Every year thousands of new Ph.D’s are minted in the universities all over the world. Fraction of them embark on a search of academic career and aim to become scholars and scientists. This journey can be simple or very complicated. It can span continents or represent a mere crossing of the street. It can transverse many disciplines or be an exploration of just a single idea. But in most cases it has two recognizable components. On the outward leg it is a show of strength, ascension to the battlefield of ideas and a desire to stand above others. When homeward bound it is a search of focus and clarity, with an eye on a more distant goal of starting one’s own research family with students and postdocs, and scattering them through the academic world to sow the advisor's ideas.
As my daughter crosses the apex in her academic journey in the vicinity of the ancient city of Troy it dawned on me that these simple observations were already made more that twenty-five hundred years ago. Two works that describe almost perfectly the plights of modern day academics are Iliad and Odyssey (with a small contribution from Vergil’s Aeneid). Here we discuss the Iliad, the poem concerning postdoctoral component in a life of a scholar.
What can I say, Troy is a magnet for a postdoc with its scorching sun and miserable food coupled with a constant din of ideas and somewhat distant presence of the greatest minds that one hopes to meet in a lifetime.
Many centuries later Christopher Marlowe condensed the reason for going to Troy to just three lines:
Was this the face that launch'd a thousand ships,
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.
Indeed, for a recent Ph.D. great ideas, mayhem and immortality are as alluring today as they were in antiquity. But what we treasure in Iliad is the collection of characters that offer guidance, warning and advice as we enter the fray. Here they come:
Agamemnon - a bloody bastard. The longer you bounce around the more likely this will be your next chair. Ruthless to friends and enemies alike and getting more greedy as his powers diminish. He sacrificed his own daughter Iphigenia to appease the gods, he stole lovely Briseis from Achilles and he will steal the key idea from your paper too. Yet, it is his lab which will launch your career and it is his skills that build the team around you. Competent scientist, authoritarian committee member, good leader and a lousy follower. Not really a role model but someone to be watchful of. A mixture of good and bad that you do not want to emulate unless you view being drowned in a bathtub by your own wife as a fitting ending of your academic career. Enough said, you have been warned.
Achilles - a genius and a total asshole, Jack Reacher if you follow the genre. If you were him you would not be reading it. So suck it up and put up with his antics, it is the case of a repulsive beauty. His papers are few, long, and profound even if you understand only half of what he has written. He can be friendly or dismissive, arrogant or helpful and often you will think that you understand him better than he does himself. Most likely it is your mistake. A man of principles and a stubborn one too. He stood up to Agamemnon and nearly lost the war for Greeks. He will screw up your project if he finds himself disagreeing with some irrelevant aspect of your work.
Yet, Achilles is a beacon because he supersizes every human attribute. Or is he really human? Oh yes, he is. And you know what? He does have a weakness. It is probably something minor like excessive earwax or flat-footedness, but eventually a weaker adversary, and he has many, will exploit it.
Nestor - a man that was already old when he was born. A man who loves to give advice and some of it makes sense. A sensible, forward looking fellow. A careful men. If he is your advisor you have chosen well, but prepare to be bored.
Odysseus - a role model finally. A brilliant and versatile man and a survivor too. Watch this guy because there is a lot to learn. He claimed to be crazy to avoid going to the war, a trick repeated by intellectuals million-fold, and when he did fight he did it with his head not just brawn. His Troyan Horse idea is one of the few military highlights preceding Sun Tzu, Patton and Rommel.
Paris - intelligent, good looking and very lucky. The kind of guy that that makes your life miserable in high school but later on there is not much substance in him. Homer does not like him much and you don’t either. Yet he got his Ph.D before you did and his wife is a home coming queen that he finessed out of hands of Agamenon’s brother Menelaus. So yes, if not for him you would not loiter around Troy trying to build your resume. And did I mention Achilles? Yes, it was earwax after all, and Paris was the first to exploit it. With Apollo’s assistance obviously.
Hector - top Troy scientist and an intellectual match for Achilles. Not as cool though: his Nikes do not measure up to Achilles' Cydwoqs, and his JC Penny outfits to Achilles' Neiman Marcus. They hate each other too. Bummer.
