scientiae
I'm late in tooting the horn for Mad Chemist Chick, the current host of Scientiae for the October posting. (OMG, how is it way into late September already? Yikes.) Her theme for this month: "The Road Not Taken." She writes:
Was there a point in your career or research where you were faced with two possible paths? Which one did you chose and why? Do you ever regret that decision? Or perhaps it was the best decision you ever made but you did not realized it until much later. Or have you ever taken a path only to discover it dead-ends or is circular? What did you do next? Have you, like the…
On Sunday, Academic posted the newest edition of Scientiae, focusing on "inspiration and desparation." Head over and read it!
New Scibling Anne Jefferson (welcome, Anne! We are neglect in our scibling hospitality, so sorry!) who blogs over at Highly Allochthonous has called out for a last hurrah for women geoscientists to fill out a survey about reading or writing blogs. Please do wander over and complete it, won't you?
In addition, Academic has extended the Scientiae deadline until midnight tonight, Saturday Sept 5. Don't forget to send in your post about inspiration or desperation...
The September Scientiae announcement is up, to be hosted by Academic (w00t! another engineer blogger!) over at her place, Journeys of an Academic. She has announced the theme: "Inspiration or Desperation?" with a submission date of September 4, so really you have no time to procrastinate. Just submit something fabulous, as you usually do. Ta.
I'm heading off line today and won't have any internet access for a few days. After that I should have access again, but life has conspired to hand me the "Weeks of DOOOOM" leading up to September 1st-ish. You know, the usual start of classes (with a new prep), two grant proposals (with a third a few weeks later), my reappointment dossier and statement due, starting Minnow in a new preschool, revaccinating her because apparently all the shots she received prior to 6 months old are "potentially subpotent", etc., etc., etc. So things are going to get pretty quiet here for a while.
Hopefully…
Hooray, the first male host of Scientiae! Abel Pharmboy is hosting the August Scientiae, and posts the following on his blog:
Summer days, driftin' away. . .
Consider how you balance the demands and pleasures of this season. Have you found ways to make progress on your must-dos while also taking time for your family, friends - and yourself - and being in the moment of this time of year? Or are July and August just another month for you?
And so as not to exclude our colleagues in the Southern Hemisphere (where I am fortunate to draw 5-7% of my blog visitors), why don't you take this time from…
Patchi at My Middle Years has put together a great Scientiae carnival, reflecting (as it were) on Mirror, Mirror on the Wall. It's great -- go give it a good read, and share some link love for Patchi. Thanks, Patchi!
And wait until you see who the next Scientiae host is.... :-)
Somehow I've survived this week with only one really big "oops" (an IRB application I should have turned in weeks ago), and I am off tomorrow to continue my conference tour. I'm heading to a workshop in Delft, The Netherlands on gender and engineering research (along with a couple of R&R days in Amsterdam - send me your best advice for things to do!), and will blog depending on internet access. Then I have a research trip to Detroit to go back to the SWE archives at the Reuther Library (a continuation of this project). Then I have another workshop in New York (state) on engineering and…
I'm sitting in a hotel room in D.C., at the first day of the 2009 Joint Annual Meeting, and I am hoping to liveblog tomorrow's sessions, depending on whether the wifi is any good downstairs.
In addition, I would like to note that I am a total hick, because I was just having some Thai food with some good colleagues, and Tim Geithner got out of an SUV and went to pick up some Chinese food and I became speechless with surprise. Organic Chinese food, as advertised by the sign. Not that I was so surprised at that. And then he go back in his SUV (driven by other people, note) and they drove off…
Was that the train? Was it? The Scientiae train? Oh damn, I was in the bathroom!
A couple of posts were left off the train completely inadvertently, so please accept the conductors' apologies, and enjoy a pretty open compartment on the bullet train to catch up to the main locomotive.
Photo from Frogandviking on Flickr
Penny Richards sent in a link that she thought was worth including in Scientiae -- the Australian War Memorial blog described the story of Valerie Briggs who worked at the CSIR Radiophysics Division. Briggs worked at the Center for Scientific and Industrial Research in…
All month the Scientiae train has been loading at platform 37.7*, and now we're pulling out of the station on a wonderful journey on the rails. I'm picturing a Harry Potter-esque train running through the Scottish countryside, complete with cozy compartments and carts full of goodies, comforting tea, and chocolate frogs.** But most importantly, this train is full of amazing people sharing confidences, celebrations, frustrations, and encouragement. Alice and ScienceWoman will be your conductors for this journey, and we're going to drop in on some of the conversations.
