Seriously, can you remove your head out of your ass?

So I have already posted my thoughts on the harvard business report regarding women in science.
I am pissed at what the article has to say about women and science, according to a summary in the globeandmail. First this article was in the life & style section of the newspaper when it should have been in the report on business section. Science, Engineering and Technology (SET) fields are business, human resource issues relating to them are important both for our economy and our society, that however is a different rant. I am pissed because the very group that is supposed to be advocating for the plight of SET is completely ignoring the issue, to the extent that they claim the female brain drain is not an issue in Biotechnology. How can I state this as a matter of fact? Well at the risk of losing my anonymity, I will tell you that I hosted a roundtable at which Colette Rivet was invited to speak, the purpose of the roundtable? To quote my own invitation to Colette:

Panellists on the roundtable will be asked whether the biotechnology industry and academia are facing the same challenges as (in respect to a skilled labour shortage and diminishing populations) other industries and countries? What will the economic impact of these challenges be? Is encouraging professional women to re-enter the job market by improving access to quality childcare and instituting flexible work-hours a solution to the impending labour shortages?

When I asked whether Biotechnology was facing a brain drain, the answer was an emphatic no, biotechnology is all peaches and roses when it come to women’s equality. Really because that is why I picked this topic. I am pissed because that roundtable was hosted by a student organization, it was full of young women who wanted to know what the challenges they faced and what some solutions were, what could they do to make a difference. It was meant to be a worthwhile discussion on what the real issues or challenges were and what were possible solutions. There were NO politicians, the other panelists? a wonderful policy guy, a banker to discuss to the financial impacts associated with HR policies (because Biotech is mostly startups where I am) and the HR council for Canada Biotech Industry. Do you know what we got? Bullshit, nothing worthwhile complete denial of an issue. But as the Harvard report shows the fact of the matter is well qualified women, and men, are leaving SET fields because of an inability to find work-life balance. We are losing talented individuals and we need to figure out how to stem the flow. Sticking our heads in our asses and denying there is a problem doesn’t do anyone any favors.

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As an aside Lesson #432861 - if you're going to rant on the phone about heads in asses while trying to cook dinner, make sure the monkey is within sight because you won't notice the silence over your ranting and you will end up with this:









What you can't see, his pants soaked in the water that used to be in the toilet bowl, the bathroom floor covered in the water that used to be in the toilet bowl.

what really happened

Okay so maybe it wasn’t an alien invasion. I apologize to myself and to my readers for not believing in my own abilities. The dry run was well worth it, as it reminded me to keep my information brief and to the point, ie tell the point of each slide if they want to know the details of how data was collected they can ask. My labmates also provided very good suggestions on how to (1) re-organize my slides for better flow and (2) which slides to add to also improve the flow. Our two female post-docs were amazing mentors as per always, one reminded me to be careful of my word choice so as not to give ammunition to the ‘dragons’ of our buildings, while the other reminded me that (a) I knew what I was doing and (b) it was not my comps, I have only been a student for 5 months if you take away my 1 year mat leave and I can not be expected to know everything. So Tuesday night I came home, fixed up the presentation slides and went to bed. Wednesday morning I woke up, got dressed, took monkey to daycare and then came home to practice. I had 2 hours to practice a 20-minute presentation, I got through one run as I found errors on my slides and couldn’t quite get the transitions correct, had to re-read some papers. You would’ve thought that the need to double check date would’ve freaked me out, and it used, but I just didn’t care. Its not that didn’t want to do could, but I realize I can’t know everything, and I don’t care if people think I am smart or not. At least that morning I did not, which is not necessarily how I feel all the time. When I arrived at the lab, FPD1 & 2 reminded that I knew my stuff and FPD1 verbalized my sub-conscious lack of stress. This talk will not change the most important things, Mr. SM and monkey will both still be home when I get there and will still love me. Everything else is just icing. Even 5 minutes before the start of seminar, I was amazingly not stressed and my stomach was not churning at 100 cycles/sec. How did the actual talk go? IMO it wasn’t too bad, when I started talking, I was going a bit last made the realization and slowed down. During the body of the talk, things I could’ve improved on: talk slower, and look at the audience more. I found myself scanning the audience, wasn’t seeing ‘friendly’ faces and would then move my attention back to the computer screen and / slide screen. Questions I think I handled OK, still have to work on not interrupting people, but didn’t get too defensive. Almost did but I stepped back and calmed down. I presented 2 projects as part of my mini-proposal, the one project I explained and executed quite well, the 2nd completely fubarred. However I somewhat blame my PI – should he not have noticed I fubarred it during the dry run? Mr. SM has severely pissed me off by claiming it is my responsibility to know everything, which is fine especially further in to my career. But right now, I think PI should’ve noticed and pointed out that I had made a flaw – he didn’t have to design the experiment or tell me how to do it, but he could’ve pointed out that it was designed incorrectly and that maybe I should think about what I was doing BEFORE my presentation. Which once again bring up the question of what is the role of your advisor? I don’t believe in having my hand held, but hey maybe throw me the ball?? It would be different if I wasn’t trying to get the PI to look at it, but I was. Oh well shit happens. I guess I will get post-docs to look before the day before.

A little bloggy help

I'm a bit late on posting this, but the more blogs out there with it, the better our chances.

