Guilty

Geoff Marcy recently resigned from Berkeley after word got out that he’d been a serial sexual harasser of women in astronomy, that a Berkeley investigation concluded he had violated campus conduct policies, that the university had barely even slapped his wrist for it, and that the women in astrophysics (and the rest of the sciences) were sick of this same old crap.

Okay then. One down, more to go.

Marcy is not the last harasser. His resignation does not mark the eradication of this disease. There are more creeps out there. There are more people making science and unwelcome place. We’re not done.

Hearing about Marcy, his misdeeds, and his shield of privileges and achievements, I was reminded of another creep, one I could have called out, but didn’t. I feel guilty hearing about these cases. I know of sexual harassment in science that has gone unreported. Am I, by staying silent, complicit?

I will tell you the story, but I am not prepared to name names. I am not the victim, and I have no wish to bring her unwanted attention. I wasn’t even present when it happened, but when a person tells you of her harassment, you’d better believe her. It’s been over a year, but that doesn’t make his actions any less wrong.

Last year at a conference I attended, a graduate student, who I’ll call Annie, was groped by a senior professor, who I’ll call Jack. It was the last night of a week-long conference. There was a party, with dancing and booze. Jack was on the dance floor. Annie walked by him, and he grabbed her butt. As Annie’s companions emphasized, this was not a case of “accidentally” bumping into or brushing up against someone. This was a middle-aged man grabbing a young woman in a clearly sexual way. Annie and her companions left the party immediately, unwilling to risk more time in an unwelcome space.

I heard about the incident moments later from Annie and the other junior scientists (grad students & post-docs) who had seen it happen. My initial response was shock: He did what?! My next thought was discouragement and disappointment. It had been a pretty great week: I’d learned about exciting science, had some great conversations, and met some delightful people. But Jack’s inability to keep his hands to himself tarnished my impression of the conference. And – even though it didn’t happen to me, and I hadn’t been in the room – it made me feel unwelcome.

We didn’t report Jack. We talked about it, the group of us. Who would we tell? Jack wasn’t just an attendee; he chaired the conference. The best we could foresee was one of our advisors just saying ‘steer clear.’ So we said nothing. The conference was over, anyway. What was the harm?

The harm is that Annie is almost certainly not the first woman Jack has grabbed. She probably won’t be the last. Annie and Jack are at different institutions in different cities, but we’re all in the same field. We’re likely to cross paths again. Even if those of us who know about his harassment of Annie warn others away, Jack just becomes another open secret.

Jack made our group feel unwelcome at the conference party. Who else is he pushing out? What if Jack is harassing women in his own department? Who is listening to them?

You might say “It’s not so bad. He just grabbed her butt, it’s not like he really did any damage.” Except it is that bad. Someone is getting pushed out every time. And it’s damaging for every single woman. It shouldn’t have to take four women multiple years to get a man to keep his hands to himself.

Jack has a name, and a home department, and a publication list as long as my arm. Jack has a reputation and a position of privilege that far outweighs mine, or Annie’s. I can’t fight that battle right now, even though I feel guilty for letting another creep skate by. So the guilt buzzes in my ear when I hear these stories, and it reminds me that I need to do better next time – and that, sadly, there is likely to be a next time.

What are my words worth?

I haven’t posted here in a while. I’ve written, but I haven’t shared much, and the reasons why have a lot to do with Impostor Syndrome.

I am very good at convincing myself that everyone else knows what I know. This line of (faulty) reasoning leads me to believe I have nothing new to contribute. Though I often encounter evidence to the contrary, it is a habit of thinking I tend to fall into.

Recently, some colleagues and I got talking on the topic of classroom ‘tricks’ for things like getting student to do assigned reading and encouraging participation in class. I mentioned some things I’ve tried and things I’ve considered trying but haven’t tested yet. My colleagues weren’t familiar with these ideas. They asked for more details, and I was happy to share what I knew, but I was also surprised: how could I, the “newbie,” know things they didn’t? They have more experience than I, surely I should be learning from them?

I recognize, of course, that my colleagues and I have had different experiences. My students teach me new things all the time, and I think nothing of it. But then, although I am often surprised by my greater knowledge than someone else, I’m rarely surprised by my comparative ignorance. This realization bothers me.

If someone offers me help, I am grateful, but if I provide help to others, de nada. It’s nothing. Somehow, I am in the habit of sabotaging myself: I undervalue my own knowledge, expertise and efforts, as if my thoughts, opinions, and ideas are somehow less worthy than those of the people I encounter, so I’d better keep them to myself so nobody else can know how inferior I am.

This is not a productive line of thinking.

So. A new resolution of sorts. I am going to keep posting here. Maybe you, dear reader, already know everything I will say. But maybe you don’t, and I have the pleasure of sharing these things I have learned with you. And maybe I will learn to keep sharing and stop measuring myself against the giants I see and imagine around me.

