Inspiration Award

I'd like to thank Amanda for honoring me with this lovely Inspiration Award. The rules say I should now nominate 7 bloggers who inspire me. I want to honor some bloggers who do something I find totally amazing: blog in a foreign language. These blogs are written in excellent English by people whose first language is not English. It's hard enough for me to write in a coherent way, and I'm writing in my mother tongue. Cheers to those who have interesting things to say and can say it in more than one language!


1. Amelie (who writes in not one, but two languages!)
2. Hypoglycemiagirl
3. Stepwisegirl
4. Nina
5. Saxifraga
6. Sciencegirl
7. Chall

These are the first 7 that sprang to mind. I know some of these people live (or have lived) in English-speaking places and I'm sure all do at least some of their work in English, so maybe I'm be condescending or something by saying they're amazing. Still, I can't imagine that it's not a least a little challenging to blog in something other than one's first language, especially since this king of blogging is usually a hobby. Anyway, these are terrific blogs regardless of what language their authors like to speak.

I'm sure there are many other great blogs like them (maybe some that I don't realize are written by non-native English speakers) that deserve a shout out as well.

Touche

Ecogeoman and I are, like everyone else, trying to save money. I think it's fair to say that I'm a Saver and he's a Spender. Tonight was his night to think of what to have for dinner and then make it.

So he ordered take out.

While we were waiting for it to arrive, I said, "I can't believe you ordered Thai." To which he replied, "I can't believe how pretty you are."

Butt head. I just don't think he gets it.

Structure of a good talk

I used to think that a great talk started with a somewhat brief introduction that described only the context and main questions of the work. It wouldn't have any extraneous information before the data. That way, the data would seem puzzling to the audience until the speaker revealed the lynchpin concept in the discussion that would draw everything together. Aha! the audience would think, and they would perceive the speaker as a brilliant, creative mind

But, I've started to notice that a great talk makes the audience feel smart and important. It should be about the audience, not the speaker. Like entertainment. If they feel good at the end, they will think well of the speaker.

Hence, I have changed my mind about the structure of a great talk. I now think that the introduction should be a bigger part of the presentation. It should include enough background information that the audience can attempt to interpret the data as they see it. That way, they can make their own journey of discovery as the talk progresses. They can feel so clever if they figure out the interpretation before the speaker presents her own conclusion. Or, if the listeners had been forming an interpretation that is different from what the speaker suggests, they can think oh, now I get it or be ready to ask good questions.

I think this approach may help the audience stay engaged through the data, since they have the information they need to understand it. Without this, I think it's easy to lose people through data slides they think are boring and then they don't pay attention to the big reveal anyway.

What do you think? What kind of structure makes the best talk?

The world won't end

I now have one less fear in life.

When Research Advisor reviewed my paper, she uncovered (or led me to uncover) tons of mistake in the data. This was after I had worked with the data extensively and several other people had read the manuscript. I did stupid things like clicking on the wrong column in Excel formulae or incorrectly converting units (apparently I don’t really understand the metric system). I also made larger errors in some of the equations I used. Lame.

The worst part was the doubt these mistakes sowed in me. I worked with that data set for years. It should not have had any problems. If I could have errors like that in spreadsheets I know like the back of my hand, what other problems are lurking in my work?

But you know what? The world didn’t end. Other than pointing out the problems, RA didn’t say a disparaging word. I was really embarrassed and went on about what a Bad Scientist I am, but she just brushed off those self criticisms, saying things like “it’s easy to mix up columns in complex spreadsheets” or “everything blurs together after a while”. I have a feeling she’ll check all my future work with an even finer comb than she used this time, but at least she didn’t make me feel like shit.

Now I know what happens when I screw up in that particular way, so I guess I don’t have to worry about it anymore.

My brand of imposter syndrome

The other day I wrote about how the “I’m not good enough” voice causes procrastination. I’ve always struggled with imposter syndrome because mine manifests in a slightly different way. I knew I suffered from it, but I also knew that it wasn’t in the same way that other people describe. I never feel like I shouldn’t have been allowed into my program or that I’m not smart enough to be a scientist or that it’s just a matter of time till everyone realizes I’m not smart. I always feel like I’m not passionate enough. It took sitting through that seminar for me to realize that in essence, it’s the same thing.

When I plan to work on the weekend, I really want to get work done. I’m super excited about my research and I really want a PhD. So when I can’t make myself stay focused to do my work, I feel like I don’t have the same love other people have. When I batted around post doc ideas with my colleagues, I always think, “yeah, that lab won’t want me once they find out how little I work”. Deep down, I think I’m actually worried about failing.

