The 10 on and 5 off experiment

This morning was one of those mornings when it seems almost impossible to make yourself do things you desperately need to do. When the brain is just not inspired and stabbing yourself in the eye (repeatedly) seems like more fun than typing one more word. The bummer is I'm not talking trivial mole whacking things being due. I talking revisions due to journals and reviews due to NSF. General Disarray was in the same boat - important things needed to be done, and we were hopeless. We were so hopeless in fact that at one point General Disarray looked at me and asked "So which one us is going to have the medical emergency?" As in, "Dear Important Person, I am terribly sorry my [insert name of important item due today] will be late. [insert professor's version of my grandmother ate my homework and died excuse here]. I promise to have your [terribly important item inserted here] to you by Monday at 5pm".

The plight of your hero and heroine looked grim. Every time we checked in with each other there was serious, serious web surfing going on. Finally, General Disarray suggested something he read over at 43 folders (I don't know why 43 folders and not 44 folders or even 100 folders, which frankly sounds more reflective of the chaos of most people's work lives). The suggestion was this: When you just can't get things done, focus on getting something done for just 10 minutes and then take 2 minutes off. I was skeptical since (I like to tell myself) I'm just too much of a free creative spirit to be constrained by that organizational/productivity crap.(As an aside, I eventually did give up on the color coding and trying not to use my inbox as a to-do list...who was I kidding anyway, I am really just not meant to live that way). But the web entries list of who this would help was like it said "River Tam, this is for you": procrastinators, the easily distracted, compulsive web-surfers, people with a long list of very short tasks (a/k/a “mosquitos”), people having trouble chipping away at very large tasks.  And I was definitely 3 out of the 4 this morning.

The problem was, I was totally not agreeing to only 2 minutes off (there was no way I could complete a round of the video game I was busy playing in 2 minutes!). I tried to negotiate with General Disarray for 10 on and 10 off - afterall even if we could get 30 minutes of good work done per hour it would be a vast improvement over what we were currently accomplishing! (Unfortunately, he knows me too well and understood I had shot for the moon in an attempt to negotiate more favorable terms). We finally settled on 10 on, 5 off . So, General Disarray set the timer and off we went. And what do you know, it actually worked!! I managed to finish writing my review this morning and General Disarray got most of a detailed response to reviewers written for a manuscript he's resubmitting.

And the 43 folders dude was totally right, it did totally save my ass.

Disappearing women - Pt 2

(I tried initially to do this is a comment, but as you will see, my commenters gave me so much to think about that it quickly ballooned - I strongly recommend that anyone reading this entry, read the comments to "The Case of the Disappearing Women" first.)

First, I want to say thank you to all of you for your comments. I've been disturbed by the conversation I had last week about the disappearing women for days and hearing what you had to say meant  lot to me. I've spent all weekend reading and thinking about all your feedback. I found great comfort in the fact that the younger scientists aren't going through training with a sense of dread and hopelessness. I honestly believe that things are turning in ecology for women and turning for the better. The ranks of the young female assistant professors are increasing by the year and many of us are not okay with waiting to have a "tenure baby".

Having said that, just because things are improving does NOT mean that we don't still have a lot of work to do. I think the anonymous commenters highlight that very clearly. Before I go further I want to specifically tell anon #1 that your story breaks my heart. I wish I could say that your story was unique, but I would be lying. It is easy for those of us who make it through the system to get complacent ("well, I'm doing well, the system must be working), and I really appreciate you sharing your story. It reminded me that things are not "fixed" by any stretch of the imagination and that I and others who make it through the gauntlet still have work to do. I still feel optimistic about my ecology sub-field, but I have collaborated widely enough to know that this is not the case in many other ecology sub-disciplines.

I also think that anon #1 and anon #2 both have hit upon something important. One of the big battles now is for the "souls" of women who want both work and families. I don't think that the current "fix" of being able to pause the tenure clock is really working, at least psychologically. So, the question remains, what will?

Fia and anon #1 hit upon something I've been thinking a lot about this weekend - the importance of having a supportive significant other. Female Science Professor also hit upon this theme a few times in her blog (can't figure out which entries those were, but they're all a good read) and I couldn't agree more. If you have a supportive spouse who values you having a successful career and who splits domestic responsibilities equally, this is a much easier path to walk. If you have one that values your career, but doesn't split domestic duties, this is a harder but not impossible path. If you have a spouse that doesn't value you having a successful career, I think you're pretty much fucked. It was clear from my conversation last week, that many of those women had husbands who did not value them having a career - or thought it was okay as long as they didn't have to sacrifice anything for it. I feel very fortunate to have married someone who wanted a truly equal partnership as much as I did. If I had married some of my other (less equal partnership minded) boyfriends, I am very certain I would be divorced by now.

And finally, Fia - unfortunately the blogs are not here to motivate the next generation of female scientists but to openly share issues we're all dealing with. I can totally understand that sometimes this is less than motivational and is sometimes downright scary. But take heart that we (female assistant professors) exist, that we're struggling to make things better for ourselves and those who follow, and I, for one, would still not choose any other career path.

The Case of the Disappearing Women

Despite the discussion this week about ogling and more posts on breasts than I can fathom (in fairness, we really should have penis week to bring cosmic balance back to the blogosphere! And it looks like Isis has gotten Penis Week off to a rousing start), I've been feeling really good about the outlook for female scientists in my field.   Graduate programs in ecology are now pretty much 50-50 male/female....sometimes actually skewed towards female. When I left my post-doctoral institution to take this job, that graduate program had a huge group of gung-ho female grad students who were clearly on the fast-track to success. (They had an intense passion for science and the pubs to prove it.) Not only has our graduate representation increased, but it also feels like our faculty representation has increased. There are a large number of totally kick-ass young female ecologists that have been hired over the past couple of years. I mean, people who have wide-spread recognition as rock-stars. While I have run into some sexism in the older ranks, my male contemporaries (or at least the one's I'm lucky enough to hang out with) evaluate their male and female counterparts based on ideas and productivity, not body parts. So, I've been blissfully sitting here, watching the discussions occurring in the blogosphere, thinking 'thank god I'm an ecologist'.

Then reality struck on Friday night. I had a long conversation with an old friend from said post-doctoral institution. During this conversation, I did the standard "what's so-and-so doing", and I asked about all the young female graduate students who had looked to be destined for successful careers in academia. Each answer was grimmer than the last. Every single one of them has either left science, or it is difficult to see how they will remain in the game for much longer. Every single one of them apparently decided that it was impossible to have children and a successful career in science. Since having both is "impossible", they have made decisions for having the child that often preclude the science.  Every single one of them has a husband with a  job he could do in any city in the U.S., but she doesn't want to uproot him and the family when it "seems likely" they won't make it in academia anyway. Unless you're in one of the cities with multiple universities in close proximity, it's hard to get a permanent position in ecology when you're anchored to one location (we don't have the same industry options as the medical folks) and the funding situation at NSF makes the soft-money route even harder than it has been. While I hope that things will work out in the science arena for these women, I am not optimistic.

Obviously, for each of those women, the details of their situation is more complex than I've portrayed, but in complexity there is often still generality. A clear message I heard  was that these women felt they had no role-model of having a family and being a tenure-track professor. They didn't like the choices other women had made and assumed it was impossible to make different choices and still succeed.

And so, despite that fact that my post-doctoral institution had a 50-50 ratio in its grad population, it looks like from that group the number of women who will make it through the post-doc phase will be much much less. As an advisor, currently training a lab full of women, this revelation has me very, very worried. So, to all those rock-star young female assistant professors out there, keep doing what you're doing, sisters, because I think we desperately need you in more ways than one.