Grey grey grey, ding!

Fall in Zurich.

Not so much sunlight. Cold and damp.

A good time to put in some halogen bulbs, bring out the fuzzy slippers and pajamas. And start catching up on Project Runway. I finished my dissertation conclusion with a reference to the judges on Project Runway, and how random their advice was each week - you didn't design outside the box enough, you went waaay too far outside the box, not enough color, too much color....These people are not much for standardized, consistent feedback. Granted, by now, 10 years into the show, even I know that you don't use fabric items for the candy challenge. C'mon, designers, have you not watched all the shows before applying?

Motivation can be tough in this weather, too. Especially when you are working alone a lot. So this fall, by lucky accident, the online work date is back in my life. Thanks for happening upon my office on the wrong week for the talk you were looking for, P. When I was finishing my dissertation, E and I would do 45 min. work sessions with a chat window open. We'd state our goals for the time period, (I'm going to wokr on 1., 2., and 3....) and then go work for 45min., with a timer set. Ding! Then we'd check in, by text or video, how the time had gone, take a 5 or 10 minute break, and start again. Sometimes 4 times in a row. It was how I got my dissertation written, even sitting at home. I wouldn't have made it without that peer pressure. So P and I did this on Monday, and it went well. Knowing that someone else is also working, having to write down your goals, all those things that don't happen when surfing the web in search of motivation, that is what makes it so powerful.

A photo of a small town in Missouri. Nothing to do with the post, except for all that grey. 

And my favorite quote from that time - that writing leads to motivation, not the other way around. It is part of why I keep this blog. Because some days, if I can just get writing, even about a topic as boring as Zurich weather, it gets me writing, and then I'm off the couch, looking for my socks and boots, and on my way to work.

"Oh no, only one, we aren't grown up enough to handle more"

It is 9:30am and I've just finished all the dishes. We're talking a full kitchen of dirty dishes from the last 4 days. Pots of crusted-on oatmeal, wooden spatulas that have to be scrapped, dishwasher emptied and restocked and running. And the last thing I knew, it was 8:30am.

Anger may be undesirable for most things but it sure does make for a clean kitchen. Good thing I had such big load, otherwise I'd be currently matching socks in the middle of the bedroom floor. And that doesn't really take enough physical activity to process anger.

And boy was I angry. Mixed with being sad, once the anger subsided.

We were trying to get dressed for school. And said little person needed to poo. And that took a while. And that was fine. But as soon as that was over, little A wanted to play at the sink, instead of wash her hands, and I said "no." And all hell broke loose.

One attempt by me to put underpants on a kicking, flailing screaming child. Two time outs from me. (And for me, let's be honest those things are for parents almost more than for kids). And then M had to step in, because A just wasn't going to calm for me at that point. Insert my first pang of "shit how do single parents do this because I'm scared of who I'd be if I didn't have back-up." And then the second pang, the one that turns all this in on me - that I can't handle even one kid. I can't get one kid dressed and out the door in the morning. She's screaming for her pacifier, and I'm so ready to take a blowtorch to the thing that keep getting lost in her bed and waking us up, and commented on by people across the world. Americans included...Hertz rental car van driver, you so did not help by commenting - after a 10 hour flight and jet lag and an extra bag scan for the apples that we ate on the plan, and exhaustion and worry about getting a bum luggage trolley to move as car seat kept falling off the pile - that your grandson gave up his pacifier at 2 years old. It may be a month and a half late, but, bite me.

And so I retreat to the kitchen. I'm in tears, sobbing, trying to keep the boogers at bay so I can just see a pan or pot. I feel deep down inside so unfit to handle this, wanting to just become an authoritarian and get rid of this kid's spirit, turn her into someone who listens when I say no. And there is no way I can see myself to justifying another child at this moment, I who have lost it. I who can't even think about tomorrow morning and how that is going to be, much less the next 18 years. I'm so disheartened by these moments, and the fact that I have all of this time, like with the first time we tried to get pregnant, to keep thinking about whether or not it is a good idea. I have time to reconsider constantly.


In the end, M and A were finally ready to go to school, 20 minutes late, with a pacifier in her mouth (that I said yes to, while dreaming of dropping it into liquid nitrogen and smashing it with a hammer), and I was still upset. And sad. And somewhat angry. About a lot of things. I managed to get it together enough to go give a little, quiet goodbye kiss on her cheek, and to M. I managed to not do it with a passive aggressive bent. I didn't manage - I let myself not manage - a bright cheery "bye, have fun, see you later!" I went back to the kitchen quickly because the tears were coming again, and for the moment, I'd decided she might get more upset about me crying.

