Rising to the occasion

A teaching puzzle

2008-08-07T14:35:00.002+02:00

According to an email in my inbox the semester has officially started. Not that it makes much of a difference. With an intensive short course program in the summer and overlap between summer courses and semester courses the change is barely noticeable. But, the students who are going to stay here for the full semester have arrived, and classes have started.

I have spent most of my time the past week preparing for the course I will be running in the fall semester. It is broad and location dependent, but builds on knowledge from several sub-disciplines and covers a broad range of geological topics. The students have very different backgrounds. Some have only taken an introduction to geology course, while others are near completion of a B.Sc. degree. The overall outline of the course is established in the school curriculum and consists of a fieldtrip, lectures, weekly exercises and an independent project to be completed during the semester. Within this broad outline it is up to me to structure the content of field work, lecture and exercise activities and decide how and when to involve guest lecturers/ co-teachers.

Previously this course has been taught in a relatively traditional lecture format with lectures two-three times a week and a weekly exercise/lab. The individual projects have been literature review projects with presentations at the end of the semester. Two years ago when I was teaching here for six months while being on part-time leave from my postdoc. I developed a course that is now the “sister”-course to this one. The two courses have a very similar structure, but the one I developed two years ago has more field activities and a larger and more research intensive independent project. My goal has been to translate these ideas into the course I’m teaching now, while also keeping some of the elements that have traditionally been part of this course.

I have been struggling with finding a way to connect the field work they do on the excursion to a practical two-week project they carry out in groups and eventually to their own independent research projects. My goal is to make each part become a piece of the next, in a way where they will have an experience of a continuous practical activity running parallel to the more traditional classroom teaching throughout the semester. Most of the stratigraphy here is sedimentary basins, but some students may choose to work on tectonic/structural geology topics for their independent projects. I’m not sure I will manage to connect all the dots this year, but I’m going to outline some of the problems I see, and if anyone has ideas to how to handle any of these successfully your advice would be much appreciated.

The link from excursion to two-week practical project: What kind of data could be collected in limited time with a group of relatively inexperienced people, which will be useful for a larger two-week project concerning partly a different part of the stratigraphy?
We can spend a maximum of one day at each field site as one of the aims for the excursion is to see as much of the stratigraphy as possible, and we have a very good and expensive logistics solution that allows us to move around. They will get to visit a couple of localities with rocks of the same age as they will be working with in the practical project, but with a different position within the basin. I am not sure they will be able to describe enough rock record during a one day stop to be able to do some good comparisons, though.

The link from two week practical project to independent research project: How can a bulk of data collected and processed as group work be separated and distributed into different independent projects. Here I am really lost. I think it would be a good idea if at least some of the independent projects could build on and expand the work they get started during the practical project weeks, but am not able to estimate how this could be done or how many projects there would be basis for doing. I am also not sure how to connect these two parts for those who choose different topics for their independent project.

In good news

2008-08-05T10:47:00.003+02:00

Well, life is busy here. Between starting up new courses, scrambling to put together some research ideas that will work here in my new environment, settling into a new place and doing laundry between field trips, time is scarce.

Yesterday I spent most of the day making a fool of myself in various situations, but today seems to start on a better note.

The sun is shining after days and days of fog.
I got a very nice review back on a paper. Like a letter from the editor saying "This is really cool science and good work. If you could just add some details and some explanations we would love to publish it in our top of the subfield journal". Yay!
We unpacked the last boxes at home, and my home office is almost up and running. Now we just need some new curtains, because all curtains in the apartment are hideous. Really. Like if someone picked them out while blindfolded.
I found a very cool conference where I could present some of the ideas my research program here will likely build on and get a chance to meet some important people in my slightly-new-to-me field. The timing of the conference is not splendid and the abstract deadline is soon (too soon given that I have field work and excursions and another conference back to back until then), but I'm going to give it a try.

Maybe it is all coming together anyway.

When field trips are so much more than what's outlined on the itinerary

2008-08-03T14:54:00.009+02:00

I’m back from a great excursion to some of the world-class outcrops that lie on my doorstep here at University above the Arctic Circle. For the past week students from all over Europe have been studying the basin fills from the Carboniferous, Cretaceous and Tertiary. Each morning we would climb some hundred meters above sea level to get to the open air class room where we have discussed sedimentary processes and sequence stratigraphy, practicing field work techniques and geological arguments, all while enjoying some spectacular sunny weather and stunning views.

Something special always happens on these trips. People loosen up and get to know each other and conversations drift from the professional to the personal and back without people even noticing. I like the way the barriers between teachers and students are broken down when in the field. In fact the free and easy atmosphere was part of what attracted me to geology in the first place. I like to get to know my students as more than rows of faces in a class room and to hear their ideas and plans and thoughts. I also like that I get to show a more personal side of the scientist. That the professors are people too, and that we also have families and pets and hobbies and interests and thoughts about things outside the geology classroom. I like the opportunities to discuss career options and education choices and to share the experiences I wished someone had shared with me when I was younger and at a lower level in the ivory tower hierarchy.

I want to show the students that it’s not about being tough, but about doing a good job. That it’s about learning the necessary techniques and bringing the right equipment. I want to show them that the skills needed to do a good job can be learned and that lack of experience does not mean that one will not be able to make it. The process of becoming a field geologist is not only about learning the science, but also about learning to navigate the outdoors. Some students come equipped with mountaineering skills and top notch equipment, but many come with only the most rudimentary knowledge of how to use a compass or how to move in a mountain side. I want to do field courses in a way where it is accepted to be less experienced and where being hungry or tired are legitimate reasons for a break.

The field part of geology is perhaps the area where we are closest to an apprenticeship system. This is where the trade is learned, where connections are made and where ideas about what symbols to use for what structure are etched into brains. It is where skills are mastered and where the way future geologists will go about doing their observations is shaped. It is a place where the tone is set for an open dialogue between teachers and students and where we get a chance to influence or inspire each other. Of course it is also a chance to go to some spectacular places that most people never get to see, enjoy some wet sandwiches after a long day in the rain or just the relief of reaching the destination after a long hike or hitting the shower at the end of the day.

I think that one of the coolest things about moving here is that much of my teaching will be based on field activities.

Going in the field with students

2008-07-21T11:43:00.003+02:00

Thanks for the welcome back comments, everyone. It’s good to be back.

When I saw Ron Schott’s call for submissions to the Accretionary Wedge on the topic “Field Camp Geology” on Saturday, I thought, wow, what an appropriate way for me to re-enter the scene on blogging. University above the Arctic Circle is located in the middle of world class outcrops of rocks from the Precambrian to the Quaternary and teaching is strongly focused on field based activities. This is one of the things that attracted me to this location in the first place, but it is also a challenge. Not the least in the practical sense. In a few weeks I will be leading a field course to several localities I have never visited before. There are no road signs here, and one needs to know from which side of the mountain the ascent is easier, where the best outcrops are or where it would be convenient to place, say four groups of students, who should work on the same formation, but not breathe down each other’s necks. This kind of knowledge requires a familiarity with the localities that cannot be achieved from the literature and which isn’t easy to obtain in the course of a few weeks as a new faculty member. Therefore I’m happy to have been asked to tag along as a co-teacher on another field course in the department, led by an experienced colleague who has been working on these outcrops for a long time. We are leaving today and alas this trip is also getting in the way from me writing a more coherent post on my thoughts on field camps/ field excursions or dig out some old stories on time for the Accretionary wedge. I will leave you with a photo from one of the places we’ll be going to and I’ll be back to talk more about field trips in general and this one in particular in a week’s time.

