Full Circle

This year marks ten years since I graduated from Colgate University with my Bachelor’s degree. Being a reunion year, I have thought more than usual about the decisions that led me from who and where I was then to who and where I am now. Chief among those decisions is my choice to go to Georgia Tech for graduate school rather than one of the other programs that offered me a place. It was a hard choice and I was deeply skeptical of moving to Atlanta. Another offer, from Boston University, was incredibly tempting. It would have kept me in the Northeast, where I was comfortable and things were familiar. I got along famously with the professor at BU who I would be working with and with some of the other faculty members. So how did I end up at Georgia Tech instead?

Most graduate schools invite accepted Master’s and Doctoral students to visit, meet with faculty and students, and get an in-person feel for the graduate program. It’s an important thing to do; the graduate program you are in will shape the next few years of your life (and possibly much more than that) and will have a supersized effect on your happiness and well-being. My visit to Boston University went really well all except for the moment when an older professor mentioned that female students didn’t have a place in graduate school. I don’t remember his name or even his exact words a decade later but I remember wondering if I could ever put myself through years in a program where I would undoubtedly have to take classes from someone who believed I shouldn’t be there not because I was personally unqualified but because of my gender.

I never had the heart to tell the young, female professor I would have been researching with why I really turned the program down.

While a graduate student at Georgia Tech, I spent many of my semesters as a Teaching Assistant (TA) for undergraduate lab classes. This entailed attending lectures, holding office hours, teaching lab sections, and grading papers. As a first year TA, I remember looking up to the older TA’s who had so much more experience and were so much less stressed about it than I was. Then, a few years later - though it felt quite sudden, I was the older TA. In the middle of a lecture on nuclear decay, the professor made a joke that I had been hearing since my first year.

”Do you know what degree girl’s go to college to get?”
”Mrs!”

Don’t ask me how he wrapped that up into the lecture material. He managed to include that little gem about twice a semester though. It wasn’t the only such comment he made either. Everyone taking his classes knew that he thought relatively little of women in college. I rolled my eyes and went back to watching the lecture. I had so neatly written off the comment that I had heard so many times before at that point that I was confused when one of the first year TA’s came up to me after class to ask how I could stand ”it.”

“Haven’t you been TA-ing for him for years?” she asked me. “How can you stand him being so disrespectful?” The real answer was “Yes but I like getting paid and just want to graduate already.” I’m sure I said something else in reality though. The new TA asked to be switched to another class and was accommodated. I simultaneously admired her and thought it was a bit of a futile move – she was just replaced with a different female TA. The next time the professor made a sexist comment, something super witty about women belonging in the kitchen, it was harder to shake off. What I had previously accepted as normal started to feel embarrassing.

I had bigger fish to fry though. I was a fifth year and months away from graduating. I continued my teaching job. I graduated. I only occasionally thought back on the professor and his commentary on women.

Very recently, I was on a conference call with a group of researchers. Someone’s name was mentioned that I did not recognize and I did some searching to find out who they were and what they were working on. Alongside professional search results was an article in Science that mentioned the researcher. Naturally curious, I opened it and was pretty shocked to find myself reading about a professor at Boston University that was brought up on sexual harassment charges years after the fact because graduate students had been unwilling to jeopardize their careers. I’ve included a link to the article at the bottom of this post though I will warn that I found it to be pretty upsetting.

I can’t know now whether the professor in the article is the same one who once made a comment to me that heavily influenced my choice of where to go to graduate school. There is a good chance that it is though. I can’t help but think that I dodged a bullet. I've struggled with how to conclude this post. Should things like this happen? No. Will they continue to happen? Probably yes. Do I feel like I am better at handling criticism and inappropriate comments following my time in graduate school? Yes. Will everyone else feel the same? Nope.

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/10/disturbing-allegations-sexual-harassment-antarctica-leveled-noted-scientist

Doing Things by Halves

Here's a very quick post (only one week late) while I work on some longer posts...

Last Monday, Memorial Day, my husband and I celebrated our eighth anniversary of being us. On Memorial Day 2010, we had our first date - a flight around Atlanta and dinner. We've been both flying and eating out together ever since then. This year also marked a milestone that we won't ever hit again - we've been married for half of our relationship. After I mentioned that, my husband quipped "And we've lived together for half our marriage!"

All of this makes me wonder where we'll be in another eight years. If I've learned anything though, it's safe to say that we probably won't be anywhere or doing anything that I'd expect.

