Ladies' Night Out

Recently, three women joined my lab, more than doubling the female population. (Just in time for me to leave.) There was instant bonding, which I had only seen before among married postdocs or among single grad students. But it is lovely to have other women about. We go to lunch together; every couple weeks we all go out together for drinks or dinner. (Which I love, by the way.) Every so often one of the men comes along- we are outnumbered about 3:1- but mostly, not.

Dr. S argues that this is discriminatory of me. What if the poor dears fell left out? I felt left out for years, I said. That doesn't make it right, or nice, he said.

Well, no. But for one, It's so much easier to spend time with the women in lab. Social taboos? Herd pressures? Who knows. We certainly have faced many of the same challenges as women, and it's nice to not be judged for talking about pretty skirts or gossip. And for another, the men have made minimal efforts to include me. Do I care if they feel excluded? I do not. In an ideal world, everyone would get along and be socially fair and equitable. In the real world, I like some people better than others.

So, are we mean? Or are we apathetic? Or both.

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Sauced Carbon Justice

Or, Where Bad Translators Go When They Die


See here for explanation. Oh, how I love it.

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In Which All Is Revealed

Good news:

Spoke to boss today; he thinks I can leave/ graduate with just the data I have now. I can leave! At the end of August! Even if all my experiments don't work! Praise the Lord and pass the vodka.



Better news:

Except not (with the vodka) because:


Or, why I was so hungry. To add insult to injury, I am hungry and nauseous! With falling-over-dizzy. 4w3d right now, and I'm telling the Internets because hey, after telling my boss, the PI on whose radiation license I work, Radiation Safety, the PI-with-radiation-license's badge person - most of these were not optional, by the way- my parents, my sister, my in-laws, and all the women in my lab (who were really wondering why I kept falling over into chairs) why not. :)

And yes, we are very, very happy. I wish a similar happiness to all of you who are trying to achieve it.

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It Runs In The Family

Several weeks ago, as I took a trowel out of my car trunk and headed into the park*, I was reminded of my Nanna, may she rest in peace.

She and her sister Violet were a pair of terrors. Nanna was clever and witty and very funny. (Violet was famous in the family for making gigantic polyester crocheted afghans.) They were very thrifty, too.

Violet kept a folding Army shovel in the trunk of her car.

One day, Nanna and Violet were out driving in the countryside and they saw a lovely hydrangea bush. Behind the house, there was an auction going on. So they figured the hydrangea wasn't being taken care of properly.

So they dug it up and put it in the trunk.

When they got back Nanna planted it by her front door. Grandpa Fred, who was a man of few words, looked at it, and looked at Nanna. 'Needs pruned,' he said, and walked into the house.

I told Dad I'd inherited the plant-stealing tendencies. He laughed.


Lily of the valley. It grows in the park! (So I didn't have to steal it from someone's yard. Which I totally would have.)

*This is not a wilderness-y park. In fact, it is paved over in much of it. And the lily-of-the-valley is there b/c it escaped from someone's yard. Should I not have dug it up? Of course not. But I did anyways. I'm a bad person, I know.

(P.S. Sometime I should tell you about all the crazy things I've seen in the park. Not the least entertaining was this short dude in overalls emerging from the brush with a sawed-off shotgun. WALK FASTER NOW.)

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Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc

I read this moderately moronic column today. Steam immediately issued from my ears. Here is all of it that you need to read:

So far, these Title IX compliance reviews haven’t had much visible impact on campuses beyond inspiring a few complaints from faculty members... But some critics fear that the process could lead to a quota system that could seriously hurt scientific research and do more harm than good for women.

The members of Congress and women’s groups who have pushed for science to be “Title Nined” say there is evidence that women face discrimination in certain sciences, but the quality of that evidence is disputed. Critics say there is far better research showing that on average, women’s interest in some fields isn’t the same as men’s...

