Camera Update

Thanks so much to everyone who left suggestions and expressions of empathy in response to my post about the broken camera. It looks like I can now put that frustrating episode behind me - we received the repaired camera back last week. It seems like everything but the housing was replaced, judging from the notes on the packing slip. And it works like a dream, too!

In fact, it almost works TOO well. The sensitivity is incredible! So incredible, in fact, that I've had to rewrite all my analysis codes because the parameters have changed so dramatically.

I also got a new computer that was pre-loaded with the right operating system. I think it's funny, though, that nobody seems to want the computer that three people slaved over for several days to wrest from the clutches of Vista. I thought it would be used for the new set-up, but they chose to order a new one as well. Then it looked like it would be used to run the fluorimeter, which used to be run by a Commodore 64 and was just upgraded. But it is still sitting next to the optical table, not attached to anything. I guess it's tainted with the scent of futility.

Finding Time for the Extras

Zuska's question for this month's Scientiae Carnival was:

How did you let the world know "I am HERE!"

The most obvious answer is that I (finally) started writing this blog. But, I've increased my visibility in other ways as well.

After going through the graduate school application process a few years ago, the program I felt was the best fit for me was in a city about five hours away from where my family and I were living. Since the program was highly respected, and at an Ivy League school, to boot, my husband and I decided that I should not pass up the opportunity to go, and decided to move the family. The plan was that I would move first, with Thing 1, and that hubby would keep his job in Old City and commute once a week until he found something suitable in New City, since we couldn't really all live off of my stipend. We thought it would take six months to a year.

It actually took almost four years. During that time, I finished my two years of coursework, did rotations, served as a teaching assistant, and joined a lab. Since there was only me to drop off and pick up Thing 1 from school and extended-day, all of those activities had to fit into a very rigidly defined window. There was not a minute of extra time on week days to do anything that couldn't be done at home or with Thing 1 in tow, and hey, the kid needed to sleep! So I made sure I was on time to pick her up every night, even if it meant leaving class early, missing review sessions, not hearing invited speakers, or skipping social events. I spent time with her until she went to sleep, then hit the books. Often I was too tired to work at night, so I would rise at the crack of dawn to finish up whatever was due that day before it was time to get her up and ready for school.

When Thing 2 was born, the window became narrower still, and it became nearly impossible to work at home. Instead of getting up early to work, I was getting up at all hours to nurse and otherwise tend to Thing 2. And in the evenings I bounced between the two kids - serving up the big kid dinner in between spoonfuls of the baby dinner, reading a story to Thing 1 while Thing 2 nursed. Multi-tasking became the norm, and I developed a habit of going to bed with the kids. Where I used to be able to occasionally arrange for Thing 1 to have dinner with one of her friends if I needed a little bit of wiggle room, I couldn't really see having someone else look after Thing 2 after she'd spent the whole day away from me. And I could not imagine traveling - I didn't even go to my program's yearly retreat that year.

So, I'm sure you can imagine the relief I felt when hubby finally took a job in New City last year. I had great expectations for how much easier it would be to handle everything when I was no longer outnumbered by my children. And things are much better. I don't feel so much like I'm running around in circles. Other changes are happening gradually. I've started to attend some of the evening talks. I've been able to travel to attend retreats and conferences. I've been able to present my research. And I've been able to participate more fully in student life. I volunteered to be the representative of my program on the board of a student group. This summer, I will be mentoring a participant of my institution's summer research program for undergraduates; I went to the kick-off dinner tonight, while hubby had quality time with the kids. And I know I'll be able to meet with him regularly without compromising too much research time.

Because I've been able to expand my available time, I've been able to do more stuff besides benchwork. I'm hoping this means I'm getting more out of graduate school, and preparing myself better for the job market. Plus, people see me around more, and I don't get that, "Wow, where have you been?" comment so often. And, you know, I feel like a more balanced human being.

scientiae-carnival.

What Every Female Grad Student Needs

You can get a pair here for under $20!

On Mentors

Over on Drugmonkey, PhysioProf wrote about the misconception that, in order to be a good mentor, a PI has to be at the bench, able to do every technique in the lab better than anyone else. He says,

Sitting at the bench or having good hands has nothing to do with being a good PI. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. There is no positive correlation.

I agree with him. I also agree with the commenters who note that the selection process for PI's really should reflect that fact. Not having gone on the job market, however, I don't know weather it does.