The one in which I reinvent this blog

2008-07-19T13:09:00.002+02:00

Once again I've been missing in action for a very long time. My mini-sabattical turned into a tough and demanding writing boot camp (though a very productive one) and I lost inspiration for blogging entirely. For some people academic writing and blogging go hand in hand, for me the energy put into the former seems to correlate negatively with my motivation for the latter. I'm ashamed to admit that I didn't even have the energy to sign on and write a short reply to the people who actually came here to ask how I was doing. I'm sorry, but your comments were very much appreciated.

As I talked about in the spring I was undecided about which direction I wanted this blog to take, and couldn't strike a tone I was entirely satisfied with. To the endlessly repeating tune of what would I write on the blog if I wanted to update it now, spring and early summer was taken up by finishing a major writing project, field work and moving, and then lately, slowly settling into a new place. I have been here for three weeks now. The house is still a mess and my office is still in boxes, but it feels good. Summer classes are well underway. I'm leaving for the first field trip with students on Monday and I'm working on the final adjustments to the syllabus for the fall semester undergraduate course. I've even managed to do some edits to a manuscript and do some small research tasks every day.

I'm happy and I think I will enjoy working here. I'm also nervous about how I will manage to get grant money, if I will ever come up with a good research topic for this particular location, how interaction will be with the rest of the department and how the switch back to a sub-discipline I haven't really worked actively in for several years will pan out. Thinking about what a source of inspiration and support the academic blogging community has been to me in the past, when navigating other difficult paths from the dissertation to the post doc to new teaching and admin responsibilities made me realise that I wanted to jump back on the wagon. It also made it clear to me that what I'm most interested in here, is how to navigate the academic carreer as a person, as a scientist, as a geologist and as a teacher. I have learned a lot from watching others and I want to share my version as well. Ideas about whether this should be more personal or private and maybe in my mother tongue or whether it should be a more streamlined research blog are just out of line with that main interest, and maybe setting some boundaries for myself about what this space is, will actually allow me to do something more interesting with it.

I may redesign the page a bit, to make it a more professional place for me. I want to be able to talk more freely about what I do, and since I'm in a very small place now, that due to its location and priorities gets a lot of attention, it will be easy to figure out who and where I am. I don't think I will come out of the pseudonymous closet, just yet, but I want the page to be in a way where I wouldn't be terribly embarrased if a colleague found it. Changes are not likely to happen over night as I will be travelling an awful lot over the next couple of months, but at least I am back in the game, and am looking forward to reconnect with all my lovely blogfriends.

It's been quiet here lately

2008-03-07T11:30:00.003+01:00

Because I've been doing this:

Let me just say that the work-from-home-mini-sabattical has turned into a very exhausting, though rather succesful writing-bootcamp. An update is in the works, but right now I'm heading out to enjoy a rare sunny moment and get some fresh air.

How I spent the leap day

2008-03-01T13:57:00.003+01:00

One would think receiving an extra day should be great. Who doesn't need more time? Whether using it for getting all the stuff done that needs to get done, or as Jo(e) suggests, leave it off the calender altogether and indulge in extra sleep and fun, extra time ought to be good.

Personally I'd be happy to wipe yesterday off the calender:

I spent all day in meetings (including this rather emotional one), while having a terrible shoulder ache that only got worse during the day. By the end of the day I was supposed to fix some tables for a poster a colleague is making, but could barely lift my arm to my desk and decided I'd better go home. My colleague suggested I should see a chiropractor for the shoulder, but they don't open until Monday (I will go then if the pain persists). On the way home someone crashed into my car while reversing in the parking lot. The damage will be covered by her insurance, but I will be the one who has to go to the mechanic and get it repaired, plus I got to stand for half an hour in a freezing cold parking lot to fill out an accident report for the insurance company. I did none of the research related tasks I had on my list for yesterday, got home at 7pm too tired to make proper dinner and fell asleep in front of the TV (which I was watching from a very strange angle given that I was lying down on the couch, but couldn't bend much because of the shoulder pain).

So on top of having a really crappy day yesterday it now looks like I can add a visit to the chiropractor and to the mechanic to my day on Monday. I really need someone to help me run my life. It seems that each time I have cleared up time for writing (or God forbid, for relaxation), I am inundated with other life-stuff, which must be attended to, and then I haven't even talked about another health appointment, online banking, cleaning the house, contacting the shipping company about possible dates for our move, the deadlines for next week and the social event I have agreed to attend.

Rant over. Let me just say that I hope today will treat me more kindly and that I'm totally ready for spring and a new month and a new beginning.

When there's more than one side to the story

2008-03-01T11:50:00.002+01:00

I resigned from my postdoc position yesterday. This should not come as a surprise to anyone as I signed the contract for my new job nearly five months ago, and I have been open about accepting the offer and leaving the postdoc prematurely all the time. I still have a year and a half left on the postdoc contract, but the money will be used to hire someone else, who does something I don't, while I will continue to work with the group, so technically it's a win-win situation for everyone.

Personally it is obviously a step forward both in terms of independence and better pay, and it is also the switch back to the university environment, I have been contemplating for a while. But, because there is always a but, I am truly sorry to be leaving the people and the research environment I am a part of here.

Let me begin by saying that I am in a field where collaboration is vital. Not only in terms of idea exchange and professional networks, but also in practical terms of organizing expeditions and being safe in the field. It is very difficult to get by in this discipline without effective working collaborations. The intensive social experience of being in the field together for weeks on end often fosters a special bond between people. Whether connections continue or not, the shared experiences under extraordinary conditions tie people together and can make even colleagues you have never met, but who works in the same or a similar area, feel like your kin. Sometimes the collaborations turn into professional/personal friendships and sometimes the professional matches of collaborators interests are more thought-provoking and inspiring than others. I have colleagues and collaborators who have become close personal friends, others who have become valued and respected professional aquaintances and connections. Some who spark my ideas and others who are inspired by mine. Some who are cherished field companions and others who are my support network, inspiration and intellectual challenge. It is, however, rare to find all these traits in the same people, but that's what I have with the research group, I'm working with now. We are field companions, professional collaborators, know each other well and appreciate each other's company whether at a party or discussing the solution to a scientific problem. These people have become a huge part of my work life and are a major source of inspiration and reason why I like my job. They are also sometimes obnoxious and make me frustrated, but isn't it so with even the best people.

When I leave this much of this will change. It's not like we will never see each other again, but it will be different. I will miss the way we interact on a day to day basis, and I will miss this feeling of connectedness to someone in the same department. I will miss the more personal side of our professional friendship. To have immidiate allies and someone to discuss tricky topics with and the combination of personal trust and appreciation with professional inspiration and development of ideas. As with all personal relationships, longdistance is just not the same.

We were talking about this yesterday, and about how to keep up the good work and still have fun together, while not working in the same place anymore. We were talking about what our future collaboration would look like, and how we could develop the line of research, we are doing now. As I mentioned in this post, I don't really know what the future holds for me research-wise yet, but I do know, that I will need to think outside the box, and start something different from what we are doing now. I started talking about, how I hoped, that eventually it would not only be me participating in our current research, while starting something new, but also them being involved in my new line of research. While we talked, ideas of how this could be done started to form. Completely new ideas of something that has never been done before. Ideas about applying our current research to something different, I will get access to in my new location. I heard my voice increase in volume with excitement, as I began to see the contours of the bridge between the two lines of research, and of how to continue the collaboration in a meaningful and rewarding way. Not only was this an answer to some of the research questions I can start looking for in the new place, it was also a great way of confirming how the collaboration can grow and transform and continue despite the distance. I still think it is sad to leave, but I left the meeting thinking that this will take our collaboration to a new level and that, once again, good discussions with great people, can generate ideas and solutions to problems that seemed insurmountable to me on my own.

I am late for this months Scientiae on renewal, so instead of letting this post be a part of the carnival, let it be a birthday celebration post for the very first birthday of the carnival for women in STEM fields. Thanks to Skookumchick who took initiative to the carnival a year ago and who put up this months theme, which made me think about the positive aspects of yesterday's meeting rather than writing a whiny post about how resigning didn't make me glow with joy at all, but rather made me feel like crap.

