Friday, October 31, 2008
How about being a global citizen?
Just found this on the Economist...what if the whole world could vote?
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Fall-out
After my food-poisoning induced mental health day yesterday I was really looking forward to coming into the lab this morning. It's amazing what a day off now and then can do for your enthusiasm. So I got in this morning and bopped around the lab for a bit just getting things organized and then...productivity came to a grinding halt and has been proceeding at a reptilian rate since then. What happened?
First thing this morning after all my bopping, I sat down with Jr. Grad Student to go over revisions on his candidacy proposal. I really like JGS - he's a super bright guy with lots of curiosity and he asks great questions. He and I have also had similar communication problems with GrAdvisor and so we have bonded over this. JGS has to submit his proposal today so he's stressing over the last little details before he sends this off to his exam committee. All in all, I think that he has written an excellent proposal...but this being his first attempt at grant (or even mock-grant) writing, I gave him A LOT of style edits, along with suggestions about revising his experimental design section to make it more hypothesis-driven. He tends to write almost a biographical account of the previous work done on the field -- the research groups who published the data are the subjects of his sentences rather than the data themselves. And he is also very verbose...when I apologized for hacking down all his sentences (I didn't want him to freak out over all the red ink), he admitted that he's currently reading Dickens and that this has crept into his own writing style. Ha! Note to self - read Hemingway when writing manuscripts. He came back this morning with all the style edits done (awesome!) but with further questions about his experiments. He needed a little bit of help expanding one aim into several experiments as well as developing a mating strategy to generate one complicated (but elegant) trigenic animal model. I really like helping people with this kind of stuff. I'm finding more and more that I prefer thinking up new experiments to actually performing them and doing so makes me feel marginally brilliant, which is more than I can say for my benchwork most days. I think that his proposal is better for our brainstorming session (it was good already), but now my head feels like there's a truck parked on it. Am thinking this is fall-out from being sick yesterday...and come to find out, NO ONE else got sick from eating the pizza at seminar. Bastards!! I must have a bug.
Will finish up the tedious but non-brain-draining stuff to do here and then:
First thing this morning after all my bopping, I sat down with Jr. Grad Student to go over revisions on his candidacy proposal. I really like JGS - he's a super bright guy with lots of curiosity and he asks great questions. He and I have also had similar communication problems with GrAdvisor and so we have bonded over this. JGS has to submit his proposal today so he's stressing over the last little details before he sends this off to his exam committee. All in all, I think that he has written an excellent proposal...but this being his first attempt at grant (or even mock-grant) writing, I gave him A LOT of style edits, along with suggestions about revising his experimental design section to make it more hypothesis-driven. He tends to write almost a biographical account of the previous work done on the field -- the research groups who published the data are the subjects of his sentences rather than the data themselves. And he is also very verbose...when I apologized for hacking down all his sentences (I didn't want him to freak out over all the red ink), he admitted that he's currently reading Dickens and that this has crept into his own writing style. Ha! Note to self - read Hemingway when writing manuscripts. He came back this morning with all the style edits done (awesome!) but with further questions about his experiments. He needed a little bit of help expanding one aim into several experiments as well as developing a mating strategy to generate one complicated (but elegant) trigenic animal model. I really like helping people with this kind of stuff. I'm finding more and more that I prefer thinking up new experiments to actually performing them and doing so makes me feel marginally brilliant, which is more than I can say for my benchwork most days. I think that his proposal is better for our brainstorming session (it was good already), but now my head feels like there's a truck parked on it. Am thinking this is fall-out from being sick yesterday...and come to find out, NO ONE else got sick from eating the pizza at seminar. Bastards!! I must have a bug.
Will finish up the tedious but non-brain-draining stuff to do here and then:
- Get a Halloween costume for Danger Dog...I'm thinking he needs a cape
- Go home and carve my jack-o-lantern and enjoy the beautiful autumn evening we've grown accustomed to lately
- Have friends M&M over for dinner - carnitas have been simmering into tasty tasty goodness in the slow-cooker all day...hopefully, Better Half has been able to resist all day and there will be some left by the time I get home. Yum.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Ass-less pants and lady-parts
There is a riveting post today regarding ass-less pants and lady-parts over at Isis the Scientist.
