Unmitigated whining

So it looks like I'll be out of a job come January. My boss didn't get a grant she was hoping for and won't be able to pick up my paycheck when my funding runs out at the end of December. So I'm working on exploring career options right now. It's actually kind of nice to finally get the kick in the @ss I needed to start seriously looking for jobs away from academic research instead of just constantly focusing on the next experiment.

I'm finishing up my first postdoc paper right now, and I'll immediately begin writing the second paper. In the meantime I've been trolling the Science Careers website, looking at job postings for industry, and doing informational interviews here at the University trying to come up with a plan to keep myself employed for at least the next year. Husband has his first interview lined up for a tenure track job (at a very prestigious place... I'm very proud, but also befuddled: He didn't get interviews at some real podunk places, but he got an interview someplace really awesome? WTF mate?) and is generally planning on doing a second search this fall. However, he's also looking at industry job postings... I think the job search left him pretty disillusioned with academia.

Articles like this one have left me pretty disillusioned myself. I think Science-with-a-capital-S was just a pretty different tplace when all of the current faculty were coming up through the ranks. There were some reasonable expectations for employment in science when you were done. For current postdocs, it's such a different atmosphere. Not only are there not enough academic jobs to go around, but leaving academia is usually a pretty ego-shattering experience. We spend 10+ years drinking the kool-aid, listening to people we respect as mentors tell us that the best and brightest stay at the bench as academics and if you leave the bench you are a sell-out or a failure.

I guess I'm finally over it. I'm done caring if people want to brand me a "failed scientist" and I'm going to try my best to find a position with a decent paycheck and some appropriate work-life balance. I'll keep you posted. I imagine that I'm in for a bumpy ride.

Nerd Humor

Labmate 1:  I'm such a moron

ScienceMama:  You're not a moron, you are the complete opposite of a moron.  You're an anti-moron.  *thinks for a second* Hey Labmate 2, Labmate 1 is a subatomic particle... an anti-moron.

Labmate 2:  An anti-moron, huh?  

ScienceMama:  Yes, that's why LB1 and I are such good baymates.  She's the anti-moron to my moron.

Labmate 3: But wouldn't you annihilate each other?...

Labmate 1:  Maybe that's why my experiments aren't working.

Labmate 3:  ...and for the universe to exist, wouldn't there have to be more of one particle than the other?  Are there more anti-morons or morons?

Labmate 2:  I think we all know the answer to that.

The case against breastfeeding(?)

My dear friend Ruchi passed along this article about breastfeeding to me and wanted to hear what I had to say about it. The main thesis of the article is that despite the claims of breastfeeding advocates such as the American Academy of Pediatrics, parenting know-it-all Dr. Sears, and La Leche League, the evidence that breastfeeding actually reduces the rates of childhood obesity, allergies, and illness, increases IQ, and promotes mother-child bonding and attachment is far from definitive.

[The medical literature] shows that breast-feeding is probably, maybe, a little better; but it is far from the stampede of evidence that Sears describes. More like tiny, unsure baby steps: two forward, two back, with much meandering and bumping into walls. A couple of studies will show fewer allergies, and then the next one will turn up no difference. Same with mother-infant bonding, IQ, leukemia, cholesterol, diabetes. Even where consensus is mounting, the meta studies—reviews of existing studies—consistently complain about biases, missing evidence, and other major flaws in study design. “The studies do not demonstrate a universal phenomenon, in which one method is superior to another in all instances.

The author goes on to discuss the fundamental problem inherent in most human studies: that in order to perform the study ethically, you can not randomize participants into breast-feeding and non-breastfeeding groups. And because of that, scientists are always chasing their tails, trying to control for factors which could confound the results (things like age of the mother, income level, number of siblings in the household). It's not surprising then that studies are often conflicting... some studies show that breastfeeding is beneficial in one area or another, other studies show no difference between breastfeeding and formula. The author notes:

The IQ studies run into the central problem of breast-feeding research: it is impossible to separate a mother’s decision to breast-feed—and everything that goes along with it—from the breast-feeding itself...

My decision to breastfeed had little to do with whether or not there was "proof" in the literature. My decision to breastfeed was based on the idea of breastmilk as a whole food, while formula is more of a synthetic food. I think of breastmilk as YEPD and formula as SC. I know my yeast grow a hell of a lot better on the rich, complex mixture of yeast extract and peptone than they do on synthetic amino acids and ammonium sulfate. I find the complexity of breastmilk reassuring... I mean there was a time when we didn't recognize that Iodine was an essential trace element. I really don't expect that we have identified all of the essential components of newborn nutrition that promote optimum growth and development.