My Least Favorite Weekend

My current work arrangement has me working two weeks of each month from Atlanta and two weeks of each month from Houston. Despite seemingly splitting each month in half, I effectively spend one weekend a month in Houston and three in Atlanta, not counting traveling in and out. The first weekend in Atlanta (somehow this is "weekend 1" in my mind) is my favorite. We often don't schedule much because we don't quite know when I'll be arriving. Weekend 1 is relaxing and I have two whole weeks of being home to look forward to. Weekend 2 is my second weekend in Atlanta and it's almost always packed with seeing all the friends we want to see and doing all the things we want to do. There's nothing relaxing about it but it's great none-the-less.

This weekend is weekend 3. Regardless of what we have going on (and this weekend's plans are pretty great), it's my least favorite weekend. In my mind, it's not weekend 3, it's leaving weekend. By Friday, I'm looking at what I'll need to pack up, even though it's very minimal. By Saturday, I'm asking myself why I keep dragging myself back and forth between Houston and Atlanta. I know that I'll be bribing myself to get moving on Monday morning (at 5am) with a treat on the way to work.

It's alright though because the next weekend is weekend 4. Weekend 4 is pretty great. I get to catch up with friends in Houston that I feel like I haven't seen in way too long. I sleep in. And, best of all, it's only five days until I get to go home again.

Lent and Loss

Two days before Lent began this year, we lost our precious cat MT to complications from heart disease. He was six years old and we didn't even know he was sick. Instead of giving up soda or going to daily Mass, my Lent became wholly focused on mourning. It was seasonally appropriate and I had no energy for anything else anyway. I thought the whole process would feel productive come Easter- that there would be some peace to be found on Easter morning. I rarely use the word "optimistic" to characterize myself but my hopes for Lent and for Easter were definitely optimistic.

So let's back up two months. I had flown home to Atlanta for the weekend on a whim to attend a friend's birthday party as a surprise. Everything at home was just fine- including our cats MT and Kaylee. I caught an early Sunday morning flight back to Houston for another week of work. Just hours later, my husband was calling to say that MT had collapsed, that he couldn't move his back legs, that they were going to the emergency vet. Hundreds of miles away, I did the only things I could think of- I prayed and I Googled. I was in the middle of Mass, where I had made a special exception from my normal routine and brought my phone in just in case there was news, when I next heard anything. We hadn't known MT had a heart condition, he hadn't shown any signs, but it was pretty advanced. A blood clot was obstructing the arteries to his legs (a saddle thrombus) and he was in congestive heart failure. The vet suggested that I fly back as soon as possible.

As soon as Mass finished, the couple I am currently staying with packed me a dinner and drove me to the airport. All I can say is that caring for people is always among the most meaningful things a person can do but that caring for someone in a bad situation takes on special significance and meaning. I won't drag readers through what the next excruciating hours were like for us. I do owe thanks to a handful of friends who were on hand to offer emergency advice and input, even if it meant getting dragged out of bed to do it. We kept our baby boy as comfortable as possible while trying any avenue open to us and to him. Aside from giving us some small peace of mind that we had tried everything we could, that we had gotten second and third opinions, it was all for naught.

I'd like to say that there was some silver lining in the whole thing. That at least my husband and I were together. That at least our baby boy was not alone. That at least there were not months of suffering. Absolutely none of it makes me feel any better though. Not everyone feels so strongly about their pets but, to us, MT was a child, our child. Not a day goes by that I do not feel like I am walking around missing something essential, like there is a hole in me.

I don't share all of this for extra sympathy and indeed that whole conversation makes me a little uncomfortable. I share it because it is a thing that happened and I'd rather write about it here than talk about it. I also share this because we cannot know what the people we encounter are dealing with at any given point in time. These last two months have been a powerful reminder of that. And yet, without knowing the backstory, we still have to interact with people all day, every day. At a time when I struggle to have patience, to be kind, to not be angry, I also remember why these things are so incredibly important.

Like all loss, time will ameliorate this one but it hasn't happened yet.

Eight years of waiting

My husband has been considering what his next car will be for as long as we've been dating. If you aren't sure, that would be 8 years. He's been saving money for the "next" car for at least the last 4 years. I've lost count of the number of auto shows, showroom visits, and test drives that have gone towards this endeavor. In the beginning, it was fun to think about in a "sometime in the future" way. A few years in, it became a more serious undertaking and I found myself getting invested in each of the cars on the list. A few years after that, I had more or less given up on a new car materializing. I was worn out from the search years before it was over and, by this year, just nodded and (sometimes) smiled when a new option was raised. Mostly I was just hoping it would all get wrapped up soon.

In the end, it all happened far quicker than I would have guessed. After (truly) exhaustive research, we are now the proud owners of a Tesla and are learning about the (frequently weird) switch from gas to electric cars. For starters, it's a lot quieter. Though, compared to the 2003 Mustang with the extra-loud, after-market exhaust system, that was pretty much a guarantee for almost any new car. I'm not sure it has fully sunk in that we will not need to be stopping at gas stations any time soon though my husband has already noted the days he would usually be stopping to fill up. (Not to worry, my Subaru will keep making routine gas stops.) In the meantime, neither of us has any intuitive sense of what a "good" Watt-hours per Mile (WhpM) rate is - something that will take a while to get used to after a lifetime of considering MpG.

