July Scientiae: Fantasy Institute

Scientists in Fantasy Land have announced the opening of a new Research Institute, to be located in Far Far Away. This Institute will be funded by grants from Bill Gates, Oprah, and Donald Trump, and will be dedicated to curing human disease because the drug companies won't do it and the Obamacare plan stalled and never helped anybody.

Fantasy Institute will be open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, with round-the-clock ordering, deliveries, and support staff for completely state-of-the-art equipment. Because of this 24-7 policy, FI will be able to employ 3 full shifts of researchers, all of whom can come and go as their experiments require. Equipment will be sufficiently available, maintained, and cutting-edge that all researchers can use any piece of equipment at any time, without having to sign up or worry that the person before them might have broken the instrument and forgot to tell anyone, or that the software is no longer compatible, or that the old Windows box it ran on died because someone spilled radioactivity on it.

Employees will be judged on only two criteria:

(1) Data points. All data will be uploaded to the Institute Wiki and shared worldwide in real time. Continued employment will depend on deposition of data points and pointers to said data points indicating usefulness to others.

(2) Training each other. Time spent instructing or helping other researchers will be logged, regardless of outcome, but a minimum amount of time must be spent each year helping at least 5 different people. No overlap is allowed from year to year for that minimum of 5 people. This requirement will prevent groups from weaseling out of it by helping only their buddies.

All employees will be hired at the same level and will be treated, paid, and funded as equals, regardless of length or level of previous employment or funding. There will be no internal competition among researchers, and no promotions. Helping each other is thus entirely voluntary, except for the training-each-other requirement as stated above.

Catering will be gourmet and on demand at all hours; the gym and outdoor recreational facilities will be similarly available 24-7, including the indoor swimming pool and ski slopes. Housing will be available within walking distance, and rapid public transportation is available every 5 minutes in all directions from FI to the surrounding neighborhoods.

24-7 daycare for children or pets is provided onsite. Emergency leave for either/both partners is paid for up to 2 years for any reason, including birth, death, or illness of family, friends, or pets. Healthcare for all workers, their families, and their pets will be given as lifetime contracts, such that any service longer than 1 year at FI guarantees lifetime top-notch healthcare for all its researchers, regardless of where they end up living later. Similarly, salary and retirement packages will be generous, including enforced vacation and sick days.

All restrooms will be unisex, include private showers with private changing areas, and will be stocked with any and all personal hygiene supplies that might be needed by anyone.

Sexual, religious, or ethical harassment will not be tolerated. Any discomfort on the part of any employees will result in the offender being voted off the island.

Researchers at FI anticipate cures for all known human diseases in the next 10 years. FI publicly thanks its insanely rich sponsors for finally getting together to spend all that money in one place, and is extremely grateful to its cadre of scientists who finally grew up enough to realize that they were wasting all their energy arguing about who was smarter instead of actually getting anything done.

May Scientiae: Humps and Bumps

For better or worse, this topic makes me think of a book called The Dip.

I was talking to a friend about this book recently, because she said she favors listening to motivational tapes to keep herself going. She said she especially likes advice for getting past failure, that tell you "yeah, things suck now but you'll get through it". Or something to that effect.

The Dip isn't like that. The Dip is about knowing when to quit.

The main point I got from this book is that if you quit when you're down, you'll always have some regrets. He suggests you should only quit when you're at the top of your game, because then you know you're quitting for the right reasons: because you want to do something else, not because you're just discouraged. Because everyone knows it's hard to make the right choices for the right reasons when you're upset.

What's interesting to me about dealing with setbacks is how much I've learned and yet, I still don't know anything. Sometimes I think that, the more I think about it, the worse my decisions get.

Sure, I've surprised myself over and over. The first time I had a major setback, I was fatalistic and depressed. Then I rationalized, found other things I loved to do, and rationalized some more.

I was surprised to find I could love to do so many different kinds of things.

Looking back now, I never really gave up, but I didn't really keep going, either. I just kind of held onto the dream and put it in my jewelry box. Sometimes I take it out and look at it, but mostly it's just nostalgia for something old and tarnished.