From the hallway, just as the door was closing, she said "I'm sorry, Mama." I came out of the kitchen because I hadn't heard what the words were, and she said it again. "I'm sorry." I hadn't asked for that apology. I don't try to force her (after the first month we started time-outs) anymore to apologize. I let that one go a while ago in some moment of trust that it would eventually work out okay. And this morning, it did. She apologized because, I think, she felt there was something unresolved. And it allowed me to wish her a good day. And that kind of feels authentic, that I didn't force myself to be cheery when I really wasn't, and that it happened out of the blue, and that I wasn't trying to engineer it. And it really did make things better.

And yet, I was left sad. Still furiously scrubbing the pots, going to get another tissue, and feeling the weight of parenting on my shoulders this morning. Feeling so unfit for this job, so undone by this morning, and not sure how I will make it. Followed by the reminder that I've even been considering a second child and feeling so silly for that. I guess it is going to be a bit of a sad morning. And I'd like to be okay with that, and not let it take over the whole day.

Oh, hey, I should go email in my US presidential election ballot now.

I decided to wade into the probably already calming waters surrounding this one....

 There is an everyone's-new-favorite-WHAT!?! letter about expectations in graduate school circulating through the astronomy community this week, complete with lots of commentary after the fact.

http://www.astrobetter.com/

I've got an opinion about it, like most other people who have read it. Let's be honest, I've got LOTS of opinions about it. And let's be honest, I'm not going to be the most eloquent, and for sure not the most diplomatic. This is a blog, that almost no one reads, so I'm going to write what I write.

1. "However, if you informally canvass the faculty (those people for whose jobs you came here to train), most will tell you that they worked 80-100 hours/week in graduate school.  No one told us to work those hours, but we enjoyed what we were doing enough to want to do so.  We were almost always at the office, including at night and on weekends.  Nowadays, with the internet, it is fine to work from home sometimes, but you still miss out on learning from and forming collaborations with other graduate students when everyone does not work in the same place at the same time.   We realize that students with families will not have 80-100 hours/week to spend at work.  Again, what matters most is productivity.  Any faculty member or mentoring/thesis committee will be more than happy to work with any student to develop strategies to maximize productivity, even in those cases where the student is unable to devote more than 60 hours to their work per week."

How about students with any other interests, too? Who want to have a pet, a hobby, a cause, a passion? A relationship? Let's not make this a women's issue, and let's not forget that there are many men with families who you are also losing (who would probably make much better mentors for having had time to engage with their kids and the complexity of family life instead of being absent) with this mindset.

And how about overachievers coming from dysfunctional families, from alcoholic or other abusive situations that result in their needing external validation like they need oxygen. I'd say you're underestimating the amount of overworking students (who become the lauded professors) who are doing what they are doing because their parents didn't do enough for them as kids. 


2. Second, a related problem is that some students are not reading enough of the literature.  All students should read at least several papers/week.  You do not have to read the entire paper, as sometimes just the abstract, intro, figures, and conclusions will provide you with sufficient information.  Nevertheless, please read.  Knowing what is going on, right now, in your field and other fields is crucial to your development as a scientist.  We would like to see more students engaged in defining their research projects and theses.  We would like to receive more telescope proposals from students and post-docs that do not include faculty members.  To do so, a detailed knowledge of the literature is a must.  

Third, we are pleased with how Science Coffee and Journal Club are going and thank the many students who help make both of those opportunities available to everyone.  We also recognize that we as a faculty need to do a better job at participating.  Yet we have received some student comments about the way in which faculty do participate.  Namely, that some faculty-student interactions have become too intense.  In these cases, it is not the faculty member’s intention to make the student uncomfortable.   The faculty member means to interact with the student as he or she would a peer.  That should be flattering to the student!  Faculty questions (at least in this department) do not arise from a desire to embarrass a student speaker, but from a real scientific interest in the answer.  In such cases, the student should do his or her best to respond and, frankly, to consider the experience good (and relatively gentle) training for any discussion at Caltech or at Tuesday Lunch at the Princetitute.

