Sunday, February 22, 2009

The Devil's Advocate



One of the first cultural nuances I noticed when crossing the pond was how impatient and challenging Americans can really be, when it comes to work. My rude awakening came the day I went to interview for my, now, current job and gave my presentation about my graduate studies - as people do when they apply for a new research position. I was interrupted at virtually every slide section and every point I made during my talk, when the over-zealous professors challenged my thought process and dug their claws deep into every philosophy I came up with explaining my work. So eager were they of getting to know my work that they ended up arguing among themselves and contradicting each other, when I couldn't come up with an explanation. This being utterly unusual in my experience of interviews that I thought they truly were disappointed at me and did not want to offer the job. The other institutes I gave a talk at were all so complimentary about the presentation! But they did offer the job to me much to my (and a lot of other people's) surprise. Only today did I realize their bizarre interview technique was actually standard protocol, when another fresh-faced graduate came to this med school to give his presentation and suffered the same outrageous grilling.

I have to admit, although they may put you back in your box and make you feel ashamed of your hard slaved experiments on the day, when you step back you appreciate what these professors are trying to do - to get you thinking and help you pass a thesis defence (of which at the time, I hadn't done), and also prepare you for the real tough world of grant and paper rejections. Money is hard to come by in science and for that matter, in any profession, so when you are applying for money, people are always going to try to beat you down, to challenge you anally at every little nook and cranny of your god forsaken work. You can kind of see this principle at work in any reality TV show contest in the last decade - like, say, American Idol, or Hell's Kitchen. In such cases, you have judges (Simon Cowell in American Idol, or Gordon Ramsey in Hell's Kitchen) who blow scorn, fire, rage and spit on the singer (in American Idol), or chef (in Hell's Kitchen) if they mess up ever so slightly. In science, you have the reviewers and professors (the judges) who also inflict a tough scolding on you, the budding scientist, if you miss just one minute detail in your paper, or thesis, or grant application.

Of course, this never really occurred to me in England where being polite and patient is a deep rooted social philosophy. None of the professors I presented my work to ever stood up so quickly at every turn and challenged my presentations on such a rigorous and almost theatrical scale the way these Americans have (but then again, I never presented at Oxbridge). In fact most of the time, all my presentations only garnered praises, which when you think about it, does not help you learn, even though it boosts your ego. This being the case, it has caused consternation before. In my previous lab back in London, one of the graduate students was so pumped up on her confidence from years of praises at her presentations, that when she finally went to do her thesis defence and the examiners gave her such a hard grilling (the examiners were Scottish), she broke down in a panic attack - she did pass in the end, after a 5 hour ordeal with some 200 pages of corrections to her thesis.

It seems like there is no way around it. Sometimes, in order to learn and to get good at something, you have to be placed through misery, either by hardened "experts" or people who rule you, or if you don't want to go down that route, just put pressure on yourself. This being America, pressure at work is constant and palpable, which ever route you choose.

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This week, Lost in Americana has continued his early morning weight lifting routine at the gym, in the face of the lack of swimming facility. How long does it take to fill up an 80ft by 10ft by 5ft swimming pool with water? Apparently longer than 3 bloody months! That's insane! By attending the small, rather humble gym of his apartment, Lost in Americana is now in contact with various gregarious characters: including a small, stubby and overweight couple who bounce like elephants on the treadmill, a really big burly 6ft tall skinhead Vinny Jones look-a-like, who cries a lot in the man's sauna and a few rag-tag old timers who are trying to preventing the onset of their imminent heart disease from a lifetime of Philly cheese steaks. This week, Lost in Americana will also be watching the Oscars, live, online from his computer - for the first time and he will be pondering how L.A. can still afford such a lavish extravaganza with a sinking world economy. Recession? Not in Lalaland! The show must go on!