In Memoriam

Our beloved Dormouse is gone.

Hearing the vet say that what he could do for her would only delay the inevitable was the second worst moment of my life. Stroking her fur as the vet put her to sleep was the worst.

I had really believed we could buy her more time than this.

Maybe we held onto her too long before easing her suffering. Maybe we gave up on her too soon. I just don't know.

I can only hope that we did what was best for her, and that we made her as happy as she could be in her final days.

For 13 years, she kept us company, made us laugh and brightened our days. For 13 years, we were a family. She stuck her nose, often literally, into just about everything we did. The house seems so empty now without the click-click-click of her nails on the wood floors as she follows us around.

Goodbye, Dormouse. We love you and miss you, and we'll never forget you.

Schrodinger's Manuscript

One of the things I like most about online manuscript submissions (as opposed to the old days when we had to print out multiple hard copies to mail to the journal) is the ability to check on the status of my manuscript on the submission webpage. Given how long the review process can sometimes take, it's nice to at least be able to see your baby move, however slowly, through the various stages.

But as it turns out, having access to your manuscript's status updates can also be a bad thing. I logged into Journal's website today to check on a manuscript I submitted about a month ago and just happened to catch it at the point where the reviews have all come in, but the editor has yet to make a decision on whether to accept or reject the manuscript.

The thought that a decision letter could be forthcoming any minute now totally kicked my OCD into overdrive. I must have refreshed that webpage at least a dozen times today, hoping to see the status label change to "Manuscript Accepted" or at least "Manuscript in Revision." Never mind that for all I knew, the editor was out-of-town or insanely busy and wasn't going to make a decision anytime soon...I couldn't stop myself from checking and re-checking every time I had the chance.

All day long, the words "Manuscript Awaiting Decision" taunted me. And now, 12 hours later, there is still no decision. Gah!

At least I managed to amuse myself this afternoon with the thought that until I actually observe the status label change to "Manuscript Accepted" or "Manuscript Rejected," perhaps my manuscript is simultaneously accepted and rejected...and maybe even in revision and in resubmission as well. I guess this would make the reviewers the radioactive substance, and the editor the hammer that breaks the flask of poison?

Ah...geek thoughts.

Here is the original (read: unbutchered) version of Schrodinger's thought experiment:

One can even set up quite ridiculous cases. A cat is penned up in a steel chamber, along with the following device (which must be secured against direct interference by the cat): in a Geiger counter there is a tiny bit of radioactive substance, so small, that perhaps in the course of the hour one of the atoms decays, but also, with equal probability, perhaps none; if it happens, the counter tube discharges and through a relay releases a hammer which shatters a small flask of hydrocyanic acid. If one has left this entire system to itself for an hour, one would say that the cat still lives if meanwhile no atom has decayed. The psi-function of the entire system would express this by having in it the living and dead cat (pardon the expression) mixed or smeared out in equal parts.

It is typical of these cases that an indeterminacy originally restricted to the atomic domain becomes transformed into macroscopic indeterminacy, which can then be resolved by direct observation. That prevents us from so naively accepting as valid a "blurred model" for representing reality. In itself it would not embody anything unclear or contradictory. There is a difference between a shaky or out-of-focus photograph and a snapshot of clouds and fog banks.

Goldilocks And The Three Work-Life Balance Schemes

You'd think after all these years in academic research, I would've found the optimal balance between being more productive by taking work home with me, and protecting my personal life by leaving work behind in lab. But no, instead of occupying a happy middle ground, I swing wildly back-and-forth between doing absolutely no work at home and spending all my evenings and weekends working from home.

This bed is too hard.
During grad school, I didn't set any work-life boundaries at all. My labmates were also my buddies, and since they were similarly boundary-less, long days and nights in lab counted as both work and socializing. Work completely bled into life, but this was a perfectly adequate arrangement...until I encountered some roadblocks in my project. Since there was no time when I was completely free of work, when work wasn't going smoothly, well, I became miserable all the time. I had no protected work-free time in which to recharge, and I burned myself out.

