative. Some decisions I made look good in retrospect, but they could have turned out badly, and I made some bad decisions, too; those are easy to overlook given that the net result has been progress. Nothing came easily, overall. And I had a lot of help from mentors, too; Kevin Padian and Scott Delp in particular. Even today, I would not say that my career is easy, by any stretch. I still can find it very draining, but it’s so fun, too!
6) Take care of yourself. I’ve learned the hard way that the saying “At least you have your health” is profoundly wise. I try to find plenty of time now to stop, breathe and observe my life, reflecting on the adventures I’ve had so far. The feelings evoked by this are rich and complex.
7) If I could go back, I’d change a lot of decisions I made. We all would. But I’m glad I’ve lived the life I’ve lived so far. At last, after almost 20 years of a career in science, I feel mostly comfortable in my own skin, more able to act rather than be frozen in the headlights of adversity. I know who I am and what I cannot be, and things I need to work on about myself. In some ways I feel more free than I’ve felt since childhood, because the success (as I’ve defined it in my life) has given me that freedom to try new things and take new risks, and I feel fortunate for that. I think I finally understand the phrase “academic freedom” and why it (and tenure) are so valuable in science today, because I have a good amount of academic freedom. I still try to fight my own limits and push myself to improve my world—the freedom I have allows this.
8) When I revisit the question of “what does success mean to me?” today I find that the answer is to be able to laugh, half-darkly, at myself—at my faults, my strengths, and the profound and the idiotic experiences of my life. I’ve found ways to both take my life seriously and to laugh at myself adrift in it. To see these crisply and then to embrace the whole as “this is me, I can deal with that” brings me a fresh and satisfying feeling.
9) Share your struggles — and successes — with those you trust. It helps. But even just a few years ago, the thought of sharing my career’s story online would have scared me.
10) As scientists we hope for success in our careers to give us some immortality of sorts. What immortality we win is but echoes of our real lives and selves. So I seek to inject some laughter into those echoes while revelling in the amazing moments that make up almost every day. I think it’s funny that I became a scientist and it worked out OK, and I’m grateful to the many that helped; no scientist succeeds on their own.
A major aspect of a traditional career in science is to test the hypothesis that you can succeed in a career as a scientist, which is a voyage of self-discovery, uncovering personal vulnerabilities and strengths. I feel that I am transitioning into whatever the next part of my science career will be; in part, to play a psychopomp role for others taking that voyage.
That’s my story so far. Thanks for sticking with it until the end. Please share your thoughts below.
Thank you.
I sometimes wish English was my native language, then I would be better in expressing what I feel when reading this.
I am grateful knowing you.
More and more I find myself in the company of people that really dare to learn and grow and acknowledge that doing it the hard way isn’t necessarily bad. People who not only acquire scientific knowledge, but even more the knowledge about who they *really* are and how they interact with other human beings.
I recognize a lot of the struggles you have faced and I am grateful that I am in a phase of my life I know that I truly am who I want to be. It is a sort of steady base without taking anything for granted. Knowing that I am allowed to make mistakes, but also take credit for my accomplishments without feeling guilty.
Again: thank you for sharing this.
Aww thanks Mieke, that’s so nice! And I am grateful to meet you, too. We tend to hear a lot about either people’s struggles or victories but seldom about the whole package that makes up a life, and even then there’s always a lot of story left untold, because we’re all interesting and complicated creatures. But it is fun getting to know good people.
Thank you so much for opening up about your vulnerabilities, John. It can be intimidating to look at successful scientists like you, and then look at one’s own efforts and struggles and to think if it, and I, will ever be enough to “succeed”, or if it is better to throw in towel and look for a real job. Reading your post about your professional and personal struggles made me realise that it is not the absence or presence of struggles that defines success, but how we deal with them. We all struggle, but not many people ‘higher up in the chain’ have the courage to open up about the person behind the science, and how their own vulnerabilities and mistakes have shaped their career paths. I wish more people did.
Thank you.
