Recently, I was looking at the CV of a colleague, and I noticed one thing that may or may not be unusual. I noticed it because the colleague listed something I don't and it made me wonder if what the colleague does is common.
Namely, on the list of the colleague's invited talks, obviously there were talks given by said colleague, but then there were invited talks given by other people -- the colleague's students, postdocs, even collaborators (the colleague indicated the presenter by underlining the presenter's name in the author list).
When I get an invitation to give a talk and then send a postdoc or a student to give it, I don't put those talks on my CV even though I was the one who received the invitation and the talk will involve joint work; the person who gives the talk should certainly put it on their CV. As for collaborators, I am not even aware of the invitations they get (I trust they will give credit where it is due if they present joint work), it's not like we report these invitations to one another.
Contributed conference papers are different, they are more like regular journal papers, you list everyone who contributed, and I guess everyone gets to list them on their CV. Invited talks are more of a single-person show and an honor; you give it, you list it.
These are my personal views, of course, I am not saying what I do is right, necessary, or even common practice.
So I am curious:
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Grantsmanship Musings
I am officially throwing in the towel... My submission of a proposal to the NSF within the Jan/Feb submission window will not happen.
My baby is miserable and will have to stay at home for a better part of the coming week. The other two kids are coughing a lot too, so I guess they have RSV as well. The nebulizer at our home has been on this weekend pretty much non-stop.
As a result of the work I missed last week and the impending missed work in the coming week, I don't think there is any chance in hell to wrap up that proposal on time considering its current state and the time I can realistically invest in it, even if I were to piss off every single person in SPO by ignoring all internal requirements and work till the very last minute until the agency submission deadline. So I am officially declaring that this proposal will not get written for this NSF submission window. There. I am admitting defeat.
I am able to do this because I received two co-PI grants late last year and just learned about a new PI grant that will be funded as of April. Therefore, everyone in the group is currently covered in the next 2-3 years (or graduating sooner than that), so missing one submission window is not the end of the world... If these grants hadn't panned out, the situation would not be rosy. I was in serious panic mode at the beginning of last year, but things are starting to look up.
One troubling fact that seems to have become more and more obvious (based on my experience on NSF panels and from my own funded and unfunded NSF proposals) is that funded proposals have a lot of preliminary data and are very detailed in terms of what gets to be done, why, and when. As in, you already had money from elsewhere for several years and did lots of work directly related to this grant, you already have many, many cool figures in the proposal that look like they could totally be published tomorrow, and the research plans are incredibly specific. It is so not about having a nifty idea, having done some preliminary work, and asking for the money to make things happen. You essentially have to have predicted every tiny detail that could go wrong and address it, otherwise you will not get funded. This can really only be done if you are well underway with the project, presumably with money received for a different project.
I find that the work getting funded is not transformative; rather, what gets funded are mature projects from established PI's, generally incremental contributions within their successful multidecade projects. I am not saying such projects should not be funded, but the NSF is all about "transformative" whereas the degree to which funded proposals are transformative, at least the ones I have been seeing recently, is actually fairly small.
There is a fine line between "too speculative = not enough preliminary data" and "every freakin' minuscule detail that will arise in the next 3 years needs to be foreshadowed and addressed in the proposal before it's fundable"; shouldn't we actually trust the PI that s/he will have the capacity to address certain challenges as they arise? That not every single detail can or even should be predicted? Anyway, my most recent funded grant is an NSF grant with a collaborator, so it's not me bitching about sour grapes. But I sure know that some of my more fun, exciting grants did not get funded because they lacked the nitty-gritty details of work that has essentially been completed... And I have seen way too many good grants, where the idea is exciting and plausible, get shot down because a mouthy panelist caught on to a tangential detail and sank a solid proposal because said detail had not been addressed in sufficient detail. Perhaps I am still a romantic, but I do wish we'd fund exciting ideas with reasonable preliminary data, not work that has essentially been completed already...
