—
I really like my job. I love doing research with my students and on my own. I love reading papers, writing papers, and even writing proposals. I get so excited about my science. I love teaching my classes, even if I do have to give them grades at the end. I love mentoring my seven graduate students and the assorted others who stop by my office on a regular basis. I am finding more opportunities to work on mentoring and diversity issues as part of my service commitments. I have no doubt that I am truly in the right job for me.

I really love my daughter. Minnow is almost three. She is enormously enthusiastic and creative, and she is becoming more independent with each passing day. Her favorite things are books, puzzles, blocks, stickers, running around with her friends, and exploring the outdoors. She is growing so rapidly that her selection of favorite books and toys changes with each passing week. She loves to tell stories with me at bedtime – we cooperatively spin tales about the adventures we have had or the ones we will have soon. She loves dragons. She’s decided that science is cool and can be heard multiple times per day calling for me to come do science with her. Of course, her definition of science is a little shaky, but it’s a start. When she grows up, she’s decided that she wants to be a “mommy and a teacher and a scientist” just like her mommy and grandma. I tell her she can be whatever she wants.
—
I declared my theme for 2009 to be “Sustainability”, as in “I’m going to focus on trying to live my life that is sustainable in the long run for my body, my mental health, my family and my career.” While I wouldn’t say that I’ve achieved total sustainable nirvana, I’ve made a series of small and large decisions over the past year that have put me on a path that is much healthier for me and those around me. Some of those decisions are associated with a great deal of loss, but oddly enough I am much happier now than I had been for much of the preceding five years.
—
For 2010, my chosen theme is “Peace and Joy.”

I want to embrace my current happiness and joyously luxuriate in all of the simple pleasures of life. A student thanking me for being a good teacher. Getting new data in hand that puts new ideas in my head. Minnow telling me that I am terrific. Phone calls and emails from good friends. The profound joyousness of having a job I like and a daughter that I love in a community where I am slowly setting roots.

There’s a prayer by Reinhold Niebuhr that I’ve always liked:

God grant me the serenity to
accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

I’m learning to accept that life doesn’t always work out exactly the way I once planned. I need to keep making peace with my life that way it is, because that peace is what will help me stay joyous.
—
Over the past year, I’ve increasingly felt distanced from this blog space. I’ve chosen not to share some important parts of my personal and professional life here, and since my source material was originally my own stories, in some ways I’ve cut off my own tongue. I can still share less-personal things, but when that’s all I write about, blogging becomes more of an obligation and less of a release. It becomes more of a droning chant and less of a lyrical melody. On top of that, I know that if my blog voice goes mute, there will still be a tremendous orchestra of people blogging about the common and diverse experiences of women in STEM and adventures in academia. And that’s a supremely comforting thought.

This will be my last post as SciWo or ScienceWoman. I’ve come to peace with the realization that blogging as SciWo is no longer a source of joy for me. I treasure the true friendships I share with many of you, but I know that we can continue to revel in and grow those friendships even without this blog. For her own reasons, Alice has also decided to stop blogging in this space, and so sciencewomen will go dark. Our archives will be here for as long as it pleases the benevolent overlords, but you won’t see new material in this space or with these voices.

The past five years have been a wonderful journey, and I am supremely happy to have shared it with you and to offer whatever little insights I have earned, but most of all to have become part of a large and diverse community of women and scientists who are also being the change we want to see.

Minnow and I have been trying to find ways to counter these daylight confines by squeezing in fun adventures on weekends (trips to living history farms, nature centers, and local playgrounds) and by using our long winter evenings to read about the adventures and misadventures of other outdoor enthusiasts. With that as an intro, I present the current favorite book in the Science household, Stan and Jan Berenstain’s The Bear Scouts.

(Isn’t it amazing how Minnow is picking up on the rhyming and able to supply her own words to end some of the lines of text? In another take she did far more of it than displayed here.)

After we’re done reading about the Bear Scouts’ adventures, we can retreat to the cozy four-season tent…

pitched inside my home office. Do you think my students will believe me if I tell them their papers aren’t graded because I’ve been camping every night this week? (As I write this, Princess Pup has made herself comfortable in the tent, as she patiently waits for me to finish and play with her.)

To all the students and faculty out there, good luck with the end of the semester crazies and may you find time to escape to nature when it is all over.

1. Done! Accepted!!!!! Finish revisions on the paper-that-won’t-die (goal: November 13)
2. Done! Internal release time application (due November 18)
3. Read some, but not nearly enough. Read around proposed grad student topics enough to ensure we’re not reinventing the wheel/pursuing proven dead ends (amorphous, I know)
4. Made progress, not enough to strike-through. Finish GIS work left-over from 2008 AGU poster.
5. Done! Draft abstract that is due in early December, so that I can get my co-authors’ approval.
6. Done! Write the letters of recommendation that have piled up because of graduate fellowship season.</li>

And, I did get some reflective clarity on what my research (and consequent writing) goals are for next semester.