Thanks Hanneke! The infrequency of hearing these stories from senior-ish scientists helped motivate me to tell mine. I think admitting weakness/vulnerability is too often seen as a sign of inadequacy, rather than a sign of positive aspects of the human condition.
thanks for sharing all this, john. it gives me hope. i’m amidst the biggest struggle, which is the end of my PhD. i have so many fears, and sometimes feel so lost. it’s been the most difficult challange i’ve ever faced in my life so far, because, as you mentioned, it is also a time we take a big journey to our deepest parts, to know our limitations… new ones and old ones… and face them all at once! i wish my health incusrance could couver a therapy to help me with it, but luckily i can count with some friends and my family. and blog posts likee these.
i’m sure that what makes you a good scientist is not only how good your papers are… it’s a combination of factors and, in my personal opinion, being able to open up like this is one of them. sometimes we all behave as if we were all robots, but no one wants to interact with robots all the time.
this end-of-phd-struggle has charged its price for me too. not as bad as for you but i have gone through a pretty dark phase.. which, maybe one day, with beer, i could talk about if you want.. not ashamed of it, just unnecessary here. but when talking about it to my advisor, he told me his own story too. and my reaction was: cry. and say “why no one talks about this shit??” it felt so good to talk to him as it feels now to read your post. i’m very glad i finally found an advisor i could talk to, it made a huge difference. and talking with some other academics i also heard their story.. and there are hard ones out there.. so many, we should talk more. it’s unfair to feel alone.
therefore, thanks once again for sharing =]
maybe one day i’ll have my own story of success to tell.
Thank you Gabi and good luck! I am glad you bonded with your advisor. Robotic advisors can be no fun, and they aren’t that uncommon.
Wow. Thank you for that. It helps a lot to know that even high profile scientists experience moments of doubt. At meetings everyone always seem so confident. I am hearing from different sources now that what people portray is not always how they really feel. Ten years too late but still nice!
Awesome stuff as usual John–thanks for sharing!
Thank you so much for sharing this, John. Reading this in the middle of my very first big data collection trip certainly caused a big reaction in me.
Life in the beginning of this PhD sometimes feels like a violent roller-coaster. It feels so exciting to be living one of my biggest dreams but it can also be quite lonely, and in this moments I can often only see my insecurities.
So I feel tremendously lucky to be able to read these posts and get your advice. They show us the person behind the papers and titles, and they make things real, and more importantly, they make me feel like it’s all possible.
Thank you
A blanket thank-you for all the nice comments!
Another excellent post, thanks John.
I feel that we have to grow from the more adverse situations we find ourselves in. Although a latecomer to academia in the 25 years I’ve been a graphic designer I have had to deal with a fair share of diversity; the private sector is cut-throat and unforgiving and can take it’s toll, as I’ve seen with good friends and experienced myself.
What makes the difference between faltering and forging ahead through diversity is the love of the subject. That motivation is essential, and it can sustain you through some rough times. You will develop a thick skin, although there’s no doubt it can be hard to take criticism, but it’s worth noting that criticism of your work is part of your profession, and personal criticism often reveals more about the person making the criticism than it does about you.
My personal journey towards science began at school, and although it’s taken me a while to get here I’m very glad to have made it this far. Many options were not open to me as a youngster, and university was out. A part-time, self-funded PhD might seem like an indulgence to many but it’s far from that; I have to earn the money to pay for everything, get no grants and need to self-motivate like never before. I still had to apply and get accepted, and to have done so means a lot to someone from my background (not deprived, just sort of sidelined at school, and coming from a family with zero academic background). Over the years I’ve had many doubters whispering in my ears, and we have to learn to ignore these people; many family and friends still don’t get it, even those close to me; luckily my wife does 😉 Whether I prove them wrong or not, at least I will have tried. At the end of the day we have to do our best, accept our failings and vulnerabilities as humans and carry on.
But science is worth walking the gunsmoke for. The feeling of being able to contribute to our knowledge and understanding of the world is very satisfying, and the wonder and profound nature of science never ceases to amaze and delight. The act of learning becomes imbued with meaning, the journey as important, if not more so, than the final destination.
One more thing. Tell those whom have inspired you what that inspiration means. The ONLY person ever to mention university to me was my sports/physics teacher who thought I was capable. I kept the memory of this brief conversation with me for years, and it continued to motivate me in those long periods when it seemed I was forever excluded from study, by whatever circumstance. This teacher died some years ago, and I never got to tell him how much his comment meant to a brummie schoolboy who, along with many others was written off by his school because he was crap at exams, but I decided to write to his family and tell them anyway. They were pleased to hear from me, and I think if we can acknowledge these souls who have inspired and believed in us and perhaps channel a smidgeon of that inspiration on, then the world can only be a better place.
Thank Stuart! And great point about making a strong effort to tell those that shaped your career how much they meant to you. I like that idea a lot!
Reblogged this on Beauty in the Bones.
I read everything carefully, thank you for telling your story.
