Out of the closet

I suck at science. I know, I've been working on science degrees or as a scientist in training for the last 16 years. Why has it taken me so damn long to figure out that I suck at what I do? I'll blame it on sheer doggedness and the fact that I could chalk it up to impostor syndrome most of the time. That and in grad school you're surrounded by friends who are struggling and it's easy to get some positive reinforcement from those friends, whether it's deserved or not.

For the last two and a half years I've pretty much been off on my own. Sure, for a while I was going in to work with Derrick, but I was hanging out with geophysicists who for the most part don't really care what I do. In those two and a half years I haven't had the crutch of friends to motivate me or reassure me and I've had to face the fact that outside the social scene of science I'm just not a scientist. I spend most of my time thinking about and doing other things. I'm not so passionate about my work that I put aside everything else to get it done; instead, I keep my house and my blog, I take photos, I cook, I read, and I write (but not science). Derrick, when he was finishing, was so passionate about his work that he shoved aside everything else in order to finish. Not to whine (but I'm gonna) but I don't think he realized how much of a burden that put on me. (I also don't think he realizes how resentful I am that everything him gets prioritized unless I make a big deal out of it. I don't want to make a big deal out of it. I want him to sacrifice something (a hobby for a little while, perhaps? Do you really need ANOTHER new tool chest?) and I don't want it to have to push for it every damn time). That burden soon became an excuse for me to not work very hard, and I haven't. Sure, sporadically I get motivated and get something done, but it's inconsistent. I get easily discouraged, easily depressed. I already know this is the end of science for me, that I'm a scientific loser, a dead end, a waste of resources and training. I'm never going to do anything with my scientific training. Really saps my motivation, thinking about that.

Which begs the question, why then am I even bothering to try to finish? I'm sitting here feeling sick to my stomach, wanting to cry and yell and vomit because I'm so frustrated that I'm not going to finish. I'm going to quit. It feels so wrong.

It is because I feel like I'm going to disappoint others? Because I'm going to. Hell, I already have. I've felt the disappointment of my advisor and committee members pretty much since I had a kid. I've had to re-prove myself as a serious student ever since then, and I've failed in every way. Everyone knows I'm faking. Everyone can see my heart lies elsewhere (or at least my time commitment). When I tell people I'm working on finishing I can see they sense the lie in the words, can see I'm just telling them what I think they want to hear. They know I'm lying to myself as I'm lying to them.

I'm not enough; I'm too lazy; I'm a loser. I will not graduate. I will not be one of those people who gets done through 45 minutes here and an hour there. I will fail.

And I will be alright. Somehow that's the worst of it.

The lost women

As a female working in science, it's sometimes discouraging to see how little women have contributed historically. Admittedly, there are very few people who make it through the filter of history to begin with, but the erosion of names that leaves behind only a few pillars makes it seem like the only people who have been involved in science were those male pillars. Here is a summary/review of a book that details the lives and contributions of the women the Royal Society refused to admit to its hallowed halls but who nevertheless were important contributors to science in their day.

One quote, from Maria Mitchell, struck me especially. She said,

"The laws of nature are not discovered by accident; theories do not come by chance, even to the greatest minds, they are not born in the hurry and worry of daily toil, they are diligently sought… and until able women have given their lives to investigation, it is idle to discuss their capacity for original work."

The discussion below the article contains the typical, 'men are more accomplished because the distribution of intelligence is flattened, leading to more smarter--and more dumber--men' (debunked--entertainingly--here and here. Personally, I think Mitchell comes much closer to the mark. My experiences tell me cultural factors, especially expectations regarding women's roles, are far more important. Women are responsible for so much, especially for children. Having a small child prevents one from giving their lives to investigation completely, so as I'm struggling to finish my dissertation the tension between my two lives--my life of the mind and of investigation, and my life of the home--is quite stark. I've been extraordinarily lucky to have people supporting me through my graduate career, especially post-Sylvia, but it's much, much harder. In the end, there is nobody who can (or, perhaps more accurately, is willing to) do the job a mother can for her own children.

I love Jorge Cham

This explains my life so well. So depressingly well.