That being said, I think that the benefits of breastfeeding are relatively small (when compared to the contributions of things like genetic makeup, family income, parent's education level, etc). And this is why observational studies like the ones the author discusses have such a hard time proving any significant benefit.

The author's main point, which she obscures with her rather bitter and unfriendly tone, is that the small benefits that breastfeeding may (and I would argue likely) provide don't justify the (sometimes militant) pro-breastfeeding culture. And I couldn't agree more. There has to be a balance between providing women with the cultural and practical support that promotes breastfeeding, and one which does not demonize women who, for any number of reasons choose not to breastfeed.

And, somewhat off topic:

Given what we know so far, it seems reasonable to put breast-feeding’s health benefits on the plus side of the ledger and other things—modesty, independence, career, sanity—on the minus side, and then tally them up and make a decision.

I actually found this sentence a little offensive. Just because this author finds breastfeeding miserable doesn't mean that everyone does, and I resent the way she presents breastfeeding as nothing but minuses. Yes, breastfeeding can be challenging, demanding, tiring, but it is also immensely rewarding. I wouldn't trade my time nursing Bean for anything.

The generation of lost post docs

With the economy in such dire straights, it’s been a terrible year to be finishing a post-doc. Post-docs that have done incredible work, who at any other time would have excellent job prospects, are finding themselves without a single interview invitation. Many universities have canceled their job searches. Other universities that are continuing their searches are rumored to be less likely to hire a candidate, and even if they do hire someone will likely offer less generous start up packages to new hires.

I can’t help but wonder if this will be the generation of lost post-docs. Husband is certainly worried about his job search this fall. A few years ago I would have said that he would be a shoe-in for a position somewhere, but in this economy no one is.

Will academia lose out on the scientists who are currently (or will soon be) out there in this toxic job market? Where will we all find jobs if academia isn’t hiring and biotech is laying people off left and right?

I feel like we’re all dressed up with no place to go.

I'm not dead yet

Wow, have I been remiss! I can’t believe it’s been a month since I last posted… Between training for my race, simultaneously potty training and weaning my toddler, jury duty, car troubles, a weeklong visit from my very best grad school friends, and wrangling with some awkward lab politics that I can’t get into, it has been an incredibly busy month!

The briefest of brief updates: I’m doing fine, great actually. My project kinda has me frustrated right now, but I’m through the “is this ever going to work?” phase and into the “I will clone this motherf***er if I have to ligate the phosphate backbone myself” phase. That’s usually more productive.

Husband has been burning the midnight oil. We have an incubator set up in our dining room and a microscope on the desk in the bedroom so that he can make it home for family dinner and then get back to work once Bean is off to sleep. One of my dear friends mocked us deservedly for our home lab setup, but one of my friends used to bring her western blotting supplies home with her at night, so surely a microscope can’t be that bizarre.

My training is going fairly well. I’m logging about 35 miles a week right now, and several of those runs are quite hilly. But I haven’t been keeping as strong a training pace as I’d like because my shin splints are back and I’m trying to avoid a full-blown injury. I’ve come to accept that I may not finish this race under 2 hours, and I’m only mildly annoyed by that. I figure if I can just make it to race day and complete it without injury, I’ll have done pretty well. Although I’m secretly hoping for some race day adrenaline that pushes me to finish in 1:59:00. But we’ll see.

Bean is, indeed, potty training right now. She’s using the potty around 4 times a day right now, to much praise from her doting parents, but I’m hard pressed to see how we will go from potty as novelty to full-time potty use. I have to do a bit more reading I guess.

And this week I officially weaned the Bean. She’s done pretty well with the transition. She’s still asking to nurse at our usual times, but doesn’t seem too upset at my explanation that the “milk is all gone.” I, on the other hand, have been in terrible pain all week and hope that my body gets the message soon that there will be no more nursing.

In my next post, I will (finally) respond to the Bean-mom’s interview meme. But for now, there’s a 0.8% gel with my name all over it.

Wait, do you work here?

