Feathering the Intellectual Nest*

A few weeks ago, for almost 48 hours, I didn’t grade, read, or think (much) about department issues.  Crazy, huh?  The semester had just started and I should have been preparing new class lecture notes, finishing up projects from the past semester, or otherwise trying to “pre-organize” so that I don’t feel like I’m putting out proverbial fires every day over the next few months.  But that weekend? Forget it. That weekend was for me - and a few of my girlfriends.

Super Bowl? Super SO!

Some of you may have noticed that the Super Bowl was yesterday. I figured we wouldn’t bother doing anything since the Packers weren’t playing. I know, right? Thus, when my SO suggested having a small get together, I wasn’t that enthused.  I had way too much to do: grade homework, prep for next week’s classes, analyze data, and attend a faculty meeting (at school, on Saturday). I had no time to shop, clean, cook… or any of the things that need to be done when hosting an event, small or otherwise. Most people work an extra day on office-related tasks, and I could not add another activity to my already-full weekend agenda.

“Don’t worry”, he said. “I’ll take care of everything!” 

Guest Post: Eilat Glikman on 'In Praise of Remote Observing'

This week's guest-blogger is Eilat Glikman. Eilat holds an NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics postdoctoral fellowship at Yale University.  She studies dust reddened quasars and their role in quasar/galaxy co-evolution, as well as faint quasars at high redshifts.  Eilat has two young children ages 7 and 4 and is dedicated to finding that elusive formula for work/life balance.  

When I decided to pursue a career in astronomy (and academia) I was not aware of the incredible amounts of travel required.  I hate to travel, get stressed in the run up to a trip, am terrible at packing and get homesick quite easily.  Of course, when I arrive at my destination I usually enjoy myself, whether it is observing and getting awesome data or going to a conference and having stimulating and vibrant discussions.  Still, it was a rude awakening when I realized the extreme amounts of airline miles that some astronomers rack up (and the frequent flyer culture that ensues).

In graduate school, I made the best of my trips by adding Hawaiian vacations to IRTF runs.  But toward the end of graduate school, when I was pregnant, traveling to a remote mountaintop in order to go observing was no longer tolerable and I started taking advantage of remote observing whenever possible.  And maybe it is because my first remote observing experiences were with the well-tested interface at IRTF, but once I got a taste of observing without travel, I was hooked.

During my postdoc at Caltech, I used the remote observing facility to observe with the Keck telescope, and delighted in the fact that I could put my toddler to bed, kiss him good night, drive to the office, work all night and come home to sleep during the day.  Comparing this routine with one that adds two days of travel and being completely away from my family, the work-life friendliness of remote observing becomes completely apparent.

I have since written entire papers based on remotely obtained data, from Keck and IRTF.  More recently I have been using WIYN’s remote observing capabilities to do my science at Yale.  And last night I used a new, quite complicated (on paper) instrument on WIYN for the first time.  The first half of the night was for my science, after that my observing partner and I handed the reigns to the next team.  I drove home, within 30 minutes was asleep in my own bed, and am now back in the office ready to go for another half-night.

I cannot express enough how wonderful that feels.

(I will leave for another post some tips on how to maximize good rest during a remote observing run, especially with children.)

The IRTF offers an ideal model to follow.  Anyone with an approved observing program can observe remotely, from anywhere.  The last time I observed with IRTF, I did it from the comfort of my own home.   The data were beautiful and it might have been the best observing run I ever had!
Observatories, astronomy departments, listen up:  If you want to maximize productivity from your facilities, be accessible to more people, and level the playing field for astronomers with different work-life situations and (I didn’t even mention) funding situations, invest in remote observing.

