I’m fielding a couple of questions to be turned into blog posts, but this is going to take me a little time to get them into a readable format, so bear with me a little bit.
While I’m swamped I’ll just report a little on my family life. We got 3 notes home in the daily folder from school last week, reporting behavioral issues from LittleA. She had lots and lots of behavioral/disciplinary issues in Kindergarten a few years ago- these were mostly developmental in the sense that she is a bit young for her class and the personality match between her and her teacher was less than optimal. Those incidents were enormously stressful for me at the time, and actually we almost moved her from public to private school. She’s been very VERY well behaved at school for the last two years. Until last week.
Note #1.: LittleA was behaving loudly in the bathroom.
Ok, so we had a talk about keeping our voices down in the bathroom at school.
Note #2.: While writing sentences at recess (25 of those ‘I will behave properly in the bathroom.’ type sentences), LittleA was having a great time, and was behaving too loudly with her friends (who were also writing sentences).
I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Seems to me you want your kid to take their punishment with a good attitude- on the other hand, you might think they would have learned their lesson the first time. LittleA told me that she actually liked writing the sentences, and it improved her penmanship. Another set of sentences was ordered.
Note #3: Please talk to LittleA about cutting a friend’s hair at school.
OH SHIT.
How do you teach people in your academic sphere about gender bias without waving a copy of various books on the subject in their faces and expecting them to actually READ them? ‘Cause- you know, it is pretty darn rare that you can get your colleagues to purchase, or even crack open your copy, of Virginia Valian’s fine book: Why so slow? Hmmm. I think there might be a new approach for this one…
I found this website for the Gender Bias Learning Project this morning, and I promptly started playing Gender Bias Bingo, and taking the little pop quiz. I’m in education, so I’m all about pop quizzes. And because many times I feel like I need an instruction book to navigate some of these biases, the GBLP has also provided a section on strategies for surviving gender bias, complete with short video presentations from some relevant experts. I haven’t watched many of them yet (meetings, manuscripts, and experiments all day), but I will later.
If you find this site useful, pass it on (and I’ll tweet it!). I think this is a great, and quick way to educate about, and teach people to recognize gender bias, in a simple, straightforward, and relatively time sparing way.
If you were looking for an answer to that up there, you’ve come to the wrong blog. I’m totally messing with you. PSYCH!
Seriously. I’m banging my head against that one, and I was reminded of my frustration about this in a post put up a few days ago from my blogging brother-in-arms Drugmonkey. I’ve been ruminating on that particular post for about three days now. At issue is a whole lot of grant money being spent to develop a web-based social networking technology for scientists.
I SO agree with DM that spending buckets full … entire banks full of federal grant dough…on inventing a whole new system so that scientists can network with each other seems pretty looney. The technology for people to network with each other across the web is out there, and I know that if you are reading this blog- it is highly likely that you are savvy to this already. Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, FriendFeed, Linkedin, …and Google for EVERYONE (and others I am undoubtedly forgetting, and I’m not linking I know you people can use google to find those web addresses)!. These sites have this networking thing DOWN, tons of users, and been out there on the web for quite some time. My gosh, if you can find your mother’s uncle’s ex-wife’s daughter’s third husband that you lost touch with in 1980 on Facebook… surely you can find (and network with) that guy you met at the Gordon Conference that works on the importance of the 52nd amino acid in your favorite protein. Right? Maybe he could have all his protocols and all his clinical collaborators listed on one of the sidebars? So that inventing a web networking tool for scientists thing… kind of seems like re-inventing the wheel to me already….seems smarter and faster to adapt existing networking technologies to ‘fit’ scientists…
But here is the problem with scientists and social networking- it is just like DM said they don’t understand or see the usefulness of it. Mention that you use Facebook or Twitter or Google Reader even (and that’s not even networking!) or heaven forbid… that you BLOG- to your faculty colleagues, and you’ll be met with a bunch of blank stares. This will be rapidly followed by comments on how your faculty colleagues would not want to, or have time to, read on Twitter about that ham sandwich XYZ person ate for lunch. I hear myself explaining for the 16 thousandth time that I’ve never read about what anyone ate for lunch on twitter… it DEPENDS if you follow the kind of people who post about their lunch, or not. You could always follow the kinds of people who post interesting techniques or papers that you care about… I’m just sayin’..
Anyway- your faculty colleagues have this mind-set not because they are not smart or savvy or whatever… simply because they aren’t convinced of the usefulness of social networking, or other kinds of web-based communication, like this to their career/project/lab etc. I’m telling you though- if there was a place on the web that I could hang out with a bunch of glycobiologists that work on O-antigen, or techie geeks who do biology in high throughput with robots and computers, or people who develop databases and tools to handle large quantities of various kinds of data… you wouldn’t be able to drag me away. I’m totally down with those topics and I want to talk to other people who are too. Web based social networking can connect me to all of those different kinds of people quickly and all at once… and that works infinitely better for me than having to contact people that might have the right expertise one at a frickin’ time.
