Sandra Bullock and me

In this editorial, David Brooks explains/asks:

Two things happened to Sandra Bullock this month. First, she won an Academy Award for best actress. Then came the news reports claiming that her husband is an adulterous jerk. So the philosophic question of the day is: Would you take that as a deal? Would you exchange a tremendous professional triumph for a severe personal blow?

Do you want to know something sad? I'm afraid that if I had been asked this question when I was in my third year of grad school, I might have said yes. I was working on developing a genetic system for Anaeromyxobacter in those days. It never did work, but, if it had, I would have been somewhat more scientifically successful than I currently am...I think. The trouble is that I sort of would have had to make this trade in order to follow up on my theoretical scientific success. As I sort of feel I would need to do now. I have been fairly successful, comparably speaking, and I am glad about that. But, having had the amazing gift of tremendous personal triumph also (i.e., amazing husband and mind boggling love for baby), I can't even imagine losing the latter, whereas, the former just seems to be a nice little fortunate thing. Probably, if I had failed in my career, I would feel differently. Particularly when my kid(s) get older and move away, I will be glad that I did this thing for my self. Also, I was incredibly glad to go back to work when Milers got old enough. That's not true for everyone and every job. I'm not sure what I'm trying to say here but Brooks goes on to say:

if you had to take more than three seconds to think about this question, you are absolutely crazy. Marital happiness is far more important than anything else in determining personal well-being. If you have a successful marriage, it doesn’t matter how many professional setbacks you endure, you will be reasonably happy. If you have an unsuccessful marriage, it doesn’t matter how many career triumphs you record, you will remain significantly unfulfilled.

I agree that it's an easy decision to make. Also, it helps to explain why a person very close to me, who is in the middle of a divorce, has spent the last few years of her life continuously changing jobs. I think maybe she was trying to fill the hole.

According to one study, joining a group that meets even just once a month produces the same happiness gain as doubling your income. According to another, being married produces a psychic gain equivalent to more than $100,000 a year.

I like this final quote because I like to point out to myself how, since I married an attorney, I get double the fantastic happiness. Is that crass to admit? I think it's possible that the difference between my salary if I had gone crazy as a scientist would be $100,000 more than what I will likely do as a job now that I'm a mom. However, the scientist on whose salary I'm basing this estimate is not happier than I am and has told me more than once that he just wants a girlfriend...

You, sir, are totally wrong!

I got sent an article (Schwartz. 2008. Journal of Cell Science. doi:10.1242/jcs.033340) which genuinely addresses how I feel, but only at the very beginning when the author is quoting someone else:

I recently saw an old friend for the first time in many years. We had been Ph.D. students at the same time, both studying science, although in different areas. She later dropped out of graduate school, went to Harvard Law School and is now a senior lawyer for a major environmental organization. At some point, the conversation turned to why she had left graduate school. To my utter astonishment, she said it was because it made her feel stupid. After a couple of years of feeling stupid every day, she was ready to do something else.

As soon as the author starts talking, he starts getting it all wrong. Here's his thesis:

I’d like to suggest that our Ph.D. programs often do students a disservice in two ways. First, I don’t think students are made to understand how hard it is to do research. And how very, very hard it is to do important research. It’s a lot harder than taking even very demanding courses. What makes it difficult is that research is
immersion in the unknown. We just don’t know what we’re doing. We can’t be sure whether we’re asking the right question or doing the right experiment until we get the answer or the result. Admittedly, science is made harder by competition for grants and space in top journals. But apart from all of that, doing significant research is intrinsically hard and changing departmental, institutional or national policies will not succeed in lessening its intrinsic difficulty.

And here's what I'd like to say: I think that my PhD program has not only given me a very clear idea of how hard it is to do research, I think that my PhD program has given me a very clear idea of how hard it is to maintain one's sense of worth while being constantly surrounded by people who think they are more valuable and worthwhile than you are simply because they have earned a PhD, or a faculty position, or a nobel prize or whatever. I think that my PhD program has also given me a clear idea of how hard it is to work inside of a hierarchical profession, dominated at the top by men, which inherently refuses to recognize new ideas while they are still new. Also, a profession which maintains its own sanctity and value to the point that anyone who seeks to criticize the system (e.g., the smart woman that is the subject of this man's essay) is labelled as one of the outside intruders who never understood or cared enough about its basic tenets. Let's all recall the Harvard incident. To me, this is the perfect example, not just of sexism in science but of non-science-ism. Scientists who have been successful seem to absolutely refuse to admit that anything could ever be wrong with the great institution of science. It's got to be the fault of the person rejecting science. There is no other option. Science is sacred, science is holy, science is exactly as it was intended to be by its maker, hold on, I mean by the big bang...or evolution...or whatever...

The hoops! The jumping and the flames and the hoops!