On the detection of interstellar boron sulfide: a response

Many of you have probably seen this letter making the rounds on Facebook, or even appearing on AstroBetter. While I can't verify the provenance of the letter, it's dismaying to see the pressure being put on the students in that astronomy department to buy into a workaholic culture. Not all the advice is bad, but there are some real stinkers in there.
So, here's my own letter of advice.
First, at the risk of revealing myself to be an imposter, let me say that I work 40-50 hours on a regular basis, and almost always have. This may change when there's an important proposal deadline looming, but I have never found working 80-100 hours a week to be sustainable. In fact, my productivity generally takes a big nose dive as I increase my hours of work, because I just can't think as clearly when I don't sleep, eat, and exercise regularly.
I don't think my career has suffered as a result. I graduated with a PhD from Harvard, had two named postdoc fellowships, and am now tenure-track faculty at a research university. I even managed to have two kids along the way. Granted, I may not be at the most prestigious university in the country, but quite frankly, if it takes 80-100 hours a week to succeed there, I'll stay right where I am, thank you very much. I am very pleased to be in a department where the typical Monday morning conversations goes something like: "What did you do over the weekend?" "I took my family camping/pumpkin picking/to the zoo. How about you?" "I went hiking/skiing/rafting up in the mountains, want to see pictures?"
Just because you don't spend every waking hour thinking about your research doesn't mean you're a bad scientist. I love that fact that nearly everyone in my department has interests outside astronomy, whether it's enjoying the outdoors, writing novels, performing music, or playing sports. It makes us all well-rounded people and better colleagues. We are all also passionate about our research, too, it's just not the only thing that gets us out of bed in the morning.
Second, the bad news. The job market is definitely worse than it was a decade or two ago. Budget cuts to universities and federal grant agencies have dried up funding for jobs at all levels. It would be disingenuous and a disservice to you to tell you otherwise. I wish I had something encouraging to say about this, except that in my experience, perseverance is key.
Third, faculty should be willing to listen to complaints and criticism from their students, even if it comes across as rude. If the students are pissed off, something has gone awry, and getting in a huff about it won't fix the problem. You know how getting a negative referee report can feel bad at first, but in the end you have to take the feedback like a big girl and address all the comments in a mature fashion? Yeah, this is the same thing.
Also, don't talk down to your students if you really think of them as peers.

Gender Politics

I would, ideally, like to keep politics out of this blog. However, given that this is an election year, politics seems to be butting its way into everything, so here goes.
The CSWA works hard to advocate for women in science. One issue that comes up over and over again is the problem of balancing career and family -- an issue for any working mother, really. A key to that balance is the ability to plan when and how many children to have -- something that many of us, like myself, take for granted.
So when a Republican-controlled House Committee convenes an all-male panel to discuss coverage for birth control, it's hard not to take it a little personally. It's bad enough that dependent care coverage is a real issue for many young astronomers, particularly grad students and postdocs, but to not even have coverage for birth control?
More recently was the whole kerfuffle between Ann Romney and Hilary Rosen about whether or not Romney "has actually never worked a day in her life." Given that Rosen was speaking specifically about women in the paid workforce, Romney's response that raising children was "work" sounded to me a lot like "gravity is only a theory."
Yes, raising children is a lot of work. So is being a scientist. Force times distance is also work. At any rate, why is it that stay-at-home mom are lavished with praise and put on pedestals, while working moms are frowned at? And, by the way, where is dad in all this?
It's great to be talking about getting more girls interested in science and math, since they are certainly smart enough. But girls are also smart enough to see the barriers ahead. If they can see that they won't be able to raise families on their own terms, no wonder they drop out.

Taking Advantage of Partnerships - The GWISE Example

Post by guest-blogger Meredith Danowski*, PhD student in Astronomy at Boston University.

There's a stack of papers to be graded, a grant proposal that needs some work, a paper that needs to be written, and a class that needs to be prepared. There are family commitments, all those half-deserted hobbies, and some laundry to do. Why on top of that, should you spend time active in a women in STEM organization?

Being "an activist" is often stigmatized. The time I spend planning events could instead go into my research, right? People might assume that because I spend time that is not directly related to my science, I've got misplaced priorities (or a time machine). But as with everything else in my life, my work for women in science is about being efficient and effective.

It makes me a more effective scientist in the long run, if I have a network of scientists I can turn to with questions, if I have a large pool of collaborators-in-the-making, if I have skills beyond data analysis. It makes me a more effective scientist if sometime down the road, I won't have to worry about needing more than twice the publications my male counterpart has, in order to be judged "competent". One of my undergrad professors once said, "you can't be a physics major by yourself." Science does not flourish in a vacuum-- collaborations are often the key to success, the best way to use our time and promote progress. And what works with science, works elsewhere—specifically, collaborative partnerships help one efficiently accomplish the goals of an organization.