My husband has also now gained bragging rights to the nominal title of "best environmentalist in the house," leap-frogging any of my efforts to compost, recycle, and reuse. If I was still living in the UP and bike commuting, I could probably maintain the lead in this household not-a-competition-competition but there's no way for me to manage bike commuting in my current circumstances in TX (I checked). I walk to the grocery store... does that count?

All joking (and Tesla shaped keys) aside, from a technological perspective, the car is really cool. For starters, the largely touch screen based interfaces make me constantly re-think the definition of "car." The driving itself is incredibly smooth and my husband has not yet stopped being as excited as a child on Christmas morning about the acceleration. Especially considering my day job, which involves a lot of LiDAR data collection, analysis, and processing as well as other forms of remote sensing, the technology and algorithms that drive the car's autopilot fascinate and excite me like a child on Christmas. The system has definite limitations but seeing all that technology realized in the day to day world is amazing.

Also the key is indeed really cool. Apparently, we're both five years old at heart.

Unexpected and Uplifting

We sold our home in Texas back in August 2017. At the time, I had six months remaining on my contract at University of Houston. Some good friends of ours were nice enough to take me in and give me a place to live for the duration. Back in August, I was optimistically sure that I would find a job long before the end of January. By Christmas, I was beginning to accept that I wouldn't be relocated to Atlanta by the new year.

Fortunately (or unfortunately), I was offered a contract extension for six months and my boss was willing to let me work two weeks of each month remotely. I was genuinely torn between wanting to move to Atlanta and live full time in my own house with my own family and wanting to continue with a job that I really enjoy. I decided to take the contract extension, which left me needing to find a new place to live. I considered getting my own apartment, which sounded really nice in quite a few ways. All of our furniture and kitchen supplies had long been relocated to Atlanta though so I knew that option was possible but impractical.

Another close friend offered me a quick save when they found me a place to live with another woman who was married and living apart from her spouse for a while. The opportunity seemed too good to pass up with one unfortunate downside- the new arrangement would move me across town, over an hour away from the SE Houston area I had lived in since 2015. So, with no small degree of sadness, I let my friends in the area know. I also let the volunteer group I've worked with since 2015 know that I wouldn't be around anymore for routine activities.

By 12 hours after my "last" volunteer meeting, I had received no less than four offers for places to live. I was floored. I was stunned. There was crying involved. Most of all, I was panicked. In true 'me' fashion, I didn't want to hurt anyone's feelings and also wanted to work out what would be best for me. In the end, I took up one of the offers from a fellow volunteer.

At risk of repeating myself, this transition has been really difficult. It's been tough emotionally, mentally, and even physically, especially when I'm bouncing from place to place, getting little sleep and plenty of germ exposure. Being surrounded by so many amazing people in both Houston and Atlanta though has made it easier every step of the way. That was certainly true before my most recent move but it was really driven home for me in the face of so much generosity.

Science Fails

There is a lot of good science out there and often I finish reading a paper feeling proud and impressed by what researchers have done. They can't all be winners though. I am currently involved in writing a review paper. For anyone not familiar with that terminology, a review paper covers a large swath of material within a sub-discipline. It's a little bit like a summary paper- it summarizes the work of a lot of people and (hopefully) puts all the research in perspective. A review paper, then, involves reading a LOT of other papers. My last review paper had a reference list that exceeded 20 typed pages.

For the current review that I am working on, I have already read roughly 40 papers. It can get a little (or a lot) tedious and is a type of work that I prefer breaking up into manageable chunks with time for "real" research activities in between each piece. Anyway, none of that is really important. When you read a lot of papers, you are bound to come up with a few that are not winners. I have been so amused by these that I decided to blog about them so that, hopefully, you can be amused by them too.

I'll leave any identifying information off of the blog. The works referenced below are not bad works. Sometimes in science, you have to prove something very obvious so that you can take that information and use it in a more in-depth study later on. I myself have had to write some obvious statements in papers because sometimes it is what is called for to prove your point. So, these are not bad works. The authors are not bad scientists. The science in their papers did move their respective fields forward. But WOW were there a few noteworthy, less-than-brilliant, conclusions in the bunch. So, without further ado, I present you the most winning science I've encountered recently.

More snow takes longer to melt.

Inter-tree distances increase following wildfires.

Just remember, you read these breaking, newsworthy assertions here first (probably, unless you've also read these remarkable pieces of human ingenuity).