Letters to a young academic

I enjoyed Rainer Marie Rilke’s excellent book Letters to a Young Poet, where the older poet gave advice to a younger, aspiring poet. Recently, a few undergraduates asked me about whether they should attend psychology graduate school. The following is the essence of my reply:

In my method and theory class, I give assignments to students in which they have to design and carry out their own experiment. Since they have never had to do this, most students express dismay and frustration, and they complain like there’s no tomorrow, but I don’t relent. But the funny thing is that the most common thing they do is look around the room, notice the horrible shade of yellow in the walls of the Armitage Hall where I teach, and they look down and see a quiz before them. They then come to me and say, “I know! I’m going to conduct a study on whether the color of the walls of the room influence test performance.”

Now, I’m sure there’s a study in that topic, and I know that the sickly yellow walls probably don’t contribute to either the performance of the students or their professor. I wouldn’t be surprised that people would feel better in a well-painted room, and feeling better would influence people to be more relaxed and make fewer errors. But I always tell them that they can’t do that study. They look even more frustrated and complain like there is no next week, but I explain to them that such a study lacks imagination.

“Imagination?” They ask. “You didn’t tell us the study had to be imaginative!”

But as I see it, the underlying problem is that all they did was look around the room, see an ugly colored wall and a test in front of them, and put two and two together and voila, they have their experiment. Yet beyond these walls are other walls, and beyond those walls are other buildings, and beyond those buildings is an entire world. By sticking to immediate perceptions, they elude the most important part of experimentation: the imagination that goes into crafting a well-designed study.

In pushing them to leave the world of perceptions and enter the imaginative domain, I think they come up with designs so creative that they humble me. One student wore worn clothes, sat on the streets of Philadelphia with a cup, begging for money, with the aim of determining whether males or females were more generous. Another went to 10 bars dressed as himself, and 10 bars dressed in a fat suit, to determine whether there is a relationship between weight and the probability that a woman would accept an offer of a free drink. Another recorded the relationship between wearing a suit or clothes typically worn by urban African American youth would influence the amount of time required for store clerks to approach them at the mall.

I have them do these studies because ultimately, imaginative experiments are far more interesting to read than unimaginative ones. Ones about the influence of wall color on test performance. And I think my students learn a great deal more about the nature of the world by going into it, armed with the tools of psychological science, and listening to what the world has to tell them. And in the end, they express satisfaction and pride, and there are few complaints.

So what does this have to do with the question of psychology graduate school. Well, I think most people, including myself, pursued psychology graduate school because they were psychology undergraduates, and they looked around the classroom, saw graduate student TAs and professors who went to psychology graduate school, and say, “I know what I will do with my life! Go to graduate school in psychology!” But beyond those walls were other majors, and beyond those majors other schools, and beyond those schools and entire world. By limiting oneself to doing what is around you, you risk being unimaginative.

For some, that gamble pays off. For instance, I’ve come, if not to love, to at least appreciate what I do, but I was one of the lucky few. Far more common is the legion of graduate school dropouts who never complete because it was the absolute wrong thing for them to do with their lives. Ever heard of the term A.B.D.? All But Doctorate. Yeah…there are a lot of them out there. Most of them were people who looked around the room, but were afraid to walk outside of it and see that there are myriad things to do with one’s life, and that maybe the right thing to do is to explore alternative paths.

Now this is not to say there are not people out there who are A.B.D. and have extraordinary careers doing things outside of academia. I’ve met some. One owns a multi-million dollar consulting business. Loves what he does. Another owns a car repair shop. Loves what he does. Another is a teacher. Loves what she does. So in the end, for most people, things work out, because even if they don’t, cognitive dissonance covers our asses pretty quickly, because we don’t like to think we’ve made the wrong decisions in life. In an experiment done in a methods class, if you choose an unimaginative study, well it’s over in a semester, and you move on. With your life and career, these are the best years of your life. You don’t want to waste several of them on a failed pursuit.

But I know some miserable A.B.D.s who never found themselves. One is a very angry and bitter bartender. Another is a very angry and bitter law clerk. Another is a very angry and bitter secretary. You don’t want to end up like these folks. No one wants to be around them.

So my first piece of advice is “look beyond the walls.”

