The Road Behind

As 2011 draws to a close, I've been thinking about how I got here, as a grad student working in science. I hear a lot of stories about how various people were interested in science at an early age, how they chose their college major and their current career. It seemed like for those people, everything had been planned out early on, when in reality, the road leading up to a chosen profession is a rather twisted one, with a couple lucky accidents along the way.

I was pushed toward math and engineering at a young age, and frankly, I didn't enjoy it. I particularly detested the plastic Erector sets my dad bought me, which were supposed to become helicopters and tanks if you followed directions and built them correctly (which I usually didn't do). I would have much rather gone to dance class and played with dolls instead of building Lego models, and my dad knew it, so as a compromise, I got to build a Lego model of a dollhouse. Beyond memorizing dinosaur names, I had limited exposure to science in grade school, and it wasn't until third grade when I got my first official science lesson on ear anatomy, where we touched on how sound is conducted through the inner ear and the information relayed to the brain. I thought the lesson was interesting, but didn't have much motivation to learn more. Besides, that memory was diluted out later with other science lessons, like taking apart owl pellets and assembling basic circuit boards. The best memory from grade school science lessons was the time where some wildlife expert came to our class and brought an assortment of animals for us to learn about. His menagerie included a chinchilla, a python (which some students wore around their neck, then promptly got very red in the face because the animal was so heavy), and a Komodo dragon. We also had a guinea pig and a tarantula as class pets, which were fun to observe, and I think that really got me interested in animal life, even though my exposure at that age consisted of cleaning the guinea pig cage.

I hardly learned anything in middle school science either, and the part I did remember involved dissecting that earthworm right before lunch in 6th grade, then immediately forgetting why we had to do that. We raised monarch butterflies in class, and watched many nature documentaries, which I thoroughly enjoyed. However, after 6th grade, my parents must have thought that I wasn't learning enough of what they considered important (read: science, math, engineering), because they got me a book called "1000 Science Questions and Answers...With Illustrations!" and told me to read it cover to cover, which I think I did, but only remember the section on animals. This book was followed by The Handy Science Answer Book, which I got for Christmas one year when I was in late middle school, and was also required to read cover to cover. The animal life section in these two books focused mostly on behavior instead of physiology, so everything I gleaned from those tomes fell under ecology (i.e. food chain), unaware of the existence of other fields like physiology, development, and genetics, all of which I'm doing now.

In high school, I told my guidance counselor that I wanted to go to med school, but in retrospect, I was making that up because I didn't have a clue as to what that entailed, and didn't have much exposure to what else was out there (aside from engineering, but my dad is an engineer and I was under the impression that it was all about cars, which I found dull). The counselor suggested that I take AP biology, which was the first lucky accident, because I loved everything about it...so much that I decided to major in it in college. The AP class gave me a wide range of interests, and I chose plain "Biology" over Cellular/Molecular and Ecology/Evolution because it gave me freedom to take any bio class that sounded interesting and still have it count toward the degree. Most of my classes fell under the Ecology/Evolution category, although if I knew then what I know now, I would have changed my major to the cellular/molecular side.

The second lucky accident happened junior year of college, when I took developmental biology (which was awesome) and its corresponding lab class (which was even more so). My GSI for the lab class, who was also one of my current advisor's former students, asked if I had considered going to grad school because I had noted my interest in animal development. And here I am.
***
My interests have changed even in grad school; on my application, I listed stem cells as one of my interests, but throughout my rotations I found out that I'd much rather be dealing with animals than growing cells in a dish. I never would have guessed that what I'm working on now would consist of animal development, genetics, physiology, and evolution, given that my early interests were something so far removed from it. I think I owe it to my AP teacher and my GSI, because otherwise I'm not sure I would have found something that I loved so much to study it for 8 years... and counting.

Realistic Optimism

Over the past few years I've heard from various people that I'm "blissfully optimisitic". One time I was stepping off to bus to go to school, and some random guy came up to me (while I was zoned out on my headphones) and said "I see you all the time and I have to ask: why are you so smiley?" Another person told me multiple times last year "I can't believe you're so happy all the time." Another time during recruitment weekend I ran into someone on the walk to lab and they were talking about how only first and second year grad students are asked to host a prospective student, since at that stage of their career, they're still "happy and excited about their research," while senior grad students are stereotypically bitter and irritated that they haven't graduated yet.

