It Gets Easier

Ann's post last week inspired a number of comments, several of which expressed dismay at her frank description of how hectic life can be when you're trying to balance astrophysics with raising a small child. And while, yes, life with kids can be quite difficult at times (it would be disingenuous to say otherwise), I would also say that it doesn't mean you need to choose between work and family.

Part of that is because it simply gets easier. Eventually, your child sleeps through the night. Eventually, your child will dress himself/herself in the morning. Eventually, your child will discover the joy of reading and will sit still for long periods of time. Eventually, your child will carry her/his own bag through airport security (and until age 12, can keep her/his shoes on).

My kids are now ages 8 and 10, and these days I lose more sleep over proposal deadlines, preparing lectures for class, red-eye flights and jet lag, and other activities typical of any busy theoretical astrophysicist, with or without children. I am also known to forego sleep to squeeze in some early morning exercise, or because of my inability to put down a good novel.

My kids are a real joy to me these days. I attended their school music programs and got to watch them showcase their talents on stage, and I am as proud of them as any doting mother can be. They help out around the house and they (mostly) listen when I tell them it's time to get up/go to bed/get ready to go. Last Sunday was Mother's Day, and they made me breakfast in bed, which included an omelet and fresh brewed coffee. My husband only had to supervise them minimally.

Yes, there are still challenges, especially juggling 4 sets of schedules at once. And I do fear the teenage years ahead. But I know my life is richer and more joyous with my children than without them, and all my lost sleep is well worth it.

*I was originally going to entitle this post "It Gets Better," but I didn't want to cause any confusion with the laudable initiative for LGBT youth of the same name.

AASWOMEN for May 11th, 2012

AAS Committee on the Status of Women
Issue of May 11, 2012
eds. Joan Schmelz, Caroline Simpson, and Michele Montgomery

This week's issues:

1. Working with CSWA

2. AAS Report for NRC Conference on Advancing Women of Color in Academia

3. Encouraging Graduate Students to be Good Teachers and Better Communicators

4. Sleep or Live? More on Motherhood and Astrophysics

5. How Academic Biologists and Physicists View Science Outreach

6. Trends in Women's Jobs

7. White House Report on Women and the Economy

8. NASA Seeks Hosts for Space Station Interactive Education Events

9. M. Hildred Blewett Fellowship

10. How to Submit to the AASWOMEN newsletter

11. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the AASWOMEN newsletter

12. Access to Past Issues

Guest Post: Kate Follette on Encouraging Graduate Students to be Good Teachers and Better Communicators

Kate Follette is a graduate student at Steward Observatory and an adjunct instructor at Pima Community College in Tucson, Arizona. Her scientific research focuses on planet formation in circumstellar disks, and she is also engaged in educational research on mitigating quantitative illiteracy through introductory science courses for non-majors.

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Encouraging Graduate Students to be Good Teachers and Better Communicators

I had an interesting discussion recently with a well-respected senior scientist about the benefits of pedagogical and communication training for graduate students. This was in connection with a proposal to start a graduate course on that topic. I mentioned that I was surprised that such a course was not already offered and, more than that, required as part of our degree program. This wasn’t an intentionally radical statement. In fact, the benefits of such a program seemed clear and abundant to me, so I was surprised at how our conversation progressed.

He countered immediately with an argument that I’ve heard before – “not all graduate students will be required to teach in their future careers”. This one didn’t faze me too much, and I already had a practiced response.

I told him that this was probably true, but that pedagogical skills are essentially communication skills. The majority of us do have to teach in some capacity during our careers, but more than that, virtually all of us have to give public lectures, write grants, and interact with people who want to hear about what we do, and this kind of training can make us better at those as well.

AASWOMEN for May 4th, 2012

AAS Committee on the Status of Women
Issue of May 4, 2012
eds. Joan Schmelz, Caroline Simpson, and Michele Montgomery

[This week's guest editor is Daryl Haggard. Daryl is a postdoctoral fellow in the Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics (CIERA) at Northwestern University. She studies AGN and their host galaxies, accreting compact binaries, and accretion-driven outflows using multi-wavelength and time domain surveys.]

This week's issues:

1. CSWA Annual Report

2. Girls Like STEM! How can we translate that interest into a career?

3. Another inspiring video of young women in STEM

4. Interesting article about women in academia

5. Why Aren't More Women in Science Fields?

6. Gender-Neutral Acknowledgments

7. 2012 Mentoring Conference at UNM

8. 2012 AAAS Mentor Awards

9. Galactic Unite STEM Scholarship Program for Young Women

10. Job Opportunities

11. How to Submit to the AASWOMEN newsletter

12. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the AASWOMEN newsletter

13. Access to Past Issues

Sleep or live? OK, I choose to live, more on motherhood and astrophysics.

We are now at 25 months since the birth of my daughter and I’m not dead yet.