The debate of interest to me at this stage of the game, however, is over just how pervasive bad mentoring actually is. One commenter, Becca (no blog), suggested that bad mentoring is so common that,

The system is broken. If not because it doesn't work for so many, than because it wastes so much time for so many. Bad mentorship is a leading cause.

She goes on to cite up to 50% drop-out rates at her institution, and to say that she

think[s] that most of these individuals *deserved* to finish their degrees.

Personally, I think Becca is suffering from the all too common disconnect between the idealistic vision of grad school and academia in general and the reality of living in the adult world. Nobody DESERVES to graduate simply because they were admitted into graduate school. It's a long, hard road, and you don't get that hood if you don't walk to the end. Period.

And that road is filled with sharp curves, and is poorly lighted. Before entering graduate school, students are so focused on doing all the right things to get into graduate school - getting the grades, getting the research experience, getting the recommendation letters, taking the GRE. It's ticking off boxes. And most people have a fair amount of support in this endeavor. But once you have ticked off those boxes, sent out those applications and been accepted to a program, the nature of the game changes. It's no longer as simple as ticking off boxes; instead of performing well at pre-determined times that have been announced to you well in advance, you have to be on top of your game all the time. Then you join a lab, and it's not enough to be smart or to have potential. You are expected to produce. Produce data, produce insight, produce something publishable.

Different mentors have different approaches for getting you to achieve that last goal. Not all styles of mentoring will work well for all mentees. And there are some ineffectual, even damaging mentors out there, but grad students, as the adults they are, need to take some responsibility for their own education. A potential mentee has but two jobs - first, seek out the mentor, or mentors that fulfill the mentee's own needs, and second, be open and accepting of mentoring. Most graduate student expect their PI to be a good mentor to them. Sometimes this doesn't happen. What then? If your PI is a bad mentor, find another mentor. Find two or three, in fact, because no one mentor is ever going to fulfill all your needs. If you find yourself at an institution that does not as a whole provide good mentorship, go to another institution.

I spent a lot of time and effort researching schools to make sure I would be in the environment that was right for me. Then, once I got into grad school, I spent a lot more time and effort looking for a mentor who was right for me. I could have joined a lab headed by a big name PI who has his fingers in every pie in my field. Instead, I chose to join the lab of a junior PI who was doing the kind of work I wanted to to, and who showed that he respected me as a person and was comfortable with my "lifestyle". I am certain that there is no way I would have made it through my first year in a lab otherwise. I am often very frustrated when I have to listen to classmates who complain about their PI's, only to find out that either they had heard the stories about that person and thought that it wouldn't happen to them, or, they hadn't even bothered to ask around or do any research on the person for whom they were going to have to work for several years. That is a careless thing to do. As they say, you have to lie in the bed you make.

As for the counter-claim that some students are not mature enough to do that kind of legwork, well, maybe some people aren't ready for graduate school right out of college. Maybe they should go out into the world for a little while and see how it works before they dive into a PhD. program.

As for the second job of a mentee, fellow students, don't be so quick to paint your PI with the dumb-fuck brush. I have had both the humbling experience of having my PI point out something incredibly obvious that was screwing up my experiments and the exhilarating experience of having an idea that my PI pooh-poohed actually produce interesting results. It seems that grad students go through a sort of adolescence - where their PI is like the parent and they have to prove that they can function separately from them. Just like how adolescent children like to say their parents don't know anything, so too do grad students like to bitch about their PI who could never understand all the details of their experiments. A certain amount of this is totally normal - just blowing off steam. But if we get carried away with it, we may miss out on what our mentors have to offer. So what if your PI doesn't know how to use every piece of equipment in the lab with a level of skill and grace that would make angels weep. Does that mean they have nothing to offer? No. And is that really all you came to graduate school to learn? I hope not.

Pulp Parenting

Thing 1 is on the girls Lacrosse travel team for our town. I knew nothing about Lacrosse when she first expressed interest in the sport; I thought it was something that rich kids who went to elite prep schools played. That may, in fact, be true. But the town we live in has a Lacrosse program, for girls and boys, and there are no tryouts - everyone who wants to play gets to play. She played last year, and it was all fun and games, but this year, she seems to be much more serious about the whole thing.