Priam - he is the ultimate dirty old men, surrounded by women with whom he produces enormous number of off-spring. Two millennia before invention of Viagra! Hugh Hefner of the antiquity.
Graduate student of any gender should be on high alert when around him. Not a strong scientist but an excellent negotiator. You will learn a few tricks if you serve with him on a committee.
Last but not least comes Helen, Paris' trophy wife snatched from the embraces of scruffy Menelaus. Her spectacular beauty and preference for a more able sexual partner overshadowed her crucial contribution to the mankind. She invented the wheel! Men will never acknowledge this fact, even under the threat of death and ever since her venture to the toolshed, members of her sex are forbiden to play with machinery. This alone slows down advances of civilization by centuries.
Few years after graduate school you know many of these characters intimately. It is time to see them in action. Sorry Mr Homer, your poem will loose its hexameter but it will get refreshed content. Also, twenty-four chapters is beyond the attention span of a modern reader, eight paragraphs will do just fine.
Iliad retold
For a long time the climate community was grappling with its key question: Is global warming for real, and if so is it human caused?
So when Paris stole from Agamemnon the Icelandic ice core samples that could have shed some light on this question a bitter war ensued. As our story begins, the war has raged for a decade and the city of Troy was chosen as a site of annual gathering of climate researchers. Graduate students, postdocs and scientists without external funding were swarming around in search of cheap lodging for days. Keynote speakers jet in on the evening before the meeting.
A few days before the conference Agamemnon scores an early triumph. Skillful negotiation with the university president allows him to recover all the overhead of his key climate grant. Given the rate his school charges, it nearly doubles his funding. Third month of summer support and a postdoc are on his mind and he decides to keep Achilles, who is the co-PI on the grant, out of the loop. Big mistake, Zeus intervenes and a string of e-mails alerts Achilles to the duplicity of his colleague. He puts his lab in a lockdown and changes fonts in his presentations to dingbats rendering the Powerpoint-handicapped Agamemnon helpless. It takes half of the Olympus deities to sort it out but hours before the opening of the conference, Achilles is still not yielding.
First day of the meeting. The morning talk by Paris discusses - yes, you guessed it - Icelandic ice core samples. Menelaus is in the audience and he is furious. He wasn’t slaving away eating salmon day after day to have his work stolen by a flamboyant postdoc.
As Paris discusses CO_2 measurements in the air bubbles embedded in ancient ice, gracefully illuminating the data with his red laser pointer, Menelaus removes the safety lock and fires his pointer. Green beam cuts across the room scattering on the dust particles suspended in the air. It is at least 20 times stronger than Paris’ laser pointer and it can blind one for hours. Audience sees the duel coming and holds their breath. “Was there a possibility of contamination during transport?” Menelaus asks with venom alluding to a murky way in which the samples ended up in Paris’ hands. The red dot is dancing on the screen in increasingly unsteady hands while the green one turns lazy, menacing circles around it. The end is near as these questions have no easy answers and Paris academic future hangs up in the air. Suddenly, a bright blue beam of retina burning strength blasts the screen. It is Priam, Paris postdoc mentor, who’s hand steadied by Aphrodite fires his primary academic weapon, a thousand dollar blue laser pointer, a Nobel-prize winner trophy. Menelaus stands down his laser and Paris retreats to enjoy a privilege of the youth, midday sex with Helen. Priam wants to follow the lead but no such luck for him.
The afternoon poster session is a raging battle. Postdocs and grad students are relentless in ridiculing each others' work and slandering their opponents' advisors. Nestor tries to offer advice and cool the tempers but he fails. Many scientific skirmishes erupt, some hastily arranged by deities. Hera lures Zeus to her bedroom allowing Poseidon to arrange the flooding of Sardinia with torrential rains. Confused climatologists do not know how to deal with such weather event and start pummeling each other with whatever is at hand. Zeus finds out the conspiracy, blasts a thunder in Poseidon’s ass and levels the Philippines with a category 5 typhoon Hayian. There is no way that solid science can result from such screwed up environment, and conference participants spend the rest of the day on a trip to the local winery.