Why would anyone spend time on administration?

2008-02-28T21:19:00.003+01:00

In a post from last week, I mentioned, how the position of "assistant department head" was invented at my institution in order to recruit women into administrative positions*, and how, I felt, that move sent a conflicting signal about women needing special training in order to move up in the hierarchy, in a way men did not. At the same time this "lower level administrative position" also became an attractive stepping stone for young people like me towards the decision-making level of the institution, and it was actively encouraged by the institution as a career-enhacing step.

Administrative work in academic institutions is often described as a thankless job and something that should be avoided as long as possible. To some extent I suppose this is true, and being swamped by administrative work can surely derail an academic career quickly, especially as long as one is at the entry level.

So it is not surprising that Wilhelm asks in the comments to the above post:

"Why on earth would you want to take on an assistant department head position, though? From what I have observed, something like that would put a serious dent in your scientific output and give you all kinds of mind-numbing administrative tasks."

Rather than just giving a brief answer in the comments I wanted to expand this a little. Administration is not for everyone, and institutions obviously differ with respect to how much real influence it is possible to obtain as a junior person, but I wanted to share why I think it has been worth the time and effort and what I have learned.

There are definitely days when I ask myself the above question repeatedly. But although taking on administrative tasks has taken quite a lot of time away from scientic production, and the fact that some of the tasks are indeed mind-numbing, I also think it has a lot of (somewhat overlooked) positive aspects.

Now, an administrative position will probably contain different tasks depending on the kind of institution, and I can only speak to why I chose it in this particular setting.

When I was offered this position initially, I didn't know much about what it would entail, but I saw it as a tactic career move if I wanted to stay here beyond my postdoc (and I'm quite sure it would have been). The honest answer is also that I was flattered to be suggested for such a position after being here for less than a year, and that also played into my decision.

However, when I got started and as I developed with the role, it got more and more interesting. Sure, there is a lot of boring paperwork and dysfunctional administrative software crap, but it also turned out to be a real opportunity to make a difference and influence the development of both the department and the institution.

Now, this is not a university, so we are not talking about little ol' me having an influence of tens of thousands of students, but on having a say in matters that affects a mid-size public research institution. A department (not the literal translation of our subdivision) does also not consist of faculty members with wildly differing research interest, but is better described as a collaborative group of researchers working in the same subject area.

I think it has been a great learning experience to get "behind the scenes" and see how such an institution works. How we argue for our state funding, how we distribute the funds internally and to have a say on which direction the institution is moving in.

At the department level this involves taking active part in shaping the future strategy for our group, arguing for hirings/other investments and delivering our input to the institutional strategy.

For me this position has been about so much more than just the paperwork and I honestly think it has been worth the time and commitment. I think it has been personally rewarding to see some of the results, and I also think this experience will be helpful in the future because very few, if any, scientists can escape administration and leadership in one incarnation or another.

*In all fairness it should be said that these positions are not exclusively for women. Currently I think there is one male assistant department head, but the typical configuration is the senior male department head matched with the junior-ish female assistant department head.

I knew it wasn't just me

2008-02-27T07:29:00.002+01:00

As seen at Styley Geek's

The quest for papers - by the numbers

2008-02-25T11:46:00.002+01:00

So i finally, finally submitted one of the papers I have talking about since forever. It has been in my sidebar for so long, that I think it has changed both its title and its content several times, since I put it there, and I have been so frustrated by the slow progress, I haven't even bothered to update the ticker.

As an experiment I have been counting all the hours spent working on the most recent reincarnation of this paper and reached 160 hours when I hit the "submit" button last night. Quite enlightening I'd say, because I've never had any real idea of how long the individual steps of writing a paper are supposed to take, and as I said in the post below, I suck at estimating time.

The 160 hours are however just the tip of the iceberg, covering a major revision of a diss chapter from splitting the original manuscript in two, some major reorganisation and rewriting and creating about 2/3s of the figures from scratch (some seriously detailed graphics work involved in what I do) and adding some new analysis.

The real journey from idea to submission looks more like this:

2001: Idea developing as part of dissertation proposal

2003: Start playing around with software supposed to help analyse data (spent about 6 full months on this and it never worked) and gave first talk based on this idea (a reincarnation of one of the figures is still in the present manuscript)

2005: First draft of paper written and revised into dissertation shape, gave first international conference presentation on this topic (didn't go well, because there were still some serious flaws in the way I interpreted the data and I didn't quite know why), defended dissertation

2006: Another conference presentation on the same data (still some issues with interpretation)

Early spring 2007: Began revising the dissertation chapter manuscript into something publishable. Got stuck at issues with interpretation and realized the manuscript had to be split into two, but didn't know exactly how to split them (spent about a month on this).

Late spring 2007: Wrote an abstract for a conference I'd been invited to speak at and realized that the abstract content was the aim of the second paper (insert lightbulb here).

Late fall 2007 - 2008: Revising the manuscript I left behind in spring 2007 to its present form.

If I had known from the beginning that this process would take 7 years I'm not sure I would have started. It's no wonder my publication rate is slow to nonexistent, and then I haven't even gotten the verdict from the journal yet. I've sent it to one of the better journals in the field. Not a top of the line one, because it's not that kind of research, but probably the best for this kind of papers. So while I'm waiting, I'm going to start writing the second paper.

Know your enemy (some thoughts on perfectionism)

2008-02-24T11:28:00.002+01:00

I used to think perfectionism was about being overly committed to detail, being afraid of making mistakes, studying obsessively and holding on to drafts much longer than necessary. This is probably all true and most of these are certainly true for me and my workstyle. I am attentive to detail and work at getting things right, but these traits are actually valued in research, so it always strikes me as somewhat counterproductive when people suggests "letting go of my perfectionism" as a way of attaining a better balance between my expectations of what I should do and what I actually get done.

When I started out on this self-analysing path some weeks ago, I began my thinking that I needed to let go of some of my ambition and to stop being so uptight about about doing everything correctly. But except letting things slide a bit at home (you wouldn't want to come and see the kitchen floor), I couldn't cut that many corners after all. I couldn't make the final draft of the paper I'm working on more messy, because if I tried, my co-authors would point out the mess anyway and insist that we fix it before submitting. The truth is that scientific work is meticulous by nature, and that final manuscripts need to be spotless. If you have an eye for detail, like I do, you will probably find many of the issues that need to be adressed by yourself, and if not, the reviewers will find them for you. Either way they still need to be fixed. I learned to write messy first drafts years ago. During my Master's I spent hours and hours on meticulously crafting and polishing sentences, but I got over that particular part of myself a long time ago. I don't suffer horribly from writer's block. Yes, I do get stuck and I procrastinate, but I have a whole bunch of little tricks up my sleeve that I can actually apply quite succesfully and get myself started again. So what I'm really suffering from is lack of time and completely unrealistic expectations of what one person should be able to do, and closely related to that, what other people get done. I also have a poor sense of my own boundaries and tend to do what others expect me to do (or what I think they expect me to do).

I tend to wildly exceed other people's expectations. I don't say this to brag, and I actually wish this wasn't so. I have spent years of my life resenting my Master's thesis advisor and the grad school for pushing me to pursue a a very difficult research topic at an unusually independent level and polish it to, if not pefection, at least a very good standard. I still think there should it would have been helpful and recommendable if my advisor had let me know that this was a bit much for Master's, but really, when looking back, this project was crazy. I obviously had no sense what a Master's was supposed to contain or how comprehensive it was supposed to be, but seriously, nobody else did that much work, but I somehow never realized that it was crazy over the top, and seriously feared failing right until the end.