That was before I started doing science.

***

My first major setback in science wasn't about science so much as it was about politics. I went with my gut reaction; I put my nose to the grindstone; I got mad and used my anger.

And that more or less worked out just fine.

Not exactly ideal or a fun time, but I had a clear goal in mind, I set my sights on it, ate my power bars and worked around the clock to show that no matter what anybody said about me, they couldn't sneeze at my science.

I was surprised at how angry I could get, and how I could use that as fuel.

***

The next setback was harder because I felt that my life as a scientist was being shortchanged; I was being treated badly. I said Oh no, Not Again, and I left. I rationalized it as being equal parts about me and the science I was doing. I was very invested in it. I've always found it's easier to stand up for something or someone other than myself. So that helped get me out of an abusive situation, but really I was able to do it because I rationalized that I was shepherding what I thought was an important finding. I rationalized it as not really being just about me, but in reality, I was watching myself get beaten down, and I needed an excuse to get out.

Then I had really serious scientific setbacks in the sense that I had gone out on a limb with a telescope and I was trying to point and wave and say Hey, you've gotta come look at this! but everyone was too busy looking at the tree and they didn't want to see where I was pointing. They weren't mean about it, they just ignored me or said I seemed a little bit crazy.

But still, I kept on fighting. I started blogging and I was very philosophical about all of it. I focused on people I admired, both scientists and non-scientists, and how they had all gotten through setbacks and succeeded anyway.

The idea being to view every hump, no matter how tall, as just a bump in a very long road.

So I got past that bump and then there was another bump and it looked exactly the same and I felt like I had taken a wrong turn somewhere. I thought whoa, am I trapped in some kind of loop here? Didn't I just do this bump?

And then I started to realize that you can keep powering through, up and over, and you can get people to help you, etc. but it does make you tired. And it's actually kind of boring.

Persevering seems glamourous at first (Cue the Montage!). But then, it's really not. It's actually just really tedious. And unlike a montage getting ready for the big fight or the dance recital or the romantic speech in the rain, persevering is infinite. Nobody can tell you when it will be over.

Then I learned that some people will think you're lazy or pessimistic if you say "Hey, I need a rest".

But if you don't take a break when you need one, it's basically impossible to climb up anything for a while. You start looking for a way to go around the hump, and maybe it takes longer but it will eventually get you to the other side.

So now I'm on the other side of the latest big hump, but I don't really feel any better because there's no celebration ticker-tape parade. And I know there's more where humps where that came from.

***

What's sad to me is how our culture views setbacks: it's all about the end.

We seem to see everything through a movie lens: if it has a happy ending, then you made the right choice. But, if the ending is just "okay", then, my friend, you can expect to be second-guessed. It couldn't have been that big of a deal, they say, because you're still here! You must be exaggerating.

So here you are, panting on other side of the biggest hump in your life, and the important thing is that you're still in one piece.

But nobody cares about that. Or maybe they just can't identify? Your friends will pat you on the back and then get on with their lives.

What our culture really cares about is the photo-finish: you're supposed to die trying, or at least be wiling to die. But mostly you're supposed to grasp that trophy and hold it high! Smile pretty!

Except there's no trophy besides being able to say you survived.

What I still don't understand is that while science is all about the journey, getting a job is not about the journey. Getting a job is about the end. The end of being a postdoc. The long-awaited, much-coveted, highly unlikely victory. And if your work isn't published, if you don't get the tenure-track faculty position, it's like you never did anything. You might as well be dead.

I don't know of a way to point and wave and say, Hey! Look at what I did! See how I came, that route there? See all the cool things I learned? ... And shouldn't the journey itself count for something? Wouldn't you rather have ideas and experience than the perfect pedigree?

But everyone is too busy looking at the trees.

So am I on top of the hump, quitting for the right reasons? A month ago, I would have said yes, definitely.

But some days I wonder if I'm still in a Dip.

Then again, I read a statistic the other day that the odds of becoming tenure-track faculty in the biosciences now are pretty much on par with the odds of becoming a successful rock star. Seriously, if someone had told me it was that much of a long shot, I would never have made it this far.