2009 has gotten off to a kind of rocky start. In addition to finding out that Husband’s change in funding source meant a net decrease in take home pay (and that he doesn’t qualify for his institution’s retirement benefits because he’s apparently a “new” employee), my paycheck dropped as well as our health insurance premiums quietly jumped 33%.

But the thing that really has me down this week was a more long-term stressor. Husband and I want to have a second child, and I’ve always been biased towards trying to space the children fairly close together. I was hoping for 2 years between babies, but with Husband’s job search happening a year later than we had hoped, we figured three years apart would be the most practical. Which would mean trying to get knocked up sometime this summer.

As we try to figure out where the hell we’re going to get the money for a second child, I tried looking into what the maternity leave policy would be now that I’m being paid by a private fellowship instead of off my boss’ grant. I couldn’t find any information on family leave in my Fellow’s Handbook, so I contacted the American Cancer Society directly. The response shocked me.

No paid parental leave. As in 0.00 days of paid leave following the birth or adoption of a child. Instead they offer to put the grant on hold until I return to the lab and extend the grant termination date.

I was really taken aback by their response. In 2008, the NIH extended their parental leave benefits from 30 paid days to 60 paid days of leave. Damon Runyon offers their fellows 12 weeks of paid leave. So I was really really surprised by the ACS policy of no paid leave.

It’s really frustrating. As a postdoc, you don’t accrue vacation days or sick leave or personal holidays. Postdocs are often in a weird unclassified vortex of suck. We’re not employees, we’re volunteers… who happen to have bosses and get a paycheck. We sometimes qualify for benefits. Sometimes not.

I know that I’m lucky to have a paycheck and health insurance and some stability in my employment. But I’m getting old here, people, and it’s frustrating to feel like I still don’t have a “real” job. Instead I’m still stuck in the confusing world of not-quite-an-employee. It makes me feel like I’m still a grad school.

I’ve contacted one of the officers of the Postdoc Association here at the University to see if I have other options, and I’m waiting to hear back. But I’m frustrated and grumpy.

I’ve also started reading “Nickeled and Dimed” to remind myself just how lucky I am.

The ghost in the lab

It’s the beginning of a new year, and Husband has run out his time on his training grant. So for the first time in five years he’ll be paid by his PI.

The change in funding source shouldn’t bring dramatic changes to ones income, but it always does. The most obvious example is going onto a private fellowship. These often pay slightly above NIH scale, and can provide a little bump to your paycheck. But there are much trickier ways in which the funding source can affect your net pay.

For example, the last two years Husband was on a NIH training grant. For some reason, getting paid on a training grant (at least at Husband’s institution) isn’t treated like regular income. Taxes, Social Security, Medicare weren’t taken out of his paycheck. But it’s still taxable income. So Husband dutifully paid his estimated taxes each year, but got to pocket money that might otherwise have been taken out for SS and Medicare.

Moving onto his boss’ grant, those things will now be taken out of his paycheck, to the tune of something like 8% of his income. That’s a huge net loss for us. A couple hundred dollars a month.

The bright side, we thought, was that Husband would finally be allowed to participate in the institution’s retirement plan (with associated fund matching). So yesterday Husband marched in to the benefits office to sign himself up.

No dice they told him. He is considered a new employee and won’t qualify to participate in the retirement plan until he had been at the institution for a full year.

Um, he’s been there for almost 6 years.

Crap like this happens all the time and it’s complete bullsh*t. I don’t understand the principle of penalizing your grad students and postdocs for successfully acquiring their own funding. At both of our institutions your position is classified according to who’s paying you, and it changes the number and types of benefits that you qualify for.

No good deed goes unpunished, I guess.

Hippie U

I did my undergraduate degree in Biochemistry at Hippie U. Hippie U is full of a lot of different types of students, not least of which are the 90s version of a hippie: the yippie (part yuppy, part hippie). Yippies are the kids that drive a brand new hybrid (that their parents gave them), live in a commune and grow their own organic weed in the basement.

Living in a town of yippies has its high points... recycling programs were top notch. Composting on campus. Plenty of organic, locally grown produce. A fantastic farmers market. A generally easy going, friendly attitude around town. But the yippies also have a lot of hip causes. There were plenty of Che posters in windows around town, though most of the people who hung them only seemed to vaguely understand who he was. "Free Mumia" was the most frequently seen graffiti in town. Hippie U had a policy of only cutting down trees for new buildings in the summer to avoid students chaining themselves to trees. Animal rights was another very hip cause on campus, and there were occasionally protests or information tables on campus.

