length of grad. student careers

[Sarah Boomer]

This is another very interesting topic to me and I'd love to hear people's
impression of my outlook, particularly given the one person's comment
about people perceiving that 6 years was too long.

I am currently finishing up my dissertation and it will be a full seven
years when I finish.  I entered a hard-core molecular lab with no
molecular experience and performed well at the onset.  Midway (3 years)
in, the project fell flat due to problems with collaborators who were
doing more clinical/cell biology experiments related to the clones I was
generating and I had to redefine things with very little direction or
ideas.  Thus, I floundered for a good year.  I am the second student of a
first-time PI, the first having left on pretty bad terms with her masters
(I say this because the addage of breaking in the boss is frequently
applied to our lab).  My boss is a wonderful, tolerant woman who has
always encouraged me to do what I came to do:  teach small college level.
Life is not without frustrations and disagreements - particularly about
the issues of doing more experiments here at the end to eek out another 2
papers (I will likely graduate with 3-4, decent Virology journals) and
telling a more thorough, "good science" story - but my relationship with
my boss has pretty much been well-founded on the premise that we can talk
openly about gripes.

The fact is, though, I am going to take seven years doing molecular
biology of retrovirus evolution and I don't really know how that will be
perceived.  I have dragged my feet this last year because the job market
has not been good - in either the teaching realm or the post-doc search
(although I have been advised to look at smaller bacterial fields if I
want to develop small college research - and so I have been met with lack
of funding and lack of network, having spent the last seven years in AIDS
research).  My confidence right now is zip and I have been tired and sick
for months with the stress of having no clue where I may wind up.

I cannot help but think that this long (and still lengthening PhD career)
is not serving a purpose but to dig me in deeper.  Our dept. has been
battling a 6.5 year PhD average for as long as I've been there, despite
all the hopes otherwise.  In my entering class of 10, one guy dropped with
his masters, one got her PhD in 5, 3 in 6, and the rest of us are all this
year, approaching 8.  My impression from the inside of such a system is
that it doesn't matter who you are or how much you work because the woman
who got out at 5 years had a lot of experience, great results, competitors
who were always riding them to produce.  One of the most recent guys also
had a lot of experience, competitors, but he just wanted to keep pushing
on certain results to tell more of the story (she was a bacterial
geneticist and he was in AIDS research).  Three of us, myself included,
all had major project set-backs midway through and one guy will likely be
here well into his eigth year.

Dealing with this "problem" has been an interesting dilemma which has
spawned some obvious factions in the faculty and often bad, divisive
morale.  Essentially, every two years the exam protocol gets changed in
some way.  A subset of the faculty clearly want to impose more steps to
"weed the garden" (ie offering the masters as the doorprize and boot
people) but a different subset don't want to invoke such rules because of
the bad morale that booting people has created in the past.  This same
subset has evolved new hopes to mandate that committees be more equalized
(although this is almost synonymous with a rule that one of the "perceived
tough guys" - one of them - sit on every students' committee).  Such rules
have generated bad feelings about the lack of respect among faculty
members (ie we all know who on the faculty thinks who is too lax and there
is a common perception among the "tougher" faculty that students can stack
the committee with "easy" members and slide through).

The fact still seems to me, though, that projects can be ill-defined and
things can happen despite everything looking perfect through the masters
bypass exams at 3 years (the point of no return in our dept).  I know that
my stuff was sailing smoothly.  I did, however, feel somewhat sleighted
when, after my project started to fold, one of my committee members (this
is 4 years in now) said:  oh, your boss' projects always struck me as a
little risky.  I about fell out of the chair (I approached this person to
advise me on dealing with a twice rejected publication that my boss was
still pressing me to expand instead of trim and publish as a note).

So - here are some specific questions for the group:

Is seven years under such circumstances a horrific, disgraceful thing?  Am
I right to just want to leave science and get my masters in education and
say it was fun but...

What is the average time - particularly in a field like molecular/virology
and are other dept's dealing with these kind of problems?

How do other dept's perceive issues like weeding the garden (masters
doorprizes), equalizing committees?

What do you all do when the project crashes and burns and the student has
been a productive, decent, and loving person for 3-4 years?

Thanks,  Sarah

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Sarah Boomer				email:  sarai at u.washington.edu
Dept. of Microbiology			work phone:  543-3376
Box 357242				work FAX:  543-3376
University of Washington
Seattle, WA  98195

personal homepage:
http://weber.u.washington.edu/~sarai/GOBOOMSINK/GOBOOMSINK.html
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!