As the PhD comic strip aptly captures:
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1431
Now, in my neck of the physical science woods, a single-PI NSF grant is essentially 1 student and a bit of summer money for 3 years ($80-100K/yr). Single-PI budgets from other agencies are not much different -- the DOE used to give about $150K/yr but recently I hear recommendations to budget closer to $100K/yr. Many of the DOD agencies I am in contact with tell me to shoot for $100K/yr for new grants. All of these are typically 3-year grants. Basically, I need as many grants as I have peeps in the group, because a grant is generally not enough to cover more than 1 person even if I strip all salary support for myself (in which case I get in trouble because I supposedly show "no effort" on that grant). Clearly, that's a lot of grants one has to have at any given time for a sizable group and, consequently, a lot of grant writing that the PI needs to do as 3 years is really not a very long time...
So yeah... Hence all the guilt I am feeling for missing one proposal window, even though a full-fledged RSV attack on all of my offspring is a really good excuse.
On the upside, my students are quite excited as I told them I was coming out of proposal writing lock-down and getting back to their many, many manuscripts that await resubmission. Maybe that's exactly what I need -- to treat myself to a month of uninterrupted manuscript editing (one of my favorite activities ever) as a prize for having received that latest grant. And I need to take my group out to lunch.
My baby is miserable and will have to stay at home for a better part of the coming week. The other two kids are coughing a lot too, so I guess they have RSV as well. The nebulizer at our home has been on this weekend pretty much non-stop.
As a result of the work I missed last week and the impending missed work in the coming week, I don't think there is any chance in hell to wrap up that proposal on time considering its current state and the time I can realistically invest in it, even if I were to piss off every single person in SPO by ignoring all internal requirements and work till the very last minute until the agency submission deadline. So I am officially declaring that this proposal will not get written for this NSF submission window. There. I am admitting defeat.
I am able to do this because I received two co-PI grants late last year and just learned about a new PI grant that will be funded as of April. Therefore, everyone in the group is currently covered in the next 2-3 years (or graduating sooner than that), so missing one submission window is not the end of the world... If these grants hadn't panned out, the situation would not be rosy. I was in serious panic mode at the beginning of last year, but things are starting to look up.
One troubling fact that seems to have become more and more obvious (based on my experience on NSF panels and from my own funded and unfunded NSF proposals) is that funded proposals have a lot of preliminary data and are very detailed in terms of what gets to be done, why, and when. As in, you already had money from elsewhere for several years and did lots of work directly related to this grant, you already have many, many cool figures in the proposal that look like they could totally be published tomorrow, and the research plans are incredibly specific. It is so not about having a nifty idea, having done some preliminary work, and asking for the money to make things happen. You essentially have to have predicted every tiny detail that could go wrong and address it, otherwise you will not get funded. This can really only be done if you are well underway with the project, presumably with money received for a different project.
I find that the work getting funded is not transformative; rather, what gets funded are mature projects from established PI's, generally incremental contributions within their successful multidecade projects. I am not saying such projects should not be funded, but the NSF is all about "transformative" whereas the degree to which funded proposals are transformative, at least the ones I have been seeing recently, is actually fairly small.
There is a fine line between "too speculative = not enough preliminary data" and "every freakin' minuscule detail that will arise in the next 3 years needs to be foreshadowed and addressed in the proposal before it's fundable"; shouldn't we actually trust the PI that s/he will have the capacity to address certain challenges as they arise? That not every single detail can or even should be predicted? Anyway, my most recent funded grant is an NSF grant with a collaborator, so it's not me bitching about sour grapes. But I sure know that some of my more fun, exciting grants did not get funded because they lacked the nitty-gritty details of work that has essentially been completed... And I have seen way too many good grants, where the idea is exciting and plausible, get shot down because a mouthy panelist caught on to a tangential detail and sank a solid proposal because said detail had not been addressed in sufficient detail. Perhaps I am still a romantic, but I do wish we'd fund exciting ideas with reasonable preliminary data, not work that has essentially been completed already...
As the PhD comic strip aptly captures:
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1431
Now, in my neck of the physical science woods, a single-PI NSF grant is essentially 1 student and a bit of summer money for 3 years ($80-100K/yr). Single-PI budgets from other agencies are not much different -- the DOE used to give about $150K/yr but recently I hear recommendations to budget closer to $100K/yr. Many of the DOD agencies I am in contact with tell me to shoot for $100K/yr for new grants. All of these are typically 3-year grants. Basically, I need as many grants as I have peeps in the group, because a grant is generally not enough to cover more than 1 person even if I strip all salary support for myself (in which case I get in trouble because I supposedly show "no effort" on that grant). Clearly, that's a lot of grants one has to have at any given time for a sizable group and, consequently, a lot of grant writing that the PI needs to do as 3 years is really not a very long time...
