Thoughts on chemistry, general science, and whatever else is banging around in my mind.
Thoughts on chemistry, general science, and whatever else is banging around in my mind.
Teaching What You Don't Know by Therese Huston
Instructors frequently need to teach outside their expertise. This book offers reassurance that you're not alone, and suggestions for making such experiences successful and rewarding.
Read MoreHello Internet, I've missed you. I feel like I've been on leave for the last month, traveling to far off places in Thesisland. Or perhaps I've been asleep (thesis coma?), since I have not been terribly aware of the outer world (i.e. anything beyond my brain), and I'm now just waking up.
Read MoreI want to take a small break from my thesis-writing to thank some folks for the very kind things they've said about me and done for me lately. First, thanks to you, reader, for stopping by my little corner of the big wide Internet. And thanks to those of you who have enjoyed it enough to pass it on elsewhere. It's pretty exciting (and honestly a teensy bit scary) to see your words quoted and linked on somebody else's blog, recommended on Twitter, and highlighted as a thing worth reading. There are only so many hours in a day, and I am delighted that there are people who find my words worthwhile enough to spend some of that precious time on.
I've learned that scientists, as a group, give pretty crappy talks. They love data and want to show you all the bits and pieces, even if there's really not time for that. They tell you things they have been working on so long and in such detail that they have forgotten what it's like to be their audience. They just dump information onto the digital page and expect you'll understand it. Instead of understanding in an instant, the audience is bombarded with new information that they need to process very rapidly before the next slide comes up with yet another information dump. This makes seminar a gamble. You spend an hour or more sitting in a dark room hoping to hear something interesting and knowing there is a possibility the best thing you'll get is a lukewarm cup of tea.
Friday's biophysics seminar was presented by Peter Chien of U Mass Amherst. He told us about recent work in his group that completes an 8-year story: they have been chasing down a mechanism for how certain proteins are broken down in Caulobacter crescentus bacteria.
It was excellent.
Read MoreMy in-laws came for a visit last weekend. We usually see them every 4-6 weeks, but thanks to various winter storms, it had been more than two months since our last visit together. When they come out to see us, we often spend Saturday at our house and Sunday morning we go to a diner for brunch before they make the long drive back to Pennsylvania.
Last weekend I was acting as a host for a prospective grad student. I spent Saturday running around the chemistry building, answering questions about the department and the city, and trying to be helpful and informative. I took my recruit from one faculty appointment to the next, manned the group poster alongside my labmates, and went to dinner with the recruits. I also tried very hard not to be The Jaded Grad Student, which I have been falling into a lot lately.
It was a full day, from breakfast in the morning to drinks and mingling in the evening, with a bunch of running up and down stairs in between. While my recruit was meeting with faculty, I tried to make bite-sized progress on my thesis, though it’s hard to get very far in 10- or 15-minute increments.
I arrived home after my in-laws had left, but the usual plans for brunch had been made. Sunday morning we met at the usual diner and had our usual catching-up chitchat. We exchanged hugs and good wishes and then headed back to our respective homes.
Recently, while talking to someone about my progress on my thesis, I mentioned going to Sunday brunch with my in-laws, and that we hadn’t visited in months. They said “But you’re so busy! You can have brunch with them twelve times after your thesis is done.”
Well, no. I totally disagree.
Read MoreBack in January, @realscientists (I believe it was @upulie at the time) was talking about nanotechnology and mentioned the growing knowledge about hazards:
For example, it was only some time after we started working with carbon nanotubes that it became apparent that we should introduce protocols for working with them. This is something we should think about for a lot of our research
To which I replied:
It was only some time after we started working with _____ that it became apparent that we should introduce safety protocols.
In that blank, insert whatever amazing new thing (not just chemicals) that is being hailed as a breakthrough. For starters, consider cyanide, arsenic, lead, and radium, materials that were in common use for their wonderful properties, but that turned out to have toxic consequences, as showcased in the recent American Experience episode based on Deborah Blum's The Poisoner's Handbook.
Read MoreMore thoughts from my trip to San Francisco. This really happened, and though you may think it's "not so bad," it still shook me.
We waited for the light to change. A fire truck rolled past, and one of the firefighters caught my eye and waved to me. I smiled. It seemed friendly. Yes, potentially flirtatious, but certainly benign.
I left the group as they entered the dance club. Tired feet took me downhill to the hotel. Four men hiked the hill in the other direction. As they approached, one called "Hey." It wasn't a greeting; it was an invitation to a conversation. I pretended not to hear and kept walking.
Another intersection. Another crosswalk. Another light slow to change. A man carrying a shopping bag neared the same stop. He skipped right to "What are you doing out tonight? You're a sweet little thing. You want to get something to eat?"
My training in politeness kicked in, even though he stepped closer, approaching my shoulder, step by step. "No thank you. Have a good night," I said, glad the light had finally turned.