So- if you all are sold-… how do we sell the other 99% of the scientific community on the uses and benefits of web based social networking to them. This is our challenge. I say we all write editorials and opinion pieces for our society publications… to do a bit of re-educatin’
P.S.: And as an aside- we shouldn’t forget those ‘networking’ areas directed specifically toward scientists… even journals have their sites… like Nature Network…like PLOS (you can set up an account here and have a profile, but it is not really networking… far as I remember) and the PLOS blog… and even the societies are getting in the game now-… the American Society for Microbiology has its own site now called ASM Community,
P.P.S: There is a brief related Post over at NeuroScoop.
P.P.P.S: Sorry for the lack of proper linkage in this post… I’m tired!!
Candid Engineer has a post up (since yesterday) about her recent experience at the Negotiating the Ideal Faculty Position Workshop (at Rice)… her post is an excellent summary of what should be in your application package, plus other collective advice. I think generally the posts I have written on this topic, the posts Comrade Physioprof and Drugmonkey have written (I’ll find the links for y’all I just can’t do it this minute), and Candid’s post of yesterday all echo the same bits of wisdom again and again.
Dear Committee on Women in Science, Engineering and Medicine:
A couple of days ago I noticed that you posted on your website an old list of 50 ‘must-read’ blogs written by women in science and engineering, borrowed from another (?perhaps dubious?) website.
First, let me say- THANKS for noticing that there are many of us women (and our allies) out here in the blogosphere talking about issues related to being a woman in science/engineering/medicine etc! I think it is totally cool that you have picked this up- we’ve been having conversations out here for some time now, and between all of us we have quite a following. Many of us are the only woman in the departments that employ us, and this can be very isolating. Online communities, blogging, and social networking sites let us get together from all over the world and discuss relevant work and work-life balance issues in an immediate way. Having legitimate and esteemed organizations such as yours, notice and promote us- goes a long way toward toward publicizing and increasing participation in these conversations. Promoting this venue and listening to the conversations that occur here should spur some creative thinking about, and implementation of, innovative policies to increase the participation of women in STEM. At least a girl can dream.
Second, I’d like to encourage you members of the CWSEM to go out there into the blog wilderness, and actually read some of our blogs, if you haven’t already. Check out the blogrolls on each of our blogs (mine is right down there on the right side of your screen!), and come up with your VERY OWN list of blogs written by scientists, engineers, and doctors- both men and women, that discuss issues related to gender balance, family friendliness, navigating academia, grantsmanship, career development and the like. Then post YOUR favorites on your site! Listing your own favorites will be infinitely more credible than posting a list you dragged up and parroted from somewhere on the internetz. Seriously.
I’ll be looking forward to seeing your very own list, I’ll keep my eye on your website!
Most Sincerely-
drdrA
See that witch pumpkin on the far right?
I carved that son-of-a-gun.
AFTER 3 glasses of wine.
In the dark.
I know my way around sharp objects, but in this case it is a miracle that I still have 10 fingers.
A mom’s got to do, what a mom’s got to do.
It is the small victories.
CWSEM picks up list of 50 “must-read” blogs written by Women in Science and Engineering
Apparently the list of the the 50 must-read women science bloggers that was posted months ago on the Phlebotomy Technician School website has caught the attention of the Committee on Women in Science, Engineering and Medicine, a standing committee of the National Research Council (NRC). The CWSEM has re-posted this list of the top 50 ‘Must-Read Blogs’ written by women in science and engineering on its very own website. To quote from the PTS site that was re-quoted by CWSEM:
Women have long played an important role in scientific developments and discourse, however, this role has historically received relatively less recognition and coverage as compared to their male counterparts. Over the last few years, however, blogging has opened up a way for leading women in science to bring to light the important improvements women have made, the struggles they still encounter, and the strategies they set up for their work to be recognized.”
All I have to say is that’s pretty cool and… !WOOT! girls- we hit the big time! We may have started out on the PTS website, …. but we’ve been discovered by the Committee on Women in Science, Engineering, and Medicine…
I’m going to poke around a bit on their website… between manuscripts!
Not really. I just don’t like what journal club has become. It has become a boring recitation of a paper. Period.
Without any general overview of the subject and context from other related literature.
Without any enthusiasm for the subject, or understanding whether or why the topic is important.
Without explanation of important terminology and jargon- indeed sometimes without the understanding of the presenter of what the jargon means.