I think I might be doing the same now. I have three big projects (one of them is my own), all requiring field work, processing of data, meetings, colaboration, networking and conference presentations. I have admin work, I try to publish papers, I teach (admittedly not much, but I do it on my own time because it's for a second employer and take vacation days or overtime off to do so), I organize all our group's contact to students and I need to start learning a lot of new stuff in order to invent a new research programme and teach a couple of new courses. It may not sound like an unusual work load, but I do have more field work, admin and teaching than most other people in the department and no one else has as much extra in combination. I am spreading myself very, very thin and more so than anyone else in our research group and yet I think I do nothing or barely keep up to the lowest standard. Technically this is probably considered the Imposter Syndrome, but it's not like I think I shouldn't be here or don't deserve my merits, it is just that I think, I should always do more.

I think I could do more if I could judge more realistically what a given project should entail. When doing the final edits to a manuscript last night and seeing that it barely scrapes in under the maximum number of words limit for the journal, I realised that this could have been two articles. I put in some extra data, because I had this grand idea of how this paper could tie it all together, and I think it might do so (let's see what the reviewers think). But if I could learn to acknowledge the smaller pieces of ideas, maybe I would first of all, be more productive in a measurable way, and second, see the intermediate milestones more clearly.

I also think it would be a great help if I got a more realistic perspective on what I am supposed to do. Beginning to talk about this topic with different people have actually opened up for some unexpected responses. A colleague I respect a lot told me, she thought I was hugely productive, while she always felt like she did nothing (which is obviously not true as I think she is hugely productive and I do nothing). Another colleague shared his frustrations about never having time to write and went on to tell a story about another colleague he just met, who had made the same complaint. So obviously people think about this, are frustrated by their own limitations and I'm not the only one who thinks everyone else are more productive than I am. So why am I doing this to myself.

As I said in the beginning I think this has much to do with my poor sense of my own boundaries. I agree to do things or to do them in an incovenient way, partly because I am ambitious and overcommitted and don't see my limitations, but also because I adhere to some cultural ideas that say I should work hard at accommodating others. I don't know how often I have heard myself say things like "well, I don't even have kids, so this shouldn't be hard" or "I don't have kids, so of course I will pick up that extra work over summer/ winter break/ Easter/ other inconvenient time", like it is somehow illegal to get tired or have wants and needs, if you don't have kids. All due respect to parents, but I use this as a way of undermining and underrating my own accomplishments as if not being a parent on top of everything else means that I'm just a lazy sucker who should do at least twice as much as anyone else. I use the same insane logic when dealing with my family, where career-oriented life styles are not appreciated. Rather than requesting them to accept my choices I hem and haw and bend my plans to fit around theirs, and actually enforce the idea of being the misfit who should accommodate others. I think rather than stop worrying about being nit-picky about the organizational details of a manuscript or the clarity of a detailed figure, this is where I really need to give myself a little kick in the butt and start changing something.

Reinventing my research

2008-02-21T16:56:00.002+01:00

With my new job follows a new field area. It is expected that I will be carrying out research in new university region, and that I will get acquainted with the immediate surroundings at a sufficient level to guide field trips and suggest thesis topics for students. I have been visiting this area for professional reasons for a number of years now, so I am not a complete loss when it comes to getting around and the overall perspective of what can be done, but I have yet to aquire any detailed knowledge about the local rocks. To make matters more complicated (because why only have one problem when you can have two for free), I am not only changing location, but also research angle with this move.

I am working at the boundary between two sub-disciplines, and although the one topic does not preclude the other, there is still, let’s say a cultural, difference between the two fields. Once you are brought up in one of them, people rarely switch to the other, and methodology and terminology associated with each field are rarely used in the other. For those of you who know something about geology, let me reveal that I am talking about sedimentology (in a pre-Quaternary sense) and Quaternary geology (broadly speaking). I started out in one of these subfields for my Masters, switched to the other for my PhD and have spent my postdoc years to refine the type of research that contributes to both fields. My upcoming faculty position will be in the same sub discipline as I did my Masters in. Although I am (working on) publishing in this field and have stayed up to date on the literature, gone to the conferences and kept some contacts, I haven't done active research directly in this field since my Masters. For the geo-crowd, this means I have been doing sedimentology and stratigraphy in Quaternary settings, but haven't worked on anything compacted for the past 8 years.

I always (more or less secretly) harboured a wish of going back to my original sub-discipline some day, so I was tremendously flattered when I was suggested for the faculty position. I considered the offer a golden opportunity to make a leap that might otherwise have been difficult, as most of my connections are within the field I have done my PhD in. The hiring committee was clear on the fact that they were interested in the interdisciplinarity I could bring to the position, but they wanted someone whose core research would be in the topic I did my Masters in. For me this means that after years of using field studies of Quaternary deposits to say something about sedimentological and stratigraphical principles, I will now try to use what I have learned from the Quaternary and apply it to much older rocks and basins. This might sound easy enough, but in reality it is no small task. I am still convinced, there is a good connection to be made, and that I have the necessary experience from both sides of the fence to make it, but now the problem is to figure out how.

After many years of being involved in projects driven by others and being part of a big network of collaborators and friends, I am now starting all over again. My network in my new (old) sub discipline is tiny and though I know the principles, the terminology and the methods I don't know the local geological history of my new field area. I am reading up on the geological record from scratch and I am trying to make educated guesses of which units or areas might be more (or less) suitable for the type of research I want to do. I have sold myself on potential rather than evidence that I can actually pull this off, and sometimes it's hard to silence the voice telling me that I will not be able to do it. As the start date is coming closer, I feel like I cannot keep giving the same vague answers to what I am going to do. It is a bit like I have been telling everybody about this fantastic trick I am going to do, but I haven't figured out what the trick is yet. That is not true, I know, but looking at the pile of literature about stuff I know nothing about, makes it seem like it is.

Time to make a plan

2008-02-20T10:21:00.003+01:00

So far, this working from home stunt is the most wonderful idea I have gotten in a long time. I actually did go into work for a few hours yesterday afternoon to discuss a manuscript with my co-author, but it felt so different because I came to do someting specific and not just because I had to be there (I really do have a problem with being told what to do). I will also come in for some meetings next week, but rather than come in the morning and stay the full day, I will come for the scheduled meetings and leave afterwards. I have been thinking about the duration of this "sabattical" and unless I get really bored at home I will probably be away from the office quite a lot for all the four weeks leading up to Easter break. Given that I want to come in for all the meetings I think my original idea of two weeks is too short to really get something done at home, and I might try to squeeze in a family visit in connection to Easter break near the end of the four weeks. This might not make me the worlds most popular person at work, but what can I do. I am four months away from starting a faculty position, and I really, really need to create the best possible circumstances for myself to get some serious writing done before my life is taken over by teaching.

So what should I be doing for the next four weeks?

Writing projects:

Finish the last layout details and minor edits to illustrations on manuscript that should have been submitted long ago and submit it (this should be doable in about a day)

Write a first draft of new manuscript and make first versions of some of the figures (this should be in a state where my coauthor can take over the manuscript around March 1st, but some of the figures should be in a state where we can meet and discuss them already next week)

Final revisions to text and illustrations on another manuscript which should have been submitted long ago (this should not take more than a week, maybe less, but since the manuscript doesn't have a particular deadline and is already late I don't want to make this a priority until I have a decent grip on the other two)

Research maintenance work:

Scan all illustrations from field notebooks from last summer and finish field reports (this is unbelievably boring, but totally mindless work, and some colleagues need the data in the field reports in order to prepare joint conference presentations, so it cannot wait much longer)

Go into work for a few hours and finish the sample list from last summer, call someone at the lab at organize where to deliver the samples for analysis (if I don't do this very soon, the samples won't be processed before I leave the institution and I might end up having to pay for the lab services because the lab hours are budgeted internally)

Creative research projects

Read and search for literature related to my field in new location and narrow down some research ideas I can start looking into (this is kind of vague and open, but I think I need to leave it like that. I don't need a formal research proposal, but I need to have an idea about what kind of research I can start up in the new place, in order to decide, whether I should plan some initial field work this summer)

Develop new work-related blog (I put this here because I think this might go hand in hand with thinking about a new line of research, but also to make it clear to myself that I consider it a professional project and not only a personal hobby)

Personal projects and necessary life maintenance

Clean the house (seriously, this goes high up on the list)

Pay bills and go through finances (this is also something I have let slip lately and which I really need to catch up on soon)

Sort big pile of personal paperwork from bank, insurance, salary slips, car purchase and much, much more

Start investigating prices, companies, time lines for move (this doesn't have to happen right now, but since everything will be shipped long-distance it can't wait forever either)

Blog about all the topics I have been wanting to talk about in a long time, but didn't have the energy to actually write.