For Boston University's GWISE, we are working to build partnerships with other women in science groups to best utilize the available (and scarce!) resources. We hold joint events with the faculty WISE group-- not only do both groups benefit individually, it encourages mentoring and networking and fosters a sense of community. We're also teaming up with the women's organizations in chemistry and biology to bring in speakers and to share not only monetary resources, but womanpower too!

Within the local community, we're harnessing even broader networks. We advertise the events of the women's groups at Harvard and other local institutions-- giving members access to more resources than we alone could provide. Most of our board members are also members of Massachusetts chapter of the Association for Women in Science and have participated in their Mentoring Circle Program. Designed to bring women in STEM together across disciplines and career-levels, the Mentoring Circles have helped us gain access to the wonderful community beyond the borders of our universities. This makes the work of planning events easier & more efficient-- we can draw from a broader network of contacts with diverse ideas and resources.

And finally, we're starting to grapple with the question raised about community and WISE at AAS- What can men do to help? Beyond supporting the cause or getting involved in advocacy, we can, as a first and fundamental step, share the work of helping each other become better scientists and professionals. To this effect, we recently co-hosted our first professional development event with the Student Association of Graduate Engineers. By sharing the work and costs, both groups benefit, and professionally we stand together as the future of the STEM community.

Utilizing networks and partnerships with other organizations is essential to our success. We benefit from collective knowledge and sharing the work, lightening the load on individuals. With a small commitment from many people, we can efficiently manage our time and resources to allow individuals to flourish scientifically and professionally, while achieving a broader impact.


*Meredith Danowski is a PhD student in Astronomy at Boston University and this is her third guest-post on the WIA blog describing her experiences with GWISE. In previous posts she discussed how to get an organization like GWISE started and how to find & utilize institutional support.

Work-Family: On Balance

As rosy a picture I painted in my previous posting on work-family balance, the truth of the matter is that raising children is not an easy task. Trying to raise children while establishing a career is even tougher. On the good days, I count the number of years until my youngest turns 18. On the bad days, I wonder if I should discourage young women from pursuing careers in science because it's simply impossible to have it all.

While mulling these rather depressing thoughts, I came across this article in the Washington Post, talking about the difficulties of parenting while pursuing a career in business. You could easily substitute "business" for "science" and "executive" for "professor" and everything Sharon Meers says applies equally well. Some choice quotes from the article:

When a father of small kids is late or looks dazed in a meeting, we're more willing to assume it's an aberration, a passing phase, and he'll snap back to top form because he values his job. We give him the benefit of the doubt. Do we give women the same?

After spending a weekend with his kids alone, one male executive told me, "If every man in Congress had to do this, we'd have some very different laws."

Meers writes that VP Joe Biden is setting up a Middle Class Task Force that can address some of these work-family balancing issues from a public policy standpoint. I agree with her that this sounds very promising, especially if they can successfully reframe the problems of working parents "not as women's issues" but as "issues of middle class economic security" as described in the article. Let's hope that this Task Force succeeds.

Work-Family: It's Not Always About Balance

So often we hear discussions of work-family balance, as if work is on entirely one side of the scale and family is on the other, and the two must always be in conflict. This article in today's Washington Post is no exception. The article discusses the challenges faced by women trying to succeed in academia, challenges I'm all too familiar with.

To be perfectly honest, I've been avoiding discussing some of my own personal experience with work-family issues on this blog, in large part because of evidence that mothers are at a distinct disadvantage in the job market. But the reality is that having children has made me a better communicator, educator, and scientist, so to not acknowledge my kids is to do them a disservice.

My kids are in elementary school now, and they are always bubbling over with questions about how the universe around them works. Explaining scientific concepts to them is a source of joy for me, though I sometimes have to stop myself when I find myself rambling on excitedly on some topic for 10 minutes at a time while their eyes slowly glaze over. My kids have taught me how to simply but accurately explain things to them before their attention spans time out. They have also taught me that my enthusiasm for science is contagious.

Recently, I participated in Science Day at my kids' elementary school, where a variety of scientists were brought in to talk to the kids. I was assigned the first graders. Although I had given public talks before and am completely comfortable with facing challenging questions from PhD scientists, I was really really anxious heading into Science Day. Would I be able to handle a classroom full of antsy six- and seven-year olds? As it turned out, the experience was a lot of fun for myself, the children, and their teachers. I talked to them a little bit about what it was like to be an astronomer, and my heart warmed when I asked them, "how many of you would like to be an astronomer when you grow up?" and nearly all of them, including the girls, raised their hands. Most of the kids are ethnic minorities, too. It's thanks to my kids that I both had the opportunity to do Science Day, and had the experience to carry it out successfully.

