Scenes from a Life: The Good, The Bad and the Ugly

...and why reasonable people make a big difference.

Act I: The Good

Setting: Graduate school. Reasonable male graduate student (RMGS) walks into our shared lab space and sits down at the computer next to me.

RMGS: Congratualations on your job offer.

Me: Thanks!

RMGS: I was really wondering what was going on with the job market recently.

Me: What do you mean?

RMGS: Well, it seemed like the female graduate students were getting all the academic jobs. I was really beginning to wonder why.

Me: Uh....

RMGS: Then I realized that all the finishing graduate students I know are women! [makes self-deprecating gesture]

Act II: The Bad

Setting: Graduate school.

Younger male graduate student (YMGS) is told by advisor to give group meeting in three weeks on project involving a collaborator from a sexist European country (SEC). YMGS proceeds to do more work in the following three weeks than he has in the last year. He gives a good group meeting presentation. He then leaves for a term of collaborative research abroad, unrelated to current project.

Advisor assigns me additional work on project, gives me paper to write up and puts me on as second author. This is totally reasonable. The SEC collaborator is added because he made the stuff we did our stuff on, though the making of said stuff is not described in this paper.

Authorship is as follows:

YMGS, Me, Advisor
R1 University, USA

and

Collaborator
SEC University

We send the paper to our collaborator in Sexist European Country.

Authorship comes back:

YMSG and Advisor
R1 University, USA

and

Male Student, Another Male Student, Collaborator
SEC Univeristy

Act III: The Ugly

Setting: e-mail message to administrator at my small college

To: A. Dean, Academic Affairs
From: Male Chair, Physchemology
Time: June
Subject: Twice

I understand that Professor Twice may have had to take it easy at the end of the semester when she was pregnant with twins. However, she had the babies almost two weeks ago! Why isn't she back working?

Epilogue I

Advisor's Office

Me: Do you have a minute?

Advisor: Come in. What is it?

Me: Um, we got this paper back from Collaborator at SEC U. He's added the names of two of his students, which I am okay with, as I assume they made [stuff]. But, um..., my name is no longer on the paper.

Advisor, hiding anger: I will take care of this.

Epilogue II

E-mail message from female administrator with three kids.

To: M. Chair, Physchemology
From: A. Dean, Academic Affairs
Date: June
Subject: [Re: Twice]

As far as the college is concerned, Professor Twice is on medical leave for eight weeks after the date of her surgery.

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Partial Success

One toddler used the potty today three times. Twice by announcing first, then going. Once by starting accidentally, then stopping, then finishing in the potty. Perhaps this is the beginning of the end of an era.

Update: Make that five times for one, once for the other!

Doubling the Love

Dean Dad over at Confessions of a Community College Dean has this excellent post about administrators suffering from narcissism:

http://suburbdad.blogspot.com/2007/03/ask-administrator-footprints-on-my-head.html

In particular, he says:

As the undeservedly-forgotten historian Christopher Lasch noted in his undeservedly-forgotten bestseller The Culture of Narcissism, narcissism isn't merely a synonym for self-centeredness. It's actually an inability to distinguish 'self' from 'other.' It's an inability to tell where the self ends and other people begin. That can resemble self-centeredness, but it can also result in crippling weakness and fear, since the lack of stable boundaries is inherently scary. That's why narcissists can sweep people up, then turn on them quickly. Simply put, they are not to be trusted, since they lack a basic, fundamental understanding of 'reciprocity,' which is the foundation of trust. They can't depersonalize decision-making

This is, I think, a great explanation of how narcissistic personalities manifest themselves once someone gets into a position of power in academia. Dean Dad says about one narcissist he worked with:

My contention that management isn't just the practice of rewarding your friends and punishing your enemies was literally incomprehensible to him.

I think he is right on here. As a result, narcissists do not understand why people might get mad at them for this behavior, and can not anticipate how future interactions might be impacted

So, assuming you can't run away, what can you do about a narcissist? So far, I've only found two things that have helped: (1) flattery seems to smooth things over in the short term and (2) knowledge you are dealing with one makes the whole thing less upsetting. I've heard keeping your head down is another strategy, but alas, I've never been good at that.

On an entirely different subject, Slash Dot has an interesting note responding to a study claiming the Hummer is greener than a Prius and other hybrids.

This seems to be popping up all over the place. According to some, we environmentally friendly folks are just ignoring the "facts". Because, you know, questioning the assumptions involved in coming up with the numbers is putting our heads in the sand.

Annoyances

We stopped at a drugstore this morning for an ibuprofen emergency (splitting headache, out of painkillers in office). After assessing which bottle of overpriced name brand pain reliever was the least overpriced, I proceeded to the checkout counter. No one was around, so I stood back waiting for the clerk to return. When such a person appears, another woman walks by me and puts her stuff on the checkout counter. No nod, no excuse me, no apology. In fact, she appears to have no interest in acknowledging my presence. Eventually, I check out too and make my way to the car.

Me: That woman who came out before me totally cut in front of me!

(Dr.) H: You mean the one over there {points}, who a moment ago kicked the snow off of her boots by using your car?

