A Lady Scientist- Blog

If you’ve been working 3 weeks straight without a day off (albeit you’ve only worked half days on the weekends) and then you sort-of mess up a protocol (by losing some sample) do you:

(a) Start prepping a new batch of samples while continuing with your diminished-sample prep because, hey! maybe diminished-sample prep will be enough (at the very least it may still tell you what you need to know). But know that you’ll lose your Saturday (with your significant other) off.

(b) Just toss everything as (now) diminished-sample prep was a trial for your new preparative method and start over. And lose your Saturday (with your significant other) off.

(c) Just like (a) but decide that you’ll take Saturday off anyhow and just come in Sunday.

(d) Just like (a) but decide that you fail at life.

I previously wrote about a survey that stated that two-thirds of all Americans could not name an famous female scientist. While I still don’t know how they defined famous (Mad Hatter pointed out that Field Famous versus Nobel Famous verses Household Name Famous are all very different), I think that it’s still important for the general public to know that there are (and have been) very influential female scientists. So, I was very relieved when I found– and by I, I mean that I found it on Science Woman’s twitter feed– this list of famous female scientists.

While not comprehensive, there are still a good number of lady scientists on there. And it gives me a place to point the people who had no idea that there are lady scientists out there.

This month’s Scientiae theme is particularly apt for me (I’m just a lot late in posting). I’m within (approximately, you know, give or take a semester or five) a year of graduating, I’m training for a 13k in October, and Dr. Man and I have started brewing our own beer. I feel like I’ve been in a holding pattern throughout my PhD experience. There’s a lot of ‘Well, I’d do X after I’m done with school’ or ‘I’m justing waiting to graduate until I try Y.’ A lot of times, it’s like I’m waiting until I’m old enough to do something. Like there’s some magical age after which I’ll have things figured out or there’s an age I must reach before I can do something.

Recently, I’ve decided that I might as well allow my life to move forward as much as it can. Hence all the activities. It doesn’t make sense to put off my life until after school. And I think that’s become an excuse to stop trying. If I categorically state that I won’t try/do something different until I’ve graduated, then I’m off the hook. I don’t have to do anything new or different or scary.

I don’t have any advice on how to make forward progress, but my guess is that it’ll be incremental. It’ll involve breaking up the new, different, scary things into smaller more palatable pieces. For once, I’ll look at the trees more than the forest. And hope that will allow me to make it through.

scientiae-carnival

I received an email from Amy R. at a Strategic Agency (not the name, but the type of Agency). In it she gave me the following link:
Nearly Two-Thirds of Americans Can’t Name a Famous Female Scientist According to National Survey

Seeing the headline, my first thought was, “WTF? Seriously?” I asked Dr. Manto name one and he said, “You.” (Which demonstrates his brilliance.) I’ve since asked other people and I’ve received one of three answers (I’ve yet to get ‘you’ as an answer again): (1) Marie Curie, (2) Rosalind Franklin, (3) Ummm…. Unfortunately, answer 3 seems to be the most prevalent. So, maybe that survey is about right. I hope not, though.

Now, I am a scientist and, so, I quantify. It’s sort of what I do. (I also research, test, and experiment, but I digress.) Anyhow, my last post generated a lot more comments than I thought it would. It gave me a decent N value (for my blog) and I decided to quantify the results (like I do). But first I wanted to clarify something.

The situation that brought this up was the death in the family of one of my friends. My friend is either agnostic or atheist (I’m not sure, but I haven’t asked). Without thinking about it, I told hir that s/he and hir family will be in my prayers. S/he gave me a funny look and said thank you. Later it occurred to me that I might have offended hir. I asked later and s/he wasn’t offended, but it occurred to me that it could offend someone else. (And I hadn’t even thought about the conversion angle! I do not pray for that.) I figured that the internets would know, so I asked you all.

The majority of people (~75%) wouldn’t be offended if someone said that they’d “pray for them” with the caveat that it was for something major (examples given were death or disease) and that it wasn’t for conversion. Scientist Mother mentioned that she mostly felt that an offer of prayer was like an offer of good thoughts, which I agree with.