So at her last game, when the referee told her she would have to remove her fisherman's bracelet that she had been wearing since last year's summer camp (sleep-away edition) she flipped out. On the one hand, her team was counting on her - they only had just enough players that day. On the other hand, she thought something magical was going to happen if she kept that bracelet on long enough. She also really believed that the bracelet could not be removed intact (since it had been shrunk to fit snugly on her wrist, and hadn't been removed for, like, almost a whole year). But she wasn't counting on Mama MacGyver to be able to quickly unravel it just enough to loosen and slip over the hand, just in time to start the game.

I saw her look at her rope-free wrist, and I knew - this is not going to go well. She was, as we say in our family, out on the ledge, and she was going to need a lot of help to get down. Suddenly, a movie scene popped into my head, and I said, "Come on, now. Let's be like Fonzie. What's Fonzie like?"

Now before you send social services over to my house, my kids have never watched Pulp Fiction. But I have. Lot's of times. So I guess I was just a little bit on the ledge myself, but I had her attention, so I ran with it.

"Who's Fonzie?" she asked. So I told her about Happy Days, which I remember watching as a child, and Fonzie, who was always my favorite character, even before Pulp Fiction came out. I told her how all the girls would get all swoony when Fonzie came around and how he would say "aaay!" and how he was so COOL. And pretty soon, Thing 1 calmed down. We gave each other one more double thumbs-up and said "aaay!" right before she donned her goggles and went into the game.

So, I accomplished the objective - talk child down from ledge, allow normal life to continue with minimal disruption. I'm not sure how she will feel if, when she gets older, she sees that movie and puts two and two together, but I think Jules would have been proud.

I just hope I never have to quote Ezekiel 25:17...

Two Weeks...

For two weeks, now, I haven't been able to get much of anything done in the lab because my camera, the most important (and expensive) piece of equipment I use on a regular basis BROKE! And I can't fix it.

Funny thing is, I've spent much of the past two weeks trying to convince the representative from the manufacturer that the thing actually is broken. He's been to the lab twice. The first was two weeks ago Friday in an heroic instant response to a somewhat frantic phone call from yours truly. I had already turned the thing off after verifying that it was, indeed, not working, and that I was not just doing something dumb like changing one of the software settings, or having some switch or toggle in the wrong position. He re-installed the drivers, installed a nice diagnostic program, and, lo and behold, it worked. Too bad my experiment samples were now past their sell-by dates.

The next week, other people use the camera without event, and we think everything is fine. But we order a new computer to run it, just in case that's the issue. Then, halfway through the week, the computer starts crashing every ten minutes. Damn! And the original mode of camera failure repeats. Shit! But wait, there's a spare that was going to be used for a new set-up which arrived early and is just sitting in the box. Yay! But even if the computer would cooperate, it doesn't have the right kind of slot for the new frame-grabber card. Damn! And the computer we ordered is not going to arrive for two weeks. Fuck! Shit! Damn!

Since it's unacceptable to have the set-up down for two weeks, we go out and buy a computer and so we can get this thing up and running with the spare. But we run smack into another problem, and its name is Vista.

It takes a few days this time to schedule a time for the rep to stop by. Meanwhile, we finally get the new computer up and running and driving the new camera, just in time to have to set up the old camera again, so he can look at it. When he turns everything on, it works just fine. He starts asking me about all sorts of possible ways that some other part of the set-up is making it appear that the camera is not working - things that only a novice would not notice. As he leaves, he says that we should try to take a picture if the camera fails again, so that the repair people can have some information to try and figure out what's wrong. IF it fails again.

Great. So I just have to soldier on and hope that I don't lose another set of samples IF the camera fails again. Okay, so be it. But as I walk in the door on Thursday morning, everyone is in a tizzy - another camera on a different set-up has failed overnight, in an identical manner to my own. And there is saved evidence! We figure out exactly how to replicate the failure. Hooray! Maybe we can finally get this fixed. But the failure is not reproducible on my camera under the same conditions. Boo! We send the data to the rep, and wait for a response.

Friday morning rolls around again. I discover workmen in the room where I do my experiments, doing some plumbing work. We were supposed to be notified when this was scheduled, but they started in the middle of the night without telling anybody. We had been told that, once the work started, it would take two weeks. I'm about to wring somebody's neck, or shoot myself in the head with a pipette tip ejector, but the workmen tell us they will be done by lunch time. Amazingly, they stay on schedule, and even vacuum up all the mess before they go. Wow! Maybe things are finally turning around!

After lunch, I get an email from the rep - turns out there is a hardware issue that is known to the manufacturer, and both cameras must be sent in for repairs. Take a guess how long the turn-around time is.