Why did I put it that way?  FYI, if you don’t read to the end of this you’ll think I am truly miserable. Everyone is occasionally miserable, but that really isn’t the point at all.

Recently I had two back-to-back work trips. The first was a science conference in Spain and the second was a collaboration meeting of a small research team at Northwestern University in Chicago. Due to the consecutive trips, I did a fast turnaround to Europe. I spent 3 nights in Spain and lost one night to the flight over to Barcelona. I had just one good night’s sleep over those 4 nights and then returned to my 2-year-old in Maryland, packed again (her stuff and mine) and headed to Evanston, IL. I had decided not to leave my daughter for two weeks in a row (which would have been unfair to my husband too).

Inbetween the two trips, instead of sleeping, I had a late night out with my husband to reconnect (which was wonderful) and then off we were to Chicago the next day. The flight on Sunday was my daughter’s first with a plane ticket (kids have to have their own tickets at age two these days) and she did not sleep and did not hardly sit still the whole time. I got to spend Sunday afternoon/evening a bit tired but in the company of my brother/sister/in-laws, extremely cute baby nephew, my daughter and parents. We ate pizza and drank wine. I had only three nights there, but in what appears to be a tradition for our trips to Evanston, my daughter got up at least twice every night.

The flight back home was a bit miserable. There was a horrible security line at Midway (an hour of inching forward) during which for some time the only thing that kept my daughter from crying was holding her upside down which amused other people but made for an even more tired me. She was a nightmare on the flight and I was so tired I hardly cared. I missed most of the next day of work due to physical exhaustion.

You might think I was pretty stupid for having attempted all this.  Shouldn't I have just stayed home?

The trip to Spain was WONDERFUL. I would say 85% of the talks were excellent. The topics included ISM chemistry, cosmic ray acceleration and star formation processes. There were 70 people in attendance in what was described as an experiment to bring together normally distinct groups. On top of this, at every coffee break, lunch and dinner I met interesting people doing relevant research and/or working on projects related to my programmatic work. Since I was sans-child I also enjoyed the red wine and late night conversations. I will say I was FIGHTING the urge to just go back to my room and sleep but I was determined to participate fully. Again, instead of sleeping on the plane (which I don’t really do anyway) I watched FIVE movies. Heaven!

The NU trip involves my core research and about eight of my favorite collaborators. The conversations were about our papers about to be submitted and our next plans. We had pleasant lunches and a nice collaboration dinner. I got to do this and see my brother, parents and daughter every night.

 So that brings me back to a decision I recall making when my daughter was a couple weeks old. I was exhausted and all I wanted was sleep. My husband asked me to watch a movie with him. Why on earth would I remember, among all the moments I cannot recall, this particular conversation? Because I remember thinking: I’ve got a choice here: sleep or live.

I chose to live.

Two female astrophysicists backed me up recently on these sorts of decisions. One of my friends said she decided her life was crazy but she would both work hard and play hard. A colleague who is a mother told me that she suspected that my trip to NU was very “rich.” This was true. The cost was physical exhaustion, but in exchange for my family and the research I love, I will gladly pay.

Don’t worry, I crashed when I finally got home.

Guest Post: Julia Kamenetzky on Girls Like STEM! How can we translate that interest into a career?

Julia Kamenetzky is an NSF Graduate Research Fellow at the University of Colorado at Boulder.  Her research focuses on extragalactic submillimeter spectroscopy with Z-Spec and Herschel.  She is active in CU’s Women in Astronomy group and is the recent winner of the CU Boulder Graduate School’s Dorothy Martin Doctoral Student Award for a student active in women’s issues.

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Girls Like STEM!  How can we translate that interest into a career?

When discussing the representation of women in STEM fields, it’s important to ask: are girls even interested in science?  Proponents of gender essentialism, the belief that men and women are fundamentally different, might assume that women are underrepresented in STEM because they simply aren’t interested.  Why should we push people into careers that don’t interest them?  Or perhaps even worse, why should we push people into careers that they aren’t “good” at?

Recent research, however, has shown the opposite to be true.  Girls are just as good as math; the rapid increase in the ratio of girls to boys receiving top scores on the math SAT shows that there was nothing biological about test scores, and high school girls perform just as well in math and science in school (AAUW).  This idea is nothing new, especially to the readers of this blog.  I’ve instead chosen to focus this post about the first question: are girls interested in science?  The answer is yes!  More importantly for the readers of this blog, how can we use these findings to change the way we approach outreach and education?

Another inspiring video of young women in STEM

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2012/04/24/next-generation-girls-stem

I got this link from AWIS, the Association for Women in Science. Their LinkedIn page gives a lot of great resources, and they offer many excellent professional development talks and workshops to members, usually through their many local chapters. Most important to me, they provide a community of people committed to advancing women in science, with many practical tips for all.