Priorities: finishing or getting a job?

Applying for jobs is a lot of work. A few weeks ago I decided that I was more worried about finishing than I was about not having a job by August, and I don't feel like I can both finish and apply for lots of jobs. I've applied for one job, and I'm not planning to apply for anything else unless it seems like a great fit because staying here a little longer didn't seem like a bad idea.

What's my backup plan? I figured that I could spend the rest of 2013 in Big City and teach here. Jon can keep doing what he's been doing, and I could maybe be a TA in our department (people have done that after finishing).

Slowly but surely, holes are being poked in my backup plan. First of all, Herb told me that the average completion time in our department is so high now that not everyone will be able to get a TA position. This has basically never happened-- they always bring in extra students from other departments to TA the classes. This makes it less likely that I could be a TA in the fall. I'd probably have to teach instead at a smaller institution in the area (I suspect it would be more work for similar pay, though it would give me valuable "real" teaching experience).

Then I started worrying that I might not get my August check if I officially graduate before payday. I talked to a staff member about this and she doesn't think it will be a problem, but I don't trust her opinion 100%. I'll get a second opinion on this.

But then there's health insurance. If I finish in the summer, my coverage only goes until mid-August. I thought I could use COBRA to extend it if we stay in the area. My student health coverage is great, but it turns out it's not technically insurance, which means that I can't use COBRA- I'd have to be enrolled as a student. Our baby is going to be on that plan for the summer, but then if I don't have a job by mid-August we'll have to find something else. Jon has super high deductible insurance since he has no options from his employers. I suppose that's what the baby and I will do, too, as a temporary measure. What a pain in the ass. Can we please get our heads out of the sand as a country and offer single-payer, universal health care?

With the incentives in all the wrong places (e.g. graduation= losing affordable health care), it could turn out that my best option is to not turn in my dissertation until September and stay on as a student TA. Hopefully not.

Defense scheduled!

I had a committee meeting last week, and it was the most drama-free meeting since my prelims (e.g. last meeting). It turned out that Chip couldn't make it, but everyone else was there. I presented on the progress of all four unfinished chapters (one done = 5 chapters) and tried to be clear that I have a lot of work do to but I really want to finish. No one told me I couldn't defend in April, so we've set a date and time. I have a deadline. Tuesday, April 23, at noon.

Trying not to hate a chapter

I need to get in a better mental space about chapter 2. This is the first time in months that I've felt like crying about research. I could write a whole lot more about why I'm feeling so crappy, but I don't think it would make me feel any better about it.

I'm pregnant!

I had a hard time deciding what to title this post, so eventually I decided to just make it clear rather than clever. Jon and I are expecting a baby in late May or early June!

I've written before about how Herb is extremely supportive of his grad students having kids in grad school. I figured out a few years ago that my student health insurance covers maternity 100%. I've got my fellowship until August. It just seemed like a good time to go for it, so we did, and it worked. Apparently all of those years of birth control were money well spent!

I told my committee I'm pregnant- almost all of them in person. Herb said it had been a while since there was a baby in the lab and I was doing my part to keep up the lab fecundity. Sam said he thought I might be. Chip gave me a high five. Melody said, "Congrats- how far along are you?" Leo said, "Well-timed."

Boy am I motivated to finish- and now my committee knows the extra reason why! My defense is probably going to be April 23 or 24, and the baby is due May 31. Technically I'll finish in the summer term because that's when I'll submit my dissertation to the university. Do you think a baby counts as an external deadline? Or about as internal as deadlines get?

Defense week

In between December 2012 and August 2013, there is one week when I can defend because Herb is going on sabbatical. One. April 22-26.

It's 23 weeks away. Oh goodness me. I have a deadline.

Accepted! Finally!

After 3 years of writing, revising, adding data, refining, and rewriting, the so-called "short note" has been accepted! By my calculations now, I've put more than 330 hours into this project over the last 3 years (a year ago my count was 263). It has been at this same journal since last Christmas. This is my first dissertation chapter.

There is one caveat- the editor thinks it could be trimmed somewhat. The subject editor made no requests and the editor offered no specific comments or even a ballpark number of words to trim. Has anyone else had this happen? "Accepted, but please make it a little shorter?"

So it's almost there. Really almost there. Hopefully I only have a few more hours of work on this, ever.

I really need my other chapters to go more quickly than this one!

Old connections

Waaaaaay back at the beginning of my PhD, on my first scouting trip to Ukenzagapia 4.5 years ago, I met another PhD student I called John (not to be confused with my husband Jon). I wrote about meeting him at a restaurant and then staying at the field station where he did his research. That was the only time we ever saw each other, but we kept in touch occasionally over email for a while since we were studying similar things in similar places. I hadn't heard from him in nearly 3 years. Recently, I got an email from him because he saw my name on the paper that just got published. It turns out that he now has a job in conservation that he loves- in Jon's Hometown. I've mentioned before that we'd like to move there, and he tipped me off to an opportunity that I'm definitely going to apply for. It's exciting when networking works!