Ahhh, my home base. Excuse me, I need to go put on my Lucha Libre mask....
First, if you think that reading the literature is crucial to doing well in this field, then you'd better  act like it, and put it on the curriculum. Right there next to the other classes. If it is important to know how to read, you need to teach it. You need to give your own tricks and ways of reading. What questions do you approach a paper with, and don't leave out the sociological ones (Did someone I know write this to b(*&-slap someone else who left him/her off of a previous paper? What is the personal history behind this paper, that the reader knows, and how does that make him/her read it differently?). Don't pretend that a list of three bullets teaches someone how to read a text. Especially not one so culturally enmeshed. Same goes for answering a question, that may be asked because: someone understood the talk but wants to disagree but not in an overt manner, someone who is pissed off, someone who didn't understand the talk (ha, ha, like that is ever acceptable by the community!), someone who is trying to clarify something for the grad students in the audience, or someone who just doesn't want their department to be embarrassed by no one having asked a question after a talk.

Second, the framing of some faculty questions arise from individuals who do not know how or may not be capable of speaking with respect or have the awareness that they have power in that room and in that building. And when faculty spar with each other verbally, or with a postdoc, how often do they explain to students why this is acceptable but not for the student to do? What it takes to be given license to spar? If you, as a senior member of the community, have ever sat in a room where a faculty member was sarcastic, or inappropriately aggressive (read: any question that gets gossiped about after the event) towards a junior member, and not spoken up, not asked the faculty member to rephrase the question more neutrally, you're part of the problem. In this culture of advisor-as-scientific-parent and student-as-scientific-child, it is the equivalent of sitting around while a father or mother verbally oversteps their bounds with a child. Once you start excusing your colleagues (intended or innocent) jabs as "you just need to learn to toughen up", you're in abusive family territory. Abusive. Because kids don't have the power in the family. And you are protecting a colleague's feelings over that of a powerless individual's. You have a higher salary, a tenured job and the power to affect that student's career - it is not a room full of peers when there are faculty and students together, regardless of the ideal of intellectual academic discourse.

Third, in the "department as academic family" scenario, that last statement is like saying "you should be happy that we only make fun of you meanly in this family, in the other ones they use a belt and a broken bottle." 

3. Fourth, in their evaluations for the APC, some students alluded to research or advisor problems that other students were having and that “no one else knew about.”  If you have a problem of any kind, or know someone who does, please come and talk with me or another faculty member.  Encourage the other student to do so.  Use your mentoring/thesis committees with or without your advisor present.  It makes no sense for someone to be struggling and not seek help.  These problems can be solved, but only after they are uncovered.  

If there was a departmental map available of all the actual relationships (marriage, friendship, affairs, secret supporters) among the faculty, a student might feel more comfortable complaining about a problematic "faculty-parent" instead of fearing that any complaint will be subverted in favor of the inttra-faculty relationships. And to go complain to an obudsman in hopes of impartiality? Like that's not going to get you kicked out of the "family." Or heaven forbid you are thinking of leaving academic but not sure - stating such might get you already listed as someone not worthy enough to have known from an early age that this was a calling. Or hell forbid you are depressed. If I don't know I'm going to talk with a person who has dealt with depression themselves or from a close friend/family member, and understands its power, no way I'm going to speak up when I'm not in a position of power. Thank goodness for some brave faculty who will use their power to speak up.

4. Fifth, while we welcome the thoughtful, honest, and insightful comments that we generally receive from students in their department evaluations, a few students are somewhat rude.  In those cases, it is hard to draw sympathy for your problem.  In your career, providing constructive criticism to your department and colleagues is important and should be valued.  Being negative and disrespectful will generally not fix the problems and will make colleagues less likely to work with you.

Again, parent .vs. child - it is the parent's job to model behavior desired. The parent has the power. As does the faculty advisor. Just because some forums like a journal club are supposed to be about peers and equals, there is almost no variable in which graduate students have equal power or say - job stability, salary, expectations. And there are many instances of faculty who do not want either constructive or other kinds of criticism. If your faculty are not modelling it, don't expect the grad students to step up.

5. Tenth, your evaluations of our program identified some concerns, including a lack of computer support, inadequate representation of women and minorities among the faculty and colloquium speakers, and poor attendance by faculty at various department talks and functions.  We are working on all three.  Professor E has developed a plan for better student support of student computing.  The faculty hiring committee is developing a detailed plan to make sure that the best women and minority candidates are encouraged to apply and carefully considered for the job.  The colloquium organizers have been made aware of your concerns.  All faculty are being strongly encouraged to participate more in the intellectual atmosphere of the department.  Do not ease up on reminding us of these points.