Front loading

Wednesday and Thursday (and Tuesday, I believe) a friend of mine from college was on campus interviewing for a position in my department. Catching up with her was quite a treat--and one that makes me wish I could go to the 10 year reunion in a few weeks. I'm amazed at how well we still know each other, in spite of not keeping in touch for so long. While she was speaking her mannerisms were at times distractingly familiar in a way that made me feel almost like I was back in Blacker. But, of course, we're not at tech anymore; we've moved on in our lives.

She is, I suspect, almost exactly where she wanted to be right now, with the possible exception of not having a tenure-track position (though that's a little out of control, since apparently there haven't been any tenure-track planetary science positions available essentially until now). She's written a number of successful grants and published many papers, one of them in Nature Geosciences. Not only is this friend wildly successful by academic standards, she's also engaged to a guy who is apparently similarly intellectually gifted, so (at least from my perspective) it looks like she's really living the dream.

I am excited things are working out so well for her. I'm totally unsurprised by her success because it's always been obvious she is going to make her mark. She's passionate about her research, about education, about science in general; she works really hard and is ambitious and charismatic. She is an amazing scientist and I really do feel it's a privilege to know her and to count her as a friend (long lost though she is).

I am envious only in that I look up to her as an example of what I wish I were more like. Comparison is a deadly thing and I should shun it, especially when it comes to my old tech friends. Even so, it's hard to see all the wonderful, exciting things my friends are doing and look at myself and think I should have done something equally impressive. But I haven't. I'm lazy; I like to blog instead of work (like right now, for instance). I like science, but I am not passionate about it most of the time; I often feel like an idiot as I struggle to understand papers I should easily understand. I just don't know if I can hack it. Some of my happiest moments are when I'm working on my science, when I feel that passion fill me to overflowing, but then some of my deepest despair comes too from the daily failures and worthlessness of much of my effort. Science is such a big part of my identity at this point, but not always in a positive way. I wish I could see a path that would let me change that.

I heard Ira Glass (of This American Life) talking about how all stories tend toward mediocrity, how it takes real effort to make something good instead of just blah. ACB was happy to diagnose the current state of my career as resulting from my front loading my family life while she front loaded her academic life. She was also happy to predict our trajectories would converge within a decade. It would be lovey if that were to happen, though I fear my natural tendency toward mediocrity is the real thing keeping me back.

The measure of creation

So, yesterday was a pretty spectacularly bad day, but I got over it and moved on, just as I have after any number of spectacularly bad days. Today wasn't a great day, though I was in a much better mood about the things that went wrong and the slowness of doing anything in lab while simultaneously caring for an infant and a husband. It occurred to me that the major change in my attitude came after I wrote about what had happened on my blog. I don't know if the difference is at all obvious to an outside observer, but yesterday's blog post was far more crafted than my usual get-down-the-details-and-don't-worry-about-how-it-sounds post. The same is true of a few other posts I've written when I've been down in the dumps about something, usually (though not always) school-related.

It occurs to me that when things are going well at school, I have less of a need to blog, less of a need to bake the cookies and cakes and endless loaves of tasty bread that Derrick so enjoys. I don't do as much photography or as much painting. I don't think it's because I have more energy when things aren't going well at school--quite the opposite is true. Instead, I think it's because for me science is very much a creative process--I am in the business of creating data, discovering ideas, creating knowledge and sharing that with others. And I get a fix off that. Elder Uchtdorf spoke to this need to create in the most recent conference:

The desire to create is one of the deepest yearnings of the human soul. No matter our talents, education, backgrounds, or abilities, we each have an inherent wish to create something that did not exist before.

Everyone can create. You don’t need money, position, or influence in order to create something of substance or beauty.

Creation brings deep satisfaction and fulfillment. We develop ourselves and others when we take unorganized matter into our hands and mold it into something of beauty—and I am not talking about the process of cleaning the rooms of your teenage children.

It's very true that I find deep satisfaction in the act of creation. Witness this tasty act of creation Derrick and I enjoyed about an hour ago:

Burned

I want to cry. I want to give up. I'm thinking maybe I don't need, and definitely don't deserve another degree. I'm looking over a collection of bottles--hard won, argued over, anticipated with the kind of feeling generally reserved for children (okay, maybe that's a slight exaggeration, but you get the idea)--and wondering if there's any possible way to identify them based on the few green and black smudges that are left on their otherwise identical faces. Is there some chemical analysis, other than the ones I've already planned, that will magically reveal the location from which the samples were collected? Is there some secret spy trick that I can use to ferret out the missing digits that were washed off the carefully made, but ultimately inadequate labels? Could I taste or smell some minute difference that will allow me to match these mystery samples with the waters they should be connected to? Alas, I fear the umbilici that should match parent water to brine shrimp offspring were cut long, long ago, and the matching ends shriveled and thrown off before I had any inkling to wonder at their connectedness.