Looking back on my blog posts starting from undergrad commencement, I've definitely taken a more serious tone in my writing about the grad student experience. I've rarely written about my project as of late and have focused more on experiences outside of lab and the changing perceptions of myself and other people. However, that doesn't mean that I'm not excited about my work anymore (my advisor recently told me that I seemd very optimistic about experimental outcomes). I think it's more of the realization that if experiments don't work, there's really nothing I can do except think it over, change a thing or two, and rerun it.

...which takes care of my life inside the lab. Outside the lab, things become very different. Sometimes I find it difficult to simply be happy when I'm surrounded by subtle pessimism, not just about lab, but also about their lives outside of lab. Two people I know have made their love lives a running joke by saying things like "what love life?" and "yours can't be more of a joke than mine!" While their comments may be on the light side of things, there are other people who say things like "marriage makes you a better person." I know one person who told me that she cried herself to sleep because she didn't have a boyfriend on her birthday. It's hard for me to deal with stories like that, especially if I'm being constantly bombarded with messages that  I can't be happy as I am, or that I simply can't become a better person because I'm unmarried.

***
My cold-emailing-club-directors-and/or-instructors is finally starting to pay off; I've started dancing again and got involved with a science outreach group. And I'm definitely seeking out happier people to be around.

Isolation and Impatient Optimism

Several older students told me that everyone in grad school eventually enters the "bitter grad student" phase in their career, and I think that time is around now. I don't even have to talk to other people about grad school and research to realize this. I've noticed that many people I talk to don't have any enthusiasm to do anything...social or otherwise. For the past few months, getting people together to do something fun has been (and still is) like pulling teeth. I usually get some variation of the excuse "when I get home from lab I just want to sit and do nothing," which makes me wonder (a) if I'm not working hard enough in lab, since I still have energy, and (b) if I get cabin fever way faster than everyone I know.

   I think part of the problem is that by now, we've settled into a life of routine...we get up, go to lab, do work, come back, and crash, only to repeat this cycle 6 or 7 days a week for the next couple years until our advisors say we can graduate. While routine can be comforting (sometimes), it also is a recipe for isolation. And after a long time, it becomes a hard habit to break. The other problem is that we're surrounded by the same people day after day, and opportunities to meet new people who aren't in the same field (or the same lab, for that matter) are scarce to nonexistent.

   One of my friends goes to med school at MSU and he came to visit several weeks ago. We talked about some of the trends we've seen in people as we go through grad school: the pessimism, isolation, and general laziness which gets progressively worse with time. He said that the best way to combat it is with optimism, "impatient optimism" to be specific. (The phrase came from a graduation speech that Bill Gates supposedly gave at Harvard.) It means to be happy, but also to be proactive in pursuing the activities that bring happiness.

   I really think I've been trying to get people together, but it's not working. At the same time, I've also looked into other activities that branch off of what I liked to do when I was younger (dance, for instance) as a way to fulfill my mental health time. Several people have told me that I should stop trying so hard, but I don't think that passivity is the best way to solve this problem.

   I don't think I've ever felt more alone in my life.

Evolution I

The grad school environment isn't exactly a breeding ground for social activities, and in some ways, the lack of "practice" coupled with constant, focused brain activity forces people to change. The other part, I suppose, is growing up in general. I'd be naive to think that people won't change with time, but sometimes the way they evolve can be surprising.


I was talking to my (now married!) friend the other day about how I found it increasingly difficult to connect with "normal" people, defined as people who never went to grad school. Obviously upon meeting someone new, you try to find some common ground first, and with other students, going to grad school IS the common ground. You start off with "Hey, nice to meet you. What program are you in? Who's lab?" and then drift to other topics that may or may not be related to work. With non-grad students it becomes harder:


-So, what do you do?
-I'm a grad student doing developmental biology.
-Masters or PhD?
-PhD.
(conversation dies in about two more sentences, unless the other person is actually interested in what you're saying)


One could argue that it's just a personality thing, but in general, I find that meeting and talking to other grad students is easier than meeting non-students.
**
That's not to say that all people in grad school change the same way. Some become hyperfocused on their work and let everything else (friends, hobbies) drop to the side, and in some extreme cases, drop entirely. I don't think school is very conducive in making people strike a balance between work and leisure; there's always "I'm too busy with lab," the universal reply to almost anything that anyone asks, unless it's the PI who's asking.


