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sciencewoman | February 10, 2009According to my self-declared theme, 2009 was supposed to be the year of sustainability. The year when I planned to "focus on trying to live my life that is sustainable in the long run for my body, my mental health, my family and my career." Instead, I feel like I could write another post with the title "Hi, I'm ScienceWoman and I sometimes blog around here." The last few weeks have been insane. I've been staying up later than usual, putting in less teaching prep time than I feel comfortable with, feeling like I'm not making any progress with my research, and missing time with my family.…
sciencewoman | January 26, 2009Dearest Minnow,
Happy Birthday!
I am so proud of my "big girl" who knows her colors, can count to three, has seven word sentences, loves books to the point of memorization, solves puzzles repeatedly, pees on the potty regularly, cares for and cuddles her "baby" and stuffed puppy, sings songs spontaneously, worries about how "Nanna has a big owie," pedals her tricycle, and has words associated with most of the letters in the alphabet ("apple, baby, cat, daddy..."). I'm amazed by how much you've grown so much in just the past few months, and I look forward to being amazed by your…
sciencewoman | January 20, 2009The real world intervened (i.e., I got a nasty cold) with my best intentions to provide more thorough blogging coverage of the wonderful conference (hi everyone!). Maybe someday I'll manage to work my thoughts from the sessions into coherent blog posts, but I know I'm pretty bad about promising and not delivering results (hello, the time-off post. It's 1/2 written even).
But here are some snapshots of the conference. And let me just say that Alice is even more wonderful in person than she is on blog. She is way cool. No wonder they gave her a trading card at the WISE event on Friday.
(Hey,…
sciencewoman | January 16, 2009
I'm sitting at the edge of the auditorium at the Sigma Xi Center, comfortably sandwiched between Scicurious and Christina Pikas. I'm listening to Rebecca Skloot describe how a creative writing class assignment to write about a place and her response about the freezer in the Colorado State University Veterinary School morgue launched her on a career in science writing. Now, she's introducing the main topic of her talk (as well as the topic of her new book) "The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks" And we're getting to hear world-premiere excerpts from the book to be published next year.
Skloot's…
sciencewoman | January 5, 2009Like many others in the blogosphere, I've adopted the profgrrrrl model of defining a theme for each year rather than a list of resolutions. In 2008, my theme was "Seeking Strategies for Survival, Sanity, and Success." As I said a few weeks ago, the survival part was achieved, but beyond that, I'm not so sure.
This year I'm going to take a slightly different tack on the same general idea, and I'm not moving from my spot in the alphabet. My theme for 2009 is Sustainability. As in, I'm going to focus on trying to live my life that is sustainable in the long run for my body, my mental health,…
sciencewoman | December 27, 2008There's quite the discussion going on over at Dr. Isis's house about different approaches to feminism and how the actions and choices of mothers and others do or do not conform to particular feminist philosophies. I made a comment early this morning that perhaps wasn't clear enough about where I thought the current US societal set-up fails us, so I tried again this afternoon:
I fervently hope that there could be a better way than having a woman work a "man's job" (in my case, science professor) and then come home and work a second "woman's job" (mother, cook, housekeeper). How many times have…
sciencewoman | December 21, 2008It's the end of the year, and I'm feeling a bit reflective. (I'm also avoiding a daunting between-semesters to-do list. When will I manage to take a break?) In a recent comment thread, Female Engineering Professor commented:
I often find myself wondering about various random threads on these blogs. Just the other day I was wondering if ScienceWoman ever got blinds or curtains in her office.
So instead of doing the year in review meme that's gone around, I'll now try to tidy up the nursery by sharing the rest of the story from a few past posts.
First to answer FEP, I did get blinds in my…
sciencewoman | December 16, 2008The last few weeks have been completely chaotic, over-crowded, and exhausting. On top of the end-of-term crunch, with its usual flurry of grading, review sessions, and exams, I was also trying to finish revisions on a paper, and get some research done in time to make the poster for AGU. The unintended, but entirely predictable consequences of all this was longer and longer hours working, more and more caffeine, and less and less time with Minnow.
I was getting so much done! I discovered that if I just drank more caffeine, I could reduce my nightly sleep to 6 (badly interrupted) hours. And in…
sciencewoman | December 1, 2008Dr. Isis has issued quite the challenge with her prompt for the December Scientiae. I knew exactly how I wanted to respond.
My science is hotter than Dr. Isis's Naughty Monkeys, because I wear better shoes [when I do my science]. To demonstrate, I present a sampling of actual shoes I have worn while collecting my hot, hot science data.