Convincing myself of my competence

My shiny new tenure-stream job terrifies me. Just thinking about it gives me a creeping case of Impostor Syndrome. This fall I will teach a course I've never taught before, and I'll be a PI for the first time. The fraidy-cat part of me insists that I can't do it because I've never done it. When I can separate myself from my anxiety, it looks like a classic case of cognitive dissonance: I insist my students can learn to do new and difficult things, but somehow I feel incapable of doing the same.

Last night a tornado siren pulled me from sleep. When the warning cleared, I stared at the ceiling arguing with myself, unafraid of the passing storm, but frightened of the future.

There's so much I need to do! I don't know how to do any of it!

You can ask. You can learn. You don't have to do everything at once and you don't have to do it on your own.

I'm not really an analytical chemist. I'm in way over my head. I don't know what to teach.

You told them you could teach analytical because you have experience with analytical methods, and that will be enough. You can use your experiences to show students how analytical and the other chemistry disciplines are interrelated. There are plenty of resources for teaching ideas; you don't have to make it all from scratch. Follow the textbook to start. Check out the syllabus they've already used. Go through your old class notes and see what's worth keeping, skipping or rearranging. Ask for suggestions. It's just like the first time you taught any other course.

But I don't know how to run the instrumentation lab.

You know how to run instruments, you know how to scrounge up manuals, and nearly every instrument has some expert out there who can answer your questions. You've done that part before in every previous lab; it's no different when you're the one in charge. Besides, even if you were an expert at using every type of instrument, your colleagues would still know more about the specific models in the lab than you.

But what if I break something? What if I don't know how to use an instrument? What if I make a mistake? They'll find out I'm a fraud.

If you break something, you'll get it fixed. If you don't know how, you can learn. You're always telling your students that it's okay to make mistakes because you can learn from them; set a good example. You're not a fraud, you're a newbie. Nobody knows everything, nobody is perfect, and it's silly to pretend otherwise.

What if I can't get published or funded?

Rejection is more likely than acceptance. It's normal. You'll just have to keep trying. And revising. And asking for feedback.

What if I don't get tenure?

Then you'll have had an awesome post-doc and you'll go find another job. It's not the end of the world.

But I'm really not good enough at any of this to do a decent job.

Your new colleagues think you're qualified. Your reference-letter writers think you're qualified. The administration at your previous position thinks you're qualified. Your chemistry friends think you're qualified. In short, people whose professional opinions you respect think you're qualified. There is no sensible reason to reject the evidence that you might, in fact, be qualified to do this job.

Okay, self. Thanks for the pep-talk.

Some thoughts about crying

Reset your "days since a sexism-in-science incident" counters to zero. A Nobel laureate dug himself a pretty deep and boggy hole when, among other things, he explained why he thought men and women shouldn't be in labs together. Apparently, the womenz are just too irresistible and men "fall in love with them," but women also cry too much.

Much digital ink has already been spilled on the many things wrong with the speech, the speaker's behavior, the non-pology circus, and the pathetic and tone-deaf kinds of support he has received. I just want to focus on the part about crying.

I cry easily. When I'm excited, I tend to tear up. I cry during movies. I have cried in the lab, in my advisor's office, while presenting a group meeting, and, yes, at the end of my thesis defense. I don't recall anyone ever calling it unprofessional, but I do know that that message has been implied at times. Several people, at several points in my life, have told me to "get a thicker skin" so I wouldn't cry as often.

I have a few problems with that.

For one thing, not crying, for me, is like not sneezing. I can control it a little bit, but it's hard and sometimes painful, and I often end up with my eyes watering anyway.

For another, you get a thicker skin by developing callouses, and you get callouses from repeated, sustained exposure to something abrasive or otherwise painful. No thank you, I don't want to become calloused. I don't want to expose myself to painful and abrasive things any more than necessary.

I want to be a person who feels.

One year on

This time last year, I was a newly-minted PhD, still revising my dissertation. I had just accepted my job at Briggs, and I was preparing for a conference, a vacation, and a new routine.

I don't remember much of my defense. My parents came to see it, even though it was a Wednesday afternoon and a 10-hour drive from their home. I was sleep-deprived and panicky. I couldn't remember the order of my slides, even though I'd given many variations of that same talk all the way through grad school. When I finished my talk, I cried.

My defense wasn't advertised beyond a poster on the seminar board alongside a dozen other defenses scheduled for the same week. Besides my committee and labmates, almost no one came. I'd been a bit disappointed about this when I started, but that turned to relief and gratitude when I was dabbing my eyes and pulling myself together most of an hour later.

I don't remember what questions the audience asked, and only one of the questions from my committee afterward. One committee member asked for a set of values in a tone of voice that, to me, implied I hadn't done my due diligence. Seeing as that value was highlighted in a table, sleep-deprived me lost patience and told said committee member to read the dissertation. I think I said something like "you'll find that on page 47 in table 2.3," but my internal dialogue was closer to "you obviously didn't bother to read my dissertation," so it's entirely possible that I said something else.