It's becoming more of a struggle for me to strike that work-leisure balance as I go into my fourth year here. Not like I don't want there to be a balance... I feel like I'm trying really hard to seek out my friends to do something fun once in a while (even as a mental break), but the act of getting x number of people together at the same place and time is sapping out the fun in whatever activity there is to do. Disagreements about where to go and what to do are normal, but they cross the line when people start complaining about my ideas without offering any of their own. I even had one person tell me (when I invited her to go to the comedy club with us) "No thanks, I don't wanna go," which would have been perfectly fine, except she continued, "I don't know why you keep inviting me to do stuff; it's not you, it's the things you plan. They're just bleh."  Who needs to hear something like that? And for the record, it's not the first (nor the last) time that someone has vetoed my ideas without a countersuggestion.


I'm trying to not use the "I'm busy" line too often without giving an alternate time, and it's been working pretty well. But right now I'm grappling with my own (perceived or not) increasing social awkwardness and decreasing sanity/patience. I also perceive that I have been constantly seeking out others, which makes me feel clingy and very dependent, something that makes me quite uncomfortable.


I suppose the good thing is that I'm relaxing a bit this upcoming weekend without having to strain myself in getting groups of people together in the same place at the same time.

motivational decline

One of my friends is getting married out of the country and I'm taking a week off to attend and go sightseeing. I'm leaving within the next couple days, and in the past week, I've been processing samples and running experiments to analyze immediately when I get back. Although it's been a bit busy lately, I will say that my motivation level in the past month has really hit an all-time low.

I had two major projects to complete before I go: one was a hormone/chemical treatment on the tadpole brain to determine the rate and location of cell division. The other is riboprobe synthesis for use in the early-stage tadpole brain. I admit I've been really slow in getting started, but sometimes just looking at the protocols makes me feel sluggish (for instance, the riboprobe synthesis and testing takes about 3 days to finish).

I'm guessing it's the 3-4 year slump; prelims are done, the post-prelim high has passed, and now it's just straight up research until my advisor says I'm done. Which would be...nobody knows when.

Two of my friends who quit grad school did so at the end of their third year/beginning of fourth year, which is where I'm at right now. One said experiments weren't working out and the other simply lost interest in their project. While I'm not planning on quitting, I'm definitely feeling the decrease in motivation (and with it, productivity). I'm guessing once I get my brain out of vacation mode -- where it's been for about two weeks -- at least some motivation will come back and I'll have cool new stuff to present/defend at my next committee meeting.

I wonder if anyone else is getting sluggish about their work...?

on knowing when to quit

Parts of science are extremely frustrating in that almost nothing works the way you want on the first try. Many assays and techniques need optimizing and multiple confirmation steps before they can yield decent data. But how do you know when to abandon something? Or is it ok to simply keep beating your head against a wall?

A good example would be in 2009, when I was trying to clone an antagonist to receptor X; I spent July to November cloning, and when I finally got a clone, I found I couldn't make cells produce mass quantities of this antagonist. Which meant I had to either reclone it, or optimize production methods. It turns out altering production methods didn't work, so I had to reclone it into a different plasmid and test for production again. By the time all this was done, it was March 2010, and I didn't actually get the antagonist tested in cell culture until June 2010.

My adventures in cloning this antagonist isn't the only one in our lab. My predecessor had done the original mutagenesis and cloning of this protein and found that he couldn't get the cells to produce it. When I took over the project, I cut off some stuff from his original sequence and cloned it into a different plasmid, but it didn't seem to make a difference, so I had to keep cloning until I got one that worked.

There are different ways to block cell signaling, but I can tell that my advisor thought it would be useful to have a receptor antagonist as a possible tool for future studies. But is the time spend on cloning and testing (in this case, more than two years) worth it? How much money and time needs to be spent in order to get this one tool?

A second example involves my time working as an undergrad in the plant lab downstairs. My job was to optimize primers that came in; since we were working with plant DNA, PCR could be a bit tricky since plant cells have all this glop (resins, tannins) that interferes with the yield of good, clean, DNA. The problem here was that I was even more clueless back then, so I just did what I was told, and couldn't explain the strange bands I kept getting on my DNA gel. So I had to try different temperature and time settings to get the primers to amplify the sequence of interest. Someone later asked me "why don't you just get new primers? They're pretty cheap."