Buy some clothes, an external harddisk and a few other items I have had on my wish list for a while, but haven't prioritised the time to actually find and buy

Get to the gym and back into a habit of regular exercise

Other research stuff

This is the big black box or the time sink that is a result of being involved in several large research projects. This is meetings, admin, visits related to outreach projects, planning, logistics, organising and I don't know what. This is the demands on my time I hope to keep at a minimum for the next few weeks, but which cannot be eliminated completely, because when the project ball is rolling, it's rolling whether I want it or not. Planned activities for the next few weeks include so far:

Meeting to discuss an archiving system for all the digital data related to the project and how to connect analogue data to this database.

Visit to science exhibition to figure out how we are going to set up a similar exhibition next year on another topic.

Meeting to discuss formalities and preparations for students who will be joining us in the field next summer

Institution wide photo session

Department meeting

Meeting to learn to work with new data in GIS

This is just for the next two weeks. More meetings will probably pop up soon.

I will consider anything that gets crossed off this list during the next four weeks a success whether personal or professional. I really need to make all of this a priority for a while.

I have given myself a break

2008-02-19T09:41:00.002+01:00

As of today I am working from home for the next two - three weeks (right now I have a hard time imagining coming back at all, but I hope that feeling will pass). Thanks to my 9 to 5 work environment and endless counting of hours, I have four weeks worth of overtime to do with what I want. Rather than blowing it all on some exotic holiday or an extended family visit I have decided to give myself a mini-"sabattical" at home. I will be working because I have many, many things to do, but I will be doing so at my own pace, and since this is the first day I have given myself permission to do nothing for a little while.

I am excited and motivated and feel like I want to do twice the amount of work I do on a regular day. I really don't know why it is so liberating not to have to come into work each day. People there are nice. I have a nice office with a view and there is really nothing wrong with anything. But I love that I can sleep as long as I want, and work on the hours that fit me rather than 9 to 5. I love that I can start up quietly, blog and do hobby-things in the morning and work into the evening. I love that I don't need to spend time packing lunch and that personal errands, shopping and cooking don't need to be crammed into a small time window between 6 and 7 pm, when I'm already hungry.

I have tried to explain to my colleagues why I think working from home for an extended period of time is great, but judging from their expressions, when I talk about it, I don't think they get it. Most people either use the overtime for flexibility throughout the year, for vacations or simply let it disappear when the clock is zeroed once a year. Generally people without families(or with grown kids) don't take off the overtime, but use it to point out how much work they do all the time. I don't want to defend myself for taking off the time, I have rightfully earned, just because I don't have a family. I also don't want to defend myself for using that time for work, because developing a research proposal for my new job and writing papers is not only something I do for my work place, but basically something I do for me.

I am also looking forward to have more time and freedom for blogging and I think I will spend some time developing this work-blog this I have been talking about.

Just another day at the office

2008-02-18T23:20:00.002+01:00

I often wonder what I spend my time on since I get so little done compared to how many hours I spend at work each week.

Today went like this

9.10 am: arrive late because I am unable to learn that it takes more than ten minutes to drive to work

9.10-10.00: read e-mails from the past week, freak out over the number of e-alerts announcing a gazillion new articles I will never find the time to read, download a few anyway just for the pain of it

10.00-10.30: Find colleague's syllabus from two years ago for course I will be teaching next fall and study the reading list looking for hints of how to go about developing a new research programme on this topic. Download two random papers on the topic, which came up in a Google search, put the whole thing in bag and decide to work on it some other time)

10.30-11.30: Move new data obtained during meeting last week from usb stick to work PC and try to open the files. They don't work. Probably because they are in Russian or because something is wrong with the software or with my head. Everybody who knows anything about this software are on winterbreak, and my head is what it is. Move folders around and check if they still don't work. Make sure I have back up and put the project on hold for another day.

Lunch: Discuss meeting with public outreach group for tomorrow. Make list of how to proceed with digitalising/organisation of data. Send copy of list to co-worker. Print copy of manuscript in progress.

1.30 - 2:00 pm: Sort out bills and tickets and receipts from last week's travel. Fight with new awful software for travel expenses and watch in disbelief as it continues to delete all my previous entries when I push return. After consultation with the head of the accounts department, I finally figure out the kinks of the program and manage to send off my request for reimbursement off into the black box that is my institutions intranet. Make list for the administration of hours spent travelling .

2.00-3.00: Procrastinate aimlessly on the net while trying to avoid ever answering three complicated emails

3.00 - 4.00: Clean out some old folders and toss about ten old versions of the same manuscript in preparation. Update CV with most recent conference presentations. Archive business cards from last weeks meetings.

4.00-5.00: Write emails (no more obvious procrastination activities available)

A follow up to the equal opportunities

2008-02-18T21:30:00.004+01:00

This started out as a response to the comments on the previous post, but it got so long that I'd rather make a full post of it.

I talked about how I have often felt like the "token woman" in my overwhelmingly male work environment and the contradictory consequences of the involuntary exposure, and I talked about how women are often dependent on male mentors in order to be considered serious colleagues. I do still think there is something to this idea, but as Wayfarer Scientista pointed out in the comments male scientists are also dependent on good mentors to advance in science.

I discussed this with a male and a female colleague the other day. We talked about how most senior scientists in our field are men and therefore most potential mentors would be men. Even if there is something seemingly offensive about female scientists being put forward by male mentors to their male networks, it is hard to see the alternatives at the moment when so few of the senior scientists are women. But we also talked about how we all had experienced subtle (or not so subtle) patronizing comments to or about female colleagues in various work settings and how sometimes even the most diversity-minded people at our workplace do this (sub)consciously*.

I wasn't satisfied with the post below when I wrote it, but it was late and I was leaving and wanted to finish it. In hindsight I realize that one thing I wasn't satisfied with was that it somehow sent the signal that I don't appreciate what my mentors have done for me because of their gender. That is not true. It is not about trashing all men or saying that senior scientist men cannot have female protegees, but about the way we talk and act that make women feel unwelcome or less worthy in many professional settings.

Even here, where we have all the right legislation in place, where affirmative action has gone to extremes and women don't have time to be on all the committees they need to be on to fill their quotas, the understanding of what really matters is sorely lacking.

*A few examples:

When I came to the first meeting as the only woman in the leader group at current institution, and at some point during the meeting asked a relevant question, whereupon the person responsible for diversity patted me on the back and said how brave it was of me to say something. (Geez, thanks, what else would I be doing there)

When a younger female scientist who has done extremely well recently and won a prestigious grant was introduced at a recent meeting as young and up-and-coming, while her male peers of the same generation were simply introduced by name and credentials. (she was however the only female speaker at a two day meeting supposed to show off the best of the instution's work)

When assistant department head** positions were introduced in order to encourage women to move into department head positions. (I am one of the fools who jumped on that wagon because it seemed/probably is career enhancing, but in hindsight it is also really offensive to assume that women need a special training ground, while men can jump directly into the "real" department head positions. WTF!)