Dr. Isis' post made me laugh so hard I nearly peed myself (thankfully, due to the food poisoning, I have strategically located myself within 2-second sprint to the bathroom so this unfortunate event was narrowly avoided). The Goddess has shared her 1st lady-parts exam story with whoever is out there in order to inspire more women to go out and get their yearly Pap test done. As any benevolent goddess would - she is forever looking out for the best interests of her adoring subjects. And while cervical cancer is no laughing matter, the first visit to the lady-parts doctor certainly is for many people that I know. Mine was somewhat more uncomfortable and less funny and left me feeling that I never wanted to go through that again...so I didn't for several years even though I knew it was in my best interest. I think that there is something to be said for inspiring women to take charge of their sexual health...and also something to be said for encouraging the doctors to treat these women not just medically, but with a little respect.
I experienced the humiliation of my first lady-parts exam at the tender age of 17. Being a late bloomer, I hadn't started menstruating until I was nearly 16 (might have had something to do with all the athletics I was involved in at the time), and it never really got regular for me. My mother decided she was concerned about this, so she scheduled me an appointment with her lady-parts doc. Let's call him Dr. Jerkface. So I dutifully showed up at Dr. J's office at the appointed time, and changed into the requisite front-opening gown at which point Dr. J. entered accompanied by a female nurse. He explained that she would remain in the room for the entirety of the exam in order to ensure that no improprieties occurred...!!!! Now, I understand the legal reasons for the policy, but they way he presented this information made it seem as if he were on parole from his last conviction of sexual impropriety with a patient and the nurse was there to make sure he behaved himself. Way to inspire confidence in your nervous young patients! He then proceeded with the usual questions:
Dr. J: Last period?
AA: I don't know, a couple of months ago.
Dr. J: Any chance that you're pregnant?
AA: No.
Dr. J: How do you know?
AA: Because I haven't been having any, you, know, sex.
Dr. J: Number of sexual partners?
AA: None.
Dr. J: What?
AA: I said "none".
Dr. J: Do you have a boyfriend?
AA: Yes.
Dr. J: So that's one sexual partner?
AA: No, that's zero sexual partners - we're not sexually active.
Dr. J: You can trust me, I'm a doctor you know. It's very important that you are honest with your doctor.
AA: I'm telling the truth...I have a boyfriend, we've discussed how sexually involved we want to be and decided that we're not ready for that yet, so we are not sexually active.
Dr. J: Are you attracted to men? Or do you also have feelings of attraction for females?
AA: [WTF!!?!?]
Things went back and forth like this for a while...me refusing to budge on my very honest answers to his questions and him clearly continuing to believe that I was lying. I was pretty fucking steamed at this point...I understand that it may be uncommon but is it really so unbelievable that an 17-year-old woman might already be making decisions about her sexual health with the support from her sexual (but not really) partner? Did he think I thought it was cool to pretend to be an 17-year-old virgin? And is the only explanation for a 17-year-old virgin that she is not really into men?!?! I was also kind of annoyed that nanny-nurse didn't step in and tell him to shut up...maybe she also thought I was lying. Anyway, Dr. J. clearly didn't like being lied to and expressed this passive-aggressively throughout the remainder of the exam - no warning before inserting the VERY COLD speculum, certainly no warning about the whole cervical scraping thing, and him dictating into his voice recorder during the breast exam: "...small, under-developed breasts...dysmennorhea...peach-fuzz on face indicate a possible hormone imbalance...possibly androgen-insensitivty..."
I kid you not, he said all this out loud as if I weren't even in the room!!! And for the record, yes I did have small ta-tas (they have since come into their own) but I was a small, very athletic person at the time (which would also explain the irregular periods), and I did (and still do) have very small fine blond hairs on my face...not exactly what I would call peach-fuzz. I also was fully aware of what androgen insensitivity means...if he was serious about that he would have asked for a tissue sample to check my karyotype for a Y chromosome...he didn't, which makes me suspect he was just trying to get back at me for "lying" about my sex life. Way to make a teenage girl feel good about herself.
And then this at the end of the exam:
Dr. J: I'd like to prescribe the following drug (popular contraceptive) to you.
AA: But I told you, I'M. NOT. SEXUALLY. ACTIVE.