After I left, the lab did get new (redesigned) primers. I talked to the lab manager after I started grad school, and she told me that someone else designed the old primers, and that their design had a lot of mistakes. But why couldn't we have checked them for mistakes earlier?

It sounds like many of the reasons for stopping or not stopping with a given project are financially motivated, but it can't be the only reason. Clearly the benefit of having a functional receptor antagonist was worth the time and funds spent to clone and test it. But what if the tests showed spotty results, as in sometimes it worked well and other times it didn't? Would we have abandoned that project?

Might be another thing that comes with more time in school...

The Quarter-Life Crisis

Fourth year is starting in two days, and the progress meter is at a standstill. While there are day-to-day frustrations with experiments and strange results, the sudden (or not-so-sudden) realization that we're a little closer to graduation (hopefully) and finding a real job can be jarring. I heard more stories of people leaving their PhD programs in the past year; they decided the pressures experienced in academic research weren't worth the end product of having the degree. Even amongst the people who stay, I find that more are struggling to figure out what the next step is going to be.

For instance, one of my friends is experiencing a few funding issues in his lab. We were talking about the pros and cons of a career in academia, and came to the conclusion that we might not be as well-prepared for such a career as we once thought. Nobody enjoys the grant-writing process, and I have limited patience when it comes to teaching. At the end of it, he said "industry doesn't look so bad now, does it?" He might as well have said it to himself as to me, since when we started grad school, he was vehemently anti-industry and didn't like the idea of science for profit's sake. Now that we've spent a bit more time here, we're both wondering what we might and might not be cut out for.

Being in industry has its own problems, and even people in that field may be rethinking what they want to do. Someone I know who is currently an industry postdoc is considering a career switch. It seems to be that there are more freedoms in academia than in industry; there's no well-defined end result in academia, whereas in industry all the time and resources are poured into drug development or disease therapy. That's not to say that all of academic research is purely for knowledge, but from my own basic science perspective, the line between academics and industry is much more pronounced.

Looking back at the past few years, I feel like I just stumbled into grad school. The story begins much earlier that college, however. In high school, my counselor highly suggested taking AP biology as prep for the college premed track; taking this class was enough for me to major in biology in college, and even though I started out premed (like everyone else), the further I went along in my college career, the more I realized that I didn't want to pursue medicine. A series of dev bio classes, a certain GSI, and a string of lab rotations helped me carve out what I wanted to do in grad school...and here I am, working on a project I enjoy that borders development and evolution.

My biggest problem now is that I can't "stumble into" the next step. I'm having some doubts about staying academia after graduation (when that happens), but so far I know that I want to remain close to the science.

Bubble

One thing I've noticed about school is that it tends to shield people from the "real world." This was especially apparent during my freshman year of college, and gradually got better when I left the dorms. However, the shield is still there; sometimes it's a good thing, but other times it means an somewhat isolated existence.

A lot of people have said that the past couple years has been a good time to be in school. The number of people pursuing post-college education has increased as the economy tanked, and in many ways, grad school is a shield from having to search for a "real" job or worrying about the consequences of not having such a job.

However, grad school comes with its own bubbles; depending on the day, labwork can be stimulating, tedious, meditative, or just plain robotic. While the schedule is relatively flexible (I go to lab when I want, but I leave when the work is done), the flip side of having such fluidity is that everyone else is on a different schedule, and sometimes I'm there by myself with just my iPod and the frogs for company. It's gotten much better, since there are more people in the lab now and the chances that I'll have human company during work hours has increased. But since people have different projects, sometimes it can still feel a little isolating, especially when the people you interact with the most aren't present.

I don't mind the lab bubble as much as I do the bubble that extends outside of work into "normal life." I've noticed lately that people are less willing to go out and do semi-organized activities. My friend, who's in a different program at another school, has noticed it too and pointed it out to me. She had tried to get people together for a wine-and-games night at her house, but out of the 30-some people she invited, only half replied. And out of the half that replied, 8-10 actually showed up, which is a pretty good sized group, but considering the number of people she asked, it's quite a low turnout. I've started to notice that as well; people are increasingly wrapped up in their own lives and not extremely willing to go out and do something social (myself included).