The field assistant is bonus. She doesn't wear shoes...although we tried once with a pair of these. They lasted all of about 4 minutes in the field. The Princess Pup prefers to do her science in the buff.
sciencewoman | November 27, 2008It's nice that Thanksgiving is here, and not just because I need a wee break from teaching. It's also a very good reminder to me to look beyond the challenges and annoyances that seem to appear daily, and see instead the big good things in my life. And when I squint my eyes just right, I can see that many of those challenges and annoyances stem from an over-abundance of good things. So this year, I am most thankful for:
A bright, inquisitive, spirited, enthusiastic little girl who loves to climb and swing and read books and cuddle with her mommy.
An incredible bond among my mom, brother and I…
sciencewoman | November 22, 2008Having worked on my writing every day for the first two weeks of November, I concluded last week feeling rather optimistic about InaDWriMo's success in getting me to increase my productivity. But I was also very tired. And in order to make time for writing every single day, I was working longer hours (i.e., seeing less of Minnow) and letting lots of other things slide (i.e., my lectures were terrible and let us not even describe the house). What I didn't realize last Saturday was how close I was to the tipping point...
But by Monday morning I was a stressed out wreck, and then a logistical…
sciencewoman | November 17, 2008 Isis tagged me for the five things meme that's making the rounds (again, actually, I know I've done this one at least once before.) But this time I borrowed Abel's idea and added a cool graphic that I got from takoma-bibelot on flickr.
5 things I was doing 10 years ago.
working towards my undergraduate degree
trying to decide whether to be a scientist, doctor, or lawyer
using ICQ to chat with my now-husband
living in my first apartment with a good friend and a third
falling in love with the Princess Pup
5 things on my to do list today
work on paper revisions
write tomorrow's lecture
write…
sciencewoman | November 15, 2008It's Saturday again, time for another update of my progress towards this month's InaDWriMo goals.
I've been sending myself little daily progress report details, but sometimes it's useful to take stock of the larger picture. For instance, until I sat down to write this post, I'd forgotten that I submitted my latest grant proposal on Monday - that's less than a week ago, and already I've made lots more progress on the next task.
So, to review. My goals were to submit a grant proposal (check!), complete major revisions to a paper (in progress!), and get the bulk of data analysis done for my AGU…
sciencewoman | November 12, 2008Where we left our heroine at the end of the last episode, she was on her way to pick Minnow up from daycare. Work day's over right? Should be smooth sailing from here to midnight. Maybe, maybe not.
(Note to Lab Lemming: Don't worry about the time to type up these posts. They were compiled from short emails I sent to myself throughout the day...this is lazy blogging.)
5:20 Arrive at daycare. Have the following conversation:
Teacher 1: So-and-so's parents just had a baby boy.
Teacher 2: Yeah, and Tyler's parents are having a girl.
Me: Tyler's mom is pregnant? Seems like…
sciencewoman | November 11, 2008Where we left our saga, our heroine was getting ready for her class. The work day had begun in earnest.
9:10 am. Start the last minute lecture prep. Decide to not make the overheads I need for an example at the end of class...we won't get there anyway I think.
9:30 am. Class. Discuss problems with the latest homework assignment, brief student presentations on a previous assignment, lecture with powerpoint and on the board. Damn, I reached the point where I need the overheads. Have to let class out 8 minutes early, even though we're running a bit behind the syllabus.
10:45 am. Discuss the…
sciencewoman | November 10, 2008Last September, I chronicled my journey through a fairly typical weekday as a first year assistant professor with an infant. The day started early and never really ended, so it took me three posts to tell the whole story (1, 2, 3). I always intended to revisit the project again, but it's taken me 14 months to do so. Now I'm a second year assistant professor with an almost 2 year old and life seems only slightly less hectic. Below the fold, follow me as I get my day going. I'm going to spread this day out into multiple posts spanning most of the week, so you'll have to keep coming back to…
sciencewoman | November 8, 2008Eek! We're one week into November already? How in the world did that happen? I've made good progress, but I still have *so* much left to do.
I've already told you how my writing month got off to a start, but below the fold you can catch up on the rest of my progress.
Sunday Nov 2: Added final sentences to proposal. Slightly reorganized methods section to clarify. Now have draft complete except what is needed from co-PI. Sent off to collaborator. (~150 words)
Monday Nov 3: Wrote budget justification (499 words.)
Tuesday Nov 4: Election day, too distracting to get huge amounts done, but…
sciencewoman | November 6, 2008I still get a little chill down my spine when the news announcers say "President-elect Obama," but already I am being reminded that we can't just sit back and wait for him to save the world. We still need to do our part, and one of the things we need to do right now is be vigilant to make sure that the most competent people are running the bureaucratic machinery of the country.
So I was very pleased when a list-serv to which I belong circulated an email from a major research organization saying that they were being contacted by the Obama transition team and asked for nominations of people…
sciencewoman | November 4, 2008Be the change we want to see...
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