I always feel like I must not really be interested enough in my science since I put off reading papers. I think the real reason is that I’m afraid I won’t understand them or won’t be able to retain the information. Same with writing – it’s hard to stay on task. I’m not so worried about what people will think about my writing itself, but I’m afraid they’ll think I don’t know the literature well enough or that I haven’t synthesized literature and my data into interesting new ideas.

All this was hiding in “I’m not passionate enough” thoughts. That felt really bad because I am really excited about my science and I’m not sure what else I could do to be more passionate about it. I know I don’t want to be monomaniacal about it and I don’t think I could be even if I wanted to. But now I realize that those valid desires for work-life balance are also tangled up with my personal brand of imposter syndrome. Now I have to figure out how to work with that.

Getting writing done

Yesterday, I wrote about how I heard a dissertation coach (DC) boil all our procrastination problems down to imposter syndrome. Today I want to share her advice for actually getting writing done.

One of DC’s big points was, don’t write like your committee is in the room. People get paralyzed by thinking that the first draft should be perfect. You can’t have a second draft until you have a first draft, so just get your thoughts down to start with. You can always edit later. In fact, she suggested defining crappy first drafts as such so you can give yourself the freedom to write. She said that people who claim to work best with a deadline really just need a way to lose the inhibitions of feeling like their writing has to be perfect. Nobody really works best under pressure, it’s just that we finally actually let ourselves work at all at that point.

Her other big message was break it down, down, down. Big tasks are impossible to penetrate. There’s no entry point into something like “write introduction” or “work on methods”. Create a timeline with milestones set for specific dates. Then break the work necessary to reach those milestones into weekly goals. Then break the weekly goals into tasks for each day you plan to work. Good daily goals are things like, “read and take notes on papers A, B, and C”. Or, “write a shitty draft of section two of discussion.” “Revise section four of introduction.” The timeline is a guide that shouldn’t be rigid -- it should be updated frequently as you progress. DC also suggested scheduling time for things like exercise and hanging out with friends. She reminded us that we are living our lives now and we need to make time for all the things we want to do. We shouldn’t put off our living for after grad school.

DC offers life and dissertation coaching. She didn’t give us the hard sell during her seminar, but she did allude to her services. Apparently, the main thing she does is help clients create a timeline and then meet with them once a week (in person or on the phone) to discuss progress and provide accountability. Not a bad idea.

Passengers on your bus

Reading Arlenna’s nice post about procrastination reminded me to write about a terrific seminar I recently attended. It was delivered by a dissertation coach* (I’ll call her DC) who was a really funny, charismatic speaker. I think that helped her morph some messages that might otherwise have been kind of tired or cheesy into something profound. She hooked me when she said, “isn’t it annoying when people tell you to just sit down and write? That’s like telling someone who wants to lose weight that they should just move more and eat less”. I need to pass that gem along to my mom.

Much of DC’s message was about dealing with imposter syndrome. She claimed that those nasty voices telling you that you aren’t smart enough are the source of your procrastination. So when you obsessively check your email when you should be writing or you spend your “work all weekend” weekend watching Beauty and the Geek marathons, it’s really imposter syndrome rearing its ugly head.

DC had a somewhat odd but very effective demonstration to convey this idea. She had someone from the audience volunteer to describe her dissertation research. She asked the volunteer to say the values that led her to this work. The woman was researching nursing, so she said things like helping people, improving quality of care, etc. Then DC compared writing a dissertation to driving a bus. A bus driver has a goal (the end of the route) and has passengers getting on and off the bus all day. The driver can’t control who gets on, even if they smell bad or are rude. She just has to continue driving toward the end of the route. DC asked other people from the audience to act like the volunteer’s imposter syndrome. She had the volunteer pretend to drive toward her goals/values while the others stood behind her, shouting all of the negative things one might think, like “you should have never been accepted to grad school” and “they’re going to think your paper is terrible”. The volunteer laughed, of course, but also didn’t make much progress toward the end of her route. She kept turning around to look at them. Which brought DC to her point: negative emotions are like passengers on the bus; you can’t get rid of them and if you keep trying to deal with them, you’ll stop making progress toward your real goals. She advised us to expect those emotions to come and then to plug along anyway. When you start to feel tempted to check your email for no reason, remind yourself that it’s the passengers on your bus distracting you.

This mindset can be applied to almost any long term goals, like saving money or losing weight. Keeping you values in mind can help you get past the little negative voices that get you off track.

Tomorrow, practical advice for actually writing your dissertation.


*DC has a nice, content-rich website that I’m happy to share with anyone who’s interested in learning more. I know my location is sort of an open secret, but since her website would make my location really obvious, I think it might be going too far to link to it here. Email me if you want the address.