Getaway

I have been on vacation with family since Thursday. We drove up to a nice resort on a lake, a few hours away from where we live. This is our third year here, we rent a two-bedroom apartment and do our own cooking. The kids and hub are enjoying the indoor and outdoor pools, and I am doing what I would do at home: nurse around the clock, and in the meantime try to get some sleep, eat, maintain personal hygiene, and spend some time with the older kids.

A striking thing has been the amount of attention that Smurf has been getting. I know people love babies, but I don't remember everybody commenting quite as much as they do on Smurf. Perhaps because he's really smaller than what people are used to seeing in public... I kid you not, every day at least 3 or 4 people (mostly women) come and ask how old he is -- he's 5 weeks old today! -- and when I tell them, they congratulate me on being brave to go on vacation with a 5-week-old. I have actually started justifying myself, saying that I have the older boys who really need to go on vacation, so that's why we do it...

There are other interesting comments I receive. From flattering (that I look great for 5 weeks postpartum) to those I can't decide what to do with. For instance, at home as well as on vacation, since I have 3 kids, whenever people see me with all of them (even if it's not during business hours, but say on a Saturday morning), everyone automatically assumes I am a stay-at-home mom and related comments come up. There is no shame in being a SAHM, but I must admit that it upsets me a bit that I am referred to as one, although I understand that there is no way anyone would guess what I do when I go shopping all bleary-eyed, messy-haired, struggling to round up all these kids.

We rented a minivan to go on this vacation. We don't own one, we own a small sedan and a small SUV that we bought after baby #2 (so almost paid off). Our cars can fit 5 people in principle, but not with the amount of luggage we have to carry and not comfortably enough for long trips, especially with two car seats in the back. But we (nearly) own both of them, and they are fine for driving around the city. So while we are enjoying the minivan, it's really roomy and the kids love it, both hub and I are reluctant to take the plunge and buy it -- it would be another loan that we are not sure we need.

And last but not least, Smurf, in his 5-week awesomeness. He holds his head quite well and does really well on his tummy. He is interacting more: makes good eye contact, sticks tongue out, holds my fingers when he nurses, and plays well with (as in, tries to grab) the colorful chains hanging off of his car seat. I am a bit ashamed to say that, even with the third kid, I still have to go and look up when each milestone happens. I only remember the really big ones (e.g. teeth and sitting up start about 6 months), but when they start to smile or roll over, I repeatedly have to look up. But Smurf is awesome and quite cool. Big bros are all over him.

I promise some academic-focused posts in the near future. I have been a busy bee talking to program managers, so a few white papers are in the works. But with only 1-1.5 hours of work per day, things are slow... I promised myself not to worry too much and actually try to relax and not think about work while on this little vacation with my family. And so far so good.

Now I'm off to get some shut-eye before it's time for the night shift at the dairy factory.

Bullshit Meter

I am totally stealing this from Bee of Backreaction.
It is too awesome to pass up.

A gentleman named Bernd Wurm developed a software, the "Blablameter," which checks text for superfluous/filler/bullshit words (such as those that ads and press releases are full of) as well as awkward constructions. If you run a piece of text through the Blablameter, you will get a result between 0 and 1; the higher the result, the more bullshit. Bee ran abstracts of several papers in her field and got a range or results, from very light to very heavy on bullshit.

The German version of the Blablameter,
http://www.blablameter.de, has interesting Questions and Answers (Fragen und Antworten), where it explains what the software does (e.g. can't check for accuracy of the content, just certain linguistic features).

If you just want to run a piece of your scientific writing through it, here's the English link.

http://www.blablameter.com/

I ran the abstract of a paper I am going to submit in the next few days, and the result is



Understandably, I am feeling very smug. :)

Smurfy News

In Casa GMP, the following has transpired:

Smurf is 3.5 weeks old. Sleeping one big chunk (4-ish hours) during the night, and the rest of the night grunting and panting trying to produce a BM. And sort of sleeping. All this wakes up mom who jumps at the slightest whimper, thinking that Smurf is in excruciating pain.

Smurf eats like a champ and weighs over 11 pounds (N.B. for those who don't have kids, babies lose a fair amount of weight in the 3 days or so until the milk comes in; generally they are supposed to be back to their birth weight by 2 weeks of age). Fat babies are cute. I am working on making mine as cute as I can, helped by the fact that my eyes no longer pop out of their sockets with pain every time Smurf latches on to nurse.

I love my husband more than ever. He has valiantly taken over all the work with the other two kids so I am having the best vacation of my whole life! When they are all away (hub at work, older kids at camp), I try to nap with the baby, and don't have to cook or do the dishes! It's awesome! All I do is snack, nap, and maintain the dairy factory. And snuggle with Smurf as much as I can. The downside is that the kids don't eat home-cooked meals, but I am hoping for a teachable moment -- could they in fact get sick of pizza?

I have become a germophobic nutcase, shielding the baby from the older kids who, after having been completely healthy for months, both got sick in recent weeks. My oldest, who hadn't been sick in probably 2 years, got a strep throat and an ear infection on day 2 postpartum! The boys are crazy excited about the baby, but nutcase mom is hogging him and growls at anyone who dares even look like they are about to sneeze or cough within a 5 meter radius of the baby.

Feeling rested, I decided to skip naps for one day and made hub take the day off, so we stayed at home and watched movies. Lo and behold, the following night and the next day Smurf kicked my butt -- would not sleep at all and I was completely exhausted. The moral of the story is that you can never, never count on your baby's good graces/predictable behavior. Even a little bit of counting on it will come back to bite you. Take it only one day at a time.