A Gordian Knot

We needed a new computer in a hurry last week, to replace the one that has been faithfully driving my camera for a year, but just couldn't seem to go on running stably for another day. Our software and drivers don't run on Vista, of course. But I can't find anyplace that stocks a new machine that has, simultaneously, a PCI-E slot, room for two hard drives, and XP loaded. That's okay; we can make do with two out of three. We got a Dell with all the slots and bays, but loaded with Vista, and bought a copy of XP.

Of course, we had no idea that we had just picked up a Gordian Knot of the computer world. Apparently, one cannot install XP "over" Vista. One must do a "clean" install after formatting the hard drive. But Vista will not let one format the hard drive. One must boot up from a disk, reformat in a DOS environment, and install the operating system from there. After finding all the drivers from the individual component manufacturer's websites, of course, since, for anything new, they won't be on the XP install disk. And Dell only maintains a list of Vista drivers on their website. At least this is what the guys from our computer support department told me after working on this for two days. I didn't get as far as booting from a disk.

Happy Mothers' Day

This is a day to celebrate mothers.

The woman who gave birth to me was a truly amazing person, and those who met her either loved her or hated her, but they never forgot her. She was incredibly bubbly, opinionated, and loud. When she arrived to pick me up from ballet class, I always heard her laugh before I saw her, much to my chagrin when I was a very quiet and awkward teenager. She was also a person who was never able to really chart her own course. When she was young, she was an artist, musician, and dancer. Her paintings hung in many of the rooms in the house I grew up in, she talked passionately about her favorite composer (Rachmaninoff), and loved to reminisce about how, at 5'10" she always had to "be the boy" when she danced. Though 5'4" is a slight exaggeration of my height, I somehow inherited her scale of movement, and choreographers liked to pair me with very tall men because it was interesting to see such a small girl keep up. Though I'm not much of a musician myself, I can be moved to tears by music, just like my mother. I also had access to every kind of arts and crafts supplies, and was left to my own devices to use them as I saw fit, which I did in the extreme.

However, my mother was a middle-school math and science teacher until my brother was born; then she became a stay-at-home mom. She was never an art or music historian as she would have liked because the only way her parents would support her going to college was if she went into a career that was "suitable for a woman". To them, that meant school teacher or nurse, and I think she made the best of her limited options. Judging from the way her former students greeted her with real affection when we ran into them around town, she must have been an excellent teacher, but she did not like to teach her own children (a slanted sort of blessing). She did, however, do everything she could to help me achieve the very sorts of goals that she was never allowed to aim for in earnest. As I got more involved in dance, she managed my schedule, drove me to classes, rehearsals, and auditions. She sought out and expedited all sorts of opportunities for me, and even made me custom leotards and dresses (for better fit, to save money, and because she enjoyed it). She also pushed my high school guidance counselors to put me in all AP classes, with no study hall, in spite of the fact that I had rehearsals until almost 9:00 most nights (later, sometimes, for tech or dress before shows), because she knew I could do the work, and that someday, I would need that education. You better believe I'm thankful for that now!

At the age of 47, she lost her husband to a heart attack, and was diagnosed with terminal inflammatory breast cancer a few months later. She died before her 48th birthday. She was the only one of her siblings to get a college degree, and she had worked incredibly hard to put her children on the trajectory to college. My fathers' siblings all had large families already, and none of them lived in our town. So, she asked her best friend, who lived a couple of blocks away, to finish raising her children. And she said "yes" without hesitation.

That was 17 years ago. This year marks the point at which I will have been mothered by these two women for the same number of years. My second mother is every bit as passionate about and committed to raising children who achieve their greatest potential, but is in no way a carbon copy of the first. She has a successful and busy career. She taught me how to drive - I don't know how she kept her cool when I couldn't shift into fifth gear the first time I went on the highway. Then gave me an old car and allowed me to get myself where I needed to go. She didn't manage my schedule; she only asked that I let her know when I'd be in. She didn't involve herself at all in what I wore. She asked me what my goals were, arranged meetings for me with people who could help, introduced me, then sat quietly while I spoke for myself (not very well, at first). She taught me, and continues to teach me, how to be an adult. And she never treated me as anything but her beloved daughter, even though I often had a hard time returning the favor.

I know I am lucky to have known two such amazing and different mothers. There is no such thing as the perfect mother - for every thing a person can do, there are many best ways. Happy Mothers' Day.