You won't be surprised to hear that this, the title of my blog, is another Gilmore girls quote. They just keep mirroring my life. I'm trying to get this god-forsaken PhD and it's just so far out of my reach. So, I am going through the literature today, working on writing my own contribution and I just feel so disillusioned. Maybe it's my day and my total and complete exasperation when it comes to pleasing my gatekeeper/prison guard/advisor. He's very good but I just don't even agree with him on edits anymore but the only choice is to do as close to what he wants as possible. So, really, my job at this point is to read his mind and to bow to his every whim and to prostrate myself. It's so demoralizing.
And here's where it comes to the literature, and reading it--I'm trying to write something good and yet so much of publishing papers is just picking a hot topic. It's all sold in the introduction. It's about spin. It's like flipping a house. You make the deal on the front end. And I don't just mean asking a good question. There are some kick-ass scientists out there, and the thing that makes them hot, what allows them to make a real contribution, is the questions they ask. The problem is that if you pick global warming or HIV or breast cancer, you can just spew garbage and get it into these journals. Then the next schmo gets hosed because she can't re-do the crap that got the brush-off in the last manuscript. She has to pretend that those bozos contributed something and write them into her introduction. "Based on data by Idiot et al. (2004), the distribution of ho-hos in 7-elevens across the country correlates with slurpee machines. While it is possible that these correlations are based on the decisions of 7-eleven corporate, the authors conclude that this correlation is due to a symbiotic relationship between chocolate and cherries." We're making progress, right? I mean, science is moving forward I think. I just go through these papers and see myself and my own insecurity and so much of what I do when I'm pulling things together and blowing smoke and I have a hard time believing that any of it is real. I guess that you listen to the themes and just use what you have. I guess that every contribution adds to the pile. The natural world doesn't lend itself to easy answers. No single person's hypothesis is going to be exactly right. So then you try and address phenomena. Tell me, does anyone else get a very disappointed feeling upon reading a journal article? Is it just me or are they all the same? And, for those of you in this business, have you noticed that we are all, all the people that I know, working so much harder than these other people? Does every fucking title have to be so dramatically inflated to the point that you can only cry, upon reading what was actually done? I think that maybe looking at things on the small scale is the problem. Hopefully the sum is greater than its sad and disgruntled parts. I mean, look at all the progress we've made with global warming. Ugh. I'm going to manage a 7-eleven. I like slurpees...and ho hos.

ASM2008

So, I'm spending the week at ASM and, in the spirit of mimicking my dear innocent abroad, I'm going to list some of my observations about my fellow microbiologists:

(1) Changes in schedule, spatial layout, or plans of any kind tend to cause mass confusion and anger, presumably because the talk that each individual intended to attend was/is so important to his/her life that he/she does not believe that others would neglect its importance by confusing him/her. I have been in very few crowds which respond so poorly to confusion. It's like you've stolen their luggage or lost their child if you mis-label a sign. This makes me wonder a lot about item number two:

(2) They show very little tolerance for ignorance. Social gatherings are wrought with phrases such as, "What do you mean you've never heard of a proteozome?!?" I sort of think that the more facts you accumulate, the more difficult it is for you to have organic, flexible thought processes.

(3) Dressing up for presentations is difficult for people who spend their time, primarily in the laboratory. Therefore, there is some sort of correlation between how strangely people dress and how much time they spend in the laboratory. Nude pantyhose, polyester, and ill-fit are some good hallmarks of someone who has been in a laboratory for more than 60 hours/week for more than a year or so. Time outside of the laboratory for social events and other life activities such as watching television appears to mediate this effect.

(4) Derogatory discussions of undergraduate students is a popular pasttime. In a talk about teaching, the following quote was heard, with regard to the fact that a survey suggested that students felt that the presenter's course was unlike his/her other courses, "Yeah, I bet it was." Now, as the recent nytimes article on sarcasm pointed out, without tone of voice, it's hard to translate this sentence. So, I'll try to add this information: There was a distinct drop in pitch, accompanied by a sort of growling/grunting sound associated with the "Yeah" and the rest was said sort of out of the corner of the speaker's mouth. This presentation was intended to help us all learn how to improve our teaching...

(5) The more important you are, the less you should be expected to refrain from taking phone calls during talks. Actually, there's some sort of delta(importance) factor that needs to be considered between speaker and phone-talker.

So, the up-side is that I saw two talks that inspired me [out of how-ever many half-hour talks fit into three days (so far)]. The down-side is that my advisor doesn't care about my work and I can't think of any good way to become the speakers who inspired me.

Wait, before I go, let me share the following conversation between myself and my advisor, that took place before I left for the meeting, while standing in his office doorway:

Me: Okay, well, if you don't want to see my poster again, I guess I'll call you when we get to Boston.
Him: SIGH I'm all poster-ed out.
Me: Do I have your cell phone number?
Him: Why?
Me: So that I can find you at the meeting?
Him: SIGH 678-
Me: Wait, let me get my phone.
Him: SIGH
Me: OK, 678...
Him: I won't be there for your poster.
Me: OK...
Him:
Me: I'll just see you there then...