sciencewoman
Posts by this author
October 3, 2008
A few days later, but my story today bears some similarities to Alice's tale of reviewer requested revisions.
I too just got back reviews on a paper derived from my dissertation. The reviews ranged from minor revisions to reject with the editors landing in the middle. Mostly it looks like major…
October 1, 2008
There's an interesting commentary in the current Chronicle of Higher Education about how men and women experience college differently. The author is Linda Sax, an associate professor in the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at the University of California at Los Angeles.
Here's…
September 29, 2008
I justed wanted to give a shout-out to my friends at YellowIbis.com, a science t-shirt shop. They specialize in wonderful shirts featuring all sorts of molecules (pick your favorite, they'll make it), sciencey one-liners, and "science varsity" shirts. Minnow and I were recently outfitted with some…
September 27, 2008
Domestic goddess, I am definitely not. But I do love to bake, though it is rare that I get the occasion. So when I saw a couple of bananas getting too brown on the counter, I seized the opportunity.
Banana bread is too much work for a busy scientist-mama, but banana oatmeal muffins can easily be…
September 24, 2008
In all the excitement of our weekend travel, two important milestones went by unmentioned. Saturday marked the two-year anniversary of my Ph.D. defense, and the one year anniversary of my move from blogger to ScienceBlogs. In celebration of the latter, I undertook the ambitious and miserably…
September 23, 2008
Are reading the cheeky and well-illustrated Dr. Isis? If so, you'll already know that she's well on her way to meeting her goal of being a domestic and laboratoy goddess.
But I had to laugh when I caught with one of her recent entries. In the post she decries the claiming on her sacred adults-…
September 21, 2008
About 20 Science bloggers and readers met at the North Carolina Zoo yesterday for a day of animals and fun. Minnow was the youngest, but not the only, child in attendance. And I think she was quite happy to meet some other children-of-bloggers, particularly the 22-month-old son of James Hrynyshyn.…
September 18, 2008
Money is on my mind a lot this semester. First, there's the grant writing marathon. And then there's the personal budgetary shortfall. Without a second income, we run a several hundred dollar per month shortfall. I've trimmed the fat from the budget and we're eating through the small amount of…
September 15, 2008
Very early one Saturday morning in October, Minnow and I will be congregating in the heart of Mystery City with thousands of other women and men, girls and boys. And many of us will be wearing pink. Then we'll run or walk five kilometers in honor of the 1 in 8 women who will be affected by breast…
September 15, 2008
Alice is rolling in the dough (yay Alice!!!!), but ScienceWoman is flat broke, both personally and professionally. The personal is a story for another day, but now's the time to talk about being professionally broke and the implications for my fall research output.
Due to MU's too restrictive…
September 11, 2008
Dear SW and Alice,
I will soon defend my dissertation, and I don't know whether it is customary or acceptable or expected to give an appreciation gift to one's adviser. ...I asked around with colleagues... and there seems to be no consensus - I got, "you could and it would be nice but I don't think…
September 10, 2008
A few weeks ago I solicited suggestions for how NOT to give a talk, and I was overwhelmed and greatly amused by the volume and enthusiasm of responses.
At about the same time, Dave Ng over at The World's Fair was thinking along the same lines. He claims to have created the most evil powerpoint…
September 9, 2008
My 19 month old Minnow is at the stage where she likes to name the things she sees. For some weeks now she's been particularly into telling me about all the water she notices. "Wa-we!" says she in her sweet little voice. There's wa-we in the bath, wa-we in the dog's bowl, wa-we in the toilet, wa-…
September 8, 2008
As you may have already heard, ScienceBlogs is expecting to reach the 1 million comments mark sometime this month. And our generous overlords want to throw a party...actually several parties. They've encouraged ScienceBloggers to take their readers out for drinks, and the parties are happening all…
September 5, 2008
Earlier this week, I thought that it would be a great idea to nip over to a local field site and get some work done. Wednesday seemed like the perfect day. The mere fact that I am only now getting a chance to write this should indicate that ideas and reality don't always mesh.