Dr. J: Well, whatever the case may be, you have other symptoms that lead me to believe that the hormones provided by this drug would be beneficial to you.
AA: Like what?
Dr. J: Well, for instance, you would have regular periods, and it might clear up your acne.
AA: But my acne isn't really that bad, and I don't really like having my period so more of those doesn't strike me as better.
Dr. J: Well, I'm your doctor and I'm recommending that you take these...I'll see you next year.
UN-fucking-believable! I did take the contraceptives, but not without further humiliation at the pharmacy because Dr. J didn't note that they were being prescribed for a medical condition. At that time in my home state, my parents' insurance company didn't want to cover contraceptives for minors. I had to explain to the pharmacist in my small town (very conservative fellow whose son I went to school with) that it wasn't for contraceptive purposes since I wasn't sexually active, and he kindly sorted this out with Dr. J's office and the insurance company and sent me on my way with a little pill pack.
I took them and didn't like them and quit them and never saw a gynecologist again until I was 23...I cried a little in her office at my first visit when she asked why it had been so long since my last exam. But she was totally understanding when I explained about my first visit and the fact that until very recently I had been virgin. (Went on dates in college but never fancied any of those guys well enough.) And you know what?
She believed me...and now I go for my annual exams religiously.
The sad thing is that this kind of inherent disrespect for young women's ability to make decisions for themselves is rampant in the field. I know another young woman who was unmarried but in a long-term monogamous relationship who went to her local Planned Parenthood facility for her annual exams and contraceptives because she didn't have health insureance. The doctors there consistently chastised her for not using a condom because they refused to believe that she had the sense to be in a relationship with a guy who wasn't cheating on her. Granted, they probably see a lot more women in not-so-healthy relationships where this is a real issue...but what ever happened to respecting the patient? I mean, they wouldn't be in the stinkin' stirrups in the first place if they weren't taking their health seriously, so why is it the default to assume that they are lying, or even worse, stupid, about their own sexual decisions.
The point of all this is that if our society or the medical community at large is going to encourage women to take charge of their sexual health, maybe we ought to start taking them seriously as women, not children, when their sexual health becomes something that needs care. Right from the start. Not giving any respect or credence to young women's good decisions regarding their own sex life is not encouraging them to be empowered about this. I'll get off my soapbox now.
And lest you think I forgot about the ass-less pants - I'm sure that Dr. Isis in all her hotness wasn't really implying that she wears such get-ups to the lab. But for the record, it is totally possible to really truly rock sexy in ass-less pants (and I don't mean in a "Gentlemen's Club"). In my youth I was a competitive equestrienne and in fact have owned several pairs of chaps (pronounced "shaps") as they are known in equestrian circles. And I looked super hot in them while beating the ass-less pants off of my competitors.
Dr. Isis' post made me laugh so hard I nearly peed myself (thankfully, due to the food poisoning, I have strategically located myself within 2-second sprint to the bathroom so this unfortunate event was narrowly avoided). The Goddess has shared her 1st lady-parts exam story with whoever is out there in order to inspire more women to go out and get their yearly Pap test done. As any benevolent goddess would - she is forever looking out for the best interests of her adoring subjects. And while cervical cancer is no laughing matter, the first visit to the lady-parts doctor certainly is for many people that I know. Mine was somewhat more uncomfortable and less funny and left me feeling that I never wanted to go through that again...so I didn't for several years even though I knew it was in my best interest. I think that there is something to be said for inspiring women to take charge of their sexual health...and also something to be said for encouraging the doctors to treat these women not just medically, but with a little respect.
I experienced the humiliation of my first lady-parts exam at the tender age of 17. Being a late bloomer, I hadn't started menstruating until I was nearly 16 (might have had something to do with all the athletics I was involved in at the time), and it never really got regular for me. My mother decided she was concerned about this, so she scheduled me an appointment with her lady-parts doc. Let's call him Dr. Jerkface. So I dutifully showed up at Dr. J's office at the appointed time, and changed into the requisite front-opening gown at which point Dr. J. entered accompanied by a female nurse. He explained that she would remain in the room for the entirety of the exam in order to ensure that no improprieties occurred...!!!! Now, I understand the legal reasons for the policy, but they way he presented this information made it seem as if he were on parole from his last conviction of sexual impropriety with a patient and the nurse was there to make sure he behaved himself. Way to inspire confidence in your nervous young patients! He then proceeded with the usual questions:
Dr. J: Last period?
