Barf

I've been away. EGM and I went to my hometown to meet S4's new baby and to see S3 and her family who were visiting from the west coast plus we got to spend a little time with my BFF. EGM got a nasty stomach virus which he graciously passed on to me and my friends (it hasn't turned up in any of the family yet) which really put a damper on things. We both better but still not quite ourselves.

You may or may not be hearing more from me soon. My laptop power cord is on the fritz. fucker.

Impending doom

I put the flannel sheets on the bed. The radiators have kicked on. It's dark when we leave in the morning. There's no turning back: winter is upon us.

More on names

My uncomfortable situation with the person who calls me the wrong name and an interesting post at Accidental Remediation got me thinking more about how our names impact our professional lives.

Short Geologist wrote about how using nicknames (or not) can be a way for some people to show power over others. Since I have a name that can't really be shortened or lengthened in any way, I've never really thought about how nicknames can be used in this way. It has occurred to me that shortening someone's name could be condescending. I never considered, however, that using a long version could be equally disrespectful like it was for Short Geologist. I always try to call people by the names they prefer, but that's more because I don't want to irritate people by using wrong nickname.

I am aware that having especially ethnic sounding names can be a detriment for landing jobs or renting apartments. I imagine that super girly names can serve as similar baggage in professional settings. In fact I have an acquaintance who has described such situations at her work where applicants with funny names have lower odds of getting positions where they have to deal with the public. I think FSP has blogged about this topic as well, but I'm too lazy to scour her archives for the post.

My name is common, but not too common. Even better, it appears in some form or another in many non-Eastern languages so it's manageable for many non-English speakers. I've never really liked how my name sounds, but I now appreciate its practical benefits.

Experiments

I recently listened to a seminar about data that came from experiments. Big deal, you say. It was interesting to me, however, because my research, although basic, is not amenable to small scale, proper experiments. Responses to treatments take a long time emerge and the really interesting work happens at a scale that cannot be easily captured on a lab bench.

Much of the work in my subfield would be better defined as "studies" instead of experiments. Most of the actual experiments are large, long term affairs that attract investigators from far flung institutions who write their own large grants to fund work on some aspect of the experiment. An advantage of this arrangement is that there is very little duplication of effort, which means there is very little scoop risk since everyone knows what everyone else is doing on a particular experiment. The downside is that you can't set up small, independent projects very easily and it's difficult to get much done without outside collaborators.

During that seminar, I was really envious of the students in that professor's lab. It would be so great to set up an actual controlled, replicated experiment in a lab, let it run for several weeks, and then have data. You'd be seeing the fruits of your work all the time! If something didn't work out, you'd be able to try again with so little investment. I think the pace of research would feel so much faster.

I love the work I do and have no desire to change fields. But damn, sometimes the progress seems downright glacial.

Hi! My Name Is _____.

If I have written about this before, I'm sorry. But if I'm posting about this issue a second time, it means you guys didn't give me good enough advice.

The science staff is relatively friendly with the support staff where I work. I recognize everyone on the custodial and maintenance crews in my building and I know most of them by name. Some of them even chat with me (and other scientists) at length from time to time. There is one custodian in particular who always greets me and always says goodbye to me when he leaves for the day, which is great.

But. He calls me the wrong name.

He calls me by the name of another person in our group. It's similar to my name, sure. But it's wrong. At first I wasn't sure if I had heard him right and then I thought maybe he just made an isolated mistake. But then I realized that he just had it wrong. And then it went on for a long time where I never had an opportunity to correct him. Now it's been going on so long that I have no idea how to tell him without one or both of us feeling like a huge ass. Plus, I think by now the people he hangs out with know me by the wrong name too. It's not really a big deal because it's not like I have to interact with this person very much, but I'm sure it will come out sooner or later and it will be super awkward. Suggestions?

In other news, I almost met all of my goals for October 15. I got both little grants submitted and of course I finished the Crummy Tedious samples. The only thing I didn't quite complete was the next draft of my manuscript. I'm close though. I just have to polish the conclusions and write the abstract. I tried all afternoon but it was so hot and stuffy in my office that I just couldn't concentrate. I think I can get it done tomorrow though, so I feel pretty good all in all.

