Blue Lab Coats

I knew I had to write an entry today- but it appears that a commenter, ‘Does Family Friendliness help anything?’ (DFFHA), on my last post did all the work for me. I have reprinted DFFHA’s comment in its entirety-

If you compare the proportion of women scientists at the PI level across the developed world, there appears to be a roughly *inverse* correlation between the representation of women in such positions and the length of the allowed maternity leave. In the Scandinavian countries, which we consider more committed to gender equality (they also consider themselves to be this way) than the US, the proportion of women full professors in the sciences is much lower than in the US. Continue reading ‘Comment to the P word… Family Friendliness..’

P for Productivity.

I’m thinking a lot about this right now… and I want to put this in the context of tenure clocks. Many places allow their women faculty to ’stop’ the tenure clock when they have a child (or adopt one, I presume). Ok, we don’t have very modern maternity leave policies in this country- you can take 3 UNPAID months by law without losing your job- outside of this things vary from institution to institution, but that’s a whole different soapbox. But it’s the tenure clock stoppage and whether or not Continue reading ‘The P word.’

…of the more unpleasant aspects of the job.

Did I mention that I am going to another meeting next month? In my current state of paper and grant rejection, going to a meeting doesn’t sound very appealing to me at exactly this moment. Plus, it just sounds like kind of a detour from all the paper-writing I could be hiding in my office doing during this time. This I-wanna-stay-home attitude is very unlike me- I usually really enjoy meetings, they Continue reading ‘Love of science minus the misery…’

So, I’m buried under grants right now- but I’ll write a quick post just to keep you updated on some loose ends. Let’s start with the paper rejection that was so hotly discussed. I sent a politely worded appeal to the editor, and waited. And waited, and waited, and waited. After 18 days of waiting, I sent a second polite inquiry Continue reading ‘It’s not personal… it’s just a job’

Every now and then I get a bug up my butt about something and spend some time poking around on CRISP. Thanks to the readership of this blog, I know that I’m not the only demented wackaloon that does this. Anyway, the convergence of grant rejection, paper rejection, general lack of motivation to pick up those two grants that I am turning over in July, and all those fabulous soccer graphs that keep appearing over at Mad Hatter’s site… I did some poking around on CRISP and graph making of my own. Continue reading ‘Fun with CRISP’

No, not mine. HA- fooled you. I’m down at the moment, but not out- at least not yet. On my last post… Enrique left a comment about PIs having to dissolve their labs…

Topic: what happens when your PI’s gov. grant is not renewed (resubmission # > 1) and the concomitant dissolvation of the lab. Anyone want to hunker a guess on the time said dissolvation will take?

Well, I’ve had a front row seat to this for the last couple of years. DrMrA was struggling with his renewal for more than two years. I don’t usually share too much about DrMrA- he’s not into publicity- so I’ll just share how this went from where I was sitting. First, Continue reading ‘Dissolving the Lab’

Ok, I need to let off some steam once again. Last night I returned from a meeting- exhausting affairs, these are. I returned to my office this morning to find a second rejection- this time of the grant variety. Just to keep you updated, the rejection (of the paper, covered in an earlier post) is still sitting with the editor…

A little background. This grant is to a federal agency to which I can only apply once per year. In the last submission I did very well- I was just off the funding line, by 2 Continue reading ‘Rejection… of the grant variety.’

I’ve had several of conversations lately with faculty senior to me about their young female graduate students. The conversations go something like this. They begin with the advisor raving about a particular female graduate student, usually including how bright said student is, what a hard worker, and how much they have or had accomplished in the lab. Then, bright female graduate student drops out of graduate school to get married (in one case she had a first author C/N/S paper) OR she graduates but leaves science to follow her spouse where ever he goes. The conversation ends with A LOT of hand wringing on the part of the advisor about how Continue reading ‘Don’t just cry about it, DO SOMETHING!(updated)’

I’m going to get back to the job search series, I swear. I think we are about up to what to do if an offer should come your way, and it is going to take me a bit of time to write that section… so I request your indulgence.

In the meantime- I’ve been stewing a little bit about luck and planning, confidence and arrogance, self-promotion and being a girl. By accident the other day I ran across a couple of articles including this one and this one. The PDF files for these are Continue reading ‘Modesty’

Just to keep you updated on the paper rejection situation that was detailed in my earlier post, and in Physioprof’s post on Drugmonkey (and then Drugmonkey had one about quality of data). I had no idea that this topic would touch off so many useful posts and informative comments on this topic.

After thinking through the reviewers’ comments and writing a point-by-point rebuttal just for myself… considering everything that had been written in those posts above and all the comments Continue reading ‘Letter to the Editor’