Mixed meeting

Today I had a brief meeting with Herb in which we talked about two very important things: Sam's role in my dissertation, and my chapters. The first one went great, the second one? Not what I was hoping for.

For nearly two years, Sam and I have acknowledged among us that he is the one actually advising me. He's at a different institution, so he can't be my committee chair. He said he felt like he should officially be listed as a co-adviser, which prompted this post. At that time, he thought he should be the one to bring it up with Herb. Later, he said why don't I bring it up with Herb, and I said I thought you thought you should do it. Then for several months now, whenever he's seen Herb, he's said he didn't want to bring it up because Herb had so much else going on. So the conversation didn't happen.

Last week I asked Sam about it, because this should be resolved well before my defense. This time Sam was of the opinion again that I should be the one to ask Herb about Sam being listed a co-advisor. Cool. I could have done this ages ago.

With the go-ahead from Sam, today I finally brought it up with Herb. As I suspected, he doesn't care at all. He's not sure there's an official mechanism for co-advising, but he's fine to have Sam listed as co-advisor. Great! Resolved. Sam is my co-advisor.

The next important issue is about my dissertation chapters. You see, I have too many projects. Six. I have six dissertationable projects. Some people in my department have four chapters. Most have five. I proposed to Herb that my five chapters should be my five best projects and I save the other one for a rainy day. The problem is that Herb is of the opinion (which is well-supported by evidence from his students) that what isn't submitted or nearly ready to submit when you leave UBC will probably never see the light of day again. Therefore, he suggested that the 6th project be included as an appendix with the data and analysis of the data. Argh. That's basically going to amount to a crude 6th chapter. I didn't know how to argue otherwise.

I suppose we'll see what the rest of my committee thinks, but it sounds like I should dust off that 6th project and at least think about it before I get my committee together (I hope it's easier than last time).

So. many. projects.

After the frustration with the student I wasn't doing a very good job of supervising, Jon asked if I have a list of all of the projects I'm involved in. He suggested that I list everything and regularly review the status of each project. I thought about doing something more complicated than that at the beginning of the summer using some kind of goal tracking software, but I never found the right thing for me. So, now I've got an uncomplicated list of all of my projects and major sub-projects in Google Docs. This includes some outreach and side-projects (things that aren't part of my dissertation). Each week (or so), I look at each project and record the status (e.g. waiting for someone else, what I have to do, etc) and then I color code it based on whether or not it is something I need to be working on this week.

If you include job hunting as a project, I have 13 projects. Thirteen! Thankfully, two of them just finished since I first made the list. That brings it down to 11. Five more are waiting for other things to happen or are otherwise on the back burner. That means there's 6 projects that I need to do at least something for this week, even if it just means emailing someone else to ask what's up on their end.

Three of those 6 projects are dissertation chapters. I have to finish my dissertation.

Student help or DIY?

I'm in the awkward situation this fall of long-distance supervising/mentoring a student who is doing some work for me. I haven't met her in person, only via Skype. Sam connected us and is technically (but only technically) in charge, as he's the one giving the grade. Now she's emailing him because she's concerned about being able to finish everything this term, he doesn't really know what's going on (though he and I talked about it 2 weeks ago), and I am trying to figure out how to get the best outcome for her and for me.

I admit kind of messed up, because I wasn't checking her work as closely and as critically as I should have at the beginning (even after blogging about checking other students' work...ugh). This was exacerbated since I never see her in person. Basically she took a bunch of photos that are worthless, and they are going to have to be re-done (but probably not by her). On the one hand, I should have looked more closely, but on the other hand, she should be able to assess the quality of a photo, too. It turns out that her setup (which I of course have not seen in person) is less than adequate, so now things have been hung up while she waits for better equipment that I am having shipped to her. And now I might be sending her to buy more stuff at Target just so she can keep working since the other crap hasn't arrived from China.

Part of me feels like I should have never outsourced this project and just done it myself. On the other hand, it's relatively low priority and relatively low stakes, so I suppose it's better I re-learn this lesson now than later. I think this is the last time I'll try to long-distance supervise a project like this. I also need to make a mental note that I need to spend A. LOT. of my time (like, maybe all of it) closely training and supervising students at the beginning of a project.

(This reminds me that Psychgirl wrote a post about how she feels like it would be easier to do research herself because students take forever to pay off.)

In press, almost accepted, and flat out rejected

I've got three manuscripts in various stages of publication right now. One is in press for real this time (I've seen the proofs and found a zillion little typos- very annoying). One is nearly accepted. Sam and I are working on the last revisions, after which it should be accepted. The other one... oh my.

The third one was first rejected without review in the spring, then we revised, aimed high, and resubmitted. We got the reviews back a few weeks ago and they were pretty dismal. They didn't even really give us much that we could improve. My sense is that it's now or never for this particular piece, and I'm not sure exactly where it belongs. My amazing coauthor, in a fit of impending maternity leave madness, turned it around in an afternoon and resubmitted to a different, somewhat obscure journal. So that's back in review. We'll see what happens.