10. Your laptop will…
September 1, 2008
Possibly my favorite political statement of all time:
I was raised to believe I could do it all, and that was very empowering. Then I got into the work force and realized there was really no support for me to do it all. ... We either have to fix that or be honest about it.
Michelle Obama as quoted…
August 31, 2008
From Wikipedia:
Labor Day is a United States federal holiday observed on the first Monday in September. The holiday originated in 1882 as the Central Labor Union (of New York City) sought to create "a day off for the working citizens".
Congress made Labor Day a federal holiday in 1894.[1] All fifty…
August 29, 2008
This post is for Scientiae's call to share what we did on our summer vacation. I've been fairly silent about my personal life the last few months, But I was hugely encouraged by all the wonderful comments that so many of you made in the getting to know you post a few weeks back, when you said that…
August 28, 2008
I'm part of a team submitting a proposal to NASA, and as such, I had to register in the NASA proposal tracking system, creatively named NSPIRES. But I was a little less than inspired when I got to the first step of the registration process. The screen shot and my analysis are below the fold.
The…
August 26, 2008
Following up on Alice's excellent discussion-starter post on "negotiating the illegal questions on an academic job interview," I'd like to offer a few thoughts from the departmental side of the equation. Anyone with more or different experiences should also chime in below.
First of all, search…
August 23, 2008
Over at FairerScience they are looking for a Clinical/Social Science Research Associate to work on a project about "Career Decision-Making of Future Minority Biomedical Science Faculty." Here's an excerpt of the job description:
This new position is responsible for the coordination and management…
August 22, 2008
It's nearing ten p.m. on a Friday night. After putting my daughter to bed, I've washed the dishes, done the laundry, and boxed up some outgrown toys. Next I'm going to start writing up work plans for two independent studies I'm supervising this semester. Then I'm going to bed.
Tomorrow, I've got to…
August 20, 2008
One class I'm teaching this semester is a senior seminar focusing on oral communication. It should be a really fun class, and I'm looking forward to it. A major assignment for the semester will involve the students presenting a journal-club style talk on a scientific paper. Before I make them give…
August 19, 2008
'Twas the week before classes and all through the hall,
the students were scurrying to register for fall.
The syllabi were printed on many colored sheets
and the profs were already tired of needing to meet....
The textbooks lined shelves in neat little rows,
just waiting for students to open, read…
August 14, 2008
I'm in the midst of going through reviews on a rejected proposal. I got the reviews back in the winter and didn't even seriously look at them until this summer, because it's a yearly RFP and I already had a good idea why I didn't get funded. So mostly, I'm pretty mellow about these reviews. They…
August 13, 2008
One of the joys of being on Scienceblogs is getting to watch the ever-changing banner and sidebar ads that are placed by the marketing folks at Seed. Unfortunately, the people making the advertising decisions are not scientists, nor do they vet their ad choices with us before running them. So,…
August 13, 2008
I work in a three story building. My office, lab, and teaching space are on the first floor. The departmental office, kitchen, and chair's office are on the second floor. The third floor contains some colleagues' offices, labs, classrooms, etc.
Obviously, most of my time is spent on first floor,…
August 12, 2008
One of the nicest things about being a PhD level scientist is that I don't have to go in the field all the time anymore. (Trust me, I paid my dues during graduate school.) Mostly, I sit in front of a computer and write proposals (and eventually papers). But sometimes I do get to go out into the…
August 11, 2008
Thank you all so much for introducing yourselves and telling us why you read this blog. Its been incredibly reassuring (at a time when I'm feeling a bit insecure about my research output) to know that I have been doing *something* good with my time. In return for your sharing, I'm going to tell you…
August 8, 2008
One of our favorite books in the Science household is Eric Carle's The Very Hungry Caterpillar. This book teaches science, counting, fruits, and nutrition (when the caterpillar gorges on junk food he gets a tummy-ache) and it is beautifully illustrated. So when I found this wonderful fabric, and…