I recently heard from my undergraduate adviser that an animal rights group had been passing out "wanted" posters around campus with the pictures, names and home addresses of scientists doing animal research. This included a young faculty member in the department who works with mice.

Later that week, that young researcher's house was firebombed as he, his wife, and two small children slept. The family was forced to escape their burning home through a second story window.

Shortly after that, protesters firebombed the car of another member of the department.

Since the two attacks, Hippie U has raised security in the various lab buildings on campus. But I have a hard time imagining how any of the faculty, postdocs or students can possibly feel safe. How could you possibly work another late night in the lab, how could you feel safe in your own home, knowing that this group was willing to set fire to a home with sleeping children inside?

And what of this poor researcher? He's spent his whole life working to get where he is today, doing research he hopes will help humanity. But with the safety of his family at risk, what will he do? What would I do? What would you do?

Science: 268 ScienceMama: 0

I'm a complete idiot.

I'm known in various circles for my propensity to break glassware (usually with important samples or toxic chemicals inside... the Bottle of Formaldehyde Incident of '03 was hard to live down). I've got a weird brown spot on my middle finger from a time when I was handling formadehyde without gloves. I once accidentally splattered DMSO in my mouth (a tiny flick off the inside of an eppie tube lid, but still... it made my tongue feel weird). I mean I've always been an idiot, prone to accidents, but seriously guys, this one takes the cake.

Yesterday I VERY CAREFULLY cut out bands on the UV box wearing eye protection... instead of a face mask.

Today, I look like I fell asleep in a tanning bed. Or went snorkling on the sun.

Trailing spouse gets the shaft

Husband is still deeply entrenched in the writing of his paper (and still doing some "final" experiments for it). He's been working crazy hours trying to get his experiments done, the paper written, and because of this his time with the Bean is way too scarce.

A few nights ago, as we were settling into bed, Husband says casually Maybe I don't want to do this tenure track thing after all. I don't want this to be my schedule for the next ten years.

Of course everyone goes through this kind of thing at every possible decision point in their career. And most postdocs are constantly asking the "is tenure track right for me?" question. Or, if you've already answered that question with a resounding HELL NO, you're wrestling with the even more amorphous question of "what the hell do I do with myself now?"

So I cooed reassuring things in Husband's general direction until we had satisfied ourselves that it wasn't a decision to be made in bed on a weeknight.

But, um, I'm a planner. I cannot handle open-ended, no-light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel plans. It makes me feel unsettled to not have a plan.

I will support Husband in whatever career path he chooses, but it is driving me f*cking crazy to not have a plan. When will he get his paper out? Who knows! Is he applying for tenure track positions? Who knows! Will we be moving next summer? Who knows! What kind of job can I find if/when we move? Who knows! Can we afford to have a second child? Who knows! Are we facing a future as assistant managers of the local video strore? Who knows!

The life of a trailing spouse. I know, I volunteered for the job. But that doesn't mean it's not really annoying. I can't plan my career until I know what Husband's plans are. And until he knows... I'm up a creek.

Best. T-shirt. Ever.

Today I saw pretty much the best T-shirt ever. A young faculty member on the shuttle, a plain white T with iron-on letters...

Reviewer #2:
I'll see you in the parking lot

I can only imagine that the guy's grad students gifted him this homemade treasure. I think I might commission one for Dr. Isis.

And now for something completely different

Okay, so I've been mulling over this one for awhile, but frankly I was too lazy because it's a somewhat involved post... and let's face it... scientists are lazy. If we weren't totally lazy, why would this exist?

As some of you may remember, I attended a week long scientific conference back in June. As at most scientific conferences, the talks and poster sessions ran rather late into the night (seriously, 11:00 is late for me these days... my toddler wakes up at 6:00!). And, as at most scientific conferences, a good percentage of the attendees would go socialize and talk shop at the bar after the sessions closed.

At the close of the last session, one of the conference organizers (a relatively big name in my little subfield... let's call him Giant Perv) announced that the entertainment for the evening would be a (crappy) DJ spinning (crappy) tunes at the bar.