There was an episode of Grey's Anatomy recently that has been haunting me. It's a cancer patient who explains how, past a certain point, hope is scary. It's so true. And ironic, because I've been accused of everything: being too pessimistic, being too naive, being too stubborn, quitting too easily.

Hope is the scariest thing, because it's very hard to learn how to let it go.

Scienciae carnival post: Sustainability in science

When I think of sustainability, I think of fairness, cost, burnout and all the potential wasted.

We can't sustain science if we keep treating women like this.

To wit:

private college tuition ~$100,000 and 4 years

grad school salary ~$100,000 and 4 years

postdoc fellowships ~$100,000 and 4 years (give or take)

publications >10

number of extra papers women postdoc candidates need to be seen as equal to men ~ 3 more high impact or 20 more in lesser-known journals

job offers = zero

unemployment benefits = zero

Taxpayers' investment in my "training"?

Priceless.

********

Other Recommended reading:

Women disproportionately leave male-dominated fields for reasons of pay and promotion opportunities

Scientiae: inspiration or desperation?

I'm going to paraphrase this title because the dichotomy reminded me of this, one of my all-time favorite scenes in a movie. From the trailer scene in Kill Bill (dialogue helpfully provided by this site).

Budd: So, which "R" you filled with?

Elle Driver: What?

Budd: They say the number one killer of old people is retirement. People got 'em a job to do, they tend to live a little longer so they can do it. I've always figured warriors and their enemies share the same relationship. So, now you ain't gonna hafta face your enemy on the battlefield no more, which "R" are you filled with: Relief or Regret?

Elle Driver: A little bit of both.

Budd: Bullshit. I'm sure you do feel a little bit of both. But I know damn well you feel one more than you feel the other. The question was, which one?

Elle Driver: Regret.

...and then later, she says:

Elle Driver: [to Budd, as he is dying] Now in these last agonizing minutes of life you have left, let me answer the question you asked earlier more thoroughly. Right at this moment, the biggest "R" I feel is Regret. Regret that maybe the greatest warrior I have ever known, met her end at the hands of a bushwhackin, scrub, alky piece of shit like you. That woman deserved better.

.....

I am definitely feeling a little bit of both.

.....

I definitely have a tendency to self-sabotage, so when I am particularly stressed out I am always looking for escape routes. Lately I feel anxious in the mornings, but if I keep busy I feel pretty good during the day, and I have been getting enough sleep most nights.

I am aware that I tend to always want to have one foot in the career grave, as it were, because I do have a fear of committing to this all-or-nothing lifestyle that seems to be required for junior faculty. So whenever I hear something awful from my now mostly-faculty friends about how stressful their jobs are, or how their personal lives are suffering because they work so much, I think "Well at least I'm glad I won't be dealing with that." Totally unhealthy, but it's how I'm coping right now.

Part of me still wants to run away, and that part is sending off for catalogs related to things I would do if/when. That part gets really excited about envisioning all the other things I could do now that I couldn't do when I was younger.

.....

And of course there is still the little voice that says, "Well even if you did that now, don't you think it will just turn out to be the same as what you've already done? Won't you just end up in the same place, having the same problems with political bullshit, several more years down the road?"

And I try to tell the voice, "Maybe, but it might also be more fun?"

And then, laughter.

.....

At the end of Buffy, there is that scene where they are standing on the edge of the cliff, and talking about how Buffy will finally get to have a normal life. It's like that. Almost impossible to imagine, but very tempting to imagine nonetheless.

And on the other hand, I am still doing experiments and printing out articles to read and pretending like everything is going along just fine. And in a way, it is. But it can't go on like this forever.

My setbacks are not the same as your setbacks.

I was reading this month's Scientiae blog carnival about challenges, and noticing that most of the posts are about personal challenges.

When asked about challenges, most women scientists apparently list these kinds of things:

divorce
children
breast cancer
dying parents
crazy colleagues
sexism

i.e. personal challenges.