We'll start up near…
Just a quick reminder that the June Scientiae theme is "moving forward" and we're looking for posts about the how and why your science, work, and life are moving forward. Of course, other topics are welcome as well.
Write your entries and get them in by midnight UTC on May 30th, and I'll get them compiled and posted the first week of June. It probably won't be the first of June, because there's already something really important in the works for June 1, but I'll try to have carnival up by the 4th or 5th at the latest.
Please email a permalink to your submission to scientiaecarnival [a] gmail…
Alice and I are teaming up to host the June edition of Scientiae, the carnival by, for, and about women in science, engineering, technology, and math. As is the norm for the monthly Scientiae carnival, I get to choose a theme to help inspire and unite you all to write posts, though submissions on any topic related to women in STEM are always welcome.
At this time of year, some of us are just emerging from the end of the semester, while others still have another month to slog through before getting a reprieve. Some people are within spitting distance of finishing their research project or…
ScienceWoman and I are either approaching or inhabiting grading jail, I think. I'm working on grading 30 teams' first-year design projects where teams of 4 had to design a procedure to calculate the energy footprint of a building/system on campus (related to this post). On Friday, we summed up all the systems (overlooking that there were replicates and different ways to estimate embodied energy) and our estimate of our campus system's energy footprint is 9.44e9 kW-hr per year. (We estimate that to be about 7500 trans-Atlantic flights.) So now I'm slogging through the individual reports.…
Katharine Haxton over at Endless Possibilities 2.0 on the Nature Network is stepping into another Scientiae hosting breech (yikes!) and will be hosting the May Scientiae, to be posted May 1. She's suggested "A Snapshot" as the theme -- a blog timecapsule for yourself, marking May 2009. Get your posts in by April 30!
The lovely Candid Engineer has posted a marvelous carnival titled "We Rise Up"! about overcoming challenges for your April reading pleasure. W00T! And someone needs to get organized and follow up on whoever said they might be interested in hosting May... let me know if you would be willing to serve as backup and I will pass the message along. ;-)
Thanks, Candid Engineer, for compiling a great list of posts to come back too when one is feeling down.
Update April 7: GrrlScientist has decided to change the name to "Scientia Pro Publica," science for the people. Thanks to folks who shared ideas with her!!
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GrrlScientist has decided to revive the Tangled Bank carnival under a new name: Scientia. While a very apt name indeed, commenters (not me) have pointed out the similarity with Scientiae, the blog carnival of stories of/by women in STEM. GrrlScientist has said she'd consider changing the name if a better idea came up, but other offerings are rather slim. Any of you out there have any good ideas? Please share…
For this month's Scientiae, Candid Engineer has asked for stories about overcoming challenges. ScienceWoman has already contributed an awesome story to the Diversity in Science carnival, but I think it does for Scientiae, too.
What about my own story?
Prior to my current job, my biggest soul-searching career-related moment was when I didn't pass my prelim exam in 2005. Ugh.
In retrospect, I think I was taking the prelim pretty casually. I had written my ~100 page, 3 chapter research proposal document, and none of my dissertation committee advisors had raised a hair about it. I had never…
I probably should have noticed the warning signs about my graduate program earlier---like, in the first week, when I went to meet my temporary assigned advisor and he said "Oh, uh, I don't want any more students right now. Go find yourself another advisor." (I guess he didn't really understand the whole idea behind "temporary advisor".) I probably should have trusted my instincts to run away to saner pastures, but I decided to stick around for a bit. What I didn't realize at the time was that things would soon get much, much worse.
Fast forward to the end of my first year. I had finished…
Just a friendly reminder that tomorrow, March 24, is Ada Lovelace Day, a day devoted to highlighting women in technology. Get your posts together! (Even if you didn't sign the pledge, please join in on the fun!) Details on how to post and tag are here.
I am so excited about my own post---the woman I am posting about totally rocks, and I can't wait to introduce you to her and her work.
Also, while we are on the subject of reminders: If you're not familiar with fellow scibling Isis the Scientist....well, why the hell aren't you reading her already? Anyway, you definitely want to click…