advice
esiegel | September 6, 2013"Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing worth knowing can be taught." -Oscar Wilde
As many of you know, last weekend I launched a suggestion box here on the site, and I've been overwhelmed by the response: about fifty of you have sent something in to me in the first less-than-a-week of this alone!
Image credit: Thao Nelson of http://mycredo.wordpress.com/.
So, let's start answering them! There are more than enough excellent questions and suggestions to keep me busy for a long time, but with the new academic year starting up, one of them…
esiegel | March 19, 2013"A lot of mothers will do anything for their children, except let them be themselves." -Banksy
One of the great joys I got to experience came last year, when for the very first time, I was invited to be a guest of honor at a most fabulous convention: MidSouthCon 30!
Image credit: MidSouthCon XXX, originally from http://www.midsouthcon.org/.
I went into it not knowing what to expect, and I wound up having one of the best times I could have asked for. I met some of the kindest, most interesting people I've ever met in my life, and I felt like everyone there immediately accepted me into their…
drorzel | May 19, 2011In keeping with this week's unofficial theme of wibbling about academia, there's an article at The Nation about the evils of graduate school that's prompted some discussion. Sean says more or less what I would, though maybe a little more nicely than I would.
I wouldn't bother to comment further, except this spurred Sean to solicit career advice for scientists looking to leave the academic track. Which reminded me that a couple of years ago, I did a bloggy Project for Non-Academic Science (name chosen to have the same acronym as a prestigious journal, because it amused me to do so), where I…
drorzel | September 2, 2010Over at Inside Higher Ed, there's a list of "survival tips" for women entering grad school in the sciences. It's a pretty good and pretty typical list of advice-- you can find more or less the same advice posted somewhere every fall.
What's striking about it, though, is that if you stripped all the specific gender references out, it would still be a good list of advice, for students of either gender. Here's the list with gender-specific terms removed:
Be realistic about support from faculty. As a general matter, faculty of either gender want to see their students of either gender succeed.…
cagapakis | July 22, 2010GOOD has an interesting series of articles called No More Dirty Looks about the cosmetics that we use every day and what options are available for safer, more environmentally sound beauty products, without any toxic carcinogens, endocrine disruptors, or petrochemicals. Yesterday they linked to a terrifying video from The Story of Stuff Project describing the limits of regulation on toxic chemicals used in everyday products from lipstick to baby shampoo:
The best line of the video I think comes in about halfway through, when talking about hair relaxers and skin whiteners advertised to young…
cagapakis | July 10, 2010Science is cooking done in a lab. Mixing carefully (or not so carefully) measured components, heating, cooling, observing phase transitions, exploring the behavior of animal and plant proteins, exploring the properties of different chemicals, slowly changing variables to optimizing procedures. Often, feeding bacteria has a lot in common with feeding people, and I have to admit that freshly autoclaved yeast media smells delicious.
Said another way, cooking is science where at least you can usually eat the failures. My fiancé and I have been failing at making soft-boiled eggs for quite some…
cagapakis | May 28, 2010I don't get nearly as many emails asking for advice as I'm sure the lovely and talented Dr. Isis does, and I'm not sure if my advice can compare in quality and sassiness to hers, but I want to address the questions I get most often--how do you get into synthetic biology if your background is in something else, and how do you get into a PhD in synthetic biology?
While there are an increasing number of labs that work primarily on synthetic biology and schools with undergraduate iGEM teams, there are still very few (if any?) graduate programs that will write "Synthetic Biology" on your diploma,…
grrlscientist | April 12, 2010tags: PiXar, NeXt, Apple computers, technology, follow your passion, education, advice, Stanford University, Steve Jobs, streaming video
Steve Jobs demonstrates tremendous tunnel vision as he talks about his life in his 2005 commencement speech at Stanford University. Unfortunately for the rest of the world, this white man with a loving family makes a huge and very basic error in logic: because he somehow managed to "make it" doesn't mean that everyone does -- or will. Most of us fail, and fail miserably, and fail publicly, and we fail repeatedly until the day we die as we strive to do what…
grrlscientist | August 28, 2009tags: coming out, sex advice, homosexuality, evangelical families, Dan Savage, streaming video
Dan Savage moved to Seattle while I lived there and began writing a sex advice column for The Stranger. I never missed reading his column because he was honest and accurate and entertaining. Regardless of where in the world I've been since, I have followed his career. This video clip features Dan at University of Maryland, speaking on the tough subject of coming out to a very Christian family. It gives you a little perspective when you hear the story he tells of the abuse that a boyfriend of his…
sciencewoman | July 6, 2009Reader science newbie poses a great question to me and asks for the collective wisdom of our readers:
Dear Sciencewoman,
I have been reading & loving you blog for some time now. Thanks! You rock!
Ok, I have a question....
I have interviewed for, and been given a verbal offer for my first assistant professor position. We are negotiating startup funds, salary, etc right now. Due to state budgetary constraints, I have been informed that all of my startup funds (excluding salary) will have to originate from the department's funds, not university or state money. I have found some information…
edyong | March 19, 2009Want to know how much you'd enjoy an experience? You're better off asking someone who has been through it, even if they're a complete stranger, than to find out information for yourself. This advice comes from Daniel Gilbert from Harvard University, who espoused it in his superb book Stumbling on Happiness. Now, he has found new support for the idea by studying speed-daters and people receiving feedback from their peers.
In the first study, he found that female students were better able to predict how much they would enjoy a speed-date if they listened to the experiences of strangers than if…