Themes for 2026

As someone who is chronically trying to do too much, I want to be more disciplined about what I do and don't do. After reflection, I've come up with three words that I think best capture my personal and professional aspirations for 2026. 

Recharge

First and foremost, I want to work less and vacation more this year after how much I worked in 2025. We have a big trip planned to celebrate my parents' 50th wedding anniversary next summer, and I really want to be able to relax during that time. We also want to go visit some family members who are on sabbatical in a fun place. 

In my normal non-vacation life, I want to keep dancing, going to therapy, and paying attention to and making time for the things that fill me up.

Simplify

I need to ask myself, Does this make my life simpler? and try to make as many decisions as possible that point clearly to Yes. If not, I should have a good justification for anything that doesn't make my life simpler. 

All the decluttering I want to do this year falls into this category. We're also financially secure enough that I should stop introducing complexity for relatively small savings (e.g. coupons and many rewards programs). If it costs a little more to simplify my life, so be it. I don't need to pinch pennies.

Clarity

This boils down to identifying and clearly communicating what I want. If I know what I want, then I can be much more effective. Clarity makes all other decisions easier. I need this both personally and professionally. 

Usually I also write some specific goals, hopes, or predictions for the year. I've organized many of those elsewhere for myself, but I'm going to keep it simple this year (see what I did there?) here on the blog. 

I'm looking forward to 2026, and hope that anyone reading will find what you're looking for this year. 

It's like The Moth but for science!

I must be so late to the game on this one, but I recently discovered The Story Collider podcast and I love it! People tell stories about science, and it's a lot of scientists telling the stories.

It has been around since 2010! What have I been doing with my life?!?! I anticipate a lot more Story Collider keeping my ears occupied in the future.

A decade of blogging

I started blogging 10 years ago, right before starting grad school. This blog chronicled 6.5 years of grad school (approximately 13,507 hours of work) and the 3.5 years since officially graduating. During that time, I lost 3 close family members, got married, spent over a year doing field work in Africa, got a dog, had a baby, moved to a new city, and had three different jobs as a PhD. This has been an eventful decade.

For the first few years, I blogged several times per month (or even several times per week). It was an opportunity for me to reflect on my experiences and practice writing. Looking back on many of my early posts in the writing of this, I am struck as much by the things that haven't changed as much as the things that have. I still love Small Friendly College just as much as in 2007 (and the post made me teary again). I see major parts my current self in these older writings. In some cases, I captured events that I see now had outsized importance in shaping my current career, like a workshop on science communication and an interdisciplinary project. There are threads and early hints of the ideas and concepts that are hugely important to my present work, which makes me feel like I'm in the right place now in my career.

In some ways, I don't think I've changed substantially, but I've learned so much about myself in the last 10 years. I've grown. I wrote in 2009 that I needed to be more of a badass. I most definitely am. My moments of greatest badass-ness are probably still finishing my dissertation before my daughter was born, then giving birth to her and going through (and recovering from) serious complications. To finish my dissertation, I toughed it out and kept my eye on the prize with intense focus to the exclusion of everything else non-essential. When recovering from childbirth, I refused to accept my limited mobility and searched and read until I found the right people and resources to help me heal. During grad school, and especially during field work, I became aware of my common mental traps and I'm much better at avoiding them now that I know the signs (like being indecisive). I am nothing if not resourceful, and as my personal networks and knowledge have grown, I have an ever-growing pool of ideas to draw upon. This last year in my new job has especially helped me realize and appreciate the breadth and depth of skills and networks I have, and given me many more ideas for how I can leverage them to do good and awesome things. I, too, can stand on the shoulders of giants—in life as well as in research.

My favorite genre of books is scientist memoirs (e.g. Richard Feynman), especially field biologists (e.g. Jane Goodall and Robert Sapolsky). I love reading about the adventures that happen in the pursuit of science. I love reading about how they live their science-y lives, what their families think, how they raised kids, what went wrong, and how they overcame adversity. Their stories have helped me imagine what my life could be. Blogs by scientists about their lives scratched a similar itch.

Blogging was also a community, and the other women in science bloggers were my mentors. I learned so much from them. I read blogs of more advanced students describing drama in their committees (I learned years later that managing your committee is a classic example of "managing up"). I read about postdocs applying for faculty positions. I read stories of scientists in all career stages struggling with chronic health issues, infertility, and difficult relationships. I was unquestionably better prepared to be a good graduate student and navigate the potential job market afterwards as a result of the science blog community. I'd like to throw some nonspecific thanks out into the universe to the dozens (hundreds?) of bloggers from whom I gleaned wisdom and advice. Thank you!