Achilles still broods over the grant overhead that Agamemnon tried to steal from him and refuses to defend their shared scientific agenda. Only when Hector finds a glaring gap in a paper of Achilles' favorite graduate student Patroclus and after Agamemnon apologizes for the n-th time for his erroneous ways, Achilles agrees to participate. The panel discussion involving Hector and Achilles is scheduled for the following day.
The panel starts at noon. Achilles and Hector are top scientists and there is a potential for a fruitful exchange. Alas, it is not going to be. Achilles mind is set on obliterating Hector's academic credentials and destroying his legacy. His own mother prophesies that it will hasten Achilles own demise and his horse concurs. No deal, Achilles is as stubborn as ever, and deities are helping. A brief e-mail tells Achilles that Hector suffers from enlarged prostate and needs to visit restroom frequently. A flip of a coin, fortuitously arranged by Apollo, puts Achilles in charge of the panel and Hector's fate is sealed. He squirms on his seat as Achilles goes through the tens of data filled slides explaining minutiae of climate modeling issues. Finally Hector breaks down and asks for a bathroom break. Achilles politely agrees and Hector retreats. When the door closes behind him, Hectors laptop starts acting funny and displays e-mails held at Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia. When Hector returns the proofs of climate conspiracy known as Climategate are all over the screen. Hector turns pale and shuts down his laptop but Achilles does not relent. He drags the academic carcass of the fallen Hector around and humiliates him endlessly.
Priam, Hector’s academic father pleads with Achilles to end this nonsense, and finally Achilles comes to his senses. Hector is stripped of his National Academy membership and academic burial - a quickly arranged retirement - is procured. There is a farewell luncheon on the penultimate day of the meeting.
Thus ends the Iliad but not the conference. On the last day of the meeting Odysseus unleashes the Troyan Horse. He brings students who spent several summers in Troy supported by the Research Experience for Undergraduates program funded by the National Science Foundation. But these are not undergrads anymore! These are hardened and able-bodied graduate students supported by NSF scholarships at the top US institutions. Armed with thumb drives they wreak havoc with global warming deniers agenda. In a short day, a malicious program set by the former US president who wanted to leave a permanent imprint on the climate science is in ruins. It is a joyous day for the climatologists all over the world and a great lesson for postdocs and students.
As my daughter crosses the apex in her academic journey in the vicinity of the ancient city of Troy it dawned on me that these simple observations were already made more that twenty-five hundred years ago. Two works that describe almost perfectly the plights of modern day academics are Iliad and Odyssey (with a small contribution from Vergil’s Aeneid). Here we discuss the Iliad, the poem concerning postdoctoral component in a life of a scholar.
What can I say, Troy is a magnet for a postdoc with its scorching sun and miserable food coupled with a constant din of ideas and somewhat distant presence of the greatest minds that one hopes to meet in a lifetime.
Many centuries later Christopher Marlowe condensed the reason for going to Troy to just three lines:
Was this the face that launch'd a thousand ships,
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.
Indeed, for a recent Ph.D. great ideas, mayhem and immortality are as alluring today as they were in antiquity. But what we treasure in Iliad is the collection of characters that offer guidance, warning and advice as we enter the fray. Here they come:
Agamemnon - a bloody bastard. The longer you bounce around the more likely this will be your next chair. Ruthless to friends and enemies alike and getting more greedy as his powers diminish. He sacrificed his own daughter Iphigenia to appease the gods, he stole lovely Briseis from Achilles and he will steal the key idea from your paper too. Yet, it is his lab which will launch your career and it is his skills that build the team around you. Competent scientist, authoritarian committee member, good leader and a lousy follower. Not really a role model but someone to be watchful of. A mixture of good and bad that you do not want to emulate unless you view being drowned in a bathtub by your own wife as a fitting ending of your academic career. Enough said, you have been warned.
