Anu Li’s ‘doctorette’ party included some of the elements usually associated with a bachelorette party, such as a sash, tiara and themed photo booth.
In June, Anu Li held a gathering for close friends and family at her home in Saint Paul, Minnesota. The party was themed, she wore a tiara and, together, Li’s loved ones celebrated as she moved from one phase of life into another.
It wasn’t a bachelorette party, nor was it a baby shower, although the guests were honouring a new milestone. Instead, the gathering was a ‘doctorette party’, to celebrate Li’s upcoming thesis defence. Li wore a ‘Mrs to Dr’ sash, and party activities paid homage to her research as a hydrologist at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. Attendees posed in a photo booth with signs reading ‘Please fund me’ and completed a mock exam featuring trivia about Li.
Pausing to mark the moment felt important, Li says, and was something she had thought about since her earliest university days. “We only acknowledge traditional milestones, like getting married or starting a family, but there are so many other things worth celebrating”, especially a PhD she’s been working towards for years, Li says. “It’s been a team effort, but also something that I’ve really made my own, and I wanted to honour that.”
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Research can be relentless, and scientists might reach career milestones at any time of the academic year, meaning that it is often left to individuals to decide when and how to reflect on their accomplishments. Achievements such as earning tenure — a form of permanent academic employment common in North America — or defending a dissertation, for example, commonly mark a natural inflection point that is worth celebrating. Nature’s careers team asked researchers how they acknowledge these milestones, and learnt that such celebrations can be deeply personal, silly and over-the-top, or as simple as a cake shared with colleagues. Everyone interviewed agreed, however: you absolutely should take the time to do it.
Keep it low-key
The instinct to celebrate comes naturally to some people, but for others, being the focus of attention can feel uncomfortable. Yet, group leaders say that cultivating a supportive environment through humour and silliness can kindle bonds between colleagues and reinforce good habits around work–life balance. In turn, these close relationships can lead to greater cohesion and innovation in the laboratory1.
Fortunately, celebrations can run the gamut from spontaneous to well-planned, and it is entirely reasonable to call in reinforcements.
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When Rachel Martin, a biophysical chemist at the University of California, Irvine, found out in 2011 that she had received tenure, it was during the summer break, and the faculty offices on her campus were empty. Martin recalls reading the approval email at around 10 a.m. on a Tuesday morning, her chair creaking as she sat back. “I went out to see who was around, and nobody was there except my one friend.”
When Martin shared the news, her friend said nothing, but immediately picked up the phone. She dialled the number for a bar at which their department members often met for drinks after work. “They were obviously closed, but she put on her professor voice and convinced the bartender to let us come in and have a celebratory beer” at midday, Martin says. “It was just the two of us sitting there in the dark, and it was glorious. I remember it all these years later.”
Other people celebrate simply by participating in rituals that help to build continuity across generations of students. In June, Robert Maples successfully defended his PhD in immunology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. Over the years, he has watched at least four students don a hot-pink feather boa and cowboy hat to celebrate successfully completing their defence — leftovers from a long-ago party that were repurposed by his adviser, Julie Pfeiffer. Now, at long last, he could count himself as one of this illustrious group.
Robert Maples celebrated his successful thesis defence with poo-emoji cakes to represent his work on gastrointestinal viruses, and a pink hat and feather boa worn at previous lab celebrations. Credit: (L) Robert Maples; (R) Phillip Maples
“After my defence, we had a small party, and I proudly wore that hat the entire time,” he says, adding that he defended his thesis while wearing a Hawaiian shirt, a cheeky nod to his long-standing practice of wearing the colourful garments on casual Fridays. “It’s taken me longer than most students to finish my degree, and it felt really good to at last be a part of that lineage.”
Go all out
Sometimes faculty members choose to keep their own celebrations tame. But several researchers told Nature they have no such qualms about making a big to-do when their students pass major milestones. Some of it might come down to human nature — it’s much easier to see and reward the work that others are putting in — but Martin adds that defending a PhD often marks a much larger change in a person’s life than getting tenure does. In some cases, students’ families might not realize just how much work goes into a degree and how impressive the achievement is. “For that reason, I make sure everybody has a big deal made out of their thesis defence,” she says.
María Ávila-Arcos, a palaeogenomics researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City, has a similar mindset, and tailors each celebration to her students’ interests. She took a student who was obsessed with the Star Wars film series to a themed restaurant, for example. It was split down the middle, with each side resembling either the cantina on the planet Tatooine or the inside of an Imperial starship. The group ordered pizzas shaped like the Millennium Falcon starship and sipped drinks from lightsaber cups delivered by Stormtroopers.
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Her own promotion to a tenured position was similarly celebrated in style, in acknowledgment of just how challenging the journey can be. As part of the tenure process, many universities in Mexico create a permanent position tailored to the applicant’s research — in Ávila-Arcos’s case, the palaeogenomics of pre-Hispanic populations. Then, they advertise the position publicly.