I realized then that those four men walking uphill had triggered something in me. I had weighed them as a possible threat and found them unlikely to be trouble. It was unconsciously done. But the lone man on the corner tripped my alarms and reminded me that those alarms even exist, that out on the street I am always judging men–and occasionally women– for their potential to cause me harm. And that fact scared me.
Someone looking at me would see I was wearing a black pea coat, jeans, and sneakers. Not exactly dressed for attention. It was 1 am. But it doesn't matter what I was wearing, and it doesn't matter what time of day it was. I shouldn't have to spend my energy shielding myself from unwanted attention.
I recently returned from the Biophysical Society Meeting in San Francisco. For my overview, see here. This post is about some things that troubled me, and that I've been thinking about a lot since.
Very early on at BPS, I noticed a pattern. A speaker would finish their talk, the session chair would open the floor to questions, and a line of men would form at the mic.
I started counting. And then I started tallying up the speakers and chairs, too, while I was at it. My results are below.
Read MoreI spent most of last week in San Francisco for the Biophysical Society Annual Meeting, and I'd like to take a moment to recap the event
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Choosing to end any phase of your life is never easy. As a woman, choosing to leave science is harder still. Although there are support groups and professional associations for women in science, there is little day-to-day support for staying. There is even less support for leaving.
This article by Frances Hocutt spoke to me. I know many people (especially women) who have stood at that same threshold and thought "Do I dare quit?" I'm glad she had the courage to choose self-respect.
When a pipeline leaks, we don't blame the water.
Go read it.
via @shanley
A paper out in PLoS ONE last month announces the discovery that a lot more fish fluoresce than we thought. 180 species of fish biofluoresce, with emission colors ranging from greens to reds: eels and rays are in the greens while scorpionfish and gobys are fairly red and others are in between.
The authors consider several evolutionary advantages that biofluorescence might bestow on these species. Some fish may use it to blend in with fluorescent corals, others may use it to communicate. Certain deep sea fishes are thought to use fluorescence to lure prey.
What really gets me excited about this paper isn't the fish, though. It's the fluorophores.
Read MoreThere is a dull buzz in my head today. Its name is Anxiety. I am trying to tune it out and make it go away. I have work to do, but it keeps interrupting, whispering lies about me.
Read MoreA week or so ago, somebody on Twitter shared this post at the US Census Bureau blog on employment in STEM fields. It includes a chart showing the trends in the fields as a fraction of total STEM employment. It doesn't tell you about would-be STEM workers who are unemployed, nor does it tell you about unfilled positions in these areas. Still, I think you can get a rough idea of the relative demand for workers in each field. If there are many people currently employed in a field, it implies a large demand for that field. Said another way, if there weren't demand for that work, why would those people still have jobs?
I was not surprised to see that T and E are bigger slices of the STEM pie. What did surprise me was how much bigger they are. So here, for your viewing pleasure, is a little graphic. The colored bars are proportional to each field's contribution to total STEM employment in 2011.
Read MoreA fun read by Hope Jahren:
I love Science because it lets me be a teenager, to rebel and defy the university and demand to borrow its car keys on the same day.
I love science for many of these same reasons too.
Lately I’ve read about rather different things that keep bumping into each other in my mind. The more I consider them, the more they seem connected.
2013 ended on a high note for me: great visits with family, laughs shared with my husband, good news on the writing front, and fun plans with friends.
Looking ahead, 2014 is a little daunting. I don't know where we'll be living come September, nor do I know who we'll be working for, or what we'll be doing. But I know we have excellent friends and welcoming family, and that the unknown can be as exciting as it is scary. We don't have to have the answers at the outset; there's plenty to discover as we go.
So here's to a year of discovery. Best wishes for 2014.
The main explanation I've heard from readers for why women had higher rates of job seeking than men is that those women are mothers. I'm not really convinced. "Parenting" isn't a choice in the postgraduation status question, so I suspect it would be lumped into "Other." But let's assume for a moment that motherhood is the major factor in the higher frequency of job-seeking among women vs. men in fields like Chemistry. Why might that be? I can think of two possibilities.
Read MoreChemjobber recently posted a link to the 2012 NSF statistics for physical science postgraduation work & study. Both Chemjobber and the Inside Higher Ed article he links to looked at the job prospects for new PhDs by field. That data table is also broken down by gender, though, and I think there's a story hidden in there.
Read MoreIt's amazing to me how I can – sometimes – make more progress in 3 hours than in 3 days. I've spent a large part of this week slogging through some revisions. I had lot of trouble staying motivated and focused, but I kept pushing at it day after day because I wanted it to be done. Today I whizzed through the rest of the task and was done with it just after 2 pm.
And man, does that feel good.
Thoughts on chemistry, general and everyday science, and whatever else is banging around in my mind