My second piece of advice is to look beyond grad school. First, graduate school is a very weird place, and it will warp your mind in a way college doesn’t. I have to confess, I didn’t enjoy graduate school. Maybe graduate school is one of those things not meant to be enjoyed, but more importantly, I didn’t like myself much when I was a graduate student. To this day, I don’t like graduate students very much. I find them to be like myself, an unpleasant mixture of confidence and loathing, ambitious and anxious, hope and despair. They have a mean and hungry look…such men and women are dangerous, particularly when you know they want your job. Has a predatory animal ever looked at you at the zoo? You feel sort of safe, but in the back of your mind you can’t shake the feeling that nothing is stopping that lion from leaping over that moat and jumping over that wall and devouring you? That’s the sense I get when I stumble into a graduate student.

Maybe it is just that time in your life, or being an apprentice at something just sucks because you are so at the whim of your master (or adviser), but if you want to ruin an otherwise perfect evening – hang out with a graduate student. If you want to destroy it, just ask how their thesis project is going.

Ask yourself: what do you want out of life, because it goes by so quickly. Do you want to spend your twenties pursuing a career path that might land you a job at some cow college in rural Idaho, or no job at all? I know many a very talented, yet miserable young academic at such a place, who is trapped there because there is no job market for academics in the city where she dreams of living. It’s sort of sad to see people expire their youths in this way, and become bitter and jaded and ultimately abandon their academic careers because of the stupefying dullness of life in a college towns like Ann Arbor or worse still, sleepy small college towns like Juniata, PA, tucked away in the Pennsyltucky mountains.

There are other interesting things in life. Explore them before committing yourself to the academic pathway! You’re only 21 years old, how the hell are you supposed to know that you want to study perceptual categorization or language development for the rest of your damn life? You’re basically a stupid kid, not because you are innately stupid, but because you lack the years of experience that provide wisdom. Experience a summer unpaid internship at a law firm or court of law. Ask lawyers how their lives are, and what they do, and what their friends do. Go volunteer for a summer at a hospital, and ask doctors and nurses what they do, and what their friends do. See the kind of lives they lead, and ask yourself if this is the kind of life you can see yourself leading. Work in a psychology lab for a summer to see what that’s like. Ask professors what they do, and what their friends do. But at such a young age, don’t commit to anything. People used to start their careers after high school, now everyone needs college, and these days, everyone clamors that you need grad school as well. And that may be true, but you don’t need grad school, you need the right grad school for you. And finding the right one – whether it be a med school, a vet school, a law school, a journalism school, an art school – whatever it is, is the most important task.

But don’t just look around the room, spot me, and think, “I know what I’ll do with my life! I’m going to be a psychology professor!” Because then you will be as unimaginative as I once was, and although I am happy that it worked out well for me (mostly) it may not work out well for you. Because there is a lot more to the job that you don’t see than what you do see in the 2.45 hours a week we are together. You might not even like those other parts, like writing papers, crafting grants, and going to conferences (which I am doing tomorrow – I am spending a weekend in Denver, meeting a group of people who looked around their classrooms and thought, “I know what I’m going to do…”). And I’d hate for you to think of me, years down the road, and wish I had warned you, rather than blindly encourage you.

So consider yourself warned, kid. But if you do decide to go to graduate school, I have five short pieces of advice.

1. Ask lots of questions. You’ll be judged more by the questions you ask than the answers you provide in all of life. But importantly, ask the low people on the totem poll. Ask the lowly undergrad RA what it is like to work in Professor X’s laboratory, or how they perceive they are treated by Professor X. These undergrads, having the least to lose, will have no fear in being honest, and if you bribe them with lunch they might tell you the gossip you need to hear. Why does this matter? Because YOU are going to be that low person on the totem pole once you arrive! And although you think your special, and that what applies to others could never apply to you, you’d be wrong about that.

2. Look at the record of the person whom you hope to work with, and that person’s student. Do they publish many articles with students, or mainly sole authored works. Do they publish a few papers a year, or a few years a paper. Because later on for getting a job, the first place people will look on your CV is your publication record, and if you work with someone who never publishes, and their students never publish, then that section on your CV will be considerably sparse.

3. Work with different people. Don’t stick with one adviser. Have several – two or three. Like suitors, they will all vie for your attention (aka time) and if the relationship with one goes sour, you are not cast adrift in your third or fourth year with no adviser. I’ve seen many an academic career end this way. Don’t put your eggs in one basket unless you like broken eggs.