In search of an old post

I have a vague recollection of reading a post a while back (2 years ago? 3 years?) about women in science putting the brakes on their careers for impending motherhood years in advance. I recall the advice being something like, "Go do your awesome science all-out, don't put the brakes on before you've even started, and it won't matter when you take maternity leave because your science will be so badass that they won't doubt your ability to keep it up." Obviously I'm paraphrasing here and I might have gotten part of the message wrong, but is this ringing a bell for anyone else? Was it a post by Isis? I've been searching her blog but I can't find what I'm looking for. Where did I read this???

How to level the playing field for women in science?

I decided to take a class this semester on women in science. We've been reading and discussing articles about different challenges that women face. Next week I'm supposed to present on possible solutions, and I'd love to hear ideas and suggestions from my readers. I'm particularly concerned with what happens to women in science during and after graduate school.

I'll briefly summarize some of the issues we've discussed and the research behind them.

All qualifications being equal on paper, female college graduates (intending to go on to grad school in science) are perceived to be less competent than identical male college grads (Science faculty's subtle gender biases favor male students). Many excellent bloggers have written extensively about this new research (here, here, and here for starters). It is important to note that both men and women who were evaluating qualifications rated men more competent than identical women.

A similar gender bias exists in single-blind peer review (Double-blind review favours increased representation of female authors). This suggests that double-blind peer review reduces unintentional gender bias that subtly discriminates against work by female authors.

In psychology, identical cv's with male or female names found lower rates of hire (at the assistant professor level) and starting salaries for the female name (The impact of gender on the review of the curricula vitae of job applicants and tenure candidates: A national empirical study). 

The emerging story from experimentation is that based solely on their perceived gender, women are perceived to be less competent in science, less likely to get papers published, less likely to be hired, and offered lower starting salaries (pre- and post-PhD). These are issues that affect women regardless of their partnership or parenthood status.

Additionally, many researchers have gathered information from scientists at various career stages about other factors that influence metrics of success (salary, grants, publications, etc.) such as work-life balance and parenthood.

A survey of academics from various fields at different types of institutions from across the U.S. found that among partnered academics, women tend to have partners who work more hours than men (Balancing Parenthood and Academia: Work/Family Stress as Influenced by Gender and Tenure Status). Women are much more likely to have spouse who is employed more than 40 hours per week. They also found that women tend to do a larger share of childcare/housework, even when their spouse is also employed full-time. Very similar results were found in a survey of tropical ecologists by the Organization for Tropical Studies (Dramatic Improvements and Persistent Challenges for Women Ecologists). A good overview on this topic is The family life of academics: gendered priorities and institutional constraints.

Considering the present challenges, what ideas do you have for leveling the playing field for women, particularly in science and academia? What can be done to better accommodate caregiving responsibilities? Do you know of any institutions (e.g. universities/granting agencies) with exemplary policies?

I've heard suggestions (some of which are already enacted to various degrees) such as wider adoption of double-blind peer review (as mentioned above), allowing child care expenses in grant budgets, improving parental leave options (maternal AND paternal), and adjusting the tenure clock. I have to admit that I know little about  tenure clock policies, so I'd love to hear suggestions for readings on that topic.

I worry sometimes that discussion of women's issues focus heavily on parenthood, which can be narrow, presumptive, and alienating for women who cannot or choose not to have children. I'd also love to hear comments from readers outside the U.S. on the pros and cons of their policies affecting women in science in their countries, since my perspective is very U.S.-centric.

I'm purposely not being too specific in terms of solutions other people have suggested, but a 2009 report, Staying Competitive: Patching America’s Leaky Pipeline in the Sciences, offers many suggestions (especially regarding issues related to parenthood).

Note: I believe that all of the articles to which I linked can be found for free online, but not necessarily via the links I provided. If you can't find any of these, feel free to email me.

Networking win!

A couple of great things have come out networking at the conference last month. One of the things I did was organize a meetup for SFC alumni, and I found out that one of the recent grads who was there got a job offer from an older alum he met at the meetup!

I also received an email from an "ESA friend" (someone who I only know from the meeting) suggesting that we organize a session on our subdiscipline for next year's meeting. We had a brainstorming session via skype, and decided that we aren't going to propose anything this year after all (the deadline is very soon), but we will keep it in mind for 2014.

I love meeting other scientists. Good things happen when we get together!

Advisor fail?

We (the lab) just found out that Herb is going on sabbatical in the spring. That's really the kind of thing we should know more than a year in advance (I think he thinks he told us, but he didn't). Although I've written before about how Sam is functionally my advisor, Herb is still the chair of my committee. He's planning to spend spring and summer in other places (in the US and abroad), but hopefully we can work out a time for him to come back for my defense (and that of my lab mate). In a couple of months we should all have a better idea of what our schedules look like.