I really appreciate your ability to hash through all this and then share it. I’m not sure what success to me means yet, or even if it will happen. Though I worry a little about upcoming tenure decisions, I do hang a lot of ‘success’ on getting the big grant. Maybe too much given the funding climate. Regardless of papers, good students, solid projects, internal funding, kids, family, health…Man, I don’t know what my view on things or the future will be if I can’t get funded by the Fed. I’ll need to re-calibrate somehow.
Lessons 1-5 are critical to everyone. 1-3 often pave the way for 4 & 5 to happen. Networking and meetings and seeing lots and lots of talks, and reading lots and lots of papers are critical to getting plugged in to Science. Getting a feel for what is going on in labs around the world really helped clarify topics, questions, and future directions for me. In undergrad (’94), I would plug in my walkman (lol), sit down on the floor in front of the library shelves of nat history books or Journals and pull them out 1 by 1 and flip through looking for things that were randomly appealing such as illustrations, topics, anything really. Besides Gould, early on I discovered Ecol and Evo of Mammal-Like Reptiles and a volume on early tetrapods by Jenny Clack. I had to embarrassingly rescue the latter book from someone’s apartment I left it at. Nerd victory!
Whoops missed this comment! Thanks Casey!
Yeah I would not want to be required to get a major grant, in UK or USA, right now as a condition of employment/tenure. It’s rough out there.
Nice LOL walkman story and nerd victory! Starting in ~grad school (and continuing today) I got a buzz from entering the science/nature section of a bookstore, excited to see what cool books there were. Luckily now you don’t have to go to a store to see cool science; online media brings it all to your desk!
[…] “The story is about me, but the key points are more about how “success” can evolve in science.” Quote by John Hutchinson from an excellent personal reflection of success in science. Super advice. Read of the week. […]
Thank you so much for posting this! The first paragraph of your handout has more career advice than my advisor ever gave me (and I just finished my Ph.D.). I really needed to read something like this– your students are very lucky to have you!
Thank you! It’s easy as a supervisor to forget what supervision is all about, and I’ve done that myself plenty of times before, too.
[…] is a follow-up post to my earlier one and also weaves into my post on “success” (with a little overlap). I am sharing my thoughts on this topic of research management, because […]
At Cal, people talk about you like you’re superhuman. This probably sounds strange, but I really just needed to hear that you struggled too. Thank you so much for this post!
Glad you liked it! Mythology is strange. It may be that if a PhD is not a struggle, then one is not trying hard enough.
“For those who have read my advice to PhD students …”
Hey, John. That link has broken. I hope you have another copy, I’ll be interested to read it. (The moral: never host important documents on your institution’s site, you just can’t trust them to be around after a few months or years. Much safer to keep copies on your blog. Strange but true.)
Riiiiiight here! http://figshare.com/preview/_preview/1285114
and more like it here:
http://figshare.com/articles/Advice_to_researchers/1285120
Thanks for the quick response! Something’s not right with the first one, though: “ERROR 403 Sorry, this content is on the closed side of figshare.”
The others seem to be downloading OK, though.
I wonder whether you might turn them into blog-posts? Blogs feel like a great venue for this kind of tutorial, not only for their accessibility but also for the opportunity of engagement.
Ahh yes, that’s right, the first link is a private one but the 2nd one is the same thing as part of a set of documents. So that one is the right one.
Blog post? Maybe. I’d rather not post the same thing, that’s boring for me, and I try to keep this blog about anatomy as much as I can (it’s a struggle; I want to talk about other things too!), so perhaps in the future I can work something in. It’s not a bad idea. Thanks Mike!
Just finished reading the blog. What an awesome, humbling story. I don’t think you realise, John, just how much respect you’re held in — not only for the stellar quality of your work but also for your endless helpfulness. I had no idea that you’d been through quite so many appalling health issues. It’s hugely impressive that you’ve not only come through them all, but come through with such a positive attitude. I’m in awe of how you not only make science, you make scientists. I am jealous of your grad-students 🙂
Thanks man, that’s very kind. I don’t feel that unusual (except that I do feel like I’ve had a disproportionate share of near-death experiences that have worn me down)- I see plenty of awesome helpful scientists around me. I think the bad stories tend to make us forget how many great researchers and mentors there are out there. Amidst my own positive energy, there is plenty of darkness and gloomy moments, I can assure you.
BTW my very recent follow-up post to that last one is here: https://whatsinjohnsfreezer.com/2015/08/27/thawing-out-ideas/
I know — that’s the one I went to read, but then I got sidetracked by the backlinks!
[…] The Anatomy of One Career in Science– 26 May, 2014: On success, while dealing with health problems. Little did I know… […]