So I get to the bar with my labmates and a couple of other girls and we get ourselves a couple of beers. After about 10 minutes, Giant Perv walks up to our table and starts trying to get us on the dance floor. I figure he's just worried that the entertainment is a flop (which, um, hello? I'm not dancing to Men At Work). So we beg off saying that we'll dance in a little bit. Giant Perv accepts this and heads over to the next table of hapless grad students.

As soon as Giant Perv leaves the table, one of the women I am with tells a horror story about the last time she came to this conference... apparently Giant Perv likes to hit on grad students and post docs, using the dance floor as his opportunity to grab a little a**. She said that last time she was at this conference, he had literally dragged her onto the dance floor.

When it was time for our second round, one of the grad students and I went up to the bar to order more beers. As we're walking past the dance floor towards the bar, Giant Perv grabs my forearm.

Time for that dance he says. I try to beg off, but he literally isn't taking no for an answer. He's grabbing my forearm for godssake and pulling me onto the dance floor.

What I didn't realize was that by "dance" Giant Perv meant "swing dance". To Shakira.

I did a lot of swing dancing in college, and I'm not half bad. I can rock a pair of three-inch heels and make it look good. Nonetheless, I was not super stoked at the idea of dancing with this guy. But rather than make a scene or yank my arm away, I danced.

As we danced, I felt that old uncomfortable feeling of dancing with a stranger. Where do you look? What do you say? As I prayed for the speakers to explode, I tried to concentrate on where to put my feet.

I'm a terrible follow I said, laughing uncomfortably.

You're not in control here he said. I'm not going to let you tell me what to do.

Um, creepy much?

When the dance was over, he complimented me on my dancing, on my dress, asked me if I wanted a drink. I said no. I was so uncomfortable that I decided to leave the bar altogether.

Why wasn't I able to say no when this guy pulled me onto the dance floor? I didn't want to make a scene, didn't want to alienate this guy. He's in my sub-field. There's a very good chance that he'll be a reviewer on my future paper (for which I have yet to collect data). So I sucked it up, danced with him though I didn't want to. And when he continued to make me uncomfortable, I had to leave.

But in fact, I did say no. He chose to interpret my refusal as coyness instead of discomfort. He chose to continue hitting on me as I was trying to leave.

In every field, there's a guy like Giant Perv. The guy with the reputation for hanging out with all the young, female grad students. Who use conferences as an excuse to flirt with or otherwise harass women who are younger than them. Guys like Giant Perv use the power differential between Established Scientist and Lowly Grad Student (or Groveling Postdoc) to get a little action.

And frankly, guys like Giant Perv can get away with it. What recourse is there, really, when a female student or postdoc is harassed at a conference (or even at their home institution)? There are rarely any consequences for bad actors.

No big take home message here, it just sucks.

Confessions of a trailing spouse

The coming year is going to be a stressful one for our little family. This fall, Husband is going on the job market for a tenure track position. It’s going to mean a lot of single parenting on my side. A lot of late nights and stressful deadlines for Husband. In theory we were supposed to be making plans for baby #2 somewhere along the way, but obviously that's not happening any time soon...

Husband has been working some pretty extreme hours over the last month or so, trying to finish up some experiments so that he can (finally!) publish his work before he starts the application process this fall. This week he’s leaving for an international conference where he’ll be presenting his post-doc work for the first time and (hopefully) networking with people who will likely be seated on selection committees.

When he returns from his conference, the month of August will be spent hammering out a paper and hopefully submitting. This will mean more long nights and working weekends. It’ll be hard on both of us. Husband will be missing out on a lot of quality time with Bean, and I’ll be stuck with a lot of single parent duty while he’s working. We will probably have to figure out a way to split our commute as well so that he can work as late as he needs to (this month we’ve been carpooling in the morning and he’s been bussing home late at night, but his hours are limited by the bus schedule).

If the gods are kind, he’ll get his paper submitted by the end of August (this will likely be a Hurculean task, as Husband’s boss is both a perfectionist and a reluctant writer). Then Husband can focus on getting his application package together. Husband will most likely submit somewhere between 50 and 100 applications to universities across the country.

Once his applications are in, it’s a waiting game to see who is interested enough to invite him for an interview. With any luck, Husband will be invited for a handful of interviews, and perhaps receive an offer or two. Hopefully somewhere in there Husband will be able to negotiate a job for his trailing spouse (that’s me!). And we’ll hopefully be moving to our semi-permanent location next summer.

