One of the other things I've been musing about since the Big National Conference is just how much feedback there is in My Science: in order for people to take you seriously, they have to know your name already, and once you're Somebody it is much easier to get the research funding and data access you need to do more good work. I don't assume that people have heard of me, with my mighty five (I think) publications in my old-school subfield, but I am trying to raise my profile by moving into sexier adjacent subfields, and by going to meetings and talking about my projects to try to make an in-person impression.
I have a good friend who is already On His Way. E is tremendously dedicated and creative, and also lucky to have thought up a timely and clever project with a well-known and socially adept advisor. He's a good speaker, the right people think well of him, and he just landed a highly respected research job. I'm glad he caught that wave, and hope he stays on it: he'll be great.
We have conceptual feedback as well, of course - research scientists tend to think of ourselves as meritocrats, respecting well-done and convincing work, and if Theory A was well-done and convincing, why should we entertain the possibility of Theory B? There's some ego acting here too: we couldn't have believed the wrong explanation for so long!
These are both deeply human tendencies, and will always play some role in the human scientific community. They can be mitigated with attention, and that's probably good: this article was eye-opening for me (in that makes-you-want-to-hide-under-the-bed kind of way). The effort to be fairer is both individual and institutional (or at least that's how I was thinking about it yesterday), and I think that the effort to be more flexible is mainly cultural. It's our job to not know all the answers, to keep thinking up questions we haven't solved yet, but it is hard to maintain a let's-see-what-happens attitude in a be-right-or-else environment.
On the advice of a total stranger on the Internet (what could go wrong?), I'm making up a new resolution for every month of the year rather than trying to do one thing all year. January's is to be a little easier on myself, to be less harsh a critic, and I see an opportunity for a corollary resolution here: I'm going to give more of a chance to papers whose authors I've never heard of, and I will try to see it as a sign of inquiry, not cluelessness, when people consider alternative explanations and make themselves persuadable.
Showing posts with label meta. Show all posts
Showing posts with label meta. Show all posts
January 21, 2010
January 20, 2010
Admission
I went to the big national (US) conference for people in My Science a couple of weeks ago. Most people will claim that they find this conference very unproductive, because it is so general, but it is an important venue for job interviews and maintaining personal connections. I actually got quite a bit of work done with some far-flung collaborators, made a point of spending time with people whose general good will I will need in the future, and had an all-around fun class-reunion-type experience.
The meeting itself was overwhelmingly large, so I did not go to most of the talks or read most of the posters. This more focused approach still left me dead on my feet at the end of the first day, and the talks and discussions I did attend kept me busy and engaged. The overall experience sparked a couple of post ideas for me, and this is one of them: promoting demographic diversity is very important in My Science, is totally dependent on the good-faith effort of people who are already in the club, and is pretty much doomed in an admissions and promotion system where we are overwhelmed with applicants and starved for time.
The last speaker in a session I went to on mentoring talked about his experiences as a black man from a small college going into a big-time graduate program: outright hostility, awkward social dynamics, undergraduate classes, and a lasting commitment to making that experience better for students who would come later. He's now a professor at Florida State, and had a lot of interesting and practical things to say about making graduate programs attractive and accessible to people with backgrounds like his: rural, few family expectations for college, no lab experience, not white, few demographic role models in the field, and less likely to maintain confidence in the face of setbacks (and the whole game in My Science is psychological: you need to realize that everyone's insecure, even the really clever people, and you can't listen to your self-doubt).
The things he does to make FSU a more diverse place are these:
When I was in grad school, the students had some long conversations on the merits and methods of increasing diversity in My Science. The business-related arguments (that a diversity of backgrounds brings a diversity of problem-solving approaches and perspectives) don't really work in our field: at least from the insider's perspective, there's not much cultural to what we do. The main point, we figured, was justice: why should people gain or lose the opportunity to do science based on what they look like or where they come from?
Being on the graduate admissions committee for a year, it quickly became clear to me that "where you come from" has a lot of effects on where you can go: my institution was very highly ranked as a graduate school for My Science, and as such could be pretty baldly snobby about who was admitted. It didn't matter how good your grades were at the University of Southern North Dakota at Hoople; we've never heard of them, we don't know the people who wrote your letters of recommendation, so we don't know whether you are prepared to come here and keep up with people who had "good preparation" (read: known quantity) at the right universities as undergraduates. In order to maintain our prestige, we have to admit mostly/only students who we are confident will do well.
This is pretty obviously problematic for people who want to go to grad school to learn things, or to become professional scientists, and not just to boost the status of a particular school by their effortless brilliance. Overall, and this is something I was shocked to realize I hadn't been using as an admissions standard, admissions ought to be about what students can do, not just what they have already done. It's very difficult to evaluate that, and when you have three days to rank 150 applications, it's so easy to start using shorthands (where an applicant went to college, GRE scores, name recognition of their letter-writers). If your department is willing to work on cultivating the students, and not just putting them to work in the data-reduction mines, I don't think it would be that big of a gamble to shake up the admissions process.