So yeah... Hence all the guilt I am feeling for missing one proposal window, even though a full-fledged RSV attack on all of my offspring is a really good excuse.
On the upside, my students are quite excited as I told them I was coming out of proposal writing lock-down and getting back to their many, many manuscripts that await resubmission. Maybe that's exactly what I need -- to treat myself to a month of uninterrupted manuscript editing (one of my favorite activities ever) as a prize for having received that latest grant. And I need to take my group out to lunch.
Saturday, January 28, 2012
Random (Irit+Observ)Ations
Aaah, it's good to be back home, here in the Jungle...
I am so busy and so tired that I want to scream. I have a proposal with internal deadline on Tuesday of next week, and I know I won't make it because I spent the better part of this week at home with a fussy baby who has gotten a new virus (seems like RSV, it's been going around the daycare, with wheezing and prodigious snot) plus an ear infection (his ear is leaking yellow goo, courtesy of his new blue ear tubes). He's miserable... My poor baby. :-(
In the light of the goo-and-snot-a-palooza it is totally shallow of me to be worried that the evil Sponsored Programs Office person will shake her index finger at me with words "Bad PI, bad PI! Sit! How dare you submit after the sacred internal deadline? So what if it's a single-PI NSF proposal, the simplest thing under the sun, and I will submit it as usual within 2 hours of you hitting "Allow SPO to view, edit, and submit" button in Fastlane? Naughty, naughty PI! Shame on you!" I don't want to bring up the sick baby excuse, because -- honestly -- I always seem to have that excuse. (Cue those people without kids who really can't stand people with kids: this is where you tell me that it's not anybody else's job to accommodate my personal choice to have kids, and that if I am not able to fulfill my work obligations like any person without a family then I should not have had a family to begin with, and that my job should have been occupied by someone who can -- presumably someone without a family or (a dude) with a partner holding down the home fort... So all the ridiculous internal grant submission deadlines could be met without a glitch).
Which reminds me of a comic strip the Hub just helped me discover -- Cyanide and Happiness
Here's a fitting example:
http://www.explosm.net/comics/2382/
On the upside, I have finished week 3 of my kickboxing regimen and it's been awesome! I credit it for my much improved mood (you wouldn't have guessed based on the previous paragraph, huh?) and more energy than before (have been off coffee yet functional the entire time). I have also lost 7 lbs, but that's almost a bonus. I sooooo love kicking the crap out of that punching bag. And I love that I am reconnecting with my body, I feel like it can do things again. My body and I had become estranged over the years of my descent into couch-potatoedness. But now, I am remembering that I in fact possess muscles and bones, and that I can run, jump, punch, and kick. My abs and arms are already much stronger than when I started (we're doing a lot of sit-up, crunches, and various other ab exercises, as well as lots and lots of push-ups). It's a really awesome program, and seeing the same people every day gives me the feeling like I belong to a team even though it's not a team sport... And have I mentioned how much I loooove punching and kicking the crap out of that bag? Jab, cross punch, hook, uppercut, body shot, front and back kicks... Aaah, that's the stuff.
Oh yeah, I heard a grant of mine will be funded so that's good news. Now everyone in the group is covered in the foreseeable future. I actually have money for one more student, and I have been emailing with a prospective candidate. He's probably too good for this place which means someone else will snatch him... But a prof can dream, can't s/he? I am conservative with money, don't commit to students until I know there will be a grant for them, but often money comes in and then you don't have an adequate student and you end up hiring someone who is not a good fit for the project... One of the professorial curses is that good students never come along right after you received a grant, they come when you are struggling to renew and keep getting rejections. *sigh*
And my favorite of the week: in a federal agency that shall remain nameless, a decision has been made that there will be no more no cost extensions, effective immediately. Just like that -- poof! They supposedly want to reduce the burden on their grants/contracts staff. Huh? What about all those students who can't just miraculously graduate at the drop of a hat, where the PIs were stretching each dollar to last till graduation? Shouldn't some transition time be allowed?