4. Your relationship with faculty and your fellow students will be valuable for the rest of your life. Do not squander this! Later on, they may be invaluable in ways that you can not imagine sitting in this room. Don’t burn bridges, even if you are thoroughly tempted to.

5. Explore options outside of academia at all junctions. Remember what I said about the room. There is a whole world out there, and things to do that may be far more rewarding than an academic career. Don’t let those of us who haven’t left this room for 40 years of our careers convince you that this is the best room in the house. That’s the biggest mind warp of graduate school – they make you believe the only good you can do on earth is find an academic job and continue publishing research. What they are REALLY are doing is trying to increase their own article impact factor by sending out little clones that form colonies of people who continually cite their original articles and make them appear more important than they are. Remember: There are many rooms, and many houses, and many worlds, and many dreams. You’ll find yours somewhere, even if it is far from here. Just be happy with whatever it is you end up doing.

Going there, and coming home

I wrote the following two years ago around the time I brought a group of students to Japan. Sometimes I try and break writing blocks by writing more freely, as academic writing is stilted and, well, boring. At least when I write. As I am going there in a few weeks to bring a second batch of students there, I figured I'd post this. The second part is my favorite story from my time in Japan.

I. The man in the moon and the rabbit in the sky

It was Mariko who first alerted me to the fact. I didn’t know a word of Japanese when I first traveled to Japan seven years ago, and so I could hardly have known that the sign in Narita airport did not simply greet travelers with the usual, “Welcome” but rather O-kuni-nasai, “Welcome Home.” But I noticed it this time.

Mariko was one of those people who appear in upon the stage of one’s life for a brief moment, deliver a few important soliloquies, then departs, never to appear in subsequent acts. She was a research assistant in a psychology laboratory at Kyoto University. She was half Japanese and half German, but married to the very idea and notion of Japan. For her, Japan was home. For me, Japan was simply an apartment that I learned to love and regretted giving up the lease once the year was up.

But there we were, thrown together, and spent many an evening talking along the Kamo river that divides Kyoto in half, sitting on stone turtles that span the river near Dematchiyanagi station. There, we sat, and talked in English, a language she hated.

But in one of those moments, she told me an interesting fact. We in the West we look at the night sky and see a man on the moon. In Japan, they see a rabbit on the moon making mochi (a type of Japanese candy). The rabbit's name is tsuki no usagi. And in one of those nights, when the moon was full and hordes of Japanese teenagers set fireworks into the night sky, I tried to see the rabbit, but to no avail. It is difficult to divorce oneself from 25 years of seeing a man on the moon, and suddenly see a rabbit.



But perhaps this is the nature of the work I was doing at the time: to show that in different cultures, we see the world in different ways. On one of those nights, I told Mariko about the fact that different cultures look at the sky and see different constellations. While most of us look at the sky and see the big dipper, the Ancient Egyptians saw a man laying down being pulled by a bull, and a Hippopotamus with a crocodile on its back. The same stimulus, and wildly divergent interpretations. At that time, I had been reading Jerome Bruner’s work from the 1950s on perceptual readiness, the idea that perception is a dynamic and active process, that we construct our percepts by imposing our desires, needs, wants, expectations, and so on, upon the sensory information that we receive. Different people, in different cultures, in different economic conditions, in different historical periods, in different geographic locations, may have a plethora of divergent wants, needs, desires, goals, and expectations, and thus perceive the world in vastly different ways. But I imagine there are some universalities. For instance, I imagine two people are at this very moment sitting on the Turtles of the Kamo River in Kyoto, sharing their dreams. Some things never change. Some things truly are universal.

II. The secret of lost things



There are others who appear for their soliloquies, never to be seen or hear from again. Like Matsuda-san.

I was naked in the sento, sitting in a bath next to a seventy year old Japanese man named Matsuda. I spoke enough Japanese and he enough English that we could get by simply through hobbling together words from both our languages.

“You must be marry, right?”
“No, not married.” I replied.
“But you handsome guy. Girls fall over you.”
“I wish, Matsuda-san! No, I recently broke up with a woman I dated for several years. I thought it would last but life took us in different directions.”
“Ah. Love. Muzukashi, Ne?” (Difficult, isn’t it?)
“Hontoni!” (True!)
“But you have, how do I say, memories are good?”
“Good memories? Of course. Many of them.”