Most of us do NOT list scientific hurdles, i.e. trying to get our experiments to work.

Maybe I misunderstand the point of Scientiae, but I think this really is what bothers women in science. It's not the science part that is hard to handle, it's all our other worries and responsibilities that get in the way of our science.

It's especially interesting to me because most of my women scientist friends (current and former scientists, that is) fall into only two categories.

a) Never had problems with the science itself, only the politics/-isms in science

b) Left science, but never realized until much later that feeling discouraged and not good enough at science was mostly because of the politics/-isms

From what I can tell, the main factor in determining which of these two categories women fall into is what kinds of experiences they had prior to starting graduate school.

Those of us who fell into category (a) had already experienced some -isms and/or already had a very strong habit of standing up for ourselves as equals.

Those who fell into category (b) came from families where women had more traditional roles, and/or attended science-heavy schools where women were in the vast minority.

(The unconscious message they got from this opportunity was that women don't do science.)

In contrast, when I ask my guy scientist friends (current and former scientists) about their challenges, they say:

exploitative boss
can't decide what to work on
experiments are not working
about to run out of funding
got scooped on a competitive project

and very rarely, they might say:

have to find a better-paying job to support the wife & kids
visa running out

But in general, they are very open about struggling with the science.

Now, there are a few possible ways to interpret these answers.

1. Guys actually are not that good at science. (Take that, Larry Summers!)

2. Guys have fewer other responsibilities and generally don't multi-task their worrying, so they effectively ignore the challenges in their personal lives.

3. Guys do worry about these other things, but they don't talk about it the way women do.

But I submit the possibility that, while everyone has setbacks, they are perceived differently.

For example.

When a man does a challenging project, it's called "groundbreaking."

Not so long ago, I was talking about some of the challenges in my project, and a young male professor told me he thought my project sounded "too hard".

I was totally baffled by this, because I was not complaining or saying that we couldn't figure out ways around these challenging issues.

In fact, I was talking about the solutions I came up with, as examples of how satisfying problem-solving can be, and how cool the answers were: i.e., things I am really proud of accomplishing at work.

... Until I realized he himself had chosen something technically easy for his own research.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately since I just had a similar conversation with another "peer" who is starting a faculty position this year. Arguably, his project is not novel at all. And yet, he has a job.

And so I debate if/how to sell myself on the job market. On the one hand, theoretically it's good to do something novel. It's better for science and better for society. On the other hand, it's not good for your job prospects if your project is seen as too risky, or if you as a candidate are perceived as unproven.

My perception is that there are a very few women who somehow slip through the "system", working on things that are extremely novel and extremely unproven. When asked, they invariably say they have never experienced any kind of sexism.

But I don't know if that's true, and if so, I don't understand how they do it.

For the rest of us, our abilities are too often met with a particularly sexist kind of skeptic-ism.

So the rest of us strategize. We say:

1. I will do many more experiments to prove my science is not too risky, and then they will see me as a real candidate.

2. I will change how I am perceived.

You can guess, then, why women often end up choosing the #1 strategy. We play to our strengths.

And so we end up finding the #2 problem the most challenging. Science is easy. It's everything else that makes it so hard.

Scientiae post: Transitions

scientiae-carnival

Somehow have never managed to do one of these before, so here goes.

The topic was:

• What big (or small) transitions have happened in your life? Or are you anticipating a big transition?

• How did it affect you? (Physically, emotionally, psychologically, locationally..)

• What was the outcome?

• Did you handle it well? If so, how did it help? If not, what could you have done differently?

• What fears or hopes did you have? Did they come to be?


I like Scientiae. I really like this topic. I guess doing one of these might be a transition of sorts. I hope to do more in the future.

I think about transitions all the time. I have never felt settled since the first time my family moved when I was in junior high. Nowhere has really ever felt like home since then.

I used to always be the sort of person who envisioned my future life. I was very driven and it kept me going, but I was terrible at living in the now.

These days, I'm less good at picturing my future, and tend to get stuck in regrets about the past. You could say my life has been a long series of bumpy transitions.