Here, can anyone spot the logical flaw? That's right. This entire argument assumes that the system is just fine as it is, and also equitable, and therefore only differences interest can account for the data. Good job, Mr. Tierney! Mooooooron.

(FSP has already eviscerated it quite neatly, as well. See also here.)

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I hate moving.

The latest Scientiae theme, is appropriately enough, 'transitions.' What, like moving? Oh, can I ever blather on about moving.

I've lived in thirteen different places since I went off to college. Somewhere along the way, I developed a terrible anticipatory dread; I associate moving with being lonely and confused, so hey, rev up the anxiety in advance! Speaking of, we finally found an apartment I don't hate, which is all of a) on the bus line; b) reasonably priced; c) tolerant of cats; d) not hideous and e) willing to offer a 6-month lease, this last because we have an elaborate plan in which house-purchasing depends on fellowship getting because of funding hell.

Anyhow. We're supposed to move in six weeks. I still don't know if I get to leave for real, because my experiments aren't so much done, but I will be definitively apartmentless in six weeks. I am filled with dread, which is strange, because I really really REALLY want to leave. Some part of my bear brain is convinced I will NEVER EVER LEAVE. Suddenly, the European 'You've been here X years and now you're leaving BYE' thing looks a lot better.

I always worry about the unknown, but this is getting a little ridiculous. I don't even have time to worry I'll be lonely! Too worried about lab!

P.S. What could I do differently to deal better? SLEEP THROUGH THE DAMN NIGHT. Except I can't.

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Trapped in lab; send potato chips

So damn hungry all the time.

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Bullets of Great Fatigue and Distraction

• Last week, I met the lovely and talented Janus Professor. Fun!
• Last weekend, Dr. Famous came to my house ate my salad. I did not fall over from anxiety.
  
• The whole house now smells like smoked meat. (We had a barbecue. Someone brought shrimp. Bless their heart.)
• I have been making fun and exciting radioactive bricks. Boring and harrowing at the same time!
• Among other things, we have nowhere to live in Cold Utopia.
• Dr. S has many talents, but finding apartments I don't hate... not among them.
• Surely anywhere with 30,000 apartments will have one I don't hate.
• Great personal and professional frustration afflict me.
• Seriously, can I shoot the next person who asks me when I'm defending? Please?
  

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Because They Can?

Rather a while ago, I was speaking with the talented and thoughtful Darcy on publishing. (I still find it hard to believe that humanities presses make YOU pay to publish. But anyways.) It made me think about page charges, because actually... we do pay to publish. Why????

For those of you who have thus far escaped scientific publishing, it generally works like this: an accepted article is subject to charges of $X per printed (proof) page, plus usually a hefty fee for color figures. Page charges that I've seen run from $50 to $250 per page; color-figure charges from $0 to $1500.

This makes sense for a nonprofit journal: figures take extra staff time to lay out, and they want to discourage 14-figure papers. It does actually cost more to print color pictures (though my professional society's journal just went online-only and now it costs them nothing). The logic is that page charges defray the subscription cost, which they wish to keep low so that many people may have access to their scholarly work.

But then there are the Large Expensive journals. They typically charge $10,000 per institutional subscription (or more). Then they charge, say, the Wellcome Trust $5000 per article for its mandatory archiving - sometimes even of the unedited article. And, while I don't know how much ads go for in big journals, I do know they charge an extremely hefty fee just for job fairs.

So how are commercial-journal page charges NOT only for padding profits? No, really. Is there a flip side?

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Recycled

I inherited a ThingPlayer from M & B. It came with about 60 pounds of obsolete Things. No-one makes these Things or their player any more, as they weigh ten times as much as the DigitalThings that replaced them.

Free obsolete Things do not travel 1200 miles with me, but I didn't want to throw them away. Wasteful! Someone might use the Things! I advertised them on The List Starting With C. 'Free! ThingPlayer and classic Things! Works.' (This is the equivalent of, in car ads, 'Runs.' I did not claim it worked well.) I thought that, if I was lucky, one or two people might come look. Well, two hours later, I had to take the ad down because, in a quite mystifying manner, ten people had already replied.