Five people suggested some other form like, “You’ll be in my thoughts” as an alternative. S. suggested that “You’ll be in my prayers” is less offensive than “I’ll pray for you.” At first I thought it was just semantics, but praying for people may have some negative connotations (what with praying for conversion to religion or to homophobia.) On the other hand, “in my prayers” seems to hold more of the “in my thoughts” connotation. What I didn’t realize was how many people have been subject to conversion attempts or snide-ish, pitying remarks. Since I’ve always been part of the majority in this particular case, I’ve never had that happen to me. I could definitely see how a mention of being in someone’s prayers could be highly offensive when this is common.

In fact, “in my thoughts” may be a safer alternative, especially as both Southern Grad Girl and Psyc Girl mentioned how this can have an effect on how people view you in academia. I really didn’t think about that too much. It’s an open secret in my lab, but, perhaps, it could affect the opinions of people in the department. If the entire department thinks that I’m a little off kilter, that could be problematic later on. I may try to use a safer alternative in the academic settings.

As to the solution to my question, I’ll have to tailor my response to the inclinations of the individual. And hope I get it right.*

*Thanks for everyone thinking I’m sensitive. Mostly I just don’t want to add to someone’s troubles, if s/he is already having a bad time. And I’m awful at remembering people’s religious inclinations, which may not make me that sensitive.

You will be assimilated.*

Our lab has acquired two new undergrads for (at least) the summer months. If they work out well, then they’ll have the option to come back for the fall semester. (I like to think of this as the “lease with an option to buy” plan.) Today, I’m planning what I’ll do tomorrow with the New One. That got me to thinking about assimilation (not only because I think that Science is somewhat like the Borg), but mostly about assimilation of information.

I’ve had a variety of undergrads. There was Underage who was very nice and, also, very sixteen. We had Fearful who seemed to be scared of me, but did good work (I’m still uncertain as to why zie was scared of me, but I’ve been informed that I am quite fearsome. As an aside, I told Advisor that and he couldn’t stop laughing. He then told Former Labmate and the two of them could not stop. Sigh. There goes Ivan the Terrible as a career aspiration.) There was Awesome Undergrad, who I still miss quite a lot. The last one that I had was Flighty, who was very nice, but, well, didn’t always show up. The ability to assimilate information, and act on it, has been key in whether or not they succeed.

I think working in a Research Lab is a very different experience for them. It’s different than a lecture course where they are told to show up and listen (while, hopefully, taking notes). It’s different than the lab courses where everything is very structured (as in, add the entire contents of tube B to flask A this will show the floogly reaction.). In Research Lab, you are allowed to have your own schedule (to a certain degree) and there’s very little of add all of this to that. Suddenly, they are expected to assimilate information from classes, lab courses, and our lab. Not only that, but their ability to assimilate this information is “tested” in everyday lab situations (as in calculating dilutions for example, or not adding acid to water). Some of my undergrads (I think this may have been the case with Fearful) are very stressed about this. Some just want to be told what to do and how to do it. Some do very well with this and even enjoy the opportunity to put all their knowledge to use. The latter I enjoy teaching the most and sometimes suggest that grad school would be a nifty option.

Now, this is where the Borg comes in. At Public U., we have many undergrads that come to our lab as a check mark on the way to med school. In theory, I think it’s good that med students (prospective or otherwise) have some idea on how research works. It’s good not only to help evaluate studies in their own field, but to understand the work it takes (and has taken) to build the body of medical information. That’s all well and good, but there are times that I would like to only teach undergrads that want to go to grad school. It’s a thought that I quash and reproach myself for even thinking about, but it has helped me to understand why professors like to mentor students that want to become professors. There is the urge to assimilate them into the Academy. An urge that I resist.

*Yes, I did see the new Star Trek move. Why do you ask? If you’re curious, I really liked it. The movie managed to combine the best of the cool science fiction-y type stuff with the human interest stuff. That’s everything that I like about the Star Trek series.**
** I did discover that I’ve developed a Pavlovian response to Red Shirts on Star Trek. Seeing a young, not-yet-Captain Kirk in a Red Shirt made me very disoriented.

We’ve been invaded by the in-laws! Well, they were invited, but invaded sounds so much funnier 🙂 It’s a strange weekend for them to come up because Dr. Man is on call and he’s been sick for the past week. However, he’s been wanting to see his parents for a while now and who am I to refuse? This means not much blogging until Monday. And now I’ve got to go and keep the two dogs from knocking over coffee cups!