After talking to a lot of friends and family recently, it occurs to me this is a bizarre process that non-scientists think is pretty weird. One of the major issues that non-scientists don’t understand is why Husband and I expect to have virtually zero control over where in the country we end up.

The tenure track job market is a lot like the lottery. Hundreds of post-docs go on the job market each fall, only a fraction of those post-docs will end up with jobs. Getting a job isn’t just about being the best (though that helps)… it also depends on a lot of factors that are basically out of your control. Does the university need another person working on (insert model organism here)? Are they interested in your particular subfield? Do they already have someone in the department working in that subfield? Do the folks on the selection committee like your boss? Do they like the other people who wrote your letters of recommendation? Does your work involve some big piece of equipment that the university will never be able to afford?

It’s a crap shoot. No matter how much I believe in Husband and what he does, I have no idea what his chances are on the job market this fall. All we can do is wait and see. Where will we end up? Who knows! But chances are we’ll have very little control over it. As a control freak, I find the situation a little distressing.

Maybe I should just start buying lottery tickets.

scientiae-carnival

I'm baaack... (Part 1)

So I'll start with the conference. The conference was great. There was lots of really great science, lots of interaction, good poster sessions, and my poster was fairly well received. So that was great. In fact, overall the conference was rather invigorating scientifically... I couldn't wait to get back to work.

Unfortunately the conference was held in the hottest place on earth. It was over 110 degrees F every single day (topping out at 118 deg F). If I didn't have my race this weekend, I certainly would have skipped out on running while I was away. But unfortunately for me, my race was just two days after I returned from the conference. So instead I hauled my butt out of bed early each day and went running at 5:30 a.m. to try to beat the heat. I was unsuccessful. Even at 5:30 a.m. it was 80 degrees outside, and since we were in the desert there was absolutely no shade from the sun. Worse yet, it was 0% humidity so it was like running with a wad of Kleenex in my throat. And best of all, I caught some sort of chest cold (most likely on the plane). Not exactly ideal conditions for preparing for my race.

Husband and the Bean did perfectly fine of course. And both Husband and a friend sent me pictures of the Bean every day while I was away (the highlight of each day by far).

I brought the pump with me to keep the breast milk going while I was gone. Of course that meant the obligate embarrassing extra search at airport security.

"Um, we're going to have to search your bag here, ma'am. Can you tell me what's in here?"

"It's a breast pump."

"What?"

(Louder) "A breast pump."

They MUST see these things every single day. They should know by now exactly what a Medela Symphony looks like... and yet... "A breast pump?" Followed by a complete wipe down and testing in their machine. Sigh.

I got back on Friday, just in time for the arrival of my buddy Wom who flew in from Chicago and did the half marathon with me. Which was successful, btw, and I'll post about that tomorrow. But for tonight, I'm going to veg on the couch and then go to bed early. I'm beat!

TTFN*

Off to Academic Conference, so probably won't be posting all week.

I'm really sad about leaving Bean for 6 days. Tonight I got all sentimental when I went to pick up her shoes. It was totally a Made For TV Movie moment where I sat there pondering the size of her shoes and how quickly she's growing. Then I snuck into her room to watch her sleep. I am so corny. I would totally make fun of myself if I weren't so bummed.

*Ta-ta for now

Failure in Science

Candid Engineer in Academia has a great post up today about failure in science (which, btw, if you're not reading Candid Engineer yet, you should be... she's your snarky friend from grad school). Candid Engineer, it seems, has the resilience-in-the-face-of-failure gene. I think pretty much all successful scientists must have this gene.

In science, it's pretty much guaranteed that approximately 99% of the work you do will end in either:

A) Human Error-related Failure... you spend six days working on an experiment and end up sucking your DNA pellet into the vacuum line, or you drop your gel into the sink where it shatters into 18,000 pieces

B) Technical Failure... the experiment was a good idea in theory, but in practice the technique doesn't have high enough resolution, or the mutants you want to test have no phenotype, or your screen isn't stringent enough

C) Systems Failure... because maybe E. coli doesn't like having extra copies of your gene of interest (at least not in that orientation), or the double mutant you want to test is actually dead, or your strain gets suppressors faster than you can test your mutation

And there are some people, like Candid Engineer, like Husband, who take all of this in stride. They have the resilience-in-the-face-of-failure gene, and they know that failure is just another day at the office. I think the reason I have such a hard time with bench work in the long run is that experiment failure always feels like personal failure. And I hate feeling like an idiot all the time.