The meeting itself was overwhelmingly large, so I did not go to most of the talks or read most of the posters. This more focused approach still left me dead on my feet at the end of the first day, and the talks and discussions I did attend kept me busy and engaged. The overall experience sparked a couple of post ideas for me, and this is one of them: promoting demographic diversity is very important in My Science, is totally dependent on the good-faith effort of people who are already in the club, and is pretty much doomed in an admissions and promotion system where we are overwhelmed with applicants and starved for time.
The last speaker in a session I went to on mentoring talked about his experiences as a black man from a small college going into a big-time graduate program: outright hostility, awkward social dynamics, undergraduate classes, and a lasting commitment to making that experience better for students who would come later. He's now a professor at Florida State, and had a lot of interesting and practical things to say about making graduate programs attractive and accessible to people with backgrounds like his: rural, few family expectations for college, no lab experience, not white, few demographic role models in the field, and less likely to maintain confidence in the face of setbacks (and the whole game in My Science is psychological: you need to realize that everyone's insecure, even the really clever people, and you can't listen to your self-doubt).
The things he does to make FSU a more diverse place are these:
- First, let them in
- Second, allow for remediation without stigma
- Third, make a comfortable department community (peer mentors can make a big difference)
- Fourth, advertise at meetings of minority scientists and at HBCs
- Fifth, involve your undergrads
When I was in grad school, the students had some long conversations on the merits and methods of increasing diversity in My Science. The business-related arguments (that a diversity of backgrounds brings a diversity of problem-solving approaches and perspectives) don't really work in our field: at least from the insider's perspective, there's not much cultural to what we do. The main point, we figured, was justice: why should people gain or lose the opportunity to do science based on what they look like or where they come from?
Being on the graduate admissions committee for a year, it quickly became clear to me that "where you come from" has a lot of effects on where you can go: my institution was very highly ranked as a graduate school for My Science, and as such could be pretty baldly snobby about who was admitted. It didn't matter how good your grades were at the University of Southern North Dakota at Hoople; we've never heard of them, we don't know the people who wrote your letters of recommendation, so we don't know whether you are prepared to come here and keep up with people who had "good preparation" (read: known quantity) at the right universities as undergraduates. In order to maintain our prestige, we have to admit mostly/only students who we are confident will do well.
This is pretty obviously problematic for people who want to go to grad school to learn things, or to become professional scientists, and not just to boost the status of a particular school by their effortless brilliance. Overall, and this is something I was shocked to realize I hadn't been using as an admissions standard, admissions ought to be about what students can do, not just what they have already done. It's very difficult to evaluate that, and when you have three days to rank 150 applications, it's so easy to start using shorthands (where an applicant went to college, GRE scores, name recognition of their letter-writers). If your department is willing to work on cultivating the students, and not just putting them to work in the data-reduction mines, I don't think it would be that big of a gamble to shake up the admissions process.
November 16, 2009
It's my birthday!
Hooray!
I always loved my birthday as a kid; I've pretty much always been up for a party with happy people and snacks. I always used to wish that my birthday was during baseball season, but even if the M's had made the post-season back then (ahahahahahaha), it still would have been over by now. As a kid with a November birthday, you can't really go to the park or go swimming for your party, so what do you do? Some birthdays that stick out in my memory involved going to movies, hosting sleepovers (with movies), and staying inside, hula-ing around in fake grass skirts, and eating pineapple upside-down cake (still a great idea, mom!).
These days it's more of a re-evaluation kind of day: I don't really go for New Year's resolutions, but a birthday is a good reminder that I've been somewhere and done something in the past year. I'm not the same person I was last year at this time. So what have I learned this year?
I always loved my birthday as a kid; I've pretty much always been up for a party with happy people and snacks. I always used to wish that my birthday was during baseball season, but even if the M's had made the post-season back then (ahahahahahaha), it still would have been over by now. As a kid with a November birthday, you can't really go to the park or go swimming for your party, so what do you do? Some birthdays that stick out in my memory involved going to movies, hosting sleepovers (with movies), and staying inside, hula-ing around in fake grass skirts, and eating pineapple upside-down cake (still a great idea, mom!).
These days it's more of a re-evaluation kind of day: I don't really go for New Year's resolutions, but a birthday is a good reminder that I've been somewhere and done something in the past year. I'm not the same person I was last year at this time. So what have I learned this year?
- Don't move via airplane. Didn't I already learn this one 10 years ago? Apparently not.
- Stop editing so much and just do it already. This is more of a work-related lesson, but also speaks to my tendency to think everything to death, and then not do unexpected new things.
- Brussels sprouts are good. Especially roasted with bacon and walnuts. This is something Chris has been trying to tell me for years: you have to try the new food before you decide you don't like it.
- Be happy. When things are good, enjoy it! At the very least it'll build up your reserves of Zen for the next time everything unexpectedly catches fire right before a deadline.