1. Get 4 grads to the proposal defense stage, get one grad to thesis writing stage, get one grad’s first paper out
2. Do a good job writing my first PI NSF proposal and submit in June
3. Write my side-project paper (or at least finish the analyses for realz)
4. Continuing laying groundwork towards a collabortive proposal pushing edges of PhD work
5. Women-in-geo paper and/or diversity grant coalition forming

More than an ambitious list given my teaching load and home-life responsibilities, but, hey it’s good to have ambitious goals, right? And having them as an ordered list should help me cross some of them out, rather than having all of them turn out to be half-finished in May.

I’d also like to dedicate this post to all of my friends who’ve had terrible, horrible no good, very bad days in the past few weeks.

• To A, who made a hard, but right decision,
• To A, who had hir Thanksgiving plans turned topsy-turvy,
• To B, who needs hir advisor just to help hir for once for crying-out-loud,
• To C, who just needs some stinkin’ data,
• To C, who is facing yet another round of surgery and recovery,
• To J, who needs in-laws that appreciate hir wonderful cookery,
• To K, who put hirself in a tight spot by fighting for the thing zie knew was right,
• To K, who is trying to figure out how to help a friend, while taking care of hirself,
• To L, who fears for hir job and hir career,
• To M and S, who were too sick to enjoy the day of feasting
• To P, who is facing so much loss right now,
• To S, who deserves more thanks for the wonderful job zie does caring for hir family, and
• To everyone who’s family dinner was less than idyllic yesterday.

Hopefully by talking about our big and small troubles, supporting each other through them, and offering the respite of compassionate friendship, we can help make things a little bit easier and kinder for everyone. As for Minnow and I, we’re having very good days, thanks in no small part to knowing we have a network of supportive friends and family. Thanks to all of you for being part of that.

With that proviso, Minnow presents this week’s edition of SciWo’s Storytime featuring the book Little Squire the Fire Engine by Catherine Kenworthy and illustrated by Nina Barbaresi.

Now there’s nothing wrong with reading about fire trucks, I just don’t think that this particular book rises to the level of other classics of the genre, like Richard Scarry’s Cars and Trucks and Things that Go or Wong Herbert Yee’s Fireman Small books.

Anyways, I was in the process of contemplating Minnow’s enthusiasm for fire truck books and wondering how I was going to get her to see a real-life fire truck when one came to us. Literally. Here’s a photo of a fire truck parked at our house a few days after this video was made. No one had a fire, but an elderly neighbor fell and hurt himself and the firefighters/first responders were dispatched to help him up and to the hospital.

Minnow was very impressed, and also very relieved that the fire truck did not sound its siren on our tiny quiet street. When she was 1, the firefighters had come to her daycare for a demo and had sounded the siren for the kids. Minnow still talks about how scared she was.

We’ve got a wonderful book about pillbugs that I really want to make a video about, and we’re still trying to track down some of the other great books requested by our DonorsChoose friends, so check back next week for another edition of SciWo’s (and Minnow’s) Storytime.

Dr. Cassell has also done a great deal of thinking about the importance of mentoring, networking, and professional development opportunities in academia and industry. Here are some snippets of what she had to say in the opening part of her remarks, advice for navigating the new environment faced by junior scientists:

• There is no substitute for tenaciousness and perseverance.
• Always be open to new opportunities.
• Treat your colleagues well.
• Establish integrity of institutions. What you do is important, but how you do it is more important.

Dr. Cassell also talked about the characteristics of a good mentor, qualities that included accessibility, empathy, honesty, savvy, humility (most important), consistency, open-mindedness, and understanding of the current/new research/academic/professional environment. Mentors should be providing networking opportunities, offering moral support, and encouraging creative thinking. In turn, good mentees are proactive, probing, gracious, and humble in accepting critical feedback.

Of course, you are not going to meet all of your mentoring needs in a single relationship, so Cassell suggests to never let go of old mentors, establish both official and informal mentors and also find a set of confidants. She urges mentees to keep meetings professional.

Cassell also spoke about the differences in the way mentoring and professional development occurs in industry versus academia. She thinks they used to be quite different, but maybe not so much anymore. In her view, strengths in industry include: constant feedback and peer review; objective [and clearly defined?] performance measures; yearly development plans, treating human capital as the greatest asset; considering the sum of team and individual performance in evaluating success; and doing good succession planning. She talked about specific programs aimed at supporting scientists at Eli Lilly, including a women’s network, on-site childcare, generous maternity leave, job sharing, flex time, remote sites of work, and a VP of Diversity. By the time she was done, I was almost ready to ask for a job application.