Children are naturally curious about the world around them. So many times, their simple, "why does...?" questions turn out to have rather profound answers. We went blueberry picking earlier this summer, and after staring at his stained hands, my son asked, "Why are they called blueberries? The juice is purple." This led to a full-fledged kitchen chemistry experiment involving acids and bases and blueberry juice as an indicator. I had just as much fun as my son did. My kids' enthusiasm and joy of discovery make me more enthusiastic about pursuing science questions of my own.

My children enrich my scientific life. So while there are days where I have to head out early to chaffeur them to one activity or another, and there are late evenings that I spend working while the kids sleep, I don't believe that the work-family balance is an either-or proposition: sometimes they can work in harmony together.

AAS 215 -- OWLM

So, last week was the 215th AAS Meeting in Washington, DC. I found the meeting to be pretty overwhelming. In fact, the title of this post is a reference to the OWLT, in case it wasn't clear. It was the biggest AAS Meeting in history, which for me translated into not being able to walk more than about 10 feet before encountering someone I knew, and perpetually getting lost in the enormous rat maze that was the poster room.

As a local, I commuted in to the meeting every day. This meant that although I got to sleep in my own bed every night, I also had to take care of chores at home in addition to spending extra long days at the meeting. On the other hand, I got to see my kids every day, so hey.

It was especially fun to meet readers of this here blog at the meeting. It's always gratifying to know that that people are reading and appreciating this blog. You guys are awesome!

I also got a great deal out of this meeting scientifically. As with any good conference, I came out of it with new ideas and energized about my science. I've been busy since the end of the meeting furiously writing papers and exploring some new ideas, which is why I haven't posted my recaps of the meeting yet.

Still, I will get to blogging eventually about aspects of the meeting relevant to Women in Astronomy, so stay tuned!

I’m planning a research sabbatical next year and by the way, we’re expecting a kid

by Ann Hornschemeier

Next year is stacking up to be my dream year, which I’ll describe at the end of this blog. Hey, don’t skip or you’ll miss the point! Before the dream, however, came a bit of a nightmare. For a while we had major funding problems in my lab and the project work took so much of my time I was making little progress on my research. I did manage to win a research prize but was wondering if the way things were going if I was going to live up to that prize’s expectations.

A new research sabbatical program was announced just a few years ago at GSFC. What if I could spend an entire year doing research and be let off my project duties for a while? I really love working with engineers and instrument scientists, but project work can be extremely intense with major time periods with no breaks. You get research time during the down times, but sometimes I was completely spent at that point!

(click on "Link to full post" to continue reading)

Yes, I mentioned a kid in the title. So, in the mean time, my husband and I were hoping for a kid. I was working fairly hard on my project work, on lots of service-related duties, and with a student and a postdoc on research. I didn’t worry too much about working and being pregnant and/or raising a kid. My mother had three children and all three of us came at pre-determined times, full term and without a hitch. She managed to do this while being in law school, passing the bar exam and then getting elected judge for the first time.

I expected, like my mother, to plan when to have a kid. Things really did not work out that way. A few years go by, and suddenly the sabbatical proposal was coming due and I’m serving on the executive committee of my professional organization. The committee is planning a big meeting coming up in Hawaii in 2010. I think sarcastically to myself, maybe that is the only time I can have a kid…

Sure enough, I am at 21 weeks now… we are due April 15, 2010 and a long over-water flight in early March is ill advised by my doctor. I will not go to Hawaii. I’m okay with this. Hawaii will still be there and apparently there are >450 people planning to go. They are going to need my hotel room.

I had several reasons for not wanting to tell anyone about this pregnancy. First of all, even now, at 21 weeks, I have relatively little confidence that things are going to be OK. I know, rationally, that everything is actually okay, but reason isn’t penetrating through these feelings I have. We just received our first baby gift and my sister is planning a shower back home in Ohio. My belly is starting to grow out noticeably and I am become guardedly optimistic. Reality is finally setting in and we are apparently only 4.5 months from the main event!