Getting to punch that bag on a daily basis is really, really important these days...
I am so busy and so tired that I want to scream. I have a proposal with internal deadline on Tuesday of next week, and I know I won't make it because I spent the better part of this week at home with a fussy baby who has gotten a new virus (seems like RSV, it's been going around the daycare, with wheezing and prodigious snot) plus an ear infection (his ear is leaking yellow goo, courtesy of his new blue ear tubes). He's miserable... My poor baby. :-(
In the light of the goo-and-snot-a-palooza it is totally shallow of me to be worried that the evil Sponsored Programs Office person will shake her index finger at me with words "Bad PI, bad PI! Sit! How dare you submit after the sacred internal deadline? So what if it's a single-PI NSF proposal, the simplest thing under the sun, and I will submit it as usual within 2 hours of you hitting "Allow SPO to view, edit, and submit" button in Fastlane? Naughty, naughty PI! Shame on you!" I don't want to bring up the sick baby excuse, because -- honestly -- I always seem to have that excuse. (Cue those people without kids who really can't stand people with kids: this is where you tell me that it's not anybody else's job to accommodate my personal choice to have kids, and that if I am not able to fulfill my work obligations like any person without a family then I should not have had a family to begin with, and that my job should have been occupied by someone who can -- presumably someone without a family or (a dude) with a partner holding down the home fort... So all the ridiculous internal grant submission deadlines could be met without a glitch).
Which reminds me of a comic strip the Hub just helped me discover -- Cyanide and Happiness
Here's a fitting example:
http://www.explosm.net/comics/2382/
On the upside, I have finished week 3 of my kickboxing regimen and it's been awesome! I credit it for my much improved mood (you wouldn't have guessed based on the previous paragraph, huh?) and more energy than before (have been off coffee yet functional the entire time). I have also lost 7 lbs, but that's almost a bonus. I sooooo love kicking the crap out of that punching bag. And I love that I am reconnecting with my body, I feel like it can do things again. My body and I had become estranged over the years of my descent into couch-potatoedness. But now, I am remembering that I in fact possess muscles and bones, and that I can run, jump, punch, and kick. My abs and arms are already much stronger than when I started (we're doing a lot of sit-up, crunches, and various other ab exercises, as well as lots and lots of push-ups). It's a really awesome program, and seeing the same people every day gives me the feeling like I belong to a team even though it's not a team sport... And have I mentioned how much I loooove punching and kicking the crap out of that bag? Jab, cross punch, hook, uppercut, body shot, front and back kicks... Aaah, that's the stuff.
Oh yeah, I heard a grant of mine will be funded so that's good news. Now everyone in the group is covered in the foreseeable future. I actually have money for one more student, and I have been emailing with a prospective candidate. He's probably too good for this place which means someone else will snatch him... But a prof can dream, can't s/he? I am conservative with money, don't commit to students until I know there will be a grant for them, but often money comes in and then you don't have an adequate student and you end up hiring someone who is not a good fit for the project... One of the professorial curses is that good students never come along right after you received a grant, they come when you are struggling to renew and keep getting rejections. *sigh*
And my favorite of the week: in a federal agency that shall remain nameless, a decision has been made that there will be no more no cost extensions, effective immediately. Just like that -- poof! They supposedly want to reduce the burden on their grants/contracts staff. Huh? What about all those students who can't just miraculously graduate at the drop of a hat, where the PIs were stretching each dollar to last till graduation? Shouldn't some transition time be allowed?
Getting to punch that bag on a daily basis is really, really important these days...
Thursday, January 19, 2012
How Much to Take?
Over at Scientopia, I discuss the following issue: once a student or a postdoc is ready to embark on a tenure track faculty job, how is it decided which project(s) he/she is free to take along to the new job in a way that is fair to everyone involved?
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Conflicting Interests
At Scientopia, I muse on the conflict of interest in scientific peer review -- when is knowing someone a little actually too much from the paper or proposal review standpoint?
Theorist for Hire
Today at Scientopia I blog about collaboration woes, in particular being perceived as a hired-help theorist.
Sunday, January 15, 2012
Tubes
Still guest blogging at Scientopia. Today's post involves musings about ear tubes in small children as a means of fighting persistent ear infections.