While blogging during grad school, I accidentally discovered the identities of a few bloggers I followed, and a few people discovered me (one person anonymously and mysteriously tried to "out" me). I made real life friends because of this blog, and it was a way to re-connect with a handful of trusted people that I invited to read it. A few of you are still reading. Thanks for following my sometimes vague and pseudonymized adventures!

I watched, always with sadness, when other bloggers decided to call it quits for one reason or another. More often, they didn't have closure and just stopped writing, or I just stopped reading. Probably kind of like this—I stopped writing so often. In part I blame the declining popularity of RSS and therefore the declining options for good feed readers. Somewhere along the migration from one feed reader to another, I lost track. It has been a long time since I regularly read other people's blogs, so my blogging is overwhelmingly an introspective exercise.

It would probably be fitting, after a decade of blogging as an "aspiring ecologist", to declare this the end. But I imagine I'll still want to blog occasionally, and I'm frankly not motivated enough to set up another blog, so I'll stick with what I've got. Those of you who are friends in real life know where to find me, and if you've been reading this for years and still don't know who I am but want to be friends in real life, drop me a note.

I'm excited about the next 10 years. I've got big ideas that have been simmering for a while now. With the right combination of preparation and luck (there's always luck), it could be awesome. Or, more likely, I'll end up doing something 10 years from now that I can't even imagine at present. Let's see where the next decade goes!

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.

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.)

And THAT'S why you always check the spam folder

I had an email from someone who saw my talk at the conference but it got flagged as spam and hidden in my spam folder for almost 2 weeks! I wrote this same person an email the other day (about how much I liked their talk) and had no idea they had already written to me. Now I have an excuse to email them again :-)

Check, check, check, check, and check again

My army of interns got a lot done this summer, but summaries of the data have shown me that we still have a lot of data cleaning to do. Ugh. I thought I was checking their work enough, but I should have been checking more often and more thoroughly. It's nothing irreparable- just a time-consuming pain.

On scientific posters

Last year I made a beautiful, awesome poster. This year, I have to figure out how to make a new, beautiful, awesome poster that looks different than the other one. The data were analyzed differently this year, but it didn't radically change our conclusions. I'm trying to make it look unique without spending too much time on it. It's kind of frustrating. I have to finish it this weekend.

Why am I presenting a very similar thing two years in a row? Because it's for two different audiences. This year I'm presenting it at a much more specific meeting where most people are working on related topics.

Speaking of posters, how do people feel about abstracts on posters? I have an opinion but I'd like to hear first what others think.

Missed opportunity

Herb's lab had a visiting scientist for many months. However, their spoken English was poor. I think it this situation, Herb should have insisted, as part of the arrangement, that the person also take intensive conversational English courses while here. The person was very bright and had great ideas, but their limited English hindered collaboration and even just regular lab meetings sometimes. It seems like a missed opportunity for Herb, the visiting scientist, and the lab.

*This person came with funding from their home country, so it was a situation with low financial investment for Herb.

Kids do and publish science

A class of 8-10 year old students in the UK designed an experiment to understand bumblebee vision. The paper was published in Biology Letters, and you can read an article about it, the paper itself, and more commentary on it for free.

The main scientist involved in the project, Beau Lotto from the University College London, has a webpage like I've never seen. This group is really, seriously sharing science in creative and novel ways (check out their Street Science and Flight of the bumblebee cubes). Kudos to them! What an inspiration!

The "Blackawton bees" project really sets a new bar for teaching science by doing science, and I expect we'll see more articles published by elementary and secondary school students in the near future. What do you think?

This week sucks

This week just hasn't gone very well so far.

On Sunday we had a brownout, meaning we had about half the electricity output that we normally have. My computer runs on that (thank goodness) but most other things don't, including my phone charger (isn't that strange that I can run my MacBook but I can't charge a cell phone battery?). The brownout wasn't so bad, but it meant I couldn't print and had to hand write some data sheets.
On Monday we still didn't have full power. One of my field assistants, B, had missed the one bus back to Nyota on Sunday afternoon and was stuck in the town trying to get a lift. So, it was just me and T, but we were supposed to visit 2 sites, and T was an hour late because he had some motorbike trouble. B never showed up. We only got one site done on Monday. (Thankfully, we did get full power back on Monday afternoon so I could print).

