sciencewoman | October 5, 2007After my hard week, I am taking the weekend off, and I'll have limited time to work Monday and Tuesday. However, I'll have some work time to "spare" for a few days after that. Would my time be better spent:
a)Writing a third grant proposal for ~$10,000 to fund one student for one semester and give me another opportunity to get some local research going
b)Working on the revisions to a paper for which I've had reviews since May and which I need to have a poster ready to present in two and a half weeks.
I'll accept the wisdom of the internets this time...you all have been so helpful in the past.
sciencewoman | October 4, 2007This week has been the hardest week so far in my first 8 weeks of professorship. I had a grant proposal due today, and two lectures to write on topics I've never formally studied. Monday was chewed up by a doctor's appointment, meetings, and errands, and there were the normal distractions of grad students, office hours, and pumping. But mostly I frantically worked on the grant proposal. In -ology, we can ask questions that are general, but the experiments get done at a specific place. In this case, the place was specified by the granting agency. So I had to learn a fair amount about a place…
sciencewoman | October 2, 2007Read all sorts of wonderful posts by/for women in science at this month's edition of Scientiae. This edition of the carnival was ably hosted by Wayfarer Scientista who selected the theme "mentoring" to get us all going. Thanks, Wayfarer for doing such a great job putting together the carnival.
Next month, the full will be hosted by Yami at Green Gabbro.
sciencewoman | October 2, 2007Just a little announcement to let everyone know that the RSS feed now seems to be working for the new website. To subscribe click the RSS button on the upper right or enter: http://www.scienceblogs.com/sciencewoman/index.xml into your feed reader.
Hopefully within the next few days, my posts will start showing up on the ScienceBlogs main page as well.
sciencewoman | October 1, 2007Think back to when you were in elementary, middle, or high school. Was there a special science teacher or a really cool experiment you did that turned you on to science? Maybe there was a field trip to an aquarium or zoo that had you bubbling with excitement for weeks afterward? Did you check out books on rocks and dinosaurs from the library? Do you remember the first time you looked through a microscope or conducted a real scientific experiment?
Here's your chance to help bring the excitement of science to today's school children. ScienceBlogs is initiating a little friendly competition to…
sciencewoman | October 1, 2007When I lived in Utopia, I was pretty mainstream. I drove to work, but shopped at the cooperative grocery. I liked to hike and get outdoors, support local businesses, and compost. So naturally when I was pregnant, I consulted my instincts and my mommy-friends and made some decisions about how I was going to parent. And for the few months that I parented in Utopia, things went pretty well and when I needed support I had numerous friends and neighbors to turn to.
But then I moved to Mystery City, and I realized how non-mainstream my ways really were. People look at us as if we are odd when we do…
sciencewoman | September 30, 2007Hat-tip to a reader for bringing this to my attention.
Should a breast-feeing woman be allowed extra long breaks during her nine-hour medical licensing exam?
That's been the question in the case of an MD/PhD student and her four month old baby.
The medical student, Sophie Currier, requested extra break time so that she could pump her breasts during the exam. The national Medical Board of Examiners denied her request, so she sued. On Wednesday, an appeals court overturned an earlier decision that denied her request.
A Superior Court judge last week rejected Currier's request to order the…
sciencewoman | September 28, 2007I'm working on another grant proposal, this one about an order of magnitude larger than the last. But still I am running into the same problem: the cost of doing the science I want to do pushes right up against the limit of the funding.
In the case of this particular grant, I have three main objectives: (1) Answer a cool science question that has intrigued me for a while; (2) fund a grad student; and (3) purchase some equipment that my inadequate startup money couldn't cover.
Objectives 2 and 3 obviously have some significant (and fixed) costs associated with them. The cost associated with…
sciencewoman | September 26, 2007Back when I started my Ph.D., I thought I really needed a good mentor that would help me get solidly grounded in my field, get started on a good research project, and get funded. As I got farther along, I didn't want a mentor - I just wanted to do my work and be left alone. Then when I was ready to write my first paper, I really needed that mentor again to look over my early, painful drafts and help me mold the paper into something ready for submission. When I became a post-doc, I felt like I had out-grown a lot of the need for a mentor - I could get funded, do the work, and write papers - I…
sciencewoman | September 25, 2007I've frantically been writing a grant proposal for a small internal grant competition, due later this week. Basically, I am proposing to update some work I was involved with ~10 years ago. This work was presented at a few meetings, but never published.*
When we were doing the work 10 years ago, it was really innovative. Other people working int he field area were surprised by our results and our literature review didn't reveal a lot of similar work in other places.
But now there is a reasonably well-established worldwide literature. And, more disturbingly, bits and pieces of our work (in our…
sciencewoman | September 24, 2007Notes for new readers: Mommy Monday is a regular feature on this blog, and Fish is my husband. This week I am responding to a request from amy, sara, and jenn to explain how I "find time for Fish on top of being a scientist and a mommy"
The short answer is "I don't do it very well." It's probably the biggest thing I'm letting slide right now (other than sleep).
But Fish swears that I do make time for him (he's really very sweet). So what do we do?
We've always gone grocery shopping together, making a list and looking at recipes beforehand, cutting out coupons, and then just going for impulse…
sciencewoman | September 22, 2007The other brouhaha this week has been over Facebook banning breastfeeding pictures because they are "obscene" and then banning a Canadian mother who had posted such pictures. Tara did a great job summarizing the stink.
Here's what I think about this:
I mean, honestly, my flabby, white, stretched out stomach is more disturbing than Minnow eating her breakfast.
This picture is a couple of months old. She's got a lot more hair than that now.
sciencewoman | September 21, 2007There's been a lot of fuss 'round here this week about the fact that The Scientist magazine picked five male science bloggers to identify their favorite science blogs, and what that says about the ways that women are excluded from the conversation even when they're not badly under-represented (which they are).
That's got people thinking about women in science in general, which is always a good thing in my opinion. PZ Myers reports that he asked his students to name a woman scientist and that many left the question blank.
Who would you name?
Who is the first woman scientist who comes to mind…
sciencewoman | September 20, 2007I'm the new mommy blogger here at ScienceBlogs.
I don't write about the latest ground-breaking research in my field. I don't even publicly reveal what my field is.
What I do write about are my experiences as an early career scientist who also happens to be a woman.
I share my life as the mother of a spunky seven-month old girl who has already "helped" with field work and seminars. I describe the dramas of being a first-year assistant professor, scrambling to write lectures and grant proposals and figure out what "service" means, while trying to be home for a little playtime before my…