“That’s good to have good memories. When I was child, I had a toy, uh, how do you say…fire truck. I played with many times. But we moved from Tokyo to Kansai region, and somehow during moving it was lost. I still think of this toy, I am a seventy year old man. But it is to me, object of my childhood times when I was very happy. I don’t think I was ever so happy again as in childhood, playing with that toy. But I think the most valuable thing we own in life are the things we lost. I lost fire truck, but I remember many happy times. Same is true for woman. You lose pretty woman, but you gain good memories. Don’t worry about losing things. In losing things, you gain more important things: good memory things. There is nothing more important than good memories. The things you lose in life are the most valuable things you own in life. This is what I believe.”

I remember thinking then that I would never forget this moment on earth, when two naked guys in a bath house in a small neighborhood in Kyoto from vastly divergent worlds spoke. The most important things we own in our lives, on this earth, are the things we have lost. The very beauty of the appreciation of the beauty in things that pass by, rather than stand still, is uniquely Asian. In America, we tend to collect things. Jay Leno has something like 100 classic cars.

Years later I sat at a table in Tokyo with some of my own students who I brought to Japan. They were saddened by the fact that they would soon be leaving the country, with no plans to return. I told them this story. But I reminded them that they can never truly lose Japan, for it is always here as a place to return. You can only miss being home, you can never truly lose it. And I told them that there is nothing more important in life than good memories.

III. Behind closed doors.

There is something special about revealing secrets. Kyoto was my secret. In my time in Kyoto, I walked its streets, ate at its restaurants, danced in its nightclubs, sung karaoke in its bars, hiked its mountains, saw its temples, meditated in its shrines. But Kyoto was always mine, secret memories locked up that I could reveal and no one really ever could understand.

Like the time I stayed at a capsule hotel.
Like the time I ate a live shrimp.
Like the time I met that old man on the train from Hakkodate to Sapporo, we shared about ten words of each other’s language but managed to entertain each other for an hour.
Like the old women of Kyoto, who each morning go outside with their watering cans and water the pavement in front of their houses and sweep the water into the gutter to reduce the dust.
Like the couple who owned the tofu factory down the street, who would marvel at this foreigner buying bricks of tofu.
Like the time I was on a train in Tokyo, and saw a woman whom I felt I must have known in another life. I exited the train when she did, and followed her down the confusing labyrinth of streets until she got to her house. I watched the lights go on and smiled, knowing that in this universe we are not alone. I walked back and continued my journey.
Like the time I walked over fire.
Like the time I stood and watched Chinese characters burning on the mountainside, guiding the ancestors back to the land of the spirits.

All of these things, and more, are part of my secret world. And it is wonderful to have the chance to share my secret world again and again.

The day after the big day

So on January 21, 2009, I went to Washington DC to review grants for the National Science Foundation. But the very day before, January 20, 2009, Barack Obama was sworn in as president. Everyone at the NSF seemed jubilant (do you know what a jubilee is? It is a biblical term for a celebration in which debts are canceled.)

The very next day, after a long series of discussions over grants, my friend Shannon and I went to see the White House and have dinner. Shannon lives in Puerto Rico with his wife and two kids, who would be thrilled to see a video of their father by the White House so close to the inauguration. I myself have a few friends who would enjoy the fact that I was able to get so close to history, both physically and temporally.

Here they are:



Honestly, I don't know who that angry guy is next to me. From the looks of it, probably a republican...



Next we went to the Lincoln Memorial.



The woman in the pink shirt behind me had a shirt that read "Virginity Rocks!" It was the Pro-Life March on Washington day. Virginity may rock, but unfortunately, it rarely works as a viable long-term strategy for preventing teen pregnancy. Just ask Sarah Palin.



Funny - there was a different air at NSF this time. People were actually happy. Maybe having a leader who doesn't aim to squash scientific progress through polemic and draconian executive orders is a good thing. Maybe now we can begin to do stem cell research and come up with cures to diseases like diabetes and parkinson's. Maybe now we can really begin to address climate change in an intelligent way. Who knows? Maybe we have a president who thinks with his head rather than knows with his heart.

The past eight years have not been great for science. Let's hope the future bings a renewed interest and trust in the value of science. There is no other way.