I was also of course highly concerned about how my pregnancy would be perceived professionally. I have tried to build a bit of a reputation as a loyal and reasonably hard worker (reasonably hard : I’ve tried to have some kind of work/life balance, I do occasionally take a vacation, I do try to have time reserved for family and friends). I can’t always be there for my colleagues and coworkers, but I like to think that if they really need me, I’m going to come running to help. I worried that I would be written off.

I waited to hear about the sabbatical proposal before I made my announcement. I think the folks involved in the decision were extremely fair, but my decision was to not let my pregnancy be a possible source of bias. All of my colleagues and coworkers were very good about the news. Now, mind you, a few folks have said some silly things to me, but I was expecting that. It turns out those were folks I don’t work with as closely and they really had no idea what they were saying.

Everyone makes different decisions about when to disclose a pregnancy, and all the reasons behind those decisions are also different and can be quite complicated. I guess one message I’d like to get across is please don’t ever be offended to “not get the news” about a pregnancy. You can still celebrate about the arrival of the kid. Also, I feel very grateful to all the folks who talked to me about project work, astrophysics, and my research sabbatical plans after I delivered the baby news. So, I’d also encourage folks to try hard to get back to the professional discussions as soon as you can after the news (within reason… congrats, etc. are good of course!).

So now I have a dream year. I will be on maternity leave for a couple months and then I am on sabbatical, mostly at my home institution, for one year. By some miracle, there are four postdocs in my group now and I won a big grant. There is a large amount of community observing time approved on the project that I have been wanting to do for years. I accumulated lots of sick leave and annual leave. Several people have commented on how lucky I seem, how the stars have aligned. Despite this lengthy post, the full story was about 2-3 times as long… the truth is, this is a complete coincidence of timing, this was certainly not my original plan.

So, with my rediscovered, yet guarded, optimism I’m feeling a bit ready for 2010. Thanks for reading.

Dr. Isis plays Socrates

There's a great discussion going on over at Isis' blog about where abortion fits into one's scientific career. The comment section is well worth reading.

Summertime

This month's Scientiae Carnival is "Summer days, driftin' away..."

Consider how you balance the demands and pleasures of this season. Have you found ways to make progress on your must-dos while also taking time for your family, friends - and yourself - and being in the moment of this time of year? Or are July and August just another month for you?

And just for some added synchronicity, here's a recent PhD Comic:

The first thing that went through my head when I read August's Scientiae Call was, "Holy ****, it's already August, where has my summer gone??" Summer, for most academics, is a break from classes, and a terrific time for getting lots of research done. As a postdoc, however, there's less of a definite shift, although it's nice being able to drive around campus without accidentally running over a hapless undergraduate.

Still, part of me still thinks that summer ought to be a time of huge productivity, but it always seems to fly by before I manage to get a whole lot done. (And why haven't I been better about keeping up this blog while I'm at it?) But then I realize that I've done a bunch of traveling, and actually, there's nothing wrong with that. My travel includes a week at a conference, a week of visiting family, and a week of honest-to-goodness vacation.

Conferences are great. There's the opportunity to meet and talk with people and develop collaborations, of course. I also find that conferences are a good way of taking a step back and looking at how my research fits into the big picture. I often get so caught up in the details that I forget how interesting my work is until I talk about it to someone, and they say, "wow, that's really cool!" This excitement is offset by the physical and mental toll that travel takes on me. I often feel like when I travel, I leave bits of my brain behind, and it takes a while before all the pieces make it back home again. This is especially true for the more stimulating conferences, precisely because you're thinking so intensely about work for so much of the time that it quickly becomes exhausting.

Traveling to visit family does not count as vacation in my book. I'm with Tajel's advisor on this one: "you spent the whole time thinking and obsessing about your research project." Perhaps this is because I often get the feeling of "I'm taking time away from my research to do WHAT?!?" I love my parents, but they do drive me crazy.

Now, an honest-to-goodness vacation is well worth it. The trick is to give yourself permission to relax and not fret about your research. This is harder than it sounds. But if you spare yourself the mental anguish about taking time off from work, you do yourself and your mental health a big favor. My vacation included camping, ravaging hordes of mosquitos, a rather nasty sunburn, catching up with old friends, long hours in the car, trips to the beach, and a nerd camp reunion. I loved it.