The day that Allison lost Zoë is forever marked her "best day ever" on Wordpress because it is the day that the most people visited her blog. For her own emotional well-being, she needs this post to be taken off her blog dashboard. The way to do that is to create a new record for visits to her blog.

On Thursday, May 29, please click on Allison's blog, Our Own Creation, and help replace that post with whatever is currently up on her blog that day. Everyone needs to visit on the same day--May 29th--because if we simply click throughout the week, it won't bump the day she lost Zoë from that section of the dashboard. I am writing this now to give us time to spread the word. Take the graphic I created and place it on your own blog. Don't worry--I'll remind you to click that day.

We need 2,350 people to visit Our Own Creation on May 29th. We need 1,785 people visit Sweet Zoë.

Alien Invasion???

Apparently an alien took over my body a few moments before my seminar began. Lucky for me this alien had an excellent understanding of my project, and its strong points was the how well it answered questions, who knew I would be so lucky.

I am going to decompress, drink some beer and play with the monkey. Thank you to everyone for the words of encouragement, they have meant so much.

Sweaty Palms

As much as I am/was frustrated with my MSc thesis adviser, there are a few things that I appreciate about him. He always read and returned my thesis proposals, committee meeting summaries, conference abstracts, scholarship apps, thesis etc, before the deadline . We would sometimes be emailing copies back and forth every hour, till 12 midnight. In the end, I always knew my submissions were rock solid. I miss that with new adviser. Also, I was rarely stressed about presentations. Actually, that is not true, I was always always stressed about presentations. My PI would make me present everyday the week before, criticizing all the time, asking me different questions every time, which I would never know the answer too. I would leave those dry runs freaking out with a list of 20 papers to read (which I sometimes did), finding the answers to those damn impossible questions. I hated practicing with him. Funny thing, now that I have my first talk as a PhD student on wednesday and my current PI is awol due to the birth of his baby, I am freaking out because I have not been put through the winger so I don't feel ready! Strange I know, but my presentations were never as bad as the dry runs, and everyone used to say how amazing my talks were. I was so good because my PI forced me to be on the top of my game AND how to think about what others would find interesting, not just the questions I would ask. I miss that. I think he could've prepared me without telling me I had only one neuron, but right now I would prefer his horrible negativity to the silence I am getting.

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I am diligently responding to comments from NaComLeaveMo. I will be a bad NaComLeavMo participant until after said talk on wednesday. I will post an outcome of the talk and then make up from my lack of commenting on new blogs.

More bits and bobs

A lady scientist led me to stirrup queen's comment marathon, and I think its great! I've made a diligent effort to list on the blogs I read, but admit to not delurking from many of them. This will force me to introduce myself to a whole cast of bloggers and in the process hopefully I will get to know few more of you. I will give myself till after the 28th to start though, as I really should not be adding to my procrastination enabling tool box.

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I was at the park the other day when a friends son starting hitting the monkey. Monkey gets beat up on a regular basis by my niece, and I don't interfere because I want monkey to learn to interact with his peer group. However at the same time if he was hitting another kid, I would stop him to teach him that it is not appropriate behaviour. Why is it okay for me to interfere when he's being bad but yet not to want other moms to correct their kids? How do you find the balance between correcting behaviour and encouraging them to stand up for themselves??

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Yet another depressing report about women leaving science, this time leaving industry for a variety of reasons, including lack of life / work balance and a macho culture. I heard about this article from a yahoo story sent to me by Mr. SM. He read the article and thought, my wife has been making this point to me all year, wow she was right and they are finally listening. I love Mr. SM for being all optimistic for thinking hey they're listening and doing something about it. But thats not how I read the article. I think some companies are recognizing the challenges and embracing policies the address the concerns, but what stuck out the most to me was that major companies were not looking at the root of the problem and trying to establish HR policies that would enable highly intelligent, well-trained women to not have to choose between family and work, but were instead lobbying the US congress to enable more foreign males / females to come in. I will say more foreign trained women will also be coming, but both genders will be making significant sacrifices to come to a "better country". They will be leaving husbands/wives, children and extended support system to come to the US (and / or Canada as I am sure we are facing similar challenges) with the hopes of gaining citizenship. I have seen the emotional toll its has taken on these individuals and its not right. Here in Canada, there have been numerous studies done in the Filipino community examining the challenges faced by the women who left there homeland (and children) to care for anothers' family. I am sure these challenges and repercussions are felt regardless of skill level. Work - Life balance is a gender neutral issue, my own PI is failing amazingly at balancing after meeting a women, falling in love and having a child. Its great because he recognizes why I'm struggling but it sucks because why do we expect such crazy long hours?

A new joy

has come in the world. I would like to congratulate HBM and her family on the arrival of their new addition. HBM has had a horribly long labor which we are all so happy is now over.

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Congratulations to the winners of ISEF, ScienceWomen has been covering the event very well, so I suggest you mosy on over to her blog to hear about the amazing women you placed in the top three, thats right the TOP three. And they say women can not do science.

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It was the beautiful long weekend this past weekend, and although I am suffering seasonal allergies, I am trying to be upbeat. I have lots of bits of different post swirling in my head, but do not have the energy or desire right now to formulate them. so sorry. will try to get something intelligent going soon.