Friday, January 13, 2012
Switch-a-roo
I will be guest blogging at Scientopia till January 22.
Today's post, Switch-a-roo, discusses students switching research groups from a faculty perspective. See you over there!
Today's post, Switch-a-roo, discusses students switching research groups from a faculty perspective. See you over there!
Sunday, January 8, 2012
Flabby Prof Gets Moving
In my experience, being a professor is a very fattening activity.
Throughout most of my life, I had a healthy weight, which I managed to maintain alongside varying levels of activity. But then I took a tenure track faculty position (in 2004). At that point, I had one kid, and my husband stayed back at our alma mater trying to finish his PhD, so I was effectively a single mom for the first two years on the tenure track. The first year was absolutely brutal. Lots of teaching duties, all new courses, writing innumerable grants. I was extremely stressed out. During that year alone, I packed on 20 lbs.
Over the following years, slowly but surely, I ended up packing 30 lbs more. I had two more kids, but the physical act of pregnancy is not particularly fattening in my case, as I vomit a lot and lose weight in early pregnancy. After giving birth, I lose weight quickly in the first couple of months, when the universe gives me permission to just feed and care for the baby and nap whenever I want to. But eventually comes the time to resume all my usual duties, including caring for the rest of my family and doing my work, and my weight begins to climb back up. The main reason is that there are not enough hours in the day, and the only place to generate them is to cut back on sleep. Now that I have a baby, I sleep very little (probably no more than 5 hrs per day, and not in a row), and in order to keep functioning I tend to consume too much carbs.
Even without an infant, every time there are additional deadlines or elevated workload, stress levels go up and more sleep is lost, and the intake of food goes up.
So here I am, about 50 lbs over what I had when I came into the tenure track position. I am pretty tall so I don't look horrible and I am quite healthy (great blood pressure, lipids, cholesterol, the works) but lugging all that extra weight around is bad for my mood and my energy levels, and makes me look too matronly for my taste. I have a baby of about 20 lbs and a 4-year-old of about 50 lbs. Picking my kids up gives me a vivid reminded of how large a weight 20 lbs or 50 lbs actually is.
When you are a working parent, finding the time to exercise can be tough. You need to have iron will to squeeze exercise into the schedule, while keeping enough time for kid pick-up/drop-off, cooking dinner, cleaning up house, and perhaps spending some time with your partner. Having a very young child throws you another curveball, because they have erratic sleeping schedules and are often much more demanding on one parent than the other. With multiple kids, both you and your partner are stretched thin just covering extracurriculars, dinner, cleanup, and bedtimes; it's easy to simply plop on the couch and watch TV after the kids are in bed or spend time surfing the web.
A couple of years ago, I finally started exercising at a women-only club in the neighborhood. It was great! They had fun classes that combined aerobics with strength training, and I went there three times a week early in the morning. After several weeks, they announced that they were going out of business. My husband teases me to this day that it was me who jinxed them out of existence.
Meanwhile, I got pregnant, had another baby, and a new fitness franchise moved into the premises occupied by my former club. One of my sabbatical resolutions was to get in shape, but I have been busier than usual with the infant, associate editor duties, and a fairly large conference I am organizing in the spring, in addition to all the things a faculty must usually do -- grant and paper writing, advising students, etc.
Excuses, excuses... right? So when I heard on the radio that the new franchise in my neighborhood was starting a 10-week fitness challenge, I knew it was time to do something.
As of tomorrow, I will be starting a 10-week, 6-days-a-week fitness program. The total cost is roughly $400. It's three days -- MWF-- of kickboxing (I've got some pent-up rage to release) and three days of resistance training; Sunday is off. We had the orientation yesterday, they measured our weight, body fat, pulse after a 4 min step test, time on a mile run, and the number of push-ups and sit-ups in a minute. They repeat the tests after 5 weeks and then again after 10 weeks. The person who improves the most in these stats after 10 weeks receives $1k; the catch is that you must let them take and use a "before" and "after" photo in a two-piece bathing suit. Being a faculty, I am really not comfortable with bathing suit pictures of me available freely on the web; I would not be comfortable even if I were super hot -- I think there are just some things that my students and colleagues should never know out about me, so I won't be going for the handsome monetary prize. But, we all got cool boxing gloves and, surprisingly, my eldest son thinks it's super cool that mom will be doing kickboxing -- who knew?