Unfortunately, in this department, the last 9-10 hires were male. Over the period of many years. So really, how much more time did they need to find someone female or minority to hire? And did they really hire the "best" men in these 9-10 positions? And were all the current faculty carefully considered for their "bestness" and only that? Or did some of them get on the faculty for a range of reasons? Gender equity comes when you have as many "less-than-best" females as "less-than-best" males on your faculty. However you want to define "less-than-best" - be it legally, in terms of mentoring, in terms of teaching, in terms of research, in terms of anything...

6. And finally, mostly what I hope is that the writer of the letter doesn't get thrown under the bus for articulating the many arcane, and misguided ideas that I think many science faculty members have about education, management and mentoring. Science faculty are mostly only trained in research - not in anything else that is important to the job, at least not in a methodical way. There is no reason we should think they will be good at mentoring, gender and minority issues, teaching, managing a group, at any level better than beginner.

Your professorship is no more noble than any other job, so don't keep giving up parts of your life, your family life, your marriage, your health as if it were. If you were to die, or quit, the academic machine that keeps asking for pounds of flesh would pretty cold-heartedly replace you, quickly. They'd hold a memorial, or a moment of silence and then get busy forgetting any legacy or heart or time you put into this. Fidelity to the institution is some sort of noble idea, and yet the institution is rarely faithful to its faculty.

Your family and friends, however, would be devastated and feel the loss. Even if you stopped having time to tend to those relationships because you were in an office 80 hours a week.

The stretch limo is waiting

Ricidulously fantastic potato pancakes. Which are really just a vehicle for sour cream.

I've been away from Zurich for a month now. In the US, for family medical issues (that have settled and are ok now), family visits, and a wedding. And for that month I was on a lot of main caregiver duty, because M only came for the last 10 days. I had help from grandmothers, and from some good friends, which kept me going. Mostly to JCPenney's or Target, places I would wander, trying on cheap, not so well-made clothing. I went to Whole Foods and stocked up on pancake and cookie mixes. I must have hit a DSW shoe store some 3 times, and unfortunately for A, those times she was with me. I think we've finally determined (on her part, too) that she does not, in fact, "like shopping", kind of like "I no like Istanbul, Mama."

I spent too much time in, and on the way to and from, stores. I spent too much time feeling worried that I would offend people who I didn't visit enough. I spent too much time trying feel like I was living in the US, shopping where I used to, visiting many people I know, trying to re-establish connections that there wasn't actually enough time to re-establish. 

I also connected with different people, though. Some I hadn't known as well, and made some deeper friendships. I spent time making loud, funny noises with my mouth, with A, in an attempt to make it the last 20 miles of a long days of flights and car rides. I worked on speaking up about what I would like, and what I didn't like to those with whom I sometimes have a hard time doing this. 

And I ate about the weight of my carry-on in potatoes, butter, sour cream and bacon at the rehearsal dinner for my cousin D's wedding. I drove about 5 different manual and automatic cars (and gained some 5 extra no-walking pounds) over 4 weeks, some rented, some borrowed, and lost just a bit of my soul every time I was at a Hertz Rental office. But I gained back some soul at a small, independent kids' shoe store in Chicago's north side, and at any place that served pancakes or french toast. I went to Toast in Chicago twice. Twice. For a food snob, my culinary desires in the US tend to gourmet comfort food. Chicken and waffles, Baja style shrimp tacos, Peanut Butter cheesecake, and anything from Toast. I mentioned that place already, yes?

Pretty good Kugelis. Also, vehicle for sour cream, thank you very much. Perhaps the leftover butter/bacon/sour cream sausce, too.

When you need a cab to the airport from the Chicago 'burbs, one option for the family bursting at the seams with luggage is....a stretch limo. "Mama, this is a biiiiiig taxi!" she said. M and A practice their "no paparazzi" moves.

I'm home again. And trying to both get back into life here in Swtizerland, and get over jetlag. Tonight is a bit bigger setback than I hoped, although it seems to be just me awake, which I'm pretty happy with. I did a lot of complaining over in the US, while I was wincing at pretty much any television content, about the lack of soul here in Switzerland. I've decided that it is time not only to seek it out actively, but to be the instigator of some such soul, when possible. A coffee shop + kids' bookstore + place-that-makes-breakfast-all-day-long-like-Toast is probably not in my cards, given that I do not care so much about cooking as I do about eating, or making coffee as I do about drinking it. But, depending some relationships, expanding how I (how we) participate, is now due. I have a few projects in mind. We'll see how they start off and I'll share a bit more here when they are underway.