Achilles - a genius and a total asshole, Jack Reacher if you follow the genre. If you were him you would not be reading it. So suck it up and put up with his antics, it is the case of a repulsive beauty. His papers are few, long, and profound even if you understand only half of what he has written. He can be friendly or dismissive, arrogant or helpful and often you will think that you understand him better than he does himself. Most likely it is your mistake. A man of principles and a stubborn one too. He stood up to Agamemnon and nearly lost the war for Greeks. He will screw up your project if he finds himself disagreeing with some irrelevant aspect of your work.
Yet, Achilles is a beacon because he supersizes every human attribute. Or is he really human? Oh yes, he is. And you know what? He does have a weakness. It is probably something minor like excessive earwax or flat-footedness, but eventually a weaker adversary, and he has many, will exploit it.
Nestor - a man that was already old when he was born. A man who loves to give advice and some of it makes sense. A sensible, forward looking fellow. A careful men. If he is your advisor you have chosen well, but prepare to be bored.
Odysseus - a role model finally. A brilliant and versatile man and a survivor too. Watch this guy because there is a lot to learn. He claimed to be crazy to avoid going to the war, a trick repeated by intellectuals million-fold, and when he did fight he did it with his head not just brawn. His Troyan Horse idea is one of the few military highlights preceding Sun Tzu, Patton and Rommel.
Paris - intelligent, good looking and very lucky. The kind of guy that that makes your life miserable in high school but later on there is not much substance in him. Homer does not like him much and you don’t either. Yet he got his Ph.D before you did and his wife is a home coming queen that he finessed out of hands of Agamenon’s brother Menelaus. So yes, if not for him you would not loiter around Troy trying to build your resume. And did I mention Achilles? Yes, it was earwax after all, and Paris was the first to exploit it. With Apollo’s assistance obviously.
Hector - top Troy scientist and an intellectual match for Achilles. Not as cool though: his Nikes do not measure up to Achilles' Cydwoqs, and his JC Penny outfits to Achilles' Neiman Marcus. They hate each other too. Bummer.
Priam - he is the ultimate dirty old men, surrounded by women with whom he produces enormous number of off-spring. Two millennia before invention of Viagra! Hugh Hefner of the antiquity.
Graduate student of any gender should be on high alert when around him. Not a strong scientist but an excellent negotiator. You will learn a few tricks if you serve with him on a committee.
Last but not least comes Helen, Paris' trophy wife snatched from the embraces of scruffy Menelaus. Her spectacular beauty and preference for a more able sexual partner overshadowed her crucial contribution to the mankind. She invented the wheel! Men will never acknowledge this fact, even under the threat of death and ever since her venture to the toolshed, members of her sex are forbiden to play with machinery. This alone slows down advances of civilization by centuries.
Few years after graduate school you know many of these characters intimately. It is time to see them in action. Sorry Mr Homer, your poem will loose its hexameter but it will get refreshed content. Also, twenty-four chapters is beyond the attention span of a modern reader, eight paragraphs will do just fine.
Iliad retold
For a long time the climate community was grappling with its key question: Is global warming for real, and if so is it human caused?
So when Paris stole from Agamemnon the Icelandic ice core samples that could have shed some light on this question a bitter war ensued. As our story begins, the war has raged for a decade and the city of Troy was chosen as a site of annual gathering of climate researchers. Graduate students, postdocs and scientists without external funding were swarming around in search of cheap lodging for days. Keynote speakers jet in on the evening before the meeting.
A few days before the conference Agamemnon scores an early triumph. Skillful negotiation with the university president allows him to recover all the overhead of his key climate grant. Given the rate his school charges, it nearly doubles his funding. Third month of summer support and a postdoc are on his mind and he decides to keep Achilles, who is the co-PI on the grant, out of the loop. Big mistake, Zeus intervenes and a string of e-mails alerts Achilles to the duplicity of his colleague. He puts his lab in a lockdown and changes fonts in his presentations to dingbats rendering the Powerpoint-handicapped Agamemnon helpless. It takes half of the Olympus deities to sort it out but hours before the opening of the conference, Achilles is still not yielding.
First day of the meeting. The morning talk by Paris discusses - yes, you guessed it - Icelandic ice core samples. Menelaus is in the audience and he is furious. He wasn’t slaving away eating salmon day after day to have his work stolen by a flamboyant postdoc.