100%

I'm finished! The Crummy Tedious Boring Dirty Samples are done! Go ahead, check the counter.

I left the lab yesterday with just four samples remaining, so I was pretty confident I would finish them today. I didn't have to carpool, so I stopped on my to work this morning and bought two large bags of mini Twix candy bars. I got some semi-unexpected help with the samples today, making it possible for me to finish by 5:00 pm! I went around offering everyone a Twix since most of them had helped me with the samples over the past three years or at the very least, they had listened to me complain about them. I left the rest of the candy in our shared food spot with a note saying "[Name] finished her [samples]!! Everyone gets a Twix!"

Blogging about this work really helped motivate me to finish it these last few months. It's a pity I don't have something else now that would lend well to a new blog progress counter. I do plan to do InaDWriMo, however, if Dr. Brazen Hussy organizes it again.

In competition

Ecogeoman and I are in competition for the same grant. It's one of the ones I wrote about last week -- just a tiny proposal for a small amount of money. It's a university award so it's not super prestigious or anything.

The situation has the potential to be a little awkward or even conflict-inducing. Academic egos bruise so easily; I could imagine one of us feeling humiliated or marginalized if one of us was successful and the other not. So far we've been pretty healthy about it. Last week EGM made really helpful comments on my proposal and today I helped improve his. We promised that we would just be happy if either one of us got funded. We decided we would focus on the success and not take away from the winner's happiness by dwelling on the failure. We also figure we should be happy if some money comes to our household, even if it means one of us gets it at the other's expense. This is all hypothetical, of course, since odds are neither one of us will be successful.

This situation is not a big deal, but it is a taste of things to come. Soon enough we'll be facing a tricky two-body job search where one of us will probably have to give in to the dreams of the other, or one of us will be more successful than the other. That success might be restricted to the job search, or it might characterize our entire careers. I think it's important for us to discuss such possibilities in advance to bolster our relationship in preparation for the uncomfortable situations that we're likely to confront.

Renewed hope

Last weekend I was all bummed because I had lost hope of meeting one of my goals. Not a big deal, but it put a small dent in my motivation. I didn't mention that one of the things prohibiting me from making the goal was a field trip scheduled for next week. Happily, today I learned that the trip has been cancelled!

With that news, I reworked my plans for the next week or so. I have two small grant applications, the latest round of manuscript revisions, and 24 more Crummy Tedious samples to finish before my (arbitrary) deadline of October 15.

With helpful comments from EGM, I think I have just finished the first grant proposal. It's not due until Monday, but I'm going to go ahead and turn it in tomorrow because I really don't want to spend any more time on it. The second one is a shorter version of the first and I have a draft, so I should be able to wrap that up in a half a day (being realistic about the time to do the supporting document crap*). I'll do that tomorrow morning so I can give Research Advisor time to read it if she wants, then I'll turn my attention to the manuscript. I have to revisit some calculations; depending on how onerous they are it might take me as little as half a day or as much as two days to finish the revisions. The Crummy Tedious samples will take 4-6 days, but I think I might be able to get some help from that international student. Although tight, it still might be possible to get it all done in a week.

Sorry to give you such a boring post but this is how I obsess about things sometimes. I'm ecstatic that I might make my goal after all, which is of course my primary source of self worth, just like all scientists, right?

*Mercifully, the supporting crap for these is nothing at all compared to big time grants.

Mutualism

Yesterday we had breakfast with some friends and then I went off to the lab after whining about work. I didn't get there until 12:30 pm.

There is a student from overseas who just arrived for a year-long visit to our lab. She doesn't have a car and is living in sort of an isolated place, so I took her to get groceries and some things from Target. It took an excruciating three hours, as I'm sure it would have taken me if I were to do the same thing in her country. She didn't recognize a lot of the produce, didn't know what items were at a good price, wasn't sure what to get. I think there were some things she wanted but she wasn't sure if the store had them and she wasn't quite sure how to ask me. In the end she got enough to last a week or more and I'm sure it will be easier next time. Situations like this make me awe the many people who work in a foreign country as well as all the scientists who learn English for work, when I most fortunately get to use my native tongue for everything.