Maybe it's time for me to look into gene therapy.

Deadlines, etc

This week I have approximately 80,000 deadlines at work. Actually, specifically, all my deadlines are on Friday. Just before I leave for a week long scientific conference. And 36 hours after I return from the conference I'll be running a half-marathon. This is making for a very stressed out ScienceMama.

I agreed to go to this conference several months ago because I figured it'd be a good way to rejuvenate the science love. And it will. I love listening to talks, I love thinking about different kinds of research. I think it will be great for the Science half of me. But the Mama half of me is totally pissy about having to go. Six days is a long time to leave my child, especially when we're still nursing twice a day (which means I'll have to bring along my pump and since I'll have a roommate at the conference, pump in the bathroom... um, suck much?).

The conference is also coming at a time when I couldn't be feeling more behind in pretty much every aspect of my life. My house is a filthy mess (if we weren't dirt poor right now, I'd be ready to give in and start paying someone to come in and sweep). I have the aforementioned 80,000 deadlines. I'm barely keeping up with my experiments. And I feel perpetually guilty for not having the time to be more creative cooking for Bean.

I'm really sad about leaving the Bean. My only consolation is that I'll probably be so busy at the conference that time will pass quickly (I hope).

New Online Journal!

A hilarious new journal for science nerds, MusculusMag.

Here's my May horoscope:

Cancer
Due to an unexpected interaction between the Sun and Saturn, you will have to do all of your genotyping on the day of the half moon. Any attempts otherwise will lead to fur mites. In the event that you aren’t working with mice: Look out. You will be soon.

Guess I'd better stop leaving out cheese and rat poison on my desk at work.

Teeth are mean

Whoever decided that babies should be born without teeth, and that the teeth should one by one come ripping through their tiny gums? What a terrible terrible idea. I submit this as proof that intelligent design is a crock. Clearly the designer's an idiot.

It has been a really difficult week (I seem to say that a lot lately. Hmm..). Bean has had one front tooth pop through and is simultaneously working on some molars. Or so we suspect. She won't let us have a look in her mouth to see. But the rivers of drool and snot pouring out of her face are a hint, as she sticks her tiny hand all the way to the back of her mouth and chews and chews. She tries to eat but it hurts her mouth and she spits the food back out. We've resorted to yogurt, banana and cheese.

Last night Bean woke up about 20 minutes after we put her to bed. She screamed and cried for literally 2.5 straight hours. And not just regular crying. Crying until she was hoarse, wet with drool and tears, sweaty from the exertion of crying so hard. She'd fall asleep for less than a minute only to wake up screaming again. Husband and I swapped off, 20 minutes at a time, hugging little Bean and rocking her. Singing and stroking. Finally, when she calmed down enough to try, I nursed her again. She didn't even really try to nurse, just lay there with her little chest shuddering and hiccuping, quietly petting me. After a little while, she fell asleep.

At 9:30, Husband and I sat down to a cold dinner and watched some History channel show about the Black Sea.

Apparently having a kid is a scientific achievement

Recently I attended a seminar given by a female professor. When the hosting faculty member introduced the speaker, it was noted that the professor was both "productive and reproductive" (ha ha), having had three kids before she was tenured.

Introductions for speakers normally include a description of where they did their graduate and post-doctoral work and who with, what honors and awards they've received, and perhaps their connection to the department (if any). Maybe a note about the publication of their most recent work. I don't think I've ever heard an introduction for a male speaker in which it was noted how many children he has. But it certainly isn't the first time I've heard a female speaker be introduced that way.

I find it kind of troubling that a woman's status as a parent (or not) is considered relevant to her level of scientific achievement, but a man's parental status is not. Is it because we take for granted that child rearing is the woman's responsibility?

Husband and I share virtually equal responsibility for raising the Bean (with the exception of breastfeeding duty... but that's because I've got a monopoly on the equipment). Yet no one is going to introduce Husband for a seminar by noting his accomplishments and the number of children he is raising.

I don't know if I'm angry on behalf of the dedicated dads for getting short shrift in terms of recognizing their role as parents or if I'm pissed that women are getting the same old patronizing crap they've always gotten ("She's developed a test to detect the signature of positive selection in recent evolutionary history and she keeps a clean house!"). Either way, it just doesn't sit well with me.