Dr. Cassell suggested that to make mentoring meaningful is to make it part of the institution’s culture. To do that, it needs to be factored into performance evaluations, because the organization needs to put its money where its mouth is. She told us that bad mentors at Lilly get sent to “charm school.” In my mind, this making mentoring part of the institutional culture, by rewarding good mentoring, is one of the biggest challenges to mentoring programs aimed at young faculty at universities. Most universities already place low value on service, and if mentoring is just one tiny component of a low value activity, then there’s little way to provide incentives and rewards to good mentors. Of course, some would argue that seeing junior faculty succeed is its own reward. But over the course of busy work days, weeks, semesters, years… is that enough of a reward to actually motivate senior faculty to devote significant time and energy to mentoring those climbing the tenure ladder? Or will it only be enough to provide a twinge of regret when some young faculty are denied tenure?

I spent the week teaching, advising, mothering, and making some progress on my InaDWriMo goals for the month. As of last week the goals stood like this:

1. Done! Finish revisions on the paper-that-won’t-die (goal: November 13)
2. Done! Internal release time application (due November 18)
3. Read around proposed grad student topics enough to ensure we’re not reinventing the wheel/pursuing proven dead ends (amorphous, I know)
4. Finish GIS work left-over from 2008 AGU poster.

The paper got re-submitted on Wednesday! May that be the last time I ever see that paper except in proof or preprint. The release time application is fully written, with a colleague for possible critique, and will be submitted tomorrow or Tuesday after a final read-through. It is absolutely at the page limit, so I will have to resist the temptation to add anything. These accomplishments sound more impressive than they really are, however, when you consider that the paper was *so* close to being done before the week and the release application was not long and not technical. I didn’t really do anything related to the last two goals, but I did talk with a distinguished person in my field who thought my students’ work was interesting and novel, so that was nice and validating.

I did, however, get reminded of two more important and urgent tasks, which I am appending to my list of InaDWriMo goals:

• Draft abstract that is due in early December, so that I can get my co-authors’ approval.
• Write the letters of recommendation that have piled up because of graduate fellowship season.

At least I can perk up an otherwise dull post (and week), with a fantastic piece of jewelry one of my readers brought to my attention.

Now, you can have one more way to proudly proclaim your passion for SCIENCE, by wearing this wonderful creation from underoakstudios on Etsy. You gotta love an artisan who make necklaces proudly proclaiming dirty words and who describes her aesthetic as “We make jewelry that showcases beautiful organic shapes and materials. Earrings, necklaces, and bracelets made of wood, shells, glass, stone, bone and seeds send us over the moon!”

That’s it. I’m out. Back to my regularly scheduled routine. I’ve gotta make some fishsticks for Minnow’s dinner.

One trip to the public library later, we came home with a book that we’d read 5 times before making it out of the library building. I think she must have read the book at her former daycare, but no matter where the source of her knowledge, Minnow was more than happy to help me record a video of “Knuffle Bunny: A Cautionary Tale” by Mo Willems.

(Not in the habit of watching the videos? This one features Minnow’s adorable interpretation of baby talk.)

While we were at the library, we also discovered a book that made Minnow shout with glee. It turns out that Knuffle Bunny has a sequel, “Knuffle Bunny Too: A Case of Mistaken Identity.” And Minnow was only too happy to help me make a video of this one too.

I don’t know how he does it but Willems managed to create two books that appeal to kids while capturing the very real emotions and antics of their parents. The scene where Trixie’s daddy tries to explain what 2:30 am means is priceless.

After reading the books ~20 times in the first day, Minnow decided that she and I both needed our own Knuffle Bunnies. Fortunately, we had two plus rabbits already in our household, so they got lots of love and attention for the next two days.

But the real Knuffle in our house isn’t a bunny at all. Rather the Knuffle Bunny of Minnow’s heart is a plush dog by the name of Bobbie. Bobbie is the lovey that Minnow’s parents decided she should adopt, and it worked like a charm. The name comes from a daycare teacher’s corruption of 1-year-old Minnow saying “puppy” in reference to her toy.

There’s another little secret about Bobbie – she’s got an identical twin. Wise souls had warned us to procure a duplicate lovey and make sure that both twins got equal love, so that if one went missing, we’d have an identical replacement ready. We followed their advice and for months we fastidiously made sure that the Bobbies were never in each other’s presence for fear of a similarity collapse. In a two-story house this was usually accomplished by having one Bobbie upstairs and the other downstairs, and the occasional tossing of a Bobbie over the stair railing.

But the inevitable happened, much like in the Knuffle Bunny. One day, at age 2.5, Minnow discovered that her unique, one-of-a-kind Bobbie was not so unique and one-of-a-kind. I experienced a Moment. Of. Terror.