AA: I don't know, a couple of months ago.
Dr. J: Any chance that you're pregnant?
AA: No.
Dr. J: How do you know?
AA: Because I haven't been having any, you, know, sex.
Dr. J: Number of sexual partners?
AA: None.
Dr. J: What?
AA: I said "none".
Dr. J: Do you have a boyfriend?
AA: Yes.
Dr. J: So that's one sexual partner?
AA: No, that's zero sexual partners - we're not sexually active.
Dr. J: You can trust me, I'm a doctor you know. It's very important that you are honest with your doctor.
AA: I'm telling the truth...I have a boyfriend, we've discussed how sexually involved we want to be and decided that we're not ready for that yet, so we are not sexually active.
Dr. J: Are you attracted to men? Or do you also have feelings of attraction for females?
AA: [WTF!!?!?
Things went back and forth like this for a while...me refusing to budge on my very honest answers to his questions and him clearly continuing to believe that I was lying. I was pretty fucking steamed at this point...I understand that it may be uncommon but is it really so unbelievable that an 17-year-old woman might already be making decisions about her sexual health with the support from her sexual (but not really) partner? Did he think I thought it was cool to pretend to be an 17-year-old virgin? And is the only explanation for a 17-year-old virgin that she is not really into men?!?! I was also kind of annoyed that nanny-nurse didn't step in and tell him to shut up...maybe she also thought I was lying. Anyway, Dr. J. clearly didn't like being lied to and expressed this passive-aggressively throughout the remainder of the exam - no warning before inserting the VERY COLD speculum, certainly no warning about the whole cervical scraping thing, and him dictating into his voice recorder during the breast exam: "...small, under-developed breasts...dysmennorhea...peach-fuzz on face indicate a possible hormone imbalance...possibly androgen-insensitivty..."
I kid you not, he said all this out loud as if I weren't even in the room!!! And for the record, yes I did have small ta-tas (they have since come into their own) but I was a small, very athletic person at the time (which would also explain the irregular periods), and I did (and still do) have very small fine blond hairs on my face...not exactly what I would call peach-fuzz. I also was fully aware of what androgen insensitivity means...if he was serious about that he would have asked for a tissue sample to check my karyotype for a Y chromosome...he didn't, which makes me suspect he was just trying to get back at me for "lying" about my sex life. Way to make a teenage girl feel good about herself.
And then this at the end of the exam:
Dr. J: I'd like to prescribe the following drug (popular contraceptive) to you.
AA: But I told you, I'M. NOT. SEXUALLY. ACTIVE.
Dr. J: Well, whatever the case may be, you have other symptoms that lead me to believe that the hormones provided by this drug would be beneficial to you.
AA: Like what?
Dr. J: Well, for instance, you would have regular periods, and it might clear up your acne.
AA: But my acne isn't really that bad, and I don't really like having my period so more of those doesn't strike me as better.
Dr. J: Well, I'm your doctor and I'm recommending that you take these...I'll see you next year.
UN-fucking-believable! I did take the contraceptives, but not without further humiliation at the pharmacy because Dr. J didn't note that they were being prescribed for a medical condition. At that time in my home state, my parents' insurance company didn't want to cover contraceptives for minors. I had to explain to the pharmacist in my small town (very conservative fellow whose son I went to school with) that it wasn't for contraceptive purposes since I wasn't sexually active, and he kindly sorted this out with Dr. J's office and the insurance company and sent me on my way with a little pill pack.
I took them and didn't like them and quit them and never saw a gynecologist again until I was 23...I cried a little in her office at my first visit when she asked why it had been so long since my last exam. But she was totally understanding when I explained about my first visit and the fact that until very recently I had been virgin. (Went on dates in college but never fancied any of those guys well enough.) And you know what?
She believed me...and now I go for my annual exams religiously.