This bed is too soft.
By the time I started my postdoc, I'd learned my lesson. I worked hard when I was in lab and stayed there till I had finished everything I needed to do. Once I left lab at the end of the day, I didn't let work intrude on my personal time. But there were problems with this arrangement as well. To get everything done without having to take work home, I had to be super-efficient during the day, leaving little time for interacting with my labmates. And since people tended to chat about their projects informally throughout the day, I missed out not only on the socializing but also on these impromptu scientific discussions. And then there were the late nights spent working on my computer in lab, wishing I were at least working on my computer at home with March Hare and Dormouse for company.

Where the hell is the bed that's just right?
In my current position, I do a lot less bench work and a lot more paperwork, which makes it all the more tempting to leave lab early enough to have dinner with March Hare everyday, and then work from home in the evenings. But March Hare tends to get a little annoyed (and rightfully so) when I ignore him all evening, or when he tries to have a conversation with me and I only actually hear 30% of what he's said. On the other hand, not bringing work home would either result in really long hours in lab or not getting nearly enough stuff done. Until I find the elusive "just right" solution, I've resorted to alternating between "too hard" and "too soft," depending on my workload, deadlines, and my mood. Not the most stable of solutions, but I still have a job and a husband, so it must be working, right?

Thanks...I Think

I told someone in my lab yesterday that I have a blog. I didn't divulge the name of my blog, just that I blog pseudonymously.

She looked at me and said, somewhat incredulously, "You are a blogger? And you have a secret online identity? Wow...suddenly you seem so much more interesting!"

Not quite sure how to take that.

What kind of reactions have you gotten when you told other people you're a blogger?

Early Morning Screwdriver

Subtitle: Why I am drinking at 4 a.m.

This weekend was absolutely gorgeous--sunny with clear skies, pleasant temperatures, lots of little woodland critters scampering around, and flowers blooming in our backyard. And what did I spend my weekend doing?

Writing an ARRA supplement application that I discovered I would be writing 6 days ago and is due in 4 days. For a grant that isn't mine, that I read for the first time 5 days ago, and is on a subfield I have never worked in.

This supplement is the reason I'm still awake and working. Not so much because I won't be able to meet the deadline otherwise, but because I have a hard time going to sleep when my brain insists on constantly rewriting and rearranging parts of the application. After all, why lie in bed working on the application in my head when I can actually make some progress?

So when I went to get a glass of orange juice ten minutes ago, I felt perfectly justified in adding a little vodka to it. Grey Goose...good stuff. I'm guessing it's not going to help my grant-writing skills, but it's certainly improving my mood.

Maybe I'll cancel my morning meetings....

Core Facility Hell

There's a core facility on campus with which I have a need-hate relationship. No, love does not enter into this relationship at all. I need them to do Super-Complicated Procedure that I can't do, and I hate them because they keep fucking things up.

How this all works in theory:

1. I spend 2 weeks and use liters of media to generate a sufficient amount of each sample.
2. I submit my precious samples to the core facility (CF).
3. CF takes the samples through a 3-step process.
4. CF sends me the resulting data.

How this works in practice:

1. I spend 2 weeks and use liters of media to generate a sufficient amount of each sample.
2. I submit my precious samples to the core facility (CF).
3. CF does nothing with my samples for several weeks.
4. CF tells me one of their reagents went bad, and 2 out of 4 of my samples were destroyed in Step 1.
5. I start remaking the 2 lost samples.
6. CF tells me an error occurred with one of the remaining samples during Step 2, and although they were able to do Step 3 with it, the resulting dataset is incomplete.
7. I start remaking the third lost sample.
8. No news on my last surviving sample from the first submission.
9. I hear from someone in another lab that CF has a huge backlog in their pipeline, which I guess explains the silence.
10. CF finally sends me data from the last sample. A 25% success rate...woohoo!
11. I submit the 3 newly-prepped replacement samples to CF.
12. CF does nothing with my samples for 2 weeks.
13. CF tells me that 2 of my 3 replacement samples have insufficient material by their quantitation method. They were fine by my quantitation method, which was the same method I used for the first submission, when there was no discrepancy between my measurements and theirs. CF refuses to proceed with these two samples until more material is submitted.
14. I start making supplemental samples for the 2 replacement samples.
15. CF says the third replacement sample is borderline in quantity, and that they can proceed but will have to modify their normal protocol to make it work.
16. I tell CF that since I'm already making more of the first 2 samples, I'll just make more of the third one too since I'd rather they use their normal protocol.
17. CF tells me that oops, they've already begun Step 1 with the third sample so no more material can be added at this point.