And then Minnow announced happily, “Another Bobbie,” set the two dogs together on her beanbag and continued playing. Since then, there have been occasional instances of two Bobbies, but much like the Large Hadron Collider, their simultaneous operation has not caused the world to end.

I have a Masters in Biology (from a 5 year BS/MS program) and for the past 4 years I’ve been working as a lab manager/technician. I have my own research project(s) in addition to keeping track of ordering/equipment maintenance/mouse breeding/etc. All-in-all it’s a sweet gig and I could see myself doing this or something similar for most of my career. The problem is that there seems to be this culture in biology that one has to get a PhD, and my competitive side kind of feels the need to get one mostly just to show that I can. My practical side can’t figure out why it would be worth taking a pay cut for 5+ years of extra stress just to continue doing what I’m already doing. I have no desire to run my own lab, and have little desire to teach.

So on to the concrete questions:

What doors does a PhD open up aside from running a lab and teaching?

What can I do without a PhD?

How does one generally go about choosing a PhD project (assuming I do decide to get one)? The answer I generally get for this last one is to read about the research that other labs are doing and that I will “know it when I see it.” But given the large number of labs at even a modest sized university, this is a very daunting task.

Dear _____,

Wow. Great questions. I think the first paragraph really contains the meat of the matter: if you are happy where you are, should you get a PhD just to prove you can?

No.

You sound happy. I have friends with MS degrees with jobs like the one you describe, and they are happy 8+ years on. As you say, you’ve found a sweet gig where you can see yourself staying. Why put yourself through the economic and academic hardship of a PhD, just to prove to a nebulous someone that you can do it? The scientific culture is also about macho masochism and no matter what you do, there will always be someone who is doing more…better…faster than you. So if you are happy, stay put.

But.

You are asking. Which means you are thinking about it. Maybe you are happy where you are…but you are the one who really wants something more than your current sweet gig for the next 30 years. We are conditioned through school to always be climbing upward and I think it can be disconcerting to find yourself in a job where there aren’t obvious opportunities for advancement.

So.

I’d spend some real time reflecting on what you really want from your life and career and exploring the various options you have with an MS if you decide to move on from your current position. I’m a geoscientist, not a bio-med type, so I really can’t help you with specifics. (That’s my duck around your question on “What can I do without a PhD?”)

If…

you do decide to pursue a PhD, make sure that you and your advisor are clear about your non-academic career plans and that he or she is supportive of you. One place to start with searching out alternative careers is with books like “A PhD Is Not Enough” and with “The Alternative Scientist” blog and those of its contributors. Katie at Minor Revisions writes a wonderful candid and metaphor-filled look at life in a bio-related industry job.

Yes.

Your friends are right. Read, ask around, attend conferences until you find the specific field that really, really excites you. You are going to need that excitement to get through ~5 years of the most frustrating and thrilling work you’ve ever done. But, maybe your friends didn’t tell you this….you need to find an advisor whose mentoring style works for you. Is she hands-on or hard to track down? Does she expect 80 hour weeks 52 weeks per year? Are her students happy? Are her graduates successful in getting the sort of jobs you want to get when you are done?

Readers, what say you?

Here’s what I wrote at ring-leader Dr. Brazen-Hussy‘s kickoff post:

1. Finish revisions on the paper-that-won’t-die (goal: November 6)
2. Internal release time application (due November 15)
3. NSF proposal (due ~December 1)

After one week, I haven’t finished the revisions, but I’m 90% done. No question as to me getting it done this week. I’ve got 3 pages of first draft of the 5 page release time application. This also will be finished this week, because it has to be finished. And…I’ve given up on the NSF proposal.

A combination of things (less free-time this month than anticipated, re-reading one of last year’s InaDWriMo posts, assessing what I could ask of collaborators) made me realize that the NSF proposal was simply an unreasonable goal for the month. At best, I’d throw together a piece of shit application, give my new collaborators inadequate time to improve it, and get terrible reviews in my first PI NSF application. So, while a 6-month delay in getting this exciting new research plan submitted is a bitter pill to swallow, there’s no question that it is a good decision.

Instead, I’d like to take my reasonably available science time this month to actually make sure I am setting my new grad students down reasonable courses for their theses. Any science time left over from that, I’ll devote to finishing analyses from my 2008 AGU poster (subject of a InaDWriMo goal last year). This should give me everything I need to start really writing that manuscript next time I have a chance (say, next June).

So, at the end of week one, the score stands like this:

1. Finish revisions on the paper-that-won’t-die (goal: November 6 13)
2. Internal release time application (due November 15)
3. NSF proposal (due ~December 1)
4. Read around proposed grad student topics enough to ensure we’re not reinventing the wheel/pursuing proven dead ends (amorphous, I know)
5. Finish GIS work left-over from 2008 AGU poster.