Now that summer is beginning to wind down, things seem to be suddenly starting to pile up. All those tasks that I thought I had plenty of time to accomplish before September are looming before me. Still, I think there's time to squeeze in another baseball game or a peach-picking trip or a dip in the pool. At least, I hope so.

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Time Management

(I apologize for the absence of posts lately, but I've been quite busy lately. I'm debating whether or not to write up my observations about demographics at the conference I was just at, but for now, I'll leave you with this.)

I've been finding myself having the same conversations over and over again with people. They generally start with someone (usually a woman, usually a scientist) looking at me incredulously and asking, "how on earth do you have time to do science, raise a family, AND [insert activity here]?" The activity in question has been any number of things, but has included singing, exercising, knitting, and yes, blogging.

After some amount of thought, the only answer I can come up with is: I make the time.

I don't watch much TV. I multi-task. I keep a pretty strict schedule, ruled by my computer's calendar. I delegate to my spouse. Sometimes, I choose to let things slide (like blogging). My life is generally pretty hectic, but if there's something I really want to go out and do, I find the time to squeeze it in.

Part of what keeps me going is a keen sense that life is too short to regret missed opportunities. One of the most important life lessons I've learned is that if there's something you really want to do, you should just go and do it. This applies equally well to having children, choosing what science to do, playing in an orchestra, or doing a triathlon.

I recently had a conversation with someone in my choral group who was mulling over auditioning for a prestigious local chorus, but was worried about the time commitment given her graduate studies. Inevitably, she gave me that incredulous look and asked, "how on earth do you have time to do science, raise a family, AND sing in a choir? I don't see how I'm going to manage, and I don't even have a family!"

I told her, "Look, you don't have kids. You don't have a husband. Now is the time to be going out and doing these kinds of things, because once you do have a family, it be even harder."

I feel like I sound like a Nike commercial or John Keating, but I do think it's really important to seize opportunities as they arise. Figure out what your priorities are in life. Find out what you are passionate about. Make the time to do them. Live your life without regrets.

Mothers in Science: 64 Ways to Have it All

Sorry about the light posting lately, I've been crazy busy.

For now, I'll leave you with this link: Mothers in Science: 64 Ways to Have it All. (Reviewed by Astronomum at Astronomoms)

Someday I will also get around to commenting on an NPR story I heard a few weeks ago about gender and language, once I'm done being crazy busy.

Rising to the Challenge

The theme for April's Scientiae Carnival is Rising to the Challenge:

Tell us about that most firey fire through which you have had to walk in your scientific career. How did you overcome the challenge? Did you have help along the way, or was it a solo effort? And what did you learn? Why are you a better scientist given the difficulties that you have encountered?

I almost didn't blog this story, because it's intensely personal. But then I thought, what's the point of separating my personal experiences from my scientific ones? After all, trying to pretend that astronomers don't have personal lives is a complete fallacy. Sometimes our personal lives spill over into our scientific lives, and that's just part of being a whole human being.

So, my story of rising to the challenge is about the year of 2004. My younger child was born in late February that year, and my defense was in mid-May. I've blocked out most of that time period, except for a vivid recollection of attempting to work from home one day while taking care of the baby and breaking down in tears and asking my husband to come home from work to help me out.

On top of that, I was preparing to move my family to another state to take up my post-doc position in the fall. So immediately after my defense, we put our house up for sale and began flying down every other weekend to another city to go house-hunting.

Now, all this time, I was dealing with post-partum bleeding. I only mention this because around about mid-June, I was diagnosed with choriocarcinoma, a type of pregnancy-related cancer.

It's funny how serious health problems can really make you re-evaluate your priorities in life.

It turned out that treatment was pretty easy. I did not require major surgery or radiation therapy, and did not suffer hair loss or much discomfort beyond minor bouts of nausea from the chemotherapy, which itself consisted only of shots every other day rather than lengthy IV drips. By fall, I was declared cured. In fact, I find it difficult to think of myself as a cancer survivor, because I didn't really suffer much at all. Still, "cancer" is a scary word, no matter what form it comes in.

I was glad simply to get through 2004 with my health, sanity, and family whole and intact. Did that year make me a better scientist? Arguably, no. While I managed to publish the papers from my thesis within a year from my graduation, I still have a significant gap in my publication record, which has probably hurt me in job searches. Do have a clear idea of what my priorities in life are? Yes. I value my career in science, but not to the exclusion of all else. This may come across as a lack of dedication to some, but their lives don't count upon my well-being.

