“But you . . .” Have published articles in the Lancet. Have tenure and millions of dollars in research grants. Were keynote speaker at a major conference. Olive wasn’t even sure what to bring up, so she settled for, “You were a MacArthur Fellow.”
“I was.” He exhaled a laugh. “And five years before the MacArthur grant, in the second year of my Ph.D., I spent an entire week preparing law school applications because I was sure that I’d never become a scientist.”
“Wait—so what Holden said was true?” She couldn’t quite believe it. “Why law school?”
He shrugged. “My parents would have loved it. And if I couldn’t be a scientist, I didn’t care what I’d become.”
“What stopped you, then?”
He sighed. “Holden. And Tom.”
“Tom,” she repeated. Her stomach twisted, leaden.
“I would have dropped out of my Ph.D. program if it hadn’t been for them. Our adviser was well-known in the field for being a sadist. Like I am, I suppose.” His mouth curled into a bitter smile. “I was aware of his reputation before starting my Ph.D. Thing is, he was also brilliant. The very best. And I thought . . . I thought that I could take it, whatever he’d dish out at me, and that it would be worth it. I thought it would be a matter of sacrifice and discipline and hard work.” There was a strain to Adam’s voice, as though the topic was not one he was used to discussing.
Olive tried to be gentle when she asked, “And it wasn’t?”
He shook his head. “The opposite, in a way.”
“The opposite of discipline and hard work?”
“We worked hard, all right. But discipline . . . discipline would presume specifically laid-out expectations. Ideal codes of behavior are defined, and a failure to adhere to them is addressed in a productive way. That’s what I thought, at least. What I still think. You said that I’m brutal with my grads, and maybe you’re right—”
“Adam, I—”
“But what I try to do is set goals for them and help them achieve them. If I realize that they’re not doing what we have mutually agreed needs to be done, I tell them what’s wrong and what they must change. I don’t baby them, I don’t hide criticism in praises, I don’t believe in that Oreo cookie feedback crap, and if they find me terrifying or antagonizing because of it, so be it.” He took a deep breath. “But I also don’t ever make it about them. It’s always about the work. Sometimes it’s well done, other times it’s not, and if it’s not . . . work can be redone. It can improve. I don’t want them to tie their self-worth to what they produce.” He paused, and he looked—no, he felt faraway. Like these were things he gave a great deal of thought to, like he wanted this for his students. “I hate how self-important this all sounds, but science is serious business, and . . . it’s my duty as a scientist, I believe.”
“I . . .” All of a sudden, the air in the hotel room was cold. I’m the one who told him, she thought, feeling her stomach flip. I’m the one who told him repeatedly that he’s terrifying and antagonizing, and that all his students hate him. “And your adviser didn’t?”
“I never quite understood what he thought. What I do know now, years later, is that he was abusive. A lot of terrible things happened under his watch—scientists were not given credit for their ideas or authorship of papers they deserved. People were publicly belittled for making mistakes that would be normal for experienced researchers—let alone trainees. Expectations were stellar, but never fully defined. Impossible deadlines were set arbitrarily, out of the blue, and grads were punished for not meeting them. Ph.D. students were constantly assigned to the same tasks, then pitted against each other and asked to compete, for my adviser’s amusement. Once he put Holden and me on the same research project and told us that whoever obtained publishable results first would receive funding for the following semester.”