** this is not a university and department head positions are not only given to people in the top rank

So much for equal opportunities

2008-02-10T22:25:00.000+01:00

My work place recently celebrated something big. People of power from a whole range of institutions were invited for the event, the place was made to look it's best and the daily routines were interrupted by fancy meals, important speaches and people dressed to impress. A lot of work and thought have gone into planning this thing. A dedicated committee has been working on it for at least a year, and I don't even know how many people were involved in the practicalities of the actual event.

All went smoothly. No scandals, the invited guests seemed happy and all of us employees somehow felt a little more important from being surrounded by all the flowers, free stuff and important people. Part of the program was a seminar series with invited people from just about everywhere and some representatives for our workplace. Out of maybe 25 speakers one was a woman. I don't know if the women did not get asked or if they declined the offer, but off the top of my head I can think of at least a handfull of women who were around for the seminar and whom it would have been appropriate to ask.

The final big-deal-event was a party with many invited guests from all sorts of leadership positions within academia, industry and government. I'm not sure exactly how many invited guest were there, but somewhere between 30 and 50 is probably correct. Out of those 5 were women.

I live in one of the most progressive countries in the world when it comes to gender and diversity issues. Politicians speak at lenght about how to accommodate women in particular, and families in general, and most girls and some women believe they have equal opportunities. Sometimes I almost believe that too. On paper we have equal opportunities and we have one of the most accommodating maternity/paternity leave legislations in the world. Some people would argue that women even have better opportunities, because of affirmative action initiatives (I don't agree, but that's another can of worms). But equal opportunities only go so far.

For my PhD I did all my field work with an all-male group. For most of the time I felt like an outsider in this group, but at least we behaved like a group when we went to meetings. We were part of a bigger research network, and in total we were only five women in the network (of a group of 50 or so people). Three of us were PhD students, and as ridiculous as it sounds, our groups scored some sort of extra credits among the others for having the "token" females onboard. My group were endlessly proud when I wrote an above average dissertation and got a job before I finished, but I was never really accepted into their clique. It wasn't exactly a delightful experience for me, and I have been more than happy to put it behind me, but even in such a toxic environment I wouldn't have had the connections I have today if it wasn't for some of the people I worked with.

I have moved faster in this career than most women/people. I am often the youngest person present at many meetings/ in many situations and I often have somewhat unusual roles for my age. I know many of the bigwigs in my field because it's a small and tightly knit community and I have good mentors who introduce me to people. I also had an advisor in grad school who made an effort to introduce me to his network. I tend to think that I interact with these people on an equal level, and to some extent I do, but really, most of the time it is the token female thing all over again. I have the positions I have and go to the meeting I do because (male) mentors have pointed me out and made it possible. Not that I'm completely passive and don't seek out opportunities myself (I do), but many of the doors that are open to me are so because someone made an effort to make them open to me. There are women in my field, but they are rarely in positions where they can offer to open these doors for others.

I thought about this at the big event the other day, where practically everyone who were in some position of power were men and many of us who were in no position of power at all were women, and then I thought about the seminar and how part of the reason maybe is that women don't even get asked when it really counts. Maybe one of the reasons there are so few women in upper level positions in my field is that the only way one can reach any level is to be "adopted" by one or more male mentors who will make sure that the token female is promoted and shown off in the world. And even if that happens, and one happens to get "adopted" by good people apparently no one makes it to the very top.

This post is a bit messy, but I've got to leave it as it is because I a plane to catch before sunrise tomorrow morning and I still haven't packed. I'll be back in a week and probably won't have internet access while I'm gone, but if the post really doesn't make sense to anyone else but me I'll clean it up when I get back.

Whoa, we've got some catching up to do

2008-02-10T15:18:00.000+01:00

Thanks for all the nice comments on the accretionary wedge post below and to all of you who keep checking in here despite my very irregular posting routine. I keep constructing new posts in my head, but somehow never find the time to actually type them out. This always gets worse if I don't blog for a while because my ideas end up being so many and so messy that I don't know where to start anymore. So rather than starting out with one of the more substantial ideas for a post, I'll do a decluttering post here so I can move onto something better and more coherent afterwards.

So what's on my mind right now:

I am torn between the wish to write more about my field and my research and why it matters to me, and the wish to write about more personal thoughts and the general aspects of being a young, female scientist. After writing the previous post and getting a lot of good response I thought wow, so cool, I really want to discuss this with my readers. At the same time I couldn't make myself sit down at night at home and write out another lengthy post about a geological topic without feeling like it was just another chore on my list.
I think blogging is one of the most amazing innovations that have come with the Internet. I see scientific blogging as a great leap forward for the general public and scientists alike, and the idea of sharing the thought process behind science as well as results and discussions about new science is exhilerating and fun, but nevertheless fun in a work-way understanding of fun. I mostly write this blog on weekends and in the evenings, and blogging and reading blogs is mainly a downtime at home hobby . I think blogging at length about work-topics is a work related project and something I would like to do in a more official space, and maybe also get some sort of credit, or at least acceptance for. I would also like to be able to occasionally post on such a blog from work as well as consider it a part of my professional identity. I think the way forward for me will be to get a second blog under my own name that could be devoted to more work/field specific topics. It is not going to happen today, but maybe soon. I need to think about how I want to use such a space in a way that makes it serious enough to be a work activity, but relaxed enough to become something I actually want to keep up.

I'm still in a bit of a funk at work. I have a post brewing on perfectionism and how I've realised how many areas of my life it affects. I am going through a very self-conscious and introspective phase and some of the insights surprise me a lot. I want to share this on the blog because I know that many people in academia struggles with self-confidence and perfectionist issues and it's often taboo to talk about it in work places because it is associated with weakness. I have often gotten advice along the lines of "try not to take everything so seriously" or "try to be less of a perfectionist", but it's more easily said than done. Personally I never knew how to go about being less of a perfectionist, until I realized that it hasn't so much to do with the way I treat tasks as the way I think about life and myself in general.

Otherwise life is good, or as my Russian colleague used to put it "life is not too bad". January was a bit of a nightmare with several fiancial emergencies after each other (old car broke, buying new car, discovering brakes didn't work on new car, repair brakes and an emergency visit to the dentist to top it off) and repeated annoying dealings with authorities about imported car and a delayed tax refund. Most of this have been sorted out now, and I look forward to finally getting the tax refund from a year ago and to blow whatever is left after car repairs on a new spring wardrobe and maybe a trip to someplace nice and warm.

Why journalists get it wrong when they come to the Arctic

2008-01-22T21:54:00.000+01:00

I spend much of my time in the high Arctic. The mythological place of ice, midnight sun and endangered polar bears. By now everybody knows what the Arctic sea ice cover looks like and how fast it's shrinking, and satellite images of the globe with ever decreasing ice cover have become common fare in even the most popular of newspapers. Each summer tourists land on these shores in great numbers. They venture out of their comfort zone to see for themselves what it's all about and with them come the journalists, the nature conservationists and the politicians. Most go on day trips to glacier fronts. They go by boat through the fjords and they look at old maps and talk about how the ice has retreated since the map was made and how beautiful it is and how sad it is for the polar bears.

We take students on similar trips. Not because we want them to experience the Arctic before it is gone, but because they need to go to the same fjords to study the modern processes and geology in their curriculum. Because professors are not mean we also go on short "sightseeing" excursions like up close to glacier fronts, and we talk about the same things other people to do when they experience this dramatic play of nature for the first time. We also talk about former positions of the ice margin, but rather than concluding that the ice has retreated two kilometers since 1963 and therefore we are sad, we talk about how glaciers behave and what ice marginal positions mean.