Am I some kind of Superwoman for having gotten through all this? No. It was an extremely hard year for me, but my life was never in any real jeopardy, and my marriage and kids remained healthy and whole. Not everyone gets off that easy. We all have our battles to face, and we face them with the resources we can muster. My internal resources consist mostly of sheer stubbornness, but I am also lucky to have good friends, supportive family, and the best husband a woman can have.

And now you all know why I think work-life balance is so important.

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A Valentine's Day Proposal

Whose bright idea was it to set the deadline for Decadal White Papers for the day after Valentine's Day anyway? It's like they don't expect astronomers to have a life outside of astronomy.

Oh wait, that is what they expect, isn't it...

Balance: a generational divide

There's a great post by Alice Pawley of Sciencewomen about a study which surveyed doctoral students in the University of California system. They found:

major research universities may be losing some of the most talented tenure-track academics before they even arrive. In the eyes of many doctoral students, the academic fast track has a bad reputation—one of unrelenting work hours that allow little or no room for a satisfying family life. If this sentiment is broadly shared among current and future student cohorts, the future life-blood of academia may be at stake, as promising young scholars seek alternative career paths with better work-life balance. Today’s doctoral students are different in many ways from those of just thirty or forty years ago. [Emphasis mine]

Just today, I had a... let's call it a vigorous conversation... with an older female scientist, one who had chosen to forego having children in order to pursue her career. She asserted that you can't fault men for their successes, just because they decide to spend all their energy on their careers instead of their families. They are harder workers, so they justly deserve their tenured positions at prestigious universities. She is of the opinion that you just can't have it all.

Now there is some truth to what she says. On the other hand, it means that there's a lot of talent going to waste. The aforementioned study finds that 84% of women and 74% of men were somewhat or very concerned about the family friendliness of their career paths. So work/family balance really is becoming a real issue for both women and men.

For those of earlier generations (I count myself as one of the younger generation, thankyouverymuch), perhaps it really was the case that women had to choose between career and family. The cultural paradigm was one where men worked out of the house, and women stayed home with their children. Today, the dominant paradigm is becoming one of dual-career couples, although there are still those (mostly women) who choose to stay home with their kids.

The problem as I see it is that the fast-track trajectory of grad school-postdoc-faculty-tenure leaves precious little room for variation. Alternative career paths do exist, but in astronomy, this almost always involves giving up either research or job security. What I would like to see is some kind of middle ground, where your research is valued for its quality, not the quantity. I would like to see flexibility in workplace demands, so that you can take time off when you need it, and come back when you're ready.¹

Because I think the section on re-envisioning academia at the end of the article does a good job of encapsulating my further thoughts on the subject, I'll simply quote it below. (Click on "link to full post" to see.)

• Assumption: Fast-track academia is typically either a fulltime or a no-time pursuit, particularly for those on fellowships or grants. Antidote: Men and women can shift to part-time status or temporarily elongate timelines over their academic lives without suffering career penalties.
• Assumption: The appropriate career trajectory for successful academics is linear and without breaks—from the doctoral years to postdoctoral experience to pretenure years to the attainment of the rank of full professor. Antidote: Many men and women will want or need to take time out temporarily from their academic lives for caregiving, and universities will support their reentry.
• Assumption: Academic “stars” are those who move through the ranks very quickly. Antidote: Academic “stars” are those who produce the most important or relevant work—faster is not necessarily better.
• Assumption: There is no good time to have children. Antidote: It is fine to have children at any point in the career path because a full array of resources exists to support academic parents.
• Assumption: Having children, particularly for women, is often equated with less seriousness and drive. Antidote: There is no stigma associated with having children, nor are there negative career consequences, and the culture is broadly supportive of academics who do have children.
• Assumption: All talented doctoral students should want to become professors on the academic fast track. Antidote: Venues exist to evaluate objectively and discuss different career and life paths in and outside academia—all are accepted.
• Assumption: Work-life balance and family friendliness are not typically promoted as important values by academic administrators and faculty. Antidote: Family-friendly policies are promoted, campuswide conferences are held to support work-life balance for all academics, department chairs are trained on the issues, and faculty mentor doctoral students.

¹Also, I want a pony.