The sad thing is that this kind of inherent disrespect for young women's ability to make decisions for themselves is rampant in the field. I know another young woman who was unmarried but in a long-term monogamous relationship who went to her local Planned Parenthood facility for her annual exams and contraceptives because she didn't have health insureance. The doctors there consistently chastised her for not using a condom because they refused to believe that she had the sense to be in a relationship with a guy who wasn't cheating on her. Granted, they probably see a lot more women in not-so-healthy relationships where this is a real issue...but what ever happened to respecting the patient? I mean, they wouldn't be in the stinkin' stirrups in the first place if they weren't taking their health seriously, so why is it the default to assume that they are lying, or even worse, stupid, about their own sexual decisions.
The point of all this is that if our society or the medical community at large is going to encourage women to take charge of their sexual health, maybe we ought to start taking them seriously as women, not children, when their sexual health becomes something that needs care. Right from the start. Not giving any respect or credence to young women's good decisions regarding their own sex life is not encouraging them to be empowered about this. I'll get off my soapbox now.
And lest you think I forgot about the ass-less pants - I'm sure that Dr. Isis in all her hotness wasn't really implying that she wears such get-ups to the lab. But for the record, it is totally possible to really truly rock sexy in ass-less pants (and I don't mean in a "Gentlemen's Club"). In my youth I was a competitive equestrienne and in fact have owned several pairs of chaps (pronounced "shaps") as they are known in equestrian circles. And I looked super hot in them while beating the ass-less pants off of my competitors.
Food Poisioning and Mental Health Days
Ick...departmental seminar provides pizza for lunchtime forum on Tuesdays. Note to self: never again. Food poisoning sucks the big one, but the upshot is an enforced "mental health day" wherein I stay in bed, catch up on sleep, maybe take the dog for the longer walk that he really deserves and generally decompress from the madness of the last few weeks. If not for the rumbly in my tumbly I think that would rather enjoy this. However, were it not for physical illness I would feel compelled to go to the lab and scramble to gets so many experiments finished/started/analyzed that I would leave myself no time for mental decompression, let alone just thinking.
It's been a busy couple of weeks. My dissertation work has, I think, reached that magical point at the end of one's graduate career where everything that has not worked for the last several years finally says, "OK kid, you've paid your dues and fought the good fight while we threw as much crap as we could muster at you, and you win...no more games." All of a sudden, all at once, all these experimental techniques that I have been trouble-shooting and tweaking for literally YEARS all started working, as if by magic. Normally, I have several things going at once with the understanding that at least half of them will not produce anything...so I focus on the ones that do in order to have shiny new data to pacify GrAdvisor, while the non-working ones get put on the back burner. This strikes me as an inefficient use of time but I can't seem to find a better way to do it. Anyway, when Everything (rather than <50% of it) starts working all at once It ALL needs my immediate attention RIGHT NOW! AAACK!
Unaccustomed to this stroke of good luck, I have felt compelled to get as much done as possible before the universe notices that things are working for me and goes, "Whoops! Check out AA's experiments over there - they're actually working! Who's the numbskull that let that happen?" On top of which, I have just had my very first first-author paper accepted for publication (OK, it's just a review in a very specific-to-subfield, not-so-high-impact journal, but it was a hell of a lot of work!), so the review process for that was concurrent with all those experiments.
I'm thinking that the universe hasn't noticed yet (pretty sure it doesn't read this blog), so I'm hoping to keep riding that wave of good fortune, but for the immediate future I am waiting for mice to breed so there is no immediate pressure to get in to the lab and make things happen at this precise moment. I am taking a deep breath, making a cup of tea, and enjoying the crisp and sunny autmnal weather today. Tomorrow, back to work.
It's been a busy couple of weeks. My dissertation work has, I think, reached that magical point at the end of one's graduate career where everything that has not worked for the last several years finally says, "OK kid, you've paid your dues and fought the good fight while we threw as much crap as we could muster at you, and you win...no more games." All of a sudden, all at once, all these experimental techniques that I have been trouble-shooting and tweaking for literally YEARS all started working, as if by magic. Normally, I have several things going at once with the understanding that at least half of them will not produce anything...so I focus on the ones that do in order to have shiny new data to pacify GrAdvisor, while the non-working ones get put on the back burner. This strikes me as an inefficient use of time but I can't seem to find a better way to do it. Anyway, when Everything (rather than <50% of it) starts working all at once It ALL needs my immediate attention RIGHT NOW! AAACK!