Science for Fun

I love science books written for a general audience. Here are a few recent favorites:

1. Color and Light in Nature by Lynch and Livingston
   
   Fabulous pictures and explanations of aurorae, rainbows, sun dogs, glories, mirages and many other light topics. Useful as background material in Intro to PhysChemology 101 courses. Also great for questions asked by 3rd graders. Great coffee table book, for geeks anyway.
   
   
2. Cats Are Not Peas: A Calico History of Genetics by Laura Gould
   
   Good explanation of why almost all calicoes are female. Almost all. Two parts story one part science. Really not recommended if you do not like cats.
   
   
3. The Elements of Murder: A History of Poison by John Emsley
   
   Juicy stuff, this. Murder (obviously), adultery, sex, palace intrigue and actual chemical formulae - what more could one ask for?
   

Omens

So is it bad when someone from Important Committee at your campus calls you to find out if your department chairperson is telling Important Committee the truth? Is it really bad when there is already another member of your department on Important Committee and he has already backed up your chairperson?

A Toddler Weighs In

My husband to my daughter: Does Mommy want a new job?

Daughter: No.

Hypothetically Speaking....

If someone in the administration tells you that you should seriously consider applying for an open Assistant Dean's job, because you name has been "discussed" as a "viable candidate" you should:

• Run screaming from the room.
  
• Say "No thank you."
  
• Find out more because you should never turn down a job you have not been offered.
  

Not the Motherly Type

Recently I ran into an adjunct from another department right before her class. She was freaking out about finding a VCR for the new classroom she just moved into. I told her she was in a smart room (hate that phrase - more on that some other time). Well, that did not suffice to calm her down - she doesn't have a key to the console and doesn't know how to use the equipment. I helped her out, in the 5 minutes before our classes began, as my students swarmed around me in search of the density of olive oil. Have you heard of Google people?

In any case, she came to my office after class, effusive in her thanks. It's really okay, I tell her. No big deal.

She sees a picture of my kids and says she doesn't know how I leave them. She tells me she only picked up her career again once all her kids were in school. It must be so hard for me to leave them.

Well, surprisingly no. Millions of men don't seem to feel guilty about this, why should women? Of course, I should point out that I have fantastic day care that I am very satisfied with. On the few occasions where I had different arrangements, it was hard. This leads me to wonder a few things: Is the guilt women feel about leaving children in daycare social conditioning (feeling what we are told we should feel)? Is it uneasiness with the particular day care arrangement? Is it our own particular situation? (I have on good authority that I am not the first parent of twins to take a deep breath after dropping them off, for example.)

Or perhaps in my case the answer is simpler As good friend and colleague once told me, I am "just not the motherly type.''

Women in SEM - Still Room for Improvement

The NSF has just come out with a new report on women and minorities in science and engineering fields. The Chronicle has a short summary in which they report:

Over all, women have earned more science and engineering bachelor's degrees than men since 2000, the report notes, and the number of such degrees awarded to women has increased every year since 1966, reaching nearly 228,000 in 2004.

This can, in fact, be seen from the report in this graph.

However, there is one key point that I am afraid will be overlooked: as of 2004, men still greatly outnumber the women receiving bachelor's degrees in the physical sciences (42.1% women), engineering (20.5%) and computer science (25.1%). By 2004 we find there is parity or near parity in some other SEM fields. So how is the total number of SEM degrees larger for women? Psychology. This is a field in which the problem is not undergraduate women, of which there are many, but female representation in the professoriate. I'm worried some will focus on just the one line "over all, women have earned more science and engineering bachelor's degrees than men since 2000" and ignore the very real issues that still exist.

The imbalance for Ph.D.'s is even worse. In 2004, many fewer women than men received Ph.D.'s in fields like the physical sciences (25.9%), engineering (17.6%), computer science (20.5%), mathematics (28.4%) and earth, atmospheric and ocean sciences (33.9%). Pipeline problem anyone? Even in math and the earth/atmospheric/ocean sciences which seem close to parity at the undergrad level, show a pipeline problem at the Ph.D. level. Biology, which ranges in the 50% to low 60% range for women receiving undergraduate degrees over the last decade drops below 50% (to 46.3%) when considering women receiving Ph.D.'s. The narrowing pipeline analogy holds across most fields even if you consider Ph.D. rates in 2004 and compare them (more appropriately) to bachelor's degrees 5-7 years earlier.

And, some may wonder, am I not concerned about a possible over-representation of women in the biological sciences at the undergrad level? What about the men?! Well, yes and no. More undergraduate students are women, which is a whole different issue I don't want to go into, but this accounts for some of the discrepancy. And the rest? I don't know. Wild speculation on my part leads me to suggest that maybe a small number of these women would choose some of the other underrepresented SEM fields in a different world. In this different world, those other fields would be equally welcoming. And maybe some women in social science or non-science fields would choose biology and those other SEM fields. And everyone would study happily ever after in a field they are passionate about. In this world, Barbie never said math was hard.


Sources of 2004 data:

http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/wmpd/pdf/tabc-4.pdf

http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/wmpd/pdf/tabf-2.pdf

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