As Paris discusses CO_2 measurements in the air bubbles embedded in ancient ice, gracefully illuminating the data with his red laser pointer, Menelaus removes the safety lock and fires his pointer. Green beam cuts across the room scattering on the dust particles suspended in the air. It is at least 20 times stronger than Paris’ laser pointer and it can blind one for hours. Audience sees the duel coming and holds their breath. “Was there a possibility of contamination during transport?” Menelaus asks with venom alluding to a murky way in which the samples ended up in Paris’ hands. The red dot is dancing on the screen in increasingly unsteady hands while the green one turns lazy, menacing circles around it. The end is near as these questions have no easy answers and Paris academic future hangs up in the air. Suddenly, a bright blue beam of retina burning strength blasts the screen. It is Priam, Paris postdoc mentor, who’s hand steadied by Aphrodite fires his primary academic weapon, a thousand dollar blue laser pointer, a Nobel-prize winner trophy. Menelaus stands down his laser and Paris retreats to enjoy a privilege of the youth, midday sex with Helen. Priam wants to follow the lead but no such luck for him.
The afternoon poster session is a raging battle. Postdocs and grad students are relentless in ridiculing each others' work and slandering their opponents' advisors. Nestor tries to offer advice and cool the tempers but he fails. Many scientific skirmishes erupt, some hastily arranged by deities. Hera lures Zeus to her bedroom allowing Poseidon to arrange the flooding of Sardinia with torrential rains. Confused climatologists do not know how to deal with such weather event and start pummeling each other with whatever is at hand. Zeus finds out the conspiracy, blasts a thunder in Poseidon’s ass and levels the Philippines with a category 5 typhoon Hayian. There is no way that solid science can result from such screwed up environment, and conference participants spend the rest of the day on a trip to the local winery.
Achilles still broods over the grant overhead that Agamemnon tried to steal from him and refuses to defend their shared scientific agenda. Only when Hector finds a glaring gap in a paper of Achilles' favorite graduate student Patroclus and after Agamemnon apologizes for the n-th time for his erroneous ways, Achilles agrees to participate. The panel discussion involving Hector and Achilles is scheduled for the following day.
The panel starts at noon. Achilles and Hector are top scientists and there is a potential for a fruitful exchange. Alas, it is not going to be. Achilles mind is set on obliterating Hector's academic credentials and destroying his legacy. His own mother prophesies that it will hasten Achilles own demise and his horse concurs. No deal, Achilles is as stubborn as ever, and deities are helping. A brief e-mail tells Achilles that Hector suffers from enlarged prostate and needs to visit restroom frequently. A flip of a coin, fortuitously arranged by Apollo, puts Achilles in charge of the panel and Hector's fate is sealed. He squirms on his seat as Achilles goes through the tens of data filled slides explaining minutiae of climate modeling issues. Finally Hector breaks down and asks for a bathroom break. Achilles politely agrees and Hector retreats. When the door closes behind him, Hectors laptop starts acting funny and displays e-mails held at Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia. When Hector returns the proofs of climate conspiracy known as Climategate are all over the screen. Hector turns pale and shuts down his laptop but Achilles does not relent. He drags the academic carcass of the fallen Hector around and humiliates him endlessly.
Priam, Hector’s academic father pleads with Achilles to end this nonsense, and finally Achilles comes to his senses. Hector is stripped of his National Academy membership and academic burial - a quickly arranged retirement - is procured. There is a farewell luncheon on the penultimate day of the meeting.
Thus ends the Iliad but not the conference. On the last day of the meeting Odysseus unleashes the Troyan Horse. He brings students who spent several summers in Troy supported by the Research Experience for Undergraduates program funded by the National Science Foundation. But these are not undergrads anymore! These are hardened and able-bodied graduate students supported by NSF scholarships at the top US institutions. Armed with thumb drives they wreak havoc with global warming deniers agenda. In a short day, a malicious program set by the former US president who wanted to leave a permanent imprint on the climate science is in ruins. It is a joyous day for the climatologists all over the world and a great lesson for postdocs and students.