Without participation and discussion from the non-faculty in the audience.
Without the audience coming prepared by reading the paper… and gosh, we don’t even have to go to the library and photocopy it ourselves anymore.
I’m sick to death of it, and I’m not taking it anymore.
First, for all of you that are making an effort, I applaud you. Seriously. This goes for presenters and active participants alike. It is tough to get up there in front of an audience and present something that maybe isn’t your primary area of interest, give the background, learn the jargon- explain someone else’s work in a coherent and constructively critical way. You are only at the beginning of your training, your business is going include doing some permutation of these tasks every single day of your research career. Good on you for embracing this opportunity.
Second, for those of you that just show up- you have taken the first step and I applaud you for that- but journal club is yours to improve and learn from. You need to take the next steps now- READ the paper and ASK QUESTIONS. Now don’t even tell me you were too busy to read the paper- you won’t find any sympathy from me on this one. I’ll bet you a million bucks that you and I don’t even measure busy on the same scale, and I read the paper in advance, and I looked up the jargon. This REALLY is not that time consuming, you could probably fit it in between PCR reactions.
Third- there is this issue of participation. I know you all are frightened to look like fools in front of the rest of the audience- but you are going to have to get over this one. Journal club is a fairly friendly, audience restricted venue- if you can’t test your participation skills here- where the hell can you test them?? At a Gordon Conference… or maybe at a Cold Spring Harbor meeting…? Trust me on this one and test the waters of active participation at journal club at your home institution in a more limited venue.
And what is the absolute worst that can happen if you do participate?? You could get slapped down once or twice?! I KNOW that this is hard, and it feels bad… but I promise you that it is extremely likely that tomorrow no one except you will remember whatever thing you said- and you’ll be one question closer to confidence in this area.
Finally- don’t do this because you ‘have to’ or because I told you to. Show some intellectual curiosity about your chosen field…
A friend came to visit me last week, and that person commented on something I had written on this blog in sort of a sideways fashion. It is a relief when friends recognize some grief you are holding in, or pick out some off-hand comment you made that just doesn’t sound right- and give you the window to let it go. Anyway- that conversation has given me the courage to write about a few things that are going on with me that are difficult.
I have a picture on my office wall of a large group of young people in caps and gowns- taken almost 20 years ago. They appear to have no cares on a very happy day. I am one of the people in that picture. I remember what life was like then, I had few responsibilities- I was trying to made it through grad school (which was 50% girls FYI), was fairly naive, was NOT in a position that had any power whatsoever, and really only had to handle one task at a time. Oh maybe I remember some more ideal version of the past than was reality, maybe- probably- looking back now, it looks pretty perfect though. I can say for certain that I never expected that my career would become important to me, and that managing the balance of my job, my marriage and my children would shape me as it has.
People who have known me a long time, comment that I have changed. I’m never sure how to take that- and on one level that hurts, on another level- I know it is true. At that second level, I want to scream-
HOW COULD I NOT BE DIFFERENT NOW THAN I WAS THEN???
And I’m not much one for screaming- maybe that helps you to understand how much emotion is behind those simple words.
How have I changed? I’ll just stick with one aspect of this for now. I have developed a hard edge to my personality- an assertiveness that I’m sometimes unsure how to channel or control at work and in other parts of my life. This edge is something that I sensed before many times in women I knew who were higher up the academic ladder than me, but I never understood. There is a strong societal message that it is just unbecoming for girls to have this edge, this assertive (maybe sometimes even aggressive) way from time to time. Us girls are so programmed to be NICE, be accommodating, to go with the consensus, to be reasonable. When I assert myself, which lots of times just feels like plain old protecting myself… I get told that I’m not being ‘nice’ (insert more screaming). A remark that I imagine is much more loaded and cutting to a woman than to a man. I feel like I work up against that societal message time and time again every day and it is wearing…. and it is like double jeopardy to be called out for not ‘nice’ because of it.
So am I different now because of this- heck YES. Was there any other option? I don’t think so.
The winners of the third round of the Gates Foundation Grand Challenge were announced yesterday. I don’t know how I missed that…but someone who is pretty well known in my little slice of biology, Dr. Allison Rice-Ficht, was one of the winners…
Here is the text released by the Gates Foundation:
Recreating a “Sticky Coating” Used by Parasitic Worms to Deliver Intranasal Vaccines
Allison Ficht of Texas A&M Health Science Center in the U.S. will recreate a protein used by parasitic worms to seal their egg cases and use it as a “sticky coating” for intranasal vaccines. If successful, this coating could protect the antigens during administration, affix them to the nasal passages and erode to slowly release the antigens for an enhanced immune response.
How cool is that? Contratulations Dr. Rice-Ficht!!