One of my other friends (in med school) thought that we're all in a particularly antisocial period, since we're trying to get enough done to graduate, but also trying to figure out what we want to do in the long run...a "quarter-life crisis" of sorts. As a result, many other things, including attempts to have some semblance of a social life, is seen as a distraction. An alternative is that we're all reaching the end of our third year, and "what have I (not) accomplished these couple years" syndrome is starting to sink in. That being said, I wonder if this is going to get worse as fourth year approaches in a few months...

Unfounded Anxiety

People who know me at least a little bit know that patience is definitely not one of my virtues, which doesn't bode too well for a career in science. When I started grad school, I noticed that I had more patience waiting for my experiments to stop running than I did for certain situations outside of work. Lately though... I haven't had much patience for ANYTHING, including bad experiment results.

I don't even have a good reason to feel rushed; I'm nowhere close to graduating, and the only person who's complaining about how little data I've gathered is myself. I have a problem accepting that are some lab days where the only "benchwork" there is to do is wait for cells/animals to grow, and I feel pretty guilty when I'm in lab and not doing benchwork. One of my friends pointed out that benchwork isn't the only way to be productive, but that's also something I have difficulty realizing.

I think the anxiety might rub off on others, namely my advisor. He was working on a paper that I contributed some data to, and I got a draft of it about two weeks ago. It's not complete at all, but I was visibly anxious about getting a draft to look at. I think I asked him every (other) day about it until he sent it. Hopefully he's just thinking I was super excited to get my name printed on something... which I am, but for some reason I still feel I need to push harder to get another paper out.

By now it sounds like my only interest is in boosting my resume. While more publications is always a good thing, there's obviously a limit to how much I can do within a certain period of time. My biggest problem right now is that I feel rushed to produce something, and get really upset/jump to conclusions when things don't work the first time around, regardless of me making some stupid mistake that caused it not to work. I'm hoping it's just a phase I'm going through, but in the meantime, I should probably find something to calm my nerves...

The Love-Hate Relationship

Several weeks ago I was talking to a group of third-year medical students, and one of them asked me how I liked my work as a grad student. I think they have the impression that I work weird hours and live to serve whatever samples I have running or animals I've isolated. Then again, what they consider as "weird hours" is seemingly normal for me and for several other grad students I've talked to. My friends in med school have more of a set schedule; they're required to be at a certain place by a certain time, rather than coming in whenever they want and leaving when the work gets done.

That doesn't mean that I walk into lab at 1pm every day and work until 9 or 10 at night. There's still an expectation that I'll be in the lab enough to get the appropriate amount of face time with my advisor, but there's not much of an endpoint to when I'll be done for that particular day, which may be irritating for some people. The good part is that I can at least estimate the amount of time I need and plan accordingly, which is often what I tell people who think I'm overworking (namely my parents).

I have this ongoing love-hate relationship with grad school. Good results and published papers aside (which everyone loves anyway), I'd have to say I like the steep learning curve which can't be picked up in any class and the fact that I get paid to do something I enjoy (i.e., biology). It's also nice to have labmates I get along with.

That being said, I haven't met anyone yet that enjoys every minute of grad school; there's always bound to be something unsatisfying about it. When I first started, there were only three grad students (including me) and two undergrads. One of the grad students was MIA due to prelims, and the other came in at sporadic times. The undergrads had set schedules, but since I didn't know what they were, it seemed like they came into lab pretty sporadically as well. I had just started in the lab, and aside from not knowing where any reagents were kept, I also was unfamiliar with the project. So I got to sit in the office and read papers all week... or week and a half... which was an utterly isolating experience. The lab has since then gotten more members; there are now five PhD students, including me, a Master's student, an assortment of undergrads, and a lab tech, which livens things up a little. Plus I'm not completely lost as to what I'm supposed to be doing, so I can spend lab time actually doing benchwork instead of reading.

***
I really don't think the in-lab isolation aspect is nearly as bad as the out-of-lab aspect. There are days when I come home pretty late and the only thing that I want to do is wash up and read a mystery before bed. There are also days when I use going to lab as an escape of sorts from whatever problems I don't want to think about in the "real world." Other days it's equally painful to go into lab as it is to stay away from it, but the good part is that those days are rare.

Mentorship

I'm a horrible mentor. There, I said it.