We celebrated in a conference room around the corner from my lab office. My labmates made me a goofy paper hat decorated with pictures of things they associated with me. It was very sweet of them, and moreso because it was a surprise. The hat is now a lab tradition, and I hope it continues. I am Graduate #1. I got to see the start of a lot of lab traditions.

I turned in my dissertation a month later, and continued to work in the lab, wrapping up projects and working on a collaboration up until I left for the conference (and subsequent vacation) in Europe. When I got back, everything was different.

I started at Lyman Briggs College in August.¹ It was a new job at a new place, with new colleagues and new students, and I had to learn everything. Where is the copier? What are the college policies? Who do I ask for X or Y? Where to I park my car? What order will we cover the course material in? How deep do we dive into each chapter? How does the course website work? What resources are available? And on and on and on. An overwhelming amount of newness in my environment and also in what was expected of me.

It took me most of the fall semester to get used to being a professor. Some aspects, like delivering lectures, holding office hours, and making copies were familiar. But others -- being the authority the learning assistants turned to, handling grade disputes, offering feedback to colleagues with much more experience than myself -- took a big shift in mindset.

I have learned a lot in the past year. No longer a student, but an instructor, still I continue to grow and learn. Last year, I'd made and given a small handful of lectures. One year on, I've not just delivered 120 lectures to hundreds of students, I've also kept up the routine. When you're a grad student interviewing for a job, you can refine a teaching demo over the course of a week or more. When you're teaching, one awesome talk on Monday is not enough. You've got to be ready for class on Wednesday and Friday as well.

Academia is a flexible place to work. I can grade in my office or at home. I can decide to eat lunch with a friend near home, rather than spending a day on campus. Inspirations for lecture and practice problems can come form anywhere. But academia is also a rigid place to work. When I have a lecture, I must be there. I can't reschedule it. One hundred twenty-five students will be there, whether I am or not. One year on, I'm still getting the hang of this combination of rigidly structured and fully unstructured time.

When I started at Briggs, few people had seriously called me "Dr. Haas." It took a while to get used to; not just the title change (thought it was a much faster transition than when I changed my name after marriage), but the notion that I was a doctor of some sort. I couldn't tell my students to go ask their professor -- that professor was me!

I'd look at Facebook and see friends from high school, college and my time as an exchange student, and I'd see the great things they'd done, places they'd gone, children they'd had, careers they'd built, and I'd think "What have I done with my life?" And then my husband would point out that none of the people in question had doctorates in chemistry, that I'd spent five years in pursuit of that degree, and that I should very much give myself a break.

You see, despite five years of graduate school and all it entailed, it was (and sometimes still is) easy to forget I'd actually gotten a PhD. It's my own flavor of Impostor Syndrome, I guess. That nagging feeling that there'd been some mistake. That I wasn't really good enough for a PhD from a highly ranked university. That they gave me a PhD to get rid of me because they pitied me, but I'd gotten too far for them to kick me out.

One year on, I answer to "Dr. Haas," "Doc," "Professor," and occassionally "Prof Haas" without blinking. I've stopped feeling like the mail room is off-limits, or like I'm a child in an adults-only space. I am less surprised when a colleague asks for my input or feedback.

When I started I feared for the way I'd measure up to stereotypes. I dressed up a little; I wore khakis and slacks. I addressed emails to students more formally than my usual style. I checked and double-checked my work for errors so my students wouldn't see me fail.

One year on, I'm in skirts every Friday. It started as "Formal Fridays" in my mind, but soon became "Fearless Fridays" when I discovered that dressing like myself gave me a confidence boost. I can tackle so much more in my dress boots and a skirt than in my fall semester "uniform."

One year on, I still make mistakes. Having yet to achieve apotheosis, I expect the mistakes will continue. ;-) But I'm learning. I make new and different mistakes, and my ability to make corrections -- and let the students and learning assistants correct me -- can be evidence to my students that you don't have to be right all the time. When it comes to dealing with students, I've relaxed.

Last year my colleagues were strangers. My freshmen hadn't yet graduated high school. I had a plan for only one year. One year on, my colleagues are mentors and friends, my students have settled into college life, and my one-year job is at an end.

It has been a real delight to work at Briggs with such wonderful, supportive, creative faculty (and staff!) and highly motivated students. The students may not all love chemistry, but they do see the value in it. They challenge me and surprise me. They are funny and insightful and earnest. They bring me so much joy. I am sad to go.

But I won't be sad forever. This spring I accepted a tenure-stream position at Misericorida University. I have new colleagues, new students and a new plan. I'm thrilled, even as I start to take farewell of Briggs and MSU. I have more to learn, more ways to grow, and another good place to do it.

So here's to another year. Wish me luck.

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1: Lyman Briggs College (aka Briggs) is a residential science college at Michigan State University: all of the students are science majors of one sort or another. In addition to taking intensive, group-focused introductory science and math courses together, the students also take courses on the history, philosophy and sociology (aka HPS) of science. It's a pretty cool place to work, and I'd have loved it as a student there.