November 9, 2009
Food and memory
Some (not totally connected) thoughts about food as personal history:
- I have yogurt for breakfast every morning (except some weekend mornings, if C makes pancakes or eggs). We all do - Liam likes pretty much any kind (two kinds together if possible), with frozen raspberries and musli, C likes a lot of musli and apricot yogurt, and I like vanilla with a little musli. When I was a kid, vanilla yogurt with sliced banana was my mom's territory, something she didn't have all the time, but would have if she got the chance. I feel a connection to her in staking out the vanilla yogurt as "mine".
- Shrimp casserole was also a rarity, and a big favorite of mine (all that cheese!), so I made a version of it last night: switch the rice for pasta, the cheddar for an emmental/gouda mix, the soup for heavy cream steeped with garlic and sauteed onions. Just like when I was a kid - but totally different. It turns out that Liam is a huge fan of shrimp; we may have to move closer to the ocean.
- I've read reviews of Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals, and they all bill it as stark anti-factory farming, conscience-shocking reporting. Truth, in other words, and high moral principle, and would that we all had the time and resources to live by our principles all the time. The excerpt I've read from the book was hardly mentioned in the reviews: Foer's hesitation and guilt at moving away from family food traditions in pursuit of vegetarianism. He tells this story by writing about his grandmother, who fled the Holocaust, who lived miserably but escaped in the end, who spent his childhood feeding him as much as possible, sweeping him off his feet in hugs so she'd know he was gaining enough weight. This is no cliched "what will I bring to Thanksgiving?" whine, and his conclusion is hopeful, forward-looking and old-fashioned: in his family, he will do his best to do the right thing. Food memories and bonds formed depend less on what's for dinner, and more on the time spent and care taken.
November 3, 2009
Permission
I have a deadline tomorrow, and really ought to be working on that instead of reading, but this article at Jezebel is so resonant for me, for a lot of reasons. It makes me wonder if I should go back to the used bookstore I was at on Saturday and buy that 100-Euro 1929 edition of A Room of One's Own. It reminds me of a story my friend L tells, about deciding she'd rather teach than do high-profile research, but being afraid to break the news to her internationally-famous research-powerhouse graduate advisor. The advisor, a woman who has been extremely dedicated to her research for many years, and who is very shrewd and direct, looked straight at my friend and told her "Well, we should make sure you're the best teacher you can be, then."
Permission to succeed. Just when you think you've gotten beyond working for gold stars on a chart, for proud looks from your parents and good grades, that little phrase blows it all away. I definitely want other people to think the work I do is interesting. It doesn't make it any more interesting for me, but the external approval tells me I don't have to prove that my work matters: smart people think I'm interesting! The sociology of research science, especially in my little specialized corner, is very complicated, and is strongly skewed by insecurity. Senior people who take the time to give serious advice, who think to ask junior people about subjects they're knowledgable in (as though they're already experts!), can make a big difference. Here's to good mentors, and good influences.
Permission to succeed. Just when you think you've gotten beyond working for gold stars on a chart, for proud looks from your parents and good grades, that little phrase blows it all away. I definitely want other people to think the work I do is interesting. It doesn't make it any more interesting for me, but the external approval tells me I don't have to prove that my work matters: smart people think I'm interesting! The sociology of research science, especially in my little specialized corner, is very complicated, and is strongly skewed by insecurity. Senior people who take the time to give serious advice, who think to ask junior people about subjects they're knowledgable in (as though they're already experts!), can make a big difference. Here's to good mentors, and good influences.
November 1, 2009
New project!
I saw it mentioned somewhere that November is "NaBloPoMo" now, so that all of the people who make themselves crazy during NaNoWriMo or NaKniSweMoDo can keep the crazy going by posting every day. It sounded interesting, since (as we have previously noted) I am a terrible correspondent and a worse diarist: converting blog posting into a new project and a challenge instead of a reminder of how looooong it had been since I wrote a post about how looooong it had been since I wrote a post. What could go wrong?
So I logged in to the old blog and went to make a list of things that would make good posts, and...what are these ads? Where's all the stuff I wrote in the last year? Oh, hey, we forgot to re-register the domain names (in, like, September. I guess it has been a while since I posted anything), and some company grabbed both our domains in the hopes that we'll pay them lots of money to get them back.
Good luck with that, jerks.
So hopefully this will be fun, and not just a series of notes about what I had for breakfast (though, for the record: it's yogurt. It's always yogurt. Actually, that would make a good post, because I have a few things to say about yogurt). Coming up: German ingenuity, office finches, yogurt and memory, and my birthday!
So I logged in to the old blog and went to make a list of things that would make good posts, and...what are these ads? Where's all the stuff I wrote in the last year? Oh, hey, we forgot to re-register the domain names (in, like, September. I guess it has been a while since I posted anything), and some company grabbed both our domains in the hopes that we'll pay them lots of money to get them back.
Good luck with that, jerks.
So hopefully this will be fun, and not just a series of notes about what I had for breakfast (though, for the record: it's yogurt. It's always yogurt. Actually, that would make a good post, because I have a few things to say about yogurt). Coming up: German ingenuity, office finches, yogurt and memory, and my birthday!
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