I will be going to the 9 am session, after all the kids have been sent to their respective schools; thank God for the sabbatical, which is the only way I can pull this time slot off. I know that it's about a lifestyle change and committing to exercising for all eternitiy. When I get back to work, I will likely have to do the early morning (5 am or 6 am) slots, but hopefully by then the baby will be sleeping more predictably so I will be able to manage the early times without compromising everyone's morning routine.
There is a whole class of about 90-100 people starting with me tomorrow (at different times in the day), so we're all in the same boat. One interesting observation -- there are about equal numbers of women and men signed up for the program. Women are overwhelmingly there to lose weight; most men who signed up are quite fit already, and are doing this for additional exercise. There was an occasional overweight man, but most are quite fit, whereas nearly all the women who signed up are overweight. This tells you that men and women seem to want to exercise for different reasons, likely linked to what is expected of them (looks vs strength/stamina). Most people of both genders were young and without wedding rings. There were a few people older than me, but not many.
Anyway, I am quite excited about this program (if a little sore from the testing yesterday), and can't wait to break in by kickboxing gloves!!!
To my readers who are working parents: do you exercise at all? If yes, what do you do, when in the day, and how often? How did you manage to squeeze it into the schedule? Is your partner supportive? Does s/he exercise too?
Throughout most of my life, I had a healthy weight, which I managed to maintain alongside varying levels of activity. But then I took a tenure track faculty position (in 2004). At that point, I had one kid, and my husband stayed back at our alma mater trying to finish his PhD, so I was effectively a single mom for the first two years on the tenure track. The first year was absolutely brutal. Lots of teaching duties, all new courses, writing innumerable grants. I was extremely stressed out. During that year alone, I packed on 20 lbs.
Over the following years, slowly but surely, I ended up packing 30 lbs more. I had two more kids, but the physical act of pregnancy is not particularly fattening in my case, as I vomit a lot and lose weight in early pregnancy. After giving birth, I lose weight quickly in the first couple of months, when the universe gives me permission to just feed and care for the baby and nap whenever I want to. But eventually comes the time to resume all my usual duties, including caring for the rest of my family and doing my work, and my weight begins to climb back up. The main reason is that there are not enough hours in the day, and the only place to generate them is to cut back on sleep. Now that I have a baby, I sleep very little (probably no more than 5 hrs per day, and not in a row), and in order to keep functioning I tend to consume too much carbs.
Even without an infant, every time there are additional deadlines or elevated workload, stress levels go up and more sleep is lost, and the intake of food goes up.
So here I am, about 50 lbs over what I had when I came into the tenure track position. I am pretty tall so I don't look horrible and I am quite healthy (great blood pressure, lipids, cholesterol, the works) but lugging all that extra weight around is bad for my mood and my energy levels, and makes me look too matronly for my taste. I have a baby of about 20 lbs and a 4-year-old of about 50 lbs. Picking my kids up gives me a vivid reminded of how large a weight 20 lbs or 50 lbs actually is.
When you are a working parent, finding the time to exercise can be tough. You need to have iron will to squeeze exercise into the schedule, while keeping enough time for kid pick-up/drop-off, cooking dinner, cleaning up house, and perhaps spending some time with your partner. Having a very young child throws you another curveball, because they have erratic sleeping schedules and are often much more demanding on one parent than the other. With multiple kids, both you and your partner are stretched thin just covering extracurriculars, dinner, cleanup, and bedtimes; it's easy to simply plop on the couch and watch TV after the kids are in bed or spend time surfing the web.
A couple of years ago, I finally started exercising at a women-only club in the neighborhood. It was great! They had fun classes that combined aerobics with strength training, and I went there three times a week early in the morning. After several weeks, they announced that they were going out of business. My husband teases me to this day that it was me who jinxed them out of existence.
Meanwhile, I got pregnant, had another baby, and a new fitness franchise moved into the premises occupied by my former club. One of my sabbatical resolutions was to get in shape, but I have been busier than usual with the infant, associate editor duties, and a fairly large conference I am organizing in the spring, in addition to all the things a faculty must usually do -- grant and paper writing, advising students, etc.