It was such a beautiful day until I came into work.

D'Aargh!

So, I had an agreement with a guy at the Utah Division of Wildlife resources to get a set of new natural samples. You know, those funny things I need to get data? And graduate? Then, bureaucratic nonsense started. First, I couldn't reach the guy I'd made arrangements with. So I found his boss and asked what was going on. Now I have to talk to some new guy who evidently has to make sure my sample request is "legal" and a "good use of department resources" before he'll agree to help me. I've spent the last week working on a proposal for him rather than working on my thesis proposal I'm supposed to hand out to my committee in, oh, a week. Argh.

I think for stress relief I'm going to stare for a few minutes at the face of my beautiful unborn daughter.





Ah, that's much better.

For those who don't know, she's due July 23rd-ish.

Porcelain

I've decided that my motivation must be something like El Nino--periodically I get motivated, work hard, get things done, and feel much satisfaction with my job, leading to even more motivation and hard work. (During an El Nino year the East Pacific warms, shutting down upwelling and causing stronger easterlies, which push more warm water into the East Pacific.) Nice example of positive feedback. Unfortunately, there's also positive feedback for the opposite motivation state, in which I lack motivation, don't work hard, don't accomplish much, and find my scarce motivation slipping further and further. Wish I knew how to get into the other motivation state more easily.

Isopropanol--least favorite alcohol EVER!

I have a very short, but rather bad history with isopropanol. I'm sure it's a great alcohol, possessing many admirable qualities and useful in any number of applications--just nothing that helps me. In fact, I seem rather adept at using it in ways that make life that much more difficult.

For instance, I once accidentally added isopropanol to a liquid-liquid extraction I was doing to collect data for my master's. I was using water and hexane, and meant to get hexane, but picked up the bottle next to it, which just happened to be isopropanol. I added it to about half the samples before realizing the phases weren't separating as they should. Just my luck, every phase was miscible. I don't think there was a compound in the lab short of dirt I could have picked that would have been a worse thing to accidentally add.

Today, I was trying to clean up some spilled sodium iodide that spilled on a balance. I used water first, then decided I wanted to use the balance, so I sprayed alcohol on it to encourage it to dry faster. Not just any alcohol, mind you, but isopropanol. I watched, horrified as the isopropanol fumes rolled down over the iodine-covered plastic, reacted with the left-over iodine and stained the balance a dark yellow. Does ethanol do this? No, of course not. Only isopropanol. Grr.

it's a beautiful day

for running away and hiding under the covers. I want to end today right now. I've managed to accomplish nothing that needed to be done (like the, oh, more than a month overdue paper for Stable Isotopes), I misplaced the food I need for a class experiment, broke a plate during dinner, burned the beans for tomorrow's dinner, and just generally made a mess of things. I threw a tantrum in front of derrick because I was so frustrated I couldn't find my cell phone (fortunately, he's pretty understanding of my occasional bouts of severe frustration). It's just a sucky, sucky day.

I'm going to bed.

Death to Sea Monkeys

They've died again. And again... And again.

I think they're telling me something: I shouldn't have a project that involves living things. Ever.

I know this is just a part of grad school--failures make the successes that much sweeter and all, and it's all a part of the learning process. That said, I don't understand why it is I can grow sea monkeys just fine last summer when I wasn't trying to experiment on them and this summer they're dying on me like flies. Little aquatic flies.

This is so irritating.

Maybe they know when I'm going to experiment on them and they all get together after seeing a few of their comrades in arms sacrificed in a shower of ethanol, and decide to commit hari-kiri to avoid the death I plan for them.

I've asked at the pet store how to keep them alive, but most people just hatch the little beasts and then dump them into a fish tank with some veracious, crustacean-eating fish. Argh.

So, it's on to the next set of sea monkeys, with the hope these ones will prove hardier, or the test I set up (this time I'm varying the quantity of food I'm giving them) will turn out to be the last step between me and a successful equilibration experiment.

Here's to hoping.