Many glaciers in this particular corner of the world are what we call surging glaciers. It means they accumulate snow (which eventually turns to ice) over many years (often decades), while moving very slowly. At some point the imbalance between the accumulation on the upper part of the glacier and the mass loss near the front will be so extreme that gravity and the sliding capacity along the base of the ice force the ice mass to move forward. Surging glaciers can move forward at incredible speeds of up to 100 m/ day or more than a km in a year. They alternate between the surging phase that commonly lasts a few years and the quiescent phase that lasts for decades. During the quiescent phase glaciers retreat to an "equilibrium position" and build up towards a new surge. In the high Arctic where modern science came with the polar explorers of the late 19th and early 20th century very little is known about the past behaviour of surging glaciers. For many glaciers it is not known whether they are surging at all. Surging glaciers often leave remarkable traces in the landscape in the shape of moraines. The force involved in the surge allows for the ice to push up "slices" of the bed and stack them in front of the glacier. When the ice retreats the moraines remain. Dating organic material (C-14 dating) or Quartz or feldspar mineral grains in sand (luminescence dating) can tell us about the age of past surges. Sometimes they also leave traces in the sea floor like plough marks where rock fragments attached to the base of the glacier have scraped the sea floor.

Surging glaciers are dependent on the ability to slide across the bed. Large glaciers and ice masses like the Greenland and Antarctic inland ice are wet at the base because the weight of the ice allows the ice mass to reach its pressure melting point. Smaller glaciers in cold areas are often what we call polythermal. It means the glacier snout is frozen to the ground, but the thicker ice mass in the hinterland is wet at the base. Surging glaciers are often polythermal. When Arctic glaciers decrease in size they become cold based or perenially frozen to the ground. Cold based glaciers don't really move. It is possible that many glaciers that were surging in the past aren't so anymore. It is also likely that some of the glaciers that surge today will not continue to do so.

In historical terms, glaciers used to be bigger. A global cold phase, "The Little Ice age" lasted from the 17th to the 19th century and is confirmed from historical records from harvest to diseases and narratives about cold winters and wet summers. It did however not begin and end simultaneously and different regions have reacted differently to the climatic fluctuations that characterized this time interval. It seems from temperature records that the north Atlantic snapped out of the cold phase relatively late, maybe as late as the 1920's-1930's. Ice margins from the maximum position of glaciers during The Little Ice Age are still dominant in the landscape. In areas with permafrost, moraines degrade very slowly. Some people have suggested that glaciers are still adapting to the temperature changes 70-80 years ago. This does not suggest that no mass loss is going on today, just that it is difficult to distill the modern change from historical change when standing on a ship experiencing the scenery for the first time.

Each year glaciologists camp out on the glaciers in order to measure thicknesses, ice temperature and isotopic composition, trace gases and other evidence of "the state of the ice". Practically all of them come to the conclusion that most glaciers in the world loose mass rapidly, and the well documented studies should leave no doubt that the heat has been turned on and that ice is melting. So what am I complaining about? I am complaining about the lack of talk about how the glaciers really move and what it is we see in the landscape. The moraine five kilometers in front of the modern glacier margin is not a sad sign of the ice retreat, but a sign of a not climate related natural phenomenon called glacier surge and the retreat from the Little Ice Age moraine is partly an adaptation to warming over the past 100 years. The real signs of climate warming such as the thinning of the glacier, change from polythermal to cold-based glaciers and shorter duration and thinner sea ice cover may be less photogenic, but all the more important.

Let me end by saying that I do "believe in global warming induced by humans and I do think we should do everything we can to turn or diminish the global warming trend. I'm all for higher gas prices, environmentally friendly cars and public transportation and I think it will at some point be considered unethical to fly everywhere and use bargain air tickets. I am also deeply conflicted about this need to always point out that I'm not against global warming when pointing out inaccuracies in terminology or public lingo about the state of the Arctic. As someone who studies palaeoclimate rather than present climate these issues come up a lot when some study or other suggests that things were different in the past than we think.

This post is submitted to the geology carnival "The Accretionary Wedge" on "Favorite geological misconceptions".

(I admit that this post does not conform with my own views on what geology is as discussed recently on Clastic Detritus, but it does have a lot to do with something I encounter regularly in my professional life as a geologist)

Update on the burn-out posts

2008-01-21T10:20:00.000+01:00

Things are looking up here. I want to thank the commenters in the posts below for good suggestions, support and feed back. It helps to know that someone is out there and your thoughts and ideas have helped me to see things clearer and ask myself some important questions.

Since last week a few things have happened, which were all small steps towards making things better.

I have slowed down at work and made time for reading widely within my field. This is not a long-term solution because I will not always be able to work at a slower pace, but right now ditching a few self-imposed deadlines and making time for thinking and reading has been nice.

Likewise I have taken evenings and the weekend off. Read a book, watched TV, cooked nice food, gone to the gym and in general taken good care of myself. Again this doesn't solve the problem in the long run, but was a nice breathing break.

I picked up where I left one of the manuscripts before the holidays and realised that although making the last figures will take time, it is not impossible. I think I am realistically looking at some 15-20 hours of work and since I don't have too many other obligations this week it should be possible to finish this paper soon. I also got an email from the co-author (and former advisor) on the other paper, and she has very few comments, so it looks like this papers is also close to being submitted.

I tried to talk about the flexibility issue at work. I ended up mentioning it in a group meeting dedicated to discussing work conditions, so I figured it was appropriate, but couldn't talk about it in a very personal way. I think my point about the need for more work from home time was largely not understood and maybe even seemed a bit offensive to some. The actual meeting was awkward and I felt a bit like I was the problem kid who wanted different and unreasonable rules. However, bringing up the topic made me realise that one of the reasons the others don't understand is that I'm in a very different situation to most of them with being a post doc and on my way out. My intense need to publish over spending time actively on the ongoing projects is mainly brought about by my leaving from this institution. Maybe I am also wrong to assume that I can have all the time in the world to write right now. I am still employed via ongoing projects and I realise now that it is totally reasonable for my PI to expect me to spend many hours a week on those, even if it doesn't mean writing. I think the issue is partly about my preferred way of working while writing (comfortably at home at the longest possible stretches of time) and partly about a lack of discussion between the PI and I on how I should spend my time (writing or doing new research). Even if the meeting made me feel like a fool, this realisation alone was enough to make me consider the meeting a success. I think I understand better now how to frame this discussion when bringing it up again.

I'm trying to work on some of my own issues that brought me in this crossroads position in the first place. I've tried reach out to friends and even tried to talk to my mom about it. I'd say it's definitely with varying levels of success, but I've also gotten some challenging and really useful input. As I've said in one of the earlier posts, one solution is obviously to lower my expectations for my own productivity. This is difficult for a number of reasons. Partly because in academia one does just not lower ones level of productivity and stay in the game, but it's also difficult because having high expectations of myself and getting acknowledged by others because of my accomplishments has become a huge part of who I am. As I just told a friend, maybe the dilemma is to find a way to still achieve academic goals, but not for the acceptance from others, but simply because I think it is important/ interesting/fun (which I still do, at least some of the time).

Revisiting priorities

2008-01-13T13:43:00.000+01:00

I hope last week was a low point and that I'm on my way back up. As often before just writing about my worries makes them seem easier to handle. I don't think there is anything physically wrong with me, or put differently, I think if I could be less stressed, I would feel better. I don't think it's a matter of having more downtime each day, fresh air, exercise and eating healthily, though all that certainly helps. I don't think the pressure is really put on me by anyone else. I already got the next job despite my meager publication record and nobody will complain if I don't publish a lot now during the spring. I think the pressure is very much in my head which in a way makes it simpler because I can control that, and in another way makes it much worse because if I really could control my thoughts, I would have done so a long time ago.

