Five easy steps to get rid of your lab

Congratulations! You have just become a permanent professor – a Certified Academic . Now that you have made it through the treacherous rapids of temporary appointments, you probably expect the academic River of No Return to wash you gently into the Bay of Retirement. Brace yourself for a rude shock, because you have just been handed a life sentence of forced hard labor. Setting up your first lab as an Assistant Professor was your academic honeymoon, but now it is time to face reality – those problems you overlooked at the start will grow on you and haunt you for the rest of your career. As the head of a lab, you will always have to toil for others. Year after year, every student and postdoc will bother you with umpteen problems; settling the authorship of papers will require the craftiness of a lawyer, the patience of a clinical psychiatrist, and the impassiveness of a Buddhist monk. And trying to rake in the funds for keeping your lab humming will chain you to a computer for most of the time. It will be like repainting the Golden Gate Bridge – as soon as you have worked your way to one end, it is time to start at the other one. If you look at it squarely, you are done for. But all is not lost. You have already shown the world – and yourself – that you can run a lab, so why not ditch it and move on to bigger things? I am not talking about becoming a chairman, a dean, or a university president – they all serve their own harsh sentences. I am talking about Easy Street – learned societies, think tanks, obscure scientific academies and advisory bodies, where almost everyone is either President, Secretary General, or on an expense account. You, too, can do it – just about everybody can. Only that lab of yours stands in the way. You cannot simply walk away from it or return it to the sender, but you can make it go away all by itself. It only takes a little patience – and five easy steps. Step 1: Accept as many students and postdocs as you can. Never ask the others in the lab what they think about the people who apply to you, and do not worry about whether there is enough space. Be vague when you assign individual bench spaces or, better yet, make several people use the same bench space on a rotating basis. And while you are at it, put several of them on the same research topic and keep consumables in short supply. Having your students and postdocs step on each others toes and bump into each others brain is a great way to keep adrenalin levels high and general happiness low. Step 2: Never enter your lab. Have your people trudge to your office, which should be as far from the lab as possible and reflect your exalted position. If necessary, use creative bookkeeping to convert grant money into a plush carpet, designer curtains, an impressive executive desk for yourself, and uncomfortable chairs for your visitors. Everything about your office should convey the message I am the boss. Do not waste time discussing unsuccessful experiments – you want Publishable Results. Insist on office hours (do not be too generous there) and keep looking at your watch to remind your students and postdocs that you have more important things to do than to talk to them. Always keep the door to your office shut, and put visitors in their place with blinkingWAIT and ENTER signs.Above all, hire a fiercely loyal secretarywhoguards the en-