Tuesday was really the worst confluence of problems. We were supposed to do 2 sites to put us back on schedule, and we were picking up a fourth person (me, B, T, and the other guy). For your reading convenience, I am bulleting the sequence of events.

-B called and said he was back in Nyota but had motorbike trouble and needed to go to the mechanic and didn't know when he'd be finished.
-T showed up 20 minutes late, but couldn't start work yet because he had to pick up his son from the clinic (he has malaria), take him home, and then pick up the other guy.
-We changed the plan to go to one other site that was closer when I realized there was no way we'd finish 2 sites.
-I started walking the 5 km to the site because T had to carry other people and B was at the mechanic.
-I called B and told him to leave his motorbike with the mechanic, get a lift as far as he could, and then start walking to the site.
-T passed me going the other way on the road because when he went to pick up the other guy (2 hours late), he wasn't at his house because he started walking to where we were supposed to be that day. The other guy has no phone, so T takes off to go find him.
-I arrive at the site and wait around for while. I repeatedly call B to ask where he is.
-T gets to the other site, and the other guy left a note that he's headed home.
-I start working by myself.
-T still doesn't find the other guy, so picks up another other guy instead. They arrive FOUR HOURS after we were supposed to start working. They have to do something in a different place, so I continue working alone. Still no word from B.
-I work by myself for 3.5 hours until T and another other guy are able to help me finish.
-After I got home, I finally talked to B. He had gotten a lift part way to the site, but forgot his bag (with his phone in it) in the car...

Today we set out to do two sites again (to really get back on track). T and B were both 15-20 minutes late. B was only able to repair one of his two motorbike problems, and now T's motorbike had two broken spokes. This morning I had to decide what was better: getting on the motorbike with broken spokes or the motorbike with the faulty clutch plate. I went with the clutch plate. Whatever. It was fine. The crappy thing that happened today is that I lost my Rite in the Rain pen and we searched for about 15 minutes to no avail. I hate losing those because they are expensive and not easy to replace. I started using the fine tip on my double-ended sharpie. Then, right at the end of the day, I lost the damn little black cap. Once again, we searched (with four people) for 10 or 15 minutes without success. Guess what? We only got one site done.

Tomorrow we're supposed to visit 3 sites. Please send some good vibes my way!

Hello, Goodbye

This is the theme song of the day. New students are arriving, two lab members are leaving. It's bittersweet.

I'm spending the afternoon editing down a communication of research findings that is supposed to go to a lay audience but was 1300 words (2.5 pages). Short and to the point is what every communication workshop I've been to emphasizes. I've got it below 500 now. Almost there.

I had a hunch

One of my field assistants (T) is phenomenal in the field, but consistently shows up late, especially when he is coming back from "town." He has also been having money problems. I loaned him some money to buy a motorbike (as it is in my interest as well for him to have one), but I wasn't able to see the motorbike before I left Ukenzagapia.

Shortly after returning, I heard from Sam that my field assistant is being a real pain in the ass and demanding another loan from Dr. K. because I didn't loan him enough to buy the motorbike. My other field assistant has been giving reports to Sam and Dr. K about the situation, but I'm supposed to feign ignorance of all this drama when I talk to them on the phone. It's all terribly complicated and everything I hear is 3rd hand.

Anyways, I've been having a hunch since the last month or so at Nyota that T a second wife & kid(s) in "town," but it's not exactly the kind of thing I can confront him about. He already has a wife and 6 kids in Nyota, but has so much trouble getting back to Nyota on time that I just think something is up.

I mentioned my hunch to Sam the other day, and it turns out I was right. He does have another wife (I'm sure not legally- but she probably has a kid or two and so now it is his responsibility to support them as well, so she's basically his second wife). Of course Sam didn't want to tell me this, but he says he's impressed that I figured it out on my own because it shows that I am really beginning to understand the culture.

Unfortunately, T isn't showing up to work (at least that's what I'm hearing from Sam via Dr. K and my other assistant). He has to repay the loan by paycheck deduction, but that doesn't work if he's not getting paid because he's not working. What a mess. And apparently, he's blatantly lying to me about buying a motorbike. What in the world can I do from here?

Maybe I should've been a librarian

I've noticed this academic year that I really enjoy connecting people with the tools, tips, and tricks to help them do research, writing, and collaboration more efficiently. I love telling people about Papers and Mendeley, both programs for managing pdfs and notes associated with journal articles. I love explaining why everyone should use a reference manager like Zotero or EndNote (or others) to cite-while-you-write and make bibliographies. I love showing people how to use wikis to facilitate group writing projects. I love sitting around and trading Mac tips and program suggestions. I love helping other grad students design their own web pages. It strikes me that these are the types of things academic librarians do these days (or at least they should).