I have been able to work a teensy bit. Half an hour here and there, answering emails, correcting papers, planning fall proposals. I am editing a special issue of a journal in the fall and organizing a fairly major conference next spring, so there's stuff to do there but it's mostly busy work, which is easy enough even with my foggy postpartum brain. And then there are manuscripts that still need to be submitted... Those take me a while.

After having Smurf, I somehow became acutely aware of my own mortality and panicked about what would happen if I, making 2/3 of the household income, were to just drop dead (not sure why this didn't bother me so much with 2 kids). So I went and got myself a hefty term life insurance policy, and realized that I am close weight-wise to a cutoff to make a low premium rate. I have been very poorly motivated over the past several years to lose weight, but it seems that being a cheapskate is the right motivator for me: saving $20 per month over the next 20 years is apparently enough of an incentive to get me to lose weight, because I have been successfully watching my diet for the past few weeks (no worries, I am having lots of protein and lots of water, so my milk production is in good shape). I am calling it "The Life Insurance Diet." I made the target weight, but will hopefully continue on the new diet, as my husband is enthusiastically praising the newly emergent physique.

Hermitage's Women sans Babies Carnival Is Back with a Vengeance

Hermitage is hosting a second incarnation of her mini-carnival on Academic Women Sans Babies. This time around she assembled an even larger and more impressive panel to answer readers' questions, so please head over to Hermitage's place and submit questions for panelists! Take advantage of this virtual discussion circle with women ranging from postdocs to senior faculty -- any and all questions related to careers in science and engineering are welcome, except those addressing babies/motherhood. Hermitage will chose four, and each panelist will answer these four in a post about a month after Q&A closes.

Here's the link to the Q&A hub of last time, here's the list of all previous readers' questions, and below is a repost of my response to the four questions chosen for the last panel (also here's the original post, there were some good comments there).

------------------

1. How do you command the attention, and respect, of men in academic settings (e.g. classroom, conferences, faculty meetings)?

I am going to assume here that the question means "I am technically very competent but do not feel I command adequate respect. How do I remedy that?" You have to take cues from the guys. Even as young students, when guys think they know the answer to a question they just blurt it out (I sometimes wish they wouldn't). This extends into their professional years. You have to get over the fear of being wrong and simply speak up. The fear does eventually go away. A good exercise is to give yourself the following task: you have to come up with one nontrivial question for each talk you hear at a conference. And then go ahead and ask it. Pretty soon you will be one of the most feared and revered members of any audience!

I am in one of the fields with the most dramatic underrepresentation of women, so the rules of the game are entirely masculine. One of the important differences between men and women (on average, of course) is that women often feel they need external validation, someone to pat them on the back and say "good job" when they are feeling down. I used to be quite unhappy because these were not forthcoming as often as my ego needed them, so I thought I was no good. That was not true -- while everyone likes praise, I have found that external affirmation is much less important for an average guy's sense of self-worth than a woman's so men simply don't volutneer praise easily. So recalibrate: I have learned not to expect pats on the back and to simply rely on what I think is best. And pats on the back do come, but infrequently and indirectly and quite unexpectedly. Sort of like hugs between manly men.

Moreover, use all the nonverbal tricks in the book to communicate that you have gravitas. Wear heels if you need to feel taller, wear clothes that make you feel strong and confident (anything in black makes me feel awesome), stand up tall and speak loudly, make eye contact. If you happen to be tall and/or have a strong voice, be grateful and use these qualities!

2. How should women dealing with a two-body problem handle assumptions that their career is secondary to their partner’s?

If stupid questions like these are asked in an inconsequential context (e.g. a random person chatting you up at a party) try to be matter-of-fact and set them straight ("Actually, my significant other is flexible in career choice and will follow me to my chosen position"). The person will usually be embarrassed enough even if you don't go on to tear them a new one for assuming that your gender automatically makes you inferior in ambition or employability.

But, if it's the issue of hunting for jobs, make sure everyone who is important (e.g. all your letter writers and close senior colleagues) know exactly how serious your career plans are. There must be no ambiguity there.

3. What would you like to see from tenure-track and not-yet-tenure-track menfolk? How can they pitch in?

When we complain of sexist treatment, shut up and listen with an open mind. Don't be on the defensive -- most of us actually don't hate men, quite the contrary. We are just exhausted.

Try to view us as you would your male colleagues and competitors. Try to be honest to yourself about how often, unwillingly, you may think "She got this because she is a woman" out of pure jealousy. If you catch yourself thinking that a woman is not deserving, ask yourself if you would think the same of a guy with the same record. I am a woman and I have caught myself valuing a paper less when I found out that the main author was a woman -- it was quite a sobering experience. So try to be honest about your biases and work to counteract them.

Speak up for your female lab mates and colleagues. Try to learn what career building is like for us, but really keep an open mind, and you will see a path akin to death by a thousand paper cuts. Listen and be empathetic. And then help us fight by putting in good words for us wherever you can. Workplaces that are friendly to women are friendly to all people who strive to have a balance between professional and personal lives.

4. How do you deal with insinuations that you were only chosen for a position/award/etc because of affirmative action?

As in 2: stupid and/or malicious questions are best deflected with matter-of-fact calmness. "My record is very strong, so I have no doubt I would be selected even if I was a guy." I think everyone deserves the benefit of a good deflection and a chance to blush and change topic; if they don't take it, i.e. if the person keeps at it, by all means bite their head off. Call them out for being a jealous insecure schmuck.

Then there are situations in which your gender may have really played a positive role. My recommendation is to say "Thanks!" and really be grateful for the break. The fact is, these breaks are so few and far between that you should not be ashamed or guilty that one happened to fall in your lap. Among a group of equally meritorious, people will take any advantage to get ahead -- pedigree, network, charm. If for once your gender gets you ahead, great!