This I believe

About a year ago after having three grant applications declined in a week and a half, I started thinking about what things I believed in. I was inspired to do so by the NPR "This I believe" program and it seemed like it should be simple enough to define my beliefs, but it turned out to be enormously challenging. This essay was the best I could come up with, and for many reasons, I wasn't ready to share it. I pulled it out last night, cleaned up the writing a little and I think that it is something I can share now.

This I Believe
I believe in accomplishing the most important thing each day. I learned this while I was in graduate school from Kay Whitmore who was an ex-CEO of Kodak. I knew him socially outside of school and at some point, maybe a year after meeting him, I realized what an amazing opportunity it would be to have this man mentoring me. So I went to him with all of the questions I didn’t have answers for and he had answers for each one of them. When I was frustrated with school and ready to quit it was “Toughen up”. When I needed to go to a conference about evolution and didn’t have any money, he helped me find a sofa that I could sleep on in a comfortable home near the conference. And when my heart was broken, the answer he gave me was two tickets for the best seats at the symphony so that I could move on. The best answer he ever gave me though was when I asked him how to do well in life. He told me to accomplish the most important thing each day. He said that this was how he had become successful. 

I took those words to heart and they did wonders for me. I got a Ph.D. in three years and published seven papers in that time. I raced through my postdoctoral studies in a year and a half and got a job as a founding faculty member at the newest campus in the University of California system about three years ago. With that position, I have helped to set up a genomics core as well as my own lab, published several more manuscripts and devised a way, at least on paper, of controlling antibiotic resistance and keeping antibiotics useful for an infinite amount of time.

Those words “accomplish the most important thing every day” would seem flawless to me if it weren’t for the fact that I seem utterly incapable of getting a grant. To a scientist, grants are life-lines. In essence, they are arteries carrying oxygen, water, and nutrients (literally) into the lab. Like blood to the body, money keeps research in a lab moving...progressing. I’ve been trying to get a grant for three years and most of my applications don’t even get scored which means they are in the bottom half. I have worked on becoming a better writer, generated data that make my proposals seem likely, and I have had scientists with grants read my proposals and edit them until they like what I have written. I don’t know what else to do.

The main source pumping money into research is the federal government, and since the war in Iraq started, there hasn’t been as much money for science as there used to be. But this may not be the only reason I can’t get a grant…I know people who get grants...Maybe I am too young, maybe I haven’t published enough, maybe I don’t know the right people, maybe antibiotic resistance isn’t as popular as H.I.V. or A.D.D. though it kills more people, and maybe it’s that I am trying to solve the problem by manipulating evolution instead of just making more and more drugs that are less and less effective.

With all of these unknowns, I want to call Kay Whitmore, or better yet, go visit him and tell him that I can’t get a grant and ask him what I should do, but I can’t because he is dead. He died of leukemia nearly five years ago. I found out about it from a newspaper article on the day of his funeral. I was in the lab and the most important task of the day ended up seeming meaningless as I sat there and cried.

I remember an address he gave a few days after the September 11th attacks in which he said ” There is no sense in death. Some people will try to say that God needs the dead more than we do, but try telling that to a widow with three children.”  

I don’t know that my need really compares with that widow either, but as the money in my lab slowly runs dry, I feel like I need to talk to Kay Whitmore pretty badly and since I can’t, I just hang on and keep believing in the best answer he ever gave me.

I still believe in that advice my friend gave me.  I am not yet funded, but seem to be getting a lot closer.  My real reason for posting this though is that I went to a business school named for Kay Whitmore and looked at the display about his life and career that was set up inside of a glass case.  It was all impressive, but there was nothing there about how involved he had been in helping college students.  I was not the only one he cared for.  He spent most of his time post-retirement working with students and he attended many recitals and graduations.  He gave out much dating advice that always started with the line "Men are like microwaves and women are like crockpots".  He was a guide and friend to so many.  I felt like I needed to pay tribute to him even if it was only in this very small way.