So, on the grounds that said person was more likely to actually show up, I gave it to the person with the best grammar. Virtue rewarded.

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Frivolous

I want a ring as a PhD-finishing congratulations. Also a never-wearing-gloves-again present. I was planning to buy it myself because I am extraordinarily picky about jewelry. Dr. S has yet to buy me any, since generally I want practical things. However. I want something pretty and useless. Specifically, I covet this:


















Alas that two weeks ago, when it was $150, I thought 'No! I didn't finish yet!' Aargh. This one isn't bad either (I went and tried it on, even). Decisions, decisions, uncertainties. Will my blot ever work? Will I ever finish? Will the price on this ring ever go down again?

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Why I Won't Teach

I think public education is really, really important. According to the government about 90% of American children attend public schools. Educating our future and all that.

But.

If I wanted to become a teacher in, say, VA, I would need a master's, obtainable for 18 semester hours of courses. The local community college, being the lowest bidder, would charge about $1500. Or I could do a 'Career Switchers' program, with five years work experience, at the CC for the sum of $3400. (Why is this a good deal?) Possibly I could qualify for state's 'alternative endorsement' route, but that also requires five years of 'work experience.' Raise your hand if you think the State of VA will accept six years of lab-every-day grad school as work. No? No-one? Didn't think so.

If I merely wanted to teach, some states have rapid-cert programs, or there is Teach For America*, but this assumes one is willing to move to another state solely to become a teacher.

To sweeten the pot, the average beginning salary is somewhere around $29,000 to $33,000. (This is for BAs; I couldn't find data for PhD starting salaries. I understand it doesn't go up much except for seniority, generally.) Given that I could earn at least that much sitting in the school's front office answering the phone, and get the same benefits, why bother? To say nothing of what I could earn elsewhere with a PhD. So, to recap: work really hard with often-bratty kids, earning peanuts. This would rather select for self-sacrifice.

But the money isn't the real reason I would never teach. Neither are deeply annoying courses on 'classroom management' and 'how to teach science to Little Janie's musical intelligence.' It's because the courses and money are an insult. They say that all my experience and training, my actual knowledge of science and research, my TEACHING, count for nothing. I am unqualified to teach in a public school, though a private school would hire me (for twice the salary) in 30 seconds. What does that say about our educational system? Oh, right. That money will buy you a better education.

Teaching pay is not competitive for college graduates because they can earn nearly as much a) without the college degree and b) by sitting at a desk all day. Teacher training is not competitive because it discounts other forms of experience and knowledge in favor of a uniformly applied and inflexible standard.** For example: I could not become certified merely by passing the required tests. I understand the motivation for an 'objective' certification process, but thinking of my teachers, I think we can safely conclude that certification offers no assurance of good teaching.

Compounding the problem is the way schools are funded: frequently, by local property taxes. Urban schools, which can least afford it, can't pay for good teachers, who are courted by richer districts. And schools burn out even the altruistic: half of all new teachers quit within five years. Teachers often cite large classes, unsupportive administrations, uninvolved parents, and a teach-to-test mentality. Also the pay: 'For this nonsense I earn bupkis? Pah.'

Teachers are underpaid. Our lightly-federalized education system ensures that the country is a patchwork of thousands of independent school districts, and that it is unlikely to change soon. The latest attempt to ask the question 'is our children learning' has resulted in a system with good schools failing their assessments for ridiculous reasons, a lot of teaching to the test, and a lot of angry teachers. Decent idea. Terrible execution.

Sound familiar?

Addendum: Hey, look at that.

* But. I know many people who've done it. Their experiences were varied along a scale of 'not great', frankly.
** My MIL (teacher for 30 years) despises 'teacher training'. 'Experience is good for a lot more,' she says. 'No class will prepare you for handling 30 rowdy teenagers. Except the one you're teaching.'

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