Back in August, I told my advisor that I was interested in getting an undergrad helper for my research. There's a school-wide program here that helps undergrads (particularly underclassmen) get started on research by getting in touch with different PIs and their projects. I got to interview the students, and chose one to help me out, so he's been here since mid-September.

Unfortunately I've realized that I'm not very good at thinking of spinoff projects for other people. A few weeks ago, my advisor asked me how everything was going with the undergrad helper -- what was his project exactly? What was he doing? My answer was something among the lines of "he does what I tell him to do," which didn't sit very well with my advisor.
I've been teaching the student various molecular biology techniques, along with an overview of how they fit into the bigger picture of my project, but this approach doesn't work very well, especially if I just dictate what he's supposed to do and watch over his shoulder while he does it.

One of the biggest problems is that I don't trust other people to do "my" work, for fear of things getting messed up. I'm pretty sure my advisor had the same problem with me when I first started working in the lab; it got to the point where my advisor asked another grad student (a year above me) to watch my technique... as in look over my shoulder. When the other student said "but I don't think she's doing anything wrong," my advisor said "well, just in case..."

I'm trying to get the student to see the big picture before he goes off to work, but sometimes I glaze/skip over things that seem second nature to me, without realizing that the student is lost. However, there's a limit to how much "big picture" stuff can be covered before the students lose interest, and many subtleties can only be learned through actually DOING the work.

If I continue mentoring throughout the next school year, hopefully the current student stays in the lab...

Conflict of Interest

I'm in grad school at the same place I went to undergrad, and I was telling a recent seminar speaker over lunch that the divide between college and grad school seemed much more pronounced. Then again, I have no other basis for judgement.

However, my first teaching experience was in a class that I had taken my junior year of undergrad, and my GSI was one of my current advisor's former students. He seemed pretty relaxed about class policies, given that we didn't do anything stupid, like take naps or text people. I think one of the best parts about the class was that everyone who was registered actually wanted to be there, and nobody was in that "I need an easy lab course to cruise through my senior year" mindset, which made life easier for both the GSI and the students.

Unfortunately cases like that are pretty much utopia.

I ran into that GSI about a year later, and found out that he was teaching the same class again. When asked how teaching was going, he gave a different response: students had become whiners. Granted, it was a lab class that met for four hours on a stretch, and lab activities aren't always going to be fun and games, especially if grades (and possibility of future schooling) is at stake. The biggest problem is that most of the students WERE in the "I need an easy A to graduate" mindset, and as a result, procured mediocre work and less-than-stellar behavior.

So what changed? The undergraduate biology program here requires all students to have at least 2 lab classes picked from a specific list. This class wasn't on the list when I took it, and suddenly it was, resulting in an influx of students that may or may not (most likely the latter) have wanted to take the class to begin with. The class always counted toward a biology degree, but since it wasn't on that specific list of labs, most people overlooked it.

One of things I struggled with a lot during my year of teaching was a huge conflict of interest between me and the students, or me and the institution. I wanted to students to care about the material they were supposed to be learning, and I expected them to put in the effort to do well in the class because they chose to take it. On the flip side, most students wanted an easy A and do just enough to cruise by. I had one student turn in his Google search list about Compound X as his bibliography about how Compound X affected embryonic development. I emailed him and asked him to redo it, which he never did. Two weeks later, he came into office hours in a panic because he claimed that he was "snowboarding in Canada" that day and didn't get the email. And also, "can I still get credit if I redo it now?"

Seriously? Why even bother asking that question? The answer is obviously no.

***

I was having a discussion with one of my friends about institutions of higher learning; I was angry about our current system and how much grade inflation there was. I think bell curves can be pretty fair, but right now our bell curve has shifted so much to the right; the average, instead of being a B- or B like some of the classes I saw in undergrad, is now an B+ or even an A-. How are you supposed to differentiate between the average students and the outstanding students then?

On the flip side, instructors get in trouble with admin if their class averages are too low. My professor for Orgo II got fired after her term teaching us. Student evaluations aside, she had one test that was so difficult that the class average (for 1000+ students) was a 42%. So part of this huge grade inflation problem stems from instructors wanting a bit of job security... I understand that at least in part. However, things get out of hand when a student who clearly deserves a C- or a C ends up getting a B... just so we can move the class average up a few points and avoid getting in trouble by admin.

No instructor wants to reward mediocrity, but it ends up that way because students are the ones who are paying... and therefore the customers. So what do we do?