The challenges of being officeless

As someone who is still kind of drifting as an under-employed (but not unemployed!) PhD, I really, really miss having an office. There are two distinct but related problems to not having an office in my circumstances. Problem 1: working. Problem 2: pumping.

I am the kind of person who enjoys working away from home because it helps keep me focused on work. There are too many distractions at home-- even before Adele was born! I did write quite a bit of my dissertation in our guest bed in the final stretch last year, but even that was mostly on the evenings and weekends, or when I really needed to avoid people at the office. I still spent most weekdays at the office. In the fall I spent less time at my office because I was trying to work more at home because of Adele. It was easier to work with her around when she was less mobile. Even when Jon is watching her, it's hard for me to not be distracted by her if I work at home.

I've never been much of a coffee shop worker myself, but I have to say that I've started to appreciate the appeal now as a parent. Somewhere I can go for a time out of the house is great! But I need more than just a couple of hours here and there to focus on the big stuff.

So why don't I just hole up somewhere for the entire day? This brings me to the pumping. Last time I checked, Starbucks didn't have a lactation room. If I'm gone more than a few hours, I have to pump. I need an outlet somewhere private that isn't a bathroom. Ideally I need access to a sink, too. I have to bring the pump with me while I'm working, and without an office, I need to bring my computer with me while I pump. It's all very cumbersome and annoying.

In order to be out of the house all day and work, I have been researching the lactation rooms at local institutions (thank you for putting info about your lactation rooms online!) and strategizing where I can sit and work in that same building in between pumping. This hasn't been very easy. The places I've found to work aren't very quiet. Or I can't get online as a guest at the institution.

As a graduate student, I was really lucky and mostly had an office to myself. I technically shared it, but with people who never really used it. This meant that I could almost always pump there uninterrupted. It was wonderfully convenient! I just left my pump there and carried a little cooler back and forth with the milk.

Today I went to a seminar at a place I might as well call Hometown U. HU has designated lactation rooms which I've used before, but they are not in or near the seminar building. I decided I wouldn't bother trying to work there and leave the pump at home because of the hassle.

While at the seminar, I remembered that a postdoc had mentioned when I was there last week that she had a baby. Today, I asked how old her baby was (1 month younger than Adele!). I asked if she was pumping. (yes!). I asked where. She took me straight across the hall to an unused lab space of a new faculty member who was letting her pump there. She had her pump all set up. Then she took me to the kind and understanding faculty member whose lab space it was, and he promptly gave me a key to the room. All I had to do was ask the right person! Now I have a space where I can work and pump on days when I'm at HU.

A desk in a secure room and a private place to pump might just help bridge this gap and keep me in science.

Intimidating applications

I have an extreme K-selection strategy when it comes to applying for jobs-- I only select the jobs that I feel I have a fighting chance at, and I put a lot of time into my applications. I am realizing now that I have an easier time writing a cover letter and feel like less of an impostor when the job description is more specific. The positions hiring a postdoc that does "some kind of related research" are much more difficult for me than those with a clear description of the intended project. When its open-ended, I spend a long time researching the lab group and their publications, scrutinizing the collaborators, and generally feeling inadequate (like here and here).

A position was recently advertised near Jon's Hometown, which is where we would move anyways if I don't find a job by Christmas. The PI is someone who I intended to contact about postdoc opportunities; I learned of his research last year at ESA when I met his graduate student. It would be fabulous to work there and he is doing exciting research. But the more I read, the more worried I am about articulating the fit with my research. Are my questions big enough? I look at the coauthors on his pubs and there are tons of well-known biologists (mostly men). Am I good enough? Can I cut it?

Argh. This application is important and I need to be convincing. But first I have to convince myself.

Missing out

Right now there's a buzz about the twittersphere if you follow science-writer types because Science Online 2013 is happening. I tried to register, but alas, I didn't get a spot. It's probably just as well, considering that I have so much left to do on my dissertation, but it sure would have been fun!

But what I'm really bummed about is that there are at least three amazing workshops that I'd love to attend this summer that would be very helpful for my career. This summer. When I'll be breastfeeding a tiny infant. I'm pretty sure I'd try to go if I wasn't the food.

Oh well. Maybe another year.

Not old or male

Someone asked me to contribute to a popular writing piece "in the interests of more gender equity." They needed someone who wasn't an old, white man. I'm white, but not old or male. FemaleScienceProfessor recently wrote about this phenomenon, "Because I'm a woman." I almost titled this post the exact same thing. Considering how my research focus shifted away from the particular topic of interest, I probably wan't an obvious choice for this except that they didn't want to have too many photos of grey-haired dudes. I'm ok with that. I think my contribution will be just as good as the others. But I definitely was surprised when the person went on to elaborate about how they had only one woman other than me. I thought there were more of us around than that?

Babies in academia

Discussions of work/life balance, timing your procreation, and parenthood are common and recurring themes in the science blogosphere. My advisor happens to be extremely supportive of his grad students (men and women alike) having kids during grad school. Herb would argue that best time is during grad school. He even went so far as to boast to the new cohort of grad students that he has the "most fertile lab in the department" since some abnormally high percentage of his previous and current students have had one or more babies during their grad student tenure. His general rule of thumb, having watched many of his grad students have kids, is that each baby adds about a year to your Ph.D. My office mate took about 7 or 8 years to finish but had two kids during that time so that puts her right on track in terms of her progress.