Anyway, the student very graciously offered to help me with the Crummy Tedious samples when we finished shopping. A fair mutualism in my view, although I didn't expect her help. It was good though, because even with a few hours of her service I was there till 10:30 pm.

As much as I would like to vege out on this dreary autumn afternoon, I think I will spend some time working on my manuscript or the two little proposals. Maybe if I get them done quickly I can find some time to work on The Samples in the next week.


UPDATE: I didn't end up doing any work today. I got out my memory stick but didn't even plug it in. Work Fail.
Tomorrow is another day.

Unattainable goals

I love setting goals. I really try to make goals that are challenging yet attainable. It sucks to continually set unrealistic goals that you never reach; you always feel like a failure. I think this is a really important skill that takes work to learn.

Shortly after finishing all my summer travel, I thought about what I wanted to accomplish this fall. The Crummy Tedious samples have been hanging over my head since 2005 (I've worked on them in fits and spurts) so I decided I really wanted to finish them. I figured I could get them done by Oct 15, which I set as sort of a tentative goal -- I really wanted some motivation and I knew I could do it as long as nothing much else came up.

Guess what? Other stuff came up. I decided to put together the symposium proposal. I got comments on my manuscript from a colleague that required some thinking and complicated revisions. I decided to apply for two small student research grants that are due in about a week.

I know it's important to do all of these things. I understand that there will always be many balls in the air and that it will get much worse as I advance in my career. I'm not complaining about any of that. The manuscript and grants are important, so I certainly want to get them done. I'm going to the lab today to work on some more Crummy Tedious samples but I probably won't do any more after that until the grant proposals and manuscript are finished. It's just sad to realize that I can't possibly achieve my (self-imposed) goal.

Is this how it is with women in charge?

First of all, I am very pleased to announce that S4 had a baby boy today. He is her third child and the 14th grandchild in my family. Everyone is happy and healthy. Yay!

Now I'd like to share two observations about life in a female-dominated lab. I've said before that the lab I'm in is something like 70% women. Since I've always been part of very woman heavy labs, I don't have personal experience with which to compare them to male dominated labs. Lately I've been trying to imagine what the little differences might be.

Our lab has several rather sensitive personalities. They aren't cry babies or difficult people, they are people who are always concerned with how their words and behaviors might be perceived by others and who carefully interpret the words and actions of others so as to fully understand their complete meaning and intent. I recently had a chance to work with a wider group of scientists from my institution as part of a new collaborative effort. We were literally working all together at a table for a whole day. As we worked, one of the technicians in my lab asked, "what is this thing?" I answered, "it's an X and it does function Y." She said, "I know it does Y but I didn't know Xs looked like this." I said, "oh, okay." No big deal. The entire exchange took less than a minute. Then the tech added, "Sorry to be short with you" and I replied, "You weren't and I hope I didn't sound condescending". The men at the table were mildly aghast. I think they thought we were walking on eggshells with each other but really it was just a normal interaction, at least among people who are used to sensitive types.

Is this representative of how women interact professionally as a result of socialization or is it because of the particular personalities that have shaped our lab culture?

Next observation. I have said before that I hate pooping (although I think butts are hilarious). It is the worst part of my day. If I have to Go while at work, I try to be as discreet as possible, even timing my bathroom visit when there are no other women in there. There is a man who works in my vicinity who goes to the bathroom every day with reading material tucked under his arm, clearly headed off to take a shit. Ewww. There have been other men at my work who regularly announce their #2 events. I have never heard a woman in our lab group do that.

Again, is this an example of how gender socialization drives lab culture or is it just individual quirks (i.e. that I am grossed out by the idea of anyone at all making #2 and it just happens that none of the women ever announce it in my presence)?