It is not entirely true that I have forgotten what I am passionate about in my work. I haven't. My passion for my field is just becoming overshadowed by all the things I must do and haven't done. I am excited about the ideas I have for new papers and for the data collection I am working on. I am excited about developing new classes for next year, about working on a more field-based way of teaching and about new research ideas that can be carried out in my new location. I want to have time in my day to think about the projects and problems I am excited about, but the only way I can do that is by neglecting the endless revision projects that makes me feel useless and stupid and slow, but never ends unless I spend so much time on them.

The paper that tipped me over the edge before the holidays is one I have been working on for years practically. It was in my dissertation as a manuscript and I knew it needed some more work before submitting it. It connects with some of the things I have been working on since and after spending some time revising it last winter, it turned out that the better decision was to split it into two papers and incorporate some old and some new data into both. The first of these papers was due for a journal in early December and I started working on it in November thinking that it would be two-three weeks of revisions. So far I have spent 80 full working hours on it (yes, I've logged them and breaks are not included) and I'm still not done. Because I rarely have a full day to work on anything, it took me from early November to mid December by spending all evenings and weekends and all available work time. It makes me feel sick to think about that it's still not done. It makes me feel slow and hopeless that it takes me 80+ hours to finish a paper that was already half-way there, and to think about how long it will take me to complete the remaining maybe 20 or so hours. It makes me feel I should spend all my waking hours working on it, although I know I will feel bad again the moment I put myself on that kind of track.

This is what happens all the time. I set out after the field season or a vacation with all the best intentions of having a balanced work life with time for writing, reading, communal tasks and research group logistics each day and it goes fine for a little while until some deadline is approaching. Then I realise I am not working hard enough and need to speed up to meet it. The first thing to go is the new research, reading and development of ideas (all the things that make me want to do this in the first place). The second thing to go is exercise, dinner and social time and within no time I am back to working non-stop, feeling sick and having no life at all. Sometimes, as the case was in December, I don't even meet the deadline anyway, leading to further despair.

I really don't know how to deal with this in a better way. Obviously my current strategy is not working but each time I have tried to set up a more balanced schedule I fail at it, because I just don't have time for it. I hate that it is not "allowed" to talk about struggling with work in academia and that the mention of difficulties is the same as admitting to a weakness. I hate that not having kids is making it even less acceptable to struggle with work demands*. It makes me sad that I don't have any close friends here and that my only network is people who are also involved in my workplace.

I think it would help a lot if I had more time to work on new research, new ideas and time to read. It would also help if I had a much more flexible schedule and by that I mean if I could work from home significantly more than I do now. It seems that many of my colleagues thrive in the corporate style environment where they meet in the office in the morning, write happily on their papers all day and punch out after 8 hours of consistent work. Maybe I'm just more lazy, but my brain simply doesn't work like that. I need breaks, I need to get up and go outside and think and be creative. I want to be able to spend a break reading blogs without feeling guilty the moment my boss shows up in the office or go to a coffee shop to think or write if a change of scene is helpful. It may take me longer to finish something, but it is more inspiring for me. I have talked about this at length before, and I am not sure I can do much to change it in my current job, but I think I need to find a way of bringing more creativity with me to work, even within my current constraints. I also need some success experiences with the old research/ manuscripts. I don't even need to see them published right now, but I must at least submit something and get a feeling of making some progress. I really must a find a way to combine the two, because still not having published (or much worse, even submitted) the dissertation papers makes me feel awful.

The really difficult thing is to apply these thoughts to everyday life. I would love to hear what you all think and how you deal with the work pressure and publishing demands. We all talk a lot about balance between work and life, but what about balance between different work tasks. Do you ever feel overworked to the point where it seems worrying and if you do, what are you doing about it? Have you ever opened up to colleagues about such concerns and if you did, how did they react?

*I think this is the other side of the coin of the family friendly politics and society in Scandinavia. The acceptance for parents needing to leave work early, having constraints on traveling plans or just in general being pressed for time is high. This is good, and I might need this acceptance soon enough, but I think it strikes back at people without a family in an unintended way. Often it implies that people with kids are understandably stressed but single people or couples without children couldn't possibly have other demands in their life than work. I don't question the stresses that parents face, but I also think it is essentially more comforting and assuring to arrive home to a loving family who needs you than to an empty house where you can just as well start working again. I was at a seminar about stress in the fall and the psychologist giving the talk actually said that single people often got hit by stress in a different way than families with children because the family demands made the parents leave work earlier and forced them to spend less time and energy on work. This is probably not true in academia, though.

Reality bites

2008-01-09T07:39:00.000+01:00

So I did it. I got up on Monday morning and went to work and it was hard, and I was tired and had a headache, but it was not awful. I can do this. I can get up and come to work every day, because, really, why shouldn't I. Other people do this all the time. Then yesterday it felt like I was coming down with something again, and I'm beginning to think I am allergic to work, or maybe to writing papers. I have already had several sick leave days in the fall, and I can't believe this is going to continue. It's been the same for a while now. I'm fine when I have time off and get to recover and instantly get worn out as soon as I return to work, without even doing much, and that scares me. I think it must be psychological in a way, because I cannot really imagine what else would function that way, but I don't know how to break out of it.

It's not even that I truly dislikes my job. It's OK. It's even interesting. I have a lot of freedom to do what I want. I am being recognised for my work and get a lot of positive feedback and the few things I might be less content with are mostly going to change when I start my new job in June. I have done all the right things like taking time off (four weeks vacation in spring and a long Christmas break now), used overtime hours to create a more flexible schedule (took a lot of Thursdays off or made them part-time work from home days in the fall) and it works. I do get more rested and more connected to myself when I take time off, but it doesn't last as soon as I get back.

When I was completely worn out after the field season I tried to talk to some friends and colleagues about it, but they didn't really get it. It is so accepted and I'd say expected in this profession to be tired, overworked and behind all the time, that it's not perceived as an alarm signal, but rather like normality. Maybe I'm just different and can't accept this normality, maybe I'm weaker or less healthy and can't push the limits the way some other people do, or maybe I have just been pushing the limits for so long now that I don't know how not to do so.

I started the postdoc right after defending the PhD. Like in getting up and packing my belongings the morning after the defense and start my new job in a new country the following Monday. I got the visiting ass. professor gig, which was really my first extensive teaching experience, while I was still working on publications from the dissertation, writing my first big grant application and getting my feet wet with the postdoc research and logistics. I moved twice within that year and had a fifty percent post doc on top of being a visiting professor. I got my first big administrative post while I was still working on grades and make up exams from the fall semester and continued to work on my postdoc research while being a new department head/group leader, and on top of that came the worst field season ever this summer as a new expedition leader on two long field seasons with lots of social tension in both. I don't think I have ever been so tired or felt as weak as during the last of these field campaigns. I am awfully behind on publications, because so much of my postdoc time has been spent in other roles and I'm feeling squeezed now because I need to publish more before I start the next job. But I'm tired because I have been loaded with new jobs and extra activities and short term pressure to learn and finish up something new for so long now.

Last year around this time I thought a lot about how to balance work and life and I thought the solution to my problems was to get better at this, take more time off and create a good home life for myself to help take off some of the pressure. Now I think that was only a way to try to cure or keep down the symptoms, but not the underlying problem. I think the real problem and my worst enemy is my own ambition and lack of ability to let go of opportunities. I think now, that maybe there are some of the opportunities that came my way that I shouldn't have taken, because I'm not a machine and cannot keep going indefinitely. I also think I need to let some of my publication goals for the spring slide, but it is hard, because I have already set myself up for being behind and it won't get better when I start teaching in the fall. I sometimes think I dislike my job, but deep down I don't think I do. I love my research when I have time to dive into it and think and play, but the pressure to be productive and on top of it all is crushing me in a way where I don't remember what I'm passionate about anymore.