Graduate school Barbie

I have nothing to say again so I'm going to (again) post one of the email forwards I received that I think is super funny:

GET GRADUATE SCHOOL BARBIE (TM)

Graduate School Barbie comes in two forms: Delusional Master's Barbie (tm) and Ph.D. Masochist Barbie (tm).

Every Graduate School Barbie comes with these fun filled features guaranteed to delight and entertain for hours: Grad School Barbie comes out of the box with a big grin on her face that turns into afrown after 2 weeks or after her first advisor meeting (whichever comes first). She also has adorable black circles under her delightfully bloodshot eyes.

Comes with two outfits: a grubby pair of blue jeans and 5 year old gap T-shirt, and a floppy pair of gray sweatpants with a matching "Go S***w Yourself" T-shirt. Grad School Barbie talks! Just press the button on her left hand and hear her say such upbeat grad school phrases like, "Yes, Professor, It'll be done by tomorrow", "I'd love to rewrite" and finally: "Why didn't I just get a job, I could have been making $40,000 a year by now if I had just started working with a Bachelor's. I wish somebody would drop a bomb on the school so that I'd have an excuse to stop working on my degree that's sucking every last drop of life force out of my withered and degraded excuse for a soul..." (9V lithium batteries sold separately)

Grad School Barbie is anatomically correct to teach kids about the exciting changes that come with pursuing a higher education. Removable panels on Barbie's head and torso allow you to watch as her cerebellum fries to a crispy brown, her heart race 150 beats per minute, and her stomach lining gradually dissolve into nothing. Deluxe Barbie comes with specially designed eye ducts. Just add a little water, and watch
Grad School Barbie burst into tears at random intervals. Fun for the whole family!

Other accessories include:

Grad School Barbie's Fun Fridge (tm) Well stocked with microwave popcorn, Coca-Cola, Healthy Choice Bologna (99% fat free!),and several small bottle of Mattel Brand Rum (tm).

Grad School Barbie's Medicine Cabinet comes in Fabulous (pepto-bismal) pink and contains Barbie sized bottles of Advil, St. Johns Wort, Zantac, and your choice of three fun anti-anxiety drugs! (Barbie Medicine Cabinet not available without a prescription).

And Grad School Barbie is not alone! Order now and you'll get two of Barbie's great friends! GRADUATE ADVISOR KEN, Barbie's mentor and advisor in her quest for knowledge, higher education and decreased self esteem.

Grad Advisor Ken (tm) comes with a supply of red pens and a permanent frown. Press the button to hear Grad Advisor Ken deliver such wisdom to Barbie as "I need an update on your progress," "I don't think you're ready to defend yet", and "This is no where near ready for publication" and "what's your big rush.....!"

Buy 3 or more dolls, and you can have Barbie's Thesis Committee! (Palm Pilot and tenure sold separately.)

REAL JOB SKIPPER, When Barbie needs to talk, she knows that she can always count on her good friend Real Job Skipper (tm), who got a job after getting her bachelor degree. Press the button to hear Real Job Skipper say, "Sometimes I wish I went for my masters degree" and "Work is so hard! I had to work a half an hour of overtime!" Real Job Skipper's Work Wardrobe, Savings Account, Medical Plan, Reliable Car, Comfortable House, and Happy Life, sold separately.

WARNING: Do not place Grad Student Barbie and Real Job Skipper too close to each other, as there have been several cases of children leaving the room and coming back to find Barbie's hands mysteriously fused to Skipper's throat.

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...

Uncomfortable truths

I'll start with the lighthearted truth I learned this morning. I use the internet very much like a woman. It's the shopping. I would like to point out that, at Land's End, I purchased a gym bag for my husband...but that probably makes this even more true because that's how much he doesn't shop online. Anyway, based on the test found here, I'm almost all woman:

Likelihood of you being FEMALE is 96%
Likelihood of you being MALE is 4%

Site	Male-Female Ratio
google.com	0.98
yahoo.com	0.9
wikipedia.org	1.08
mapquest.com	0.83
facebook.com	0.83
blogger.com	1.06
weather.com	1.08
bankofamerica.com	0.9
homedepot.com	0.94
rockyou.com	0.46
shutterfly.com	0.67
hallmark.com	0.52
hotmail.com	0.83
llbean.com	0.68
landsend.com	0.64
gatech.edu	1.06

Apparently, "rock you" is associated with facebook. I don't think I should have to take that score twice. I think that the only sites that get included are the ones that are in that top 10k sites website. I'm annoyed. I feel somewhat androgenous but, whatever.

This brings me to another realization I had today. Along the lines of "He's Just Not That Into You," there should maybe be a book for the complaining graduate students of the world called, "You're Just Not Doing That Good of a Job" or maybe, "You're Just Not All That Smart." This happens to me occassionally. I somehow get an outside perspective and realize that part of my trouble is that I'm sort of in way over my head. I have a long history of getting myself to this point by hook or by crook and now I'll graduate the same way. My former office mate and I were constantly complaining about how hard it is to get my advisor to submit one of our papers and how his standards are just so ridiculous. So I gave my paper to the office mate to read. After sort of a long time, he sent it back to me with what can only be described as an email cringe. Here's a quote:

"I have tried to offer you honest, constructive criticism that I believe will improve the manuscript...I think that you have an interesting story, but the manuscript needs some additional work before the data and significance become clear. Please don't hate me."

So, really, in short, "You're the problem, in this case." Anyway, I've got coffee and big plans to fix this. It kind of makes me feel empowered to realize that the ball is in my court. The ironic thing is that my "difficult" advisor was super nice to me about this particular paper. We had a meeting and he was enthusiastic and he reminded me that the other paper is almost done and that I'm on my way. Take all this together and what do you get? The problem is ME! This is like when I study my ass off and get an F on an exam while my study partners make A's. It's not the material so much as the receptacle. I'm re-examining my committee meeting and all the dum-dums my advisor has employed in the past and thinking that the committee must have all been sitting there thinking, "If only there had been a committee meeting sooner, we could have suggested that this sweet young thing leave with a master's. She probably spends her time surfing the internet for gym bags to buy her husband."

Sigh. Now I need to start the blog about why I am so disappointed to find out that I'm an internet woman and how that links in my head to my difficulties with science. Totally fucked up, right? Sigh again.