In the words of the great Charlie Brown, AAAUUGH!!!

Saturday Night Dinner

There's been an awful lot of food blogging going on lately, with people posting recipes, pictures of yummy things they made, etc. Naturally, I didn't want to miss out on all the fun, so here we go.

For dinner on Saturday night, March Hare and I made the following:

Crispy Fish Tacos: Strips of halibut, lightly battered and fried, served on a flour tortilla with shredded lettuce and a chipotle cream sauce.



Chocolate Bread Pudding: Bread pudding with dark and white chocolate pieces, served warm with an Irish Cream sauce.



And for an after-dinner drink, Pampero Aniversario rum: A Venezuelan rum which makes the best rum-and-coke ever!

Career Management Advice?

I haven't blogged about academic career issues in a while, mostly because all my effort at work has been directed toward just getting shit done, leaving no bandwidth for dealing with career management issues. But I now find myself with a decision to make, and so I humbly come before you, O Great Science Blogosphere, to ask for the benefit of your wisdom.

I've blogged about my position before, but here's a brief summary: I am non-tenure track junior faculty at a biomedical research center. I love my job, but it became obvious very early on that in order to be successful as non-tt faculty, I'd have to pay serious attention to actively managing my career.

It's not that career management isn't important for tt faculty, but it seems career development for non-tt faculty is particularly prone to going off-course unless said faculty keep both hands on the wheel and steer firmly. After all, mentoring and promoting non-tt faculty isn't high on any department chair's list of things to think about, if it's on the list at all. And since non-tt faculty don't have regular evaluations or promotion clocks, chances are pretty good that the only person keeping track of my progress and the number of years I've been here...is me.

Before I accepted my position, I had a chat with my chair about expectations and criteria for my promotion. Basically, in order for me to be promoted to the next "level," I had to publish papers and be the PI on a grant. How many papers I had to publish was not specified. And the grant requirement was that I submit one as the PI--getting it funded was not required.

Fast forward 2.5 years, and I have been the PI on one submitted grant, which did not get funded, and I have secured funding as co-Investigator on another grant which pays for lab supplies and part of my salary. In the publication department, I have one published middle-author paper, one first-author paper under review, a second middle-author paper in preparation, and two other first-author papers in preparation. Now, I'm well aware that manuscripts in preparation are to actual papers as stock options are to actual money, but I'm confident I can have all but one of these in press in the next six months or so.

So by my reckoning, I'm pretty close to meeting the requirements for my promotion. And since my chair probably isn't going to just show up at my desk with a gift-wrapped promotion in his hand, I'm thinking I should go have a friendly chat with him about this. I should mention that I have a very good relationship with him and have no intention of charging into his office making loud demands, so I'm not really worried about this conversation going badly.

So what's the problem? Well, for one thing, asking for a promotion and the attendant salary increase when many labs are cutting costs and personnel seems...I dunno...a little self-absorbed. Second, I imagine the funding crunch isn't going to be conducive to my trying to negotiate for the salary increase I would like. Third, it is not uncommon for tt faculty to interview at other places ahead of going up for promotion. It's not clear to me if I'm also expected to play this little game of leverage, but suffice it to say that now is not a particularly good time to try to secure other job offers for negotiation purposes.

On the other hand, who the hell knows when funding is going to be good again, whatever "good" is? So maybe it'd be stupid to hold off if I've actually earned the promotion, especially since I suspect that no promotion will be forthcoming at all unless I speak up at some point.

So what do y'all think? Should I approach my chair about this and if so, when's the best time?