You might think that Herb had his child while in grad school. Quite the contrary. At the celebration dinner after my office mate's defense, Herb mentioned in conversation that he took his son to museums 4 days per week when he was a toddler/preschooler so that his wife could get her science done. Confused at how this was possible, I asked for clarification how he spent four weekdays at a museum all day entertaining his son. His response? He was already a full professor so he had the flexibility. He was a full professor when his son was born- he was no spring chicken. For those of you who are less familiar with the traditional ranks of academia, a person typically does not become a full professor until after they have completed their Ph.D., typically had a postdoc (~1-4 years), landed a tenue-track position as an Assistant Professor (5-6 years), gotten tenure and become an Associate Professor (probably at least 5 years), and then finally made the (typically) last leap in rank to become a Professor. That's minimally about 11 years after completing your Ph.D. Assuming one starts a Ph.D. at age 23 (young) and finishes at age 28 (fast), then you would be at least 39 before you become full professor. What this boils down to is that most women would be in less-than-ideal circumstances to start having kids when they are a full professor. My advisor had the flexibility in his schedule (and the reduction in pressure) that comes with the job/financial security of a full professorship. Interesting, no?

What's in a name?

Apparently, a lot. Check out this article about what changing the writer's name meant for business. I think this is fascinating.

Thanks to FSP for mentioning it last week.

inapropriately addressed

I just got an email that went something like this:

Dear Sirs,

We are writing this email on behalf of Professional Society Outside of My Discipline to invite posters and presentations at our upcoming annual meeting. Could you please forward the following information to the students, post-doc fellows and researchers in your department/program?

Sincerely,
Student Chapter Committee, PSOMD
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dear Colleagues,

[Relevant conference information]

Sincerely,
PSOMD Conference Committee

This is disturbing for a few reasons.

1. The first part of the email assumes that all recipients of this email are men.
2. The first part of the email is from the STUDENT committee! The non-student committee used the more appropriate and gender-neutral term "colleagues." Aren't the students supposed to be the ones challenging the status quo?!
3. I am sad for the women in this particular field who have to deal with such asinine assumptions.
   

In a less offensive incident of mistakenly addressed correspondence, I am still receiving letters from my IACUC regarding my animal care protocol addressed to "Dr. Anirak." I suppose the title "Dr." is a safe assumption since not many grad students here are PIs on their own protocols.

mental gender bias

Last week in class a grad student was leading discussion about a paper with three authors. While summarizing the paper, the student repeatedly referred to the authors as "he." Two of the three authors had traditionally female names (first and third, in case you were wondering). Some of the women in the room, myself included, started saying "she" when he repeatedly said "he," but quietly. We did this a few times, and when he finally noticed and paused we said, "Two of the three authors are women, but you keep saying 'he.'" I suggested he say "they" instead since it was more appropriate anyways. He admitted that he said "he" because that was what he thought while reading the paper to prepare for discussion. The student said "they" a few times and then reverted back to "he" for the rest of the discussion (being corrected a few times).

We discussed a second paper, but the gender of the author was unknown, since there were only initials. I suggested lightheartedly that he just assume it was a woman and say "she" (in part to make up for all of the misplaced "he's" in the earlier discussion). He quickly fell back into "he found this" and "he did that."

The scene was never tense, and the student leading discussion laughed at himself for his false assumption, but it makes me sad that the assumption that the author(s) was male was so stuck in his mind.

in case you were wondering...

...this is what a scientist looks like.

I won this t-shirt from a drawing of ScienceWomen readers who donated to the DonorsChoose challenge that I supported in October. Thank you to ScienceWomen and YellowIbis for this awesome t-shirt!

Ambition

Yesterday evening I was chatting in the hallway with two guys from my program. The architecture of our building is such that I don't usually cross paths with grad students from other labs so I don't talk to these guys much outside of classes. Anyways, we were talking about our different research plans for this summer, the job market, food prices, and complaining about various things (these two guys like to complain a lot in a jovial sort of way). They asked about my plans for this summer and I regaled them with tales of the various hoops I'm jumping through, blah blah blah. Then one said, "So why are you going to Nyota instead of Neotropical Field Site where Herb works? Wouldn't that be easier?"

Regular readers will recall that I did a long post about this in January when I was trying to figure out where to go. But this post isn't really about my reasons- it's about how I replied to that question and why my response is bugging me.

The first thing I thought to say to the question was that I have a better opportunity to make a name for myself at Nyota. There are many people working with critters in the Neotropics, but there's only a handful of people working with them in Africa. I said I'd be more able to establish myself as an expert in the field. Then I also mentioned that I also really wanted to go for reasons I couldn't quite explain, and I told them about my conversation with Leo when he said, "You really shouldn't underestimate the value of your heart in making a decision like this." Plus Nyota's a great place to study what I want to study, Sam thinks my project is a great one, yada yada scientific reasons.

Afterwards, I thought, Why was the first thing I mentioned that I wanted to "make a name for myself"? I must sound too ambitious, and that's not the main reason anyways. Now I'm totally hung up on the idea that I think I might have sounded "too ambitious" to my (male) peers, and even moreso I'm contemplating why I'm still thinking about this conversation that they've probably forgotten. Considering that my goal is to teach at a small liberal arts college where I'll be doing more teaching than research, it doesn't make sense that my first response would be related to prestige in research. On the other hand, maybe I subconsciously felt like I had to say something like that for them to respect my justification. Still further, if one of my goals is to become a respected expert in my field, why should I be ashamed to articulate that? Even before the conversation changed focus yesterday, I thought, I should also explain to them that teaching is important to me too so that I don't look like a fame-seeker. This is totally whack, since I really shouldn't feel the need to backpedal or justify ambitious research plans.

Somehow, this antiquated idea that women shouldn't be "too ambitious" is still down there somewhere inside me, and I want to get it out.