Excuses, excuses... right? So when I heard on the radio that the new franchise in my neighborhood was starting a 10-week fitness challenge, I knew it was time to do something.
As of tomorrow, I will be starting a 10-week, 6-days-a-week fitness program. The total cost is roughly $400. It's three days -- MWF-- of kickboxing (I've got some pent-up rage to release) and three days of resistance training; Sunday is off. We had the orientation yesterday, they measured our weight, body fat, pulse after a 4 min step test, time on a mile run, and the number of push-ups and sit-ups in a minute. They repeat the tests after 5 weeks and then again after 10 weeks. The person who improves the most in these stats after 10 weeks receives $1k; the catch is that you must let them take and use a "before" and "after" photo in a two-piece bathing suit. Being a faculty, I am really not comfortable with bathing suit pictures of me available freely on the web; I would not be comfortable even if I were super hot -- I think there are just some things that my students and colleagues should never know out about me, so I won't be going for the handsome monetary prize. But, we all got cool boxing gloves and, surprisingly, my eldest son thinks it's super cool that mom will be doing kickboxing -- who knew?
I will be going to the 9 am session, after all the kids have been sent to their respective schools; thank God for the sabbatical, which is the only way I can pull this time slot off. I know that it's about a lifestyle change and committing to exercising for all eternitiy. When I get back to work, I will likely have to do the early morning (5 am or 6 am) slots, but hopefully by then the baby will be sleeping more predictably so I will be able to manage the early times without compromising everyone's morning routine.
There is a whole class of about 90-100 people starting with me tomorrow (at different times in the day), so we're all in the same boat. One interesting observation -- there are about equal numbers of women and men signed up for the program. Women are overwhelmingly there to lose weight; most men who signed up are quite fit already, and are doing this for additional exercise. There was an occasional overweight man, but most are quite fit, whereas nearly all the women who signed up are overweight. This tells you that men and women seem to want to exercise for different reasons, likely linked to what is expected of them (looks vs strength/stamina). Most people of both genders were young and without wedding rings. There were a few people older than me, but not many.
Anyway, I am quite excited about this program (if a little sore from the testing yesterday), and can't wait to break in by kickboxing gloves!!!
To my readers who are working parents: do you exercise at all? If yes, what do you do, when in the day, and how often? How did you manage to squeeze it into the schedule? Is your partner supportive? Does s/he exercise too?
Thursday, January 5, 2012
Versatile
Cloud of Wandering Scientist nominated me for the Versatile Blogger Award in her recent meme post -- thanks, Cloud!
Here are the rules I'm supposed to follow:
1) Nominate 15 fellow bloggers
2) Inform the Bloggers of their nomination
3) Share 7 random things about yourself
4) Thank the blogger who nominated you
5) Post the award badge.
I feel a bit silly posting the badge, but here goes:
A number of bloggers I would consider versatile have already been tagged -- Clarissa, Cloud, feMOMhist, Alyssa, Grumpies...
Here are some people who I think are great and versatile bloggers but who may not yet common fixtures on people's blogrolls.
*drumroll*
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you (in the order in which they popped into my mind) the following Awesomely Versatile Bloggers:
Thoreau of Unqualified Offerings -- politics, academia, pop culture. Always fun.
Massimo of Exponential Book -- physics, academia, gadgets, Canadian politics. Clairvoyant.
Cath of VWXYNot -- someone said she's one the silliest science bloggers. Truer words have rarely been spoken. She covers a wide variety of topics and is always funny.
Hermitage -- a STEM student, a gamer, fluent in German and lolcatz. Awesomesauce.
Namnezia of Take It to the Bridge -- academia, cooking, astronomy, kids, taxidermy.
Bee of Backreaction -- Bee writes really well about physics and physicists, science in general, philosophy, books... Also adorable twin baby pics.
Dr Sneetch -- a math prof, a snarky academic, a mom. Lots of cool photographs.
The Barefoot Doctoral -- a STEM postdoc, solving a 2+epsilon body problem. Also writes poetry. Nuff said.
Female Computer Scientist -- a new prof, but a CS industry veteran, FCS writes about feminism, CS in general (e.g. internet security) and lots of geek-friendly whimsy.
Cherish the Scientist -- academia, science, engineering, mommyhood. Cherish also writes for Engineering Blogs.