Unaccustomed to this stroke of good luck, I have felt compelled to get as much done as possible before the universe notices that things are working for me and goes, "Whoops! Check out AA's experiments over there - they're actually working! Who's the numbskull that let that happen?" On top of which, I have just had my very first first-author paper accepted for publication (OK, it's just a review in a very specific-to-subfield, not-so-high-impact journal, but it was a hell of a lot of work!), so the review process for that was concurrent with all those experiments.
I'm thinking that the universe hasn't noticed yet (pretty sure it doesn't read this blog), so I'm hoping to keep riding that wave of good fortune, but for the immediate future I am waiting for mice to breed so there is no immediate pressure to get in to the lab and make things happen at this precise moment. I am taking a deep breath, making a cup of tea, and enjoying the crisp and sunny autmnal weather today. Tomorrow, back to work.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
What it's all about....
So I'm starting this blog for several reasons:
1) I have been inspired by the online musings of several other science bloggers as they navigate and negotiate the ins and outs of academic research and all the other crap that comes with it. I have been lurking around Dr. Jekyll and Mrs. Hyde, DrdrA, Dr. Isis, and FSP for some time and I really appreciate the dialogue (and monologues) there...thought it might be time to join the conversation.
2) I've always wanted to be the sort of person that keeps a journal...I've done it in the past in fits and starts but never really stuck with it. In spite of my inability to follow through with journaling long-term, I find that when I have a written forum as an outlet for all the noise in my head, it helps to get it hashed out somewhere so I can really identify the preoccupation and deal with it, table it, and move on to the stuff that requires more attention...like experiments. This is in essence my attempt to get all the non-essential-to-experiments-and-manuscripts noise out of my head and into a forum where other people might find it and engage in what (if any of it) sounds interesting...and if no one reads it, at least I'll have an electronic journal.
3) As I'm approaching the transition from student to post-doc, I'm finding it a more nerve-wracking and confusion-riddled move than I originally anticipated. The progression used to seem obvious: student, post-doc, post-doc, assistant, associate, full professor, but I have to admit that the deeper I get into this the more I realize that the decision to proceed down this path is not as easy as I was hoping it would be. Like many other women in science, I find that I am frequently dealing with the "two-body problem", the possibility and timing of starting a family, protecting my personal priorities, Imposter Syndrome, and feeling like I have to prove myself more so than my male counterparts. I'm not sure that I have anything necessarily new to add to the other fine forums out there but at least now I won't just be a lurker.
So there's my mission statement. If anyone out there is reading, I promise that subsequent posts will be lots more interesting.
1) I have been inspired by the online musings of several other science bloggers as they navigate and negotiate the ins and outs of academic research and all the other crap that comes with it. I have been lurking around Dr. Jekyll and Mrs. Hyde, DrdrA, Dr. Isis, and FSP for some time and I really appreciate the dialogue (and monologues) there...thought it might be time to join the conversation.
2) I've always wanted to be the sort of person that keeps a journal...I've done it in the past in fits and starts but never really stuck with it. In spite of my inability to follow through with journaling long-term, I find that when I have a written forum as an outlet for all the noise in my head, it helps to get it hashed out somewhere so I can really identify the preoccupation and deal with it, table it, and move on to the stuff that requires more attention...like experiments. This is in essence my attempt to get all the non-essential-to-experiments-and-manuscripts noise out of my head and into a forum where other people might find it and engage in what (if any of it) sounds interesting...and if no one reads it, at least I'll have an electronic journal.
3) As I'm approaching the transition from student to post-doc, I'm finding it a more nerve-wracking and confusion-riddled move than I originally anticipated. The progression used to seem obvious: student, post-doc, post-doc, assistant, associate, full professor, but I have to admit that the deeper I get into this the more I realize that the decision to proceed down this path is not as easy as I was hoping it would be. Like many other women in science, I find that I am frequently dealing with the "two-body problem", the possibility and timing of starting a family, protecting my personal priorities, Imposter Syndrome, and feeling like I have to prove myself more so than my male counterparts. I'm not sure that I have anything necessarily new to add to the other fine forums out there but at least now I won't just be a lurker.
So there's my mission statement. If anyone out there is reading, I promise that subsequent posts will be lots more interesting.
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