Best and worst

There are plenty of aspects of my job that I really love.  Among them is the tremendous variety in the tasks I do: field work, all different types of lab work, data analysis, reading, writing.  I rarely have to do the same thing for more than a few weeks at a time, so I don't get tired of the things I enjoy and the things I dislike are mostly over before I know it.  My favorite thing of all, however, is the thrill of inspiration.

I love it when a colleague or I have a new idea to discuss.  That feeling of excitement and possibility that comes from seeing how the pieces can fit together to show you something new about nature.  The daydreaming of how the experiments will go, what you'll learn from potential outcome A vs. outcome B, how you could build the story out of various pieces of literature, what journal it could go to.  I really like going to conferences for many reasons, but a big one is that they so often inspire new ideas.  The exposure to the latest research, expressed in a way that is much more lively that a journal article, combined with the opportunity to interact with the scientists presenting that research is so conducive to developing new ideas.  I always come home chomping at the research bit.

At the other end of the spectrum, I really dislike the frustration of waiting for other people to do their parts.  A couple of years ago I would have said that my least favorite aspect of my job is the guilt - of not working enough, working too much, whatever.  Now my ire is much more practical.  I just want to get shit done.  There's still an element of guilt wrapped in this, though, because sometimes people are waiting on me to get my bit done and I feel bad when it takes longer than it should.  And I feel bad for nagging people who I know are orders of magnitude busier than I am.

As I get more involved in the bench work necessary to my new field, I'll be curious to see how much my likes and dislikes might shift.  I think the moments of inspiration will remain the best part, but I wonder if bench frustrations will surpass collaboration frustrations in my new, more sophisticated and finicky lab work.

Don't forget!

Get your Scientiae posts in today! 

What is the best part of your job/life as a scientist, and what is the worst part?

The answer

I really dislike this completely empty advice: "publish, publish, publish".  In almost any conversation about career issues, someone is bound to say it or something similar.  Isn't publishing critical for success for almost any research career?  

Publish, publish, publish?  Oh, so that's the key to solving my two-body problem?  If only I had known sooner.  You mean that's all I have to do to be competitive for funding and jobs?  No problem!  I'll get right on it.

While I'm at it, I think I'll eat less and move more.  Oh, and I can buy low and sell high, too.  Life is so simple!

I heart flash mobs

Totally fucking cool.

http://mashable.com/2010/06/20/flash-mob-videos/


I want a dancing one at our wedding.  Real bad.

Isn't that most, to say the least?

I'll be hosting the November Scientiae Carnival, and it's high time I announce a theme. 

Day after day on our blogs, we all write about the trials and triumphs of life in science. The guilt, the frustrations, the jackasses.  And the gratification, sense of importance, the pride.  But when you boil it all down, I wonder,

What is the best part of your job/life as a scientist, and what is the worst part?

How do these things motivate you?  Do the good parts function as a carrot and the bad parts a stick?  Or are the bad parts simply something you endure knowing that no job is perfect? 

As always, women and men both are encouraged to post for the carnival.  And if you have something you'd like to share but you don't have a blog, I'll consider guest posts here.  Get your posts in by midnight (American Samoa time) on October 31.

Flood

Not the They Might Be Giants Flood, but our apartment filled with water flood.

We went out for dinner tonight.  After eating, we contemplated a second beer but decided to go home instead.  Good thing we did!  When we got to our floor of our building, there was all this water in the hallway.  We stood there, dumbfounded, until the elevator doors closed.  When we got our wits back, we entered the hallway to find that a utility closet next to our unit was spewing water into the hallway.  Our neighbors next door were running around trying to figure out what to do.  Our unit was rapidly flooding. 

For some reason, no one could get in touch with anyone who had a key to the utility room responsible for the deluge, so the neighbors called the fire department.  In the meantime, we started sweeping water into the stairwell.  The firemen came pretty quickly, broke into the utility room, and shut off the water.  Then they busted out these huge squeegees and quickly pushed most of the remaining water into the stairs.  We took care of the rest of it with mops.  At the peak, I think we had about 4 in of water in our apartment. 

Fortunately, the bedroom stayed completely dry and it doesn't look like there's any real damage to our furniture.  The wood floors are totally fucked, but that will be the unit owner's responsibility.  We had a large rug that is totally soaked, but it's currently on the very windy balcony so it might dry out fine.  The only real thing of value of ours that might be damaged is EGM's aging laptop, but our renter's insurance should cover that and it was on it's way out anyway.  There are a few other odds and ends that will might try to get replaced via the insurance, but nothing too huge.  Several of our neighbors weren't home tonight, and I don't envy the mess their going to find when they come home to standing water.

I'm just so grateful that it wasn't something that we caused.  I remember ScienceMama's awful experience after her laundry exploded; I think we'll be able to avoid that drama, at least.

I'm back, and France was great!  Getting to the conference venue was a bitch, but once we were there is was completely awesome.  It was one of those smaller (<200 people), highly focused meetings where they have you at an isolated place so you stay together a lot.  We had all our meals together instead of breaking off into groups going to different restaurants, so there was tons of opportunity to interact with all different people.  The pacing of the program was really good too, with tons of time for poster viewing and discussion.  That worked because the posters were super good.  Surprisingly, I had lots of traffic at my poster which I hadn't expected given its topic.

I made kind of a personal breakthrough at this meeting as well.  I recently read the book Who Moved My Cheese? and the line from it, "what would I do if I weren't afraid?" really stuck with me.  I kept that in mind as I reminded myself not to be Advisor Junior.  In other words, when I go to meetings with Research Advisor, I tend to stay by her side a lot.  She's great and all, but this means that I don't carry on my own conversations with people and they probably remember me as someone from her lab rather than as someone who is interesting in her own right.  So this time, I made a concerted effort to gracefully walk away to start my own conversations or sit with other people during meals.  It worked really well and I felt like my networking was really effective.

After the conference, I made my way to EGM's sister's place and had a fantastic weekend visit with her and her family.  I'm grateful that we get on so well given that I've only met a few times.  And I'm happy that I made the effort to see his family since we have so little opportunity to visit them.

Now, I hope that the meeting we're hosting next week will be anywhere near as successful!