As a result of my undergraduate experience, I greatly appreciate well-run libraries and the librarians that make them work. I received library education in several different classes, where students learned how to use the different resources available to them such as web design programs and scholarly databases. I recall that the SFC library is well-respected (albeit small, since the school is too), but I didn't appreciate what a good library was until I graduated. After graduation, Jon and I lived in a town with a public library that must have had one of the worst online catalogs in the country. Seriously, I have no idea how it could be so bad. But I digress...

I have been tossing around thoughts on some of the queries I made for myself back in November. So far the only blogworthy thing that has come out of it is my enjoyment of connecting people with research tools. I don't really know what to make of that in terms of my career choices now, but maybe I should have considered being a librarian.

2009 in review

I've always enjoyed sitting down at the end of a calendar year and reflecting on what the passing year brought and what the new year may bring. This has been an unforgettable year.

The trend of events in 2009 was very similar to 2008- the beginning of the year brought tragedies but then many wonderful things happened. I am thankful that there have been many uplifting events this year to thwart despair. If I had to pick a theme for 2009, it would be self-context. I didn't go into 2009 expecting to find new revelations about my work habits and hurdles in the field, nor could I have possibly imagined the tremendous losses in my family and my personal struggles accompanying their deaths. I have been seeing a great therapist this fall to help me unravel the interconnected themes of sisterhood, family, death, regret, religion, self-esteem, loss, health, and communication. I have come to see my strengths and weaknesses in a much deeper context of past experiences and family dynamics, and I think these realizations (and so many others) will help me overcome personal and professional challenges.

Here's a brief recap of 2009:
January- Jon and I went to Obama's inauguration and I prepared for prelims.
February- My grandmother passed away after a difficult surgery, followed immediately, independently, and unexpectedly by my younger sister's death the next day due to pulmonary thrombosis resulting from misdiagnosed blood clots. That pretty much says it all. February was the worst month of my life.
March- I passed my prelims!
April- I received the graduate research fellowship, and Jon and I got married!
May- I went to Ukenzagapia for my first real field season.
June- Jon came to visit me in Ukenzagapia.
August- I returned from Ukenzagapia.
October- I went to a conference, we visited family in Canada, saw tons of friends who came into town for my best friend's wedding, and went back to Small Friendly College.
November & December- Pretty uneventful but traveled a lot and saw lots of family at the holidays.

Since self-context wasn't exactly on my list of goals for 2009, I'd like to address some of the ones that were.

Academic goals:
1) Prelims!  DONE!
2) Finally publish the damn review paper. NOPE. Maybe 2010...
3) Collect and analyze data from my first field season. I got the 'collect' part done but not the analysis.

4) Get the friggin' NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. DONE! Thank God!
5) Continue to seek opportunities to communicate my research to non-scientists. Not really. I did a poor job of this in 2009. I need to think strategically about how to do this in 2010.


Even though I wasn't able to get that review sent out for publication or analyze my data, I am feeling pretty good about my progress. I didn't teach at all this year but did write letters of recommendation for a fantastic former student and it has been a joy to see her interest in research develop, even though it is an entirely different field of biology. I have a project underway in Ukenzagapia and several possibilities for doable projects in the field over the next two years. I submitted a big grant (still waiting to hear) and got a fellowship and two other small grants to fund my research. I am about one day of work away from submitting a short note based on observations from my first field season, which will be my first publication from grad school. I'm finished with all of the classes I have to take, and mostly finished with my interdisciplinary group project. Soon I'll return to Ukenzagapia for my next field season. Not bad.

Personal goals:
1) Exercise regularly and frequently. Could've been worse. I did well in the spring, burned a lot of calories in the field, but not this past fall. I can do better.

2) Contribute to my IRA. Pretty good. Not as much as I'd like, but we do contribute a fixed percent of Jon's income now now which I like.
3) Make monthly contributions to Small Friendly College and small monthly donations to public radio. DONE! This makes me happy.
4) Get some of the kids in our lives (cousins, nieces, nephews) to visit us in Big City. DONE! Hopefully we'll have more kid visitors in 2010.
5) Go dancing at least once per month. NOPE. Not even close.
6) Foster more discussion on this blog. Not really, but my readership has grown steadily (if slowly).