So while I should be oyster-ifically expecting a Big Transition in my career to a faculty position, most of me doubts that it will ever happen.

Lately I feel like I've hit the ground so many times, and in the past I always bounced back. But now I'm just covered with bruises. I don't feel very bouncy anymore. I look back at my past self and think, how the hell did I do that?

When I started grad school, I had a physical reaction to the transition of moving. I was physically ill, and never did find out whether it was food poisoning, stress, or something else altogether. The brilliant MDs who ran a bunch of tests on me had no idea what it was. Thanks, US healthcare!

Eventually it went away.

Mostly I think my body was trying to tell me STOP NOW, DON'T DO THIS!! But I was just surprised and terrified and, uncharacteristically just in the moment of being in pain. Pain is very interesting that way, it can really stop time.

And I had no idea how much more emotional and psychological abuse was in store for me. Looking back, it seems obvious that the mystery pain was a bad sign.

...

Somewhere along the line I transitioned to confidence. For me, that was the best achievement, and almost made the whole grad school debacle worthwhile. I am confident in my science.

But somewhere along the line, where I used to be personally confident, I transitioned to self-doubt. And got stuck there.

Mostly I think at its root, the problem is that I doubt whether I really want to be a Professor. Not that I dislike science. Contrary to what certain journalists have claimed recently, I know plenty of women who love science.

No, I am one of those who consider, quite frequently, quitting because of the culture.

I am tired of working with assholes. And I include in that term both men and women.

I can see all too clearly how this culture is not necessary or sufficient for good science to get done.

So I have never understood why everyone says I should just put up with it.

And that it's perfectly reasonable, even NORMAL, to hate it.

Maybe most of the successful scientists don't mind because they have the sensitivity of a block of wood (?).

So I can't help wanting science to change. I would like to transition to doing something more about changing it, hence the try-for-faculty-position approach.

Alternatively, I would like to be able to transition to letting it go.

I don't think I will ever transition to just accepting the bullshit. In a way, I hope I don't.

But it's too bad, because I feel stuck. Here I have this awesome project that I think is of earth-shaking importance. And I am slowly, slowly convincing others that I'm onto something with this project.

But lately I feel myself slipping toward the belief that, even if I quit, it won't matter because eventually somebody else will work on it. So then everybody wins, right?

On the other hand, which will I regret more? Quitting now?

Or wasting more years of my life being unhappy and frustrated so much of the time?

The other day I had a dream that I drove my car off a cliff in a rainstorm. At first I was scared, but then I realized I was dreaming and thought of Thelma and Louise, closed my eyes, and relaxed.

In dream mythology, your car represents your career.

Was I dreaming about committing career suicide? Predicting a fatal outcome beyond my control? Or just having a moment of fear?

...

Another transition I've noticed is that when I was younger and kept a diary, I was very black-and-white about everything.

I had strong opinions and did not mind arguing my point.

Somewhere along the line I decided most things are gray. But not everything. A good example of something that seemed gray to me before, but is now black-and-white, was not being aware of sexism before, to being acutely aware of it. All the time.

While not being aware of it hurt my career, in some ways I think being aware of it has hurt my career more, just because it is one of the last remaining things that can really piss me off. And there's still very little I can do about it.

But once you see it, you can't go back.

Another major transition, related to my realization that I was being discriminated against, has both helped and hurt my career. While I once enjoyed verbal sparring, I've learned to hate it. It's not that I don't have strong opinions, but I definitely transitioned to seeing things from more than one side. I get bored with people who don't, and usually these are the most vocal opponents.

I think this transition was partly brought on by being aware of sexism, since I got smacked a few times for defending myself in ways I had learned growing up, when I often found myself arguing with boys in school. This does not fly, apparently, for women in science. My favorite is when I stand up for myself and they tell me I'm "being defensive" (to which I always want to say, "But you attacked me!").

But doesn't help to say nothing, which is in many ways what I've done in recent years.

It's another typical battered woman response, and I am trying to transition to some happy medium where I can speak my mind in a forceful but, god help us all, culturally acceptable way for a woman.