Now for the random things about me...
1) I love, love, loooove driving. I only learned how to drive after I had come to the US, at the age of 26. Driving alone on the open road is one of my greatest pleasures.
2) Way back when, as a high school senior, I represented my home country at the International Physics Olympiad. I was the first girl (from my country) to ever do so.
3) I am 6' tall. I am also the runt of the family -- my baby sister is 6' 3".
4) When I was young I used to play volleyball. I was pretty good. My position was the middle blocker.
5) I also used to be a heavy smoker -- I spent my late teens and a better portion of my 20's (essentially the entire 1990's) going through 2 packs a day. Go ahead, judge -- but be aware that I come from a culture where smoking is not particularly frowned upon. Ironically, some of my heavy smoking years overlapped with my active volleyball playing years. I quit when I got pregnant with Baby #1, in 1999. Started again amidst much stress and turmoil in 2003. Stopped for good in late 2004.
6) I like to drink socially, but I have never been drunk. The idea of losing control and not knowing what I am doing scares me to death.
7) I don't like chips. I hate, hate Doritos because of how they smell. Unfortunately, everyone else in my family loves Doritos. "Gross mom out by blowing in her face with Dorito breath" is a popular game with my older kids.
Here are the rules I'm supposed to follow:
1) Nominate 15 fellow bloggers
2) Inform the Bloggers of their nomination
3) Share 7 random things about yourself
4) Thank the blogger who nominated you
5) Post the award badge.
I feel a bit silly posting the badge, but here goes:
A number of bloggers I would consider versatile have already been tagged -- Clarissa, Cloud, feMOMhist, Alyssa, Grumpies...
Here are some people who I think are great and versatile bloggers but who may not yet common fixtures on people's blogrolls.
*drumroll*
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you (in the order in which they popped into my mind) the following Awesomely Versatile Bloggers:
Thoreau of Unqualified Offerings -- politics, academia, pop culture. Always fun.
Massimo of Exponential Book -- physics, academia, gadgets, Canadian politics. Clairvoyant.
Cath of VWXYNot -- someone said she's one the silliest science bloggers. Truer words have rarely been spoken. She covers a wide variety of topics and is always funny.
Hermitage -- a STEM student, a gamer, fluent in German and lolcatz. Awesomesauce.
Namnezia of Take It to the Bridge -- academia, cooking, astronomy, kids, taxidermy.
Bee of Backreaction -- Bee writes really well about physics and physicists, science in general, philosophy, books... Also adorable twin baby pics.
Dr Sneetch -- a math prof, a snarky academic, a mom. Lots of cool photographs.
The Barefoot Doctoral -- a STEM postdoc, solving a 2+epsilon body problem. Also writes poetry. Nuff said.
Female Computer Scientist -- a new prof, but a CS industry veteran, FCS writes about feminism, CS in general (e.g. internet security) and lots of geek-friendly whimsy.
Cherish the Scientist -- academia, science, engineering, mommyhood. Cherish also writes for Engineering Blogs.
Now for the random things about me...
1) I love, love, loooove driving. I only learned how to drive after I had come to the US, at the age of 26. Driving alone on the open road is one of my greatest pleasures.
2) Way back when, as a high school senior, I represented my home country at the International Physics Olympiad. I was the first girl (from my country) to ever do so.
3) I am 6' tall. I am also the runt of the family -- my baby sister is 6' 3".
4) When I was young I used to play volleyball. I was pretty good. My position was the middle blocker.
5) I also used to be a heavy smoker -- I spent my late teens and a better portion of my 20's (essentially the entire 1990's) going through 2 packs a day. Go ahead, judge -- but be aware that I come from a culture where smoking is not particularly frowned upon. Ironically, some of my heavy smoking years overlapped with my active volleyball playing years. I quit when I got pregnant with Baby #1, in 1999. Started again amidst much stress and turmoil in 2003. Stopped for good in late 2004.
6) I like to drink socially, but I have never been drunk. The idea of losing control and not knowing what I am doing scares me to death.
7) I don't like chips. I hate, hate Doritos because of how they smell. Unfortunately, everyone else in my family loves Doritos. "Gross mom out by blowing in her face with Dorito breath" is a popular game with my older kids.
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