So much has happened in my personal life this year! Since I already mentioned the difficult things above, I'm not going to talk more about those here. 2009 was a fantastic year for seeing friends and family. According to our guest book, we had 51 different people stay at our apartment on at least 125 different nights (a month of that was while Jon was in Ukenzagapia), including two different grad students and a family of three who were subletters at different times. Not only did we get friends and family to come see us in Big City, we traveled a lot this year (especially for weddings- including our own). Married life for us has so far been very much like our unmarried life, which is to say that it's great :-)

I'm thankful that we didn't move this year. For the first time in 10 years, neither of us moved a significant portion of our belongings! That does mean that we have acquired a fair amount of stuff we don't need that we need to creatively rid ourselves of in January. When I'm actually in Big City, I have greatly enjoyed taking care of my houseplants, container gardening outside on our balcony, working in the community garden, cooking the fruits of my labor, entertaining friends and family, and deciding how to incorporate new art (like our marriage certificate) and furniture that Jon builds into our apartment. We love where we live and hope that we don't have to move again until we leave Big City when I finish my Ph.D.

I love blogging, and have found the blog to be a great way for me to process and share my life experiences. Thank you to all of my readers for sharing in it.

Happy New Year!

Those with whom you disagree

Earlier this semester we had an invited speaker who holds many opinions contrary to what most people in the department think. This is precisely the reason he was invited.

I furiously scribbled notes during his talk in an attempt to understand his worldview and how his arguments were constructed. I was also trying to figure out what the heck he was saying. It seemed to me that he mostly said disputatious things to get a rise out of people rather than clearly developing his position in a logical manner. He said some crazy things, such as, "Nothing useful has come from theoretical ecology." When people asked questions using clear examples beyond those he had given, he went off on tangents and didn't really answer their questions. I wonder if he could get away with saying the things he did if he weren't an old white dude with a long CV. I should perhaps note that he isn't a scientist, though he sure does write a lot about science.

Although I think a lot of garbage came out of his mouth, listening to him did force me to think more carefully about my own perspectives regarding approaches to research and its applications.

Elements of a good proposal

I recently heard someone describe the elements of good research proposal. It made such perfect sense that I couldn't believe I'd never heard it before. So, I'm sharing it here.

Proposal= background/context + research plan + effective communication

Without all three things, your proposal probably won't fare well.

The same person also outlined steps for developing a research plan.

1. Start with a compelling question.
2. Generate testable hypotheses.
3. Define your data needs to test the hypotheses.
4. Identify methods of collecting and analyzing those data.

Of course, it's not nearly as simple as that. In my limited experience, a lot of revisiting #1 and #2 happens when data will be too difficult to obtain. Back to the drawing board!

Challenges of managing a long-distance project

One of the most difficult aspects of doing fieldwork in Ukenzagapia for me has been communicating with my field assistants. They both have cell phones, but if they are out of range because they are on the wrong side of a hill or something then I have to send them a text message because they don't have voicemail. Also, it is too expensive for them to call me so I have to call them back and hope that they're in range.

The time change is also very inconvenient. I have to call them first thing in the morning so that I don't call them too late in the evening. If I forget or have something else planned, I have to wait until the next day unless I stay up late to call them.

It's also expensive. I use Skype to call their cell phones (they definitely do not have Skype since they don't have computers) and it's 25-30 cents per minute. I can waste a lot of money if we get disconnected repeatedly because their signal isn't great. I'm going to look for cheaper options.

Then of course there's language. Sometimes I worry that if I ask yes or no questions they'll always say yes. We speak in a mix of English and Ukenzagapese, and I choose my English words carefully. The mental translation from one language to another also slows down conversation.

All of these things make it difficult to manage a project that my field assistants have started while I'm gone. If all goes well, things will be all set to start an experiment when I return to Ukenzagapia in a few months. I'm not counting on it, but it sure would be nice.

This morning I was able to get a good update from one of my field assistants on the status of the project, and it actually sounds like things are going pretty well. We got disconnected twice but if we're understanding each other correctly then they've completed one part of the experiment preparation. I've been concerned that we had only a narrow window in which to complete the prep but it turns out we might have a much larger window of opportunity.

Science communication and policy

Kent from Uncommon Ground just wrote a great post about the importance of science communication and the role of science in policy. He has been writing for months now about the distinction between science informing policy and science dictating policy. I think he's right on.

He's been reading and writing about Don't Be Such A Scientist by Randy Olson. I've really got to read that book.