Dr. Shellie

I went surfing for the first time last week, on vacation. Here’s how my 90 minute lesson broke down:

• tugged on uncomfortably tight wet suit, 10 minutes
• carried/dragged surf board down the street to the beach, 15 minutes
• paddled out through the waves to manuever myself into place, 10 minutes
• frantically rubbed my stinging eyes, which were suffering from a mixture of salt water and sun block, 5 minutes

And then, just when my eyes stopped stinging and I had gotten into position, I PROMPTLY GOT RUN OVER by another surfer. That’s right. He was standing up on his board, sailing along, and ran smack into me. (I was sitting on my board.) I fell off backwards and went underwater, and he surfed over the top of me. Fortunately, all were unharmed. However, this little episode got me out of position, and so we returned to…

• paddling into position, 10 minutes
• rubbing stinging eyes again, 3 minutes

and then… I caught a wave! What glory! I rode in towards the beach, full of heroism, inched into a kneeling position (no standing yet), and thought surfing a fine sport. An imaginary audience clapped. Sadly, I was out of position again. And so again…

• paddling back out, 10 minutes

And then, on the very next wave, I fell. The board slipped away from me and hit HARD against my middle right toe, which bent downward at an unnatural angle inside the wetsuit bootie. I started to think that escaping with no more than a broken toe was probably a fairly successful outcome for such a crazy sport. I paddled back to the beach to nurse my foot (27 minutes) and gave up my surfing dreams.

"How’d you do?" asked the surf store manager when I got back. I shrugged weakly. "Well, if surfing were easy, everyone would do it," he said.

According to this article in the New York Times, training a husband is just like training a dolphin. In brief: if he does something that annoys you, don’t respond. If he does something you like, praise him a lot. Don’t nag. The author, Amy Sutherland, says she learned these simple principles from exotic animal trainers, but I am pretty sure she was scooped by Dr. Laura’s "The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands."

Anyway, it seems this is also a good approach to training grad students. After all, what grad student really responds well to either nagging or criticism? Isn’t the usual response to "you really haven’t been achieving enough in your research lately" to get either depressed (mostly women) or angry (mostly men) and do even less?

I had forgotten how hard it was to network with women.

Starting in college, all my classes were filled with men. My problem set groups were mostly men. The seminars I attend and conferences I present are filled with men, too. My personality adapted accordingly. I am mostly comfortable with large groups of male scientists, though I still feel I must prove myself– that their expectation is that someone who looks like me is probably not too bright. So I fight hard: flaunt my credentials, try to say some clever things, and make sure my ideas are properly cited. I am used to this. That’s just how work is.

Now, I also belong to a group for women in science, and we get together for monthly meetings. These feel completely different than my normal working environment. There is far less pressure to appear bright, driven, and successful. But there is an implicit value put on being upbeat, positive, and cheerful (rather than ironic, sarcastic and bitter!). I am not sure how much of this is a male/female difference, and how much due to a difference between academics and scientists working in industry, which many of these women are. In any case, I’m an outlier in this group. At our last networking social, I won a Starbucks gift certificate in the networking game– while I was racing around the room filling in answers on the sheet, no one else seemed to realize we were playing. 

So now I am adapting again. It’s not a bad move — I suppose everyone would appreciate my being a little more upbeat, positive, and cheerful.

It seems some ideas are just too good to give up on. Terry Gross’ guest on Fresh Air last night, Sharon Weinberger, has written a book on fringe science in the defense industry. My favorite wacky idea: the Voice of God weapon. Simply beam a microwave signal at your enemies’ head, and they will hear a voice speaking, intoning the message of your choice, e.g. "LAY DOWN YOUR WEAPONS. SAVE YOUR SOUL." Except, of course, it doesn’t actually work.

More on this at Wikipedia, though the entry doesn’t look too credible.

It’s not too hard to imagine why the Voice of God weapon remains fringe science. Imagine trying to do controlled experiments on this one. So you apply to your Institutional Review Board for Approval to Test Human Subjects. Proposed protocol: beam microwaves at people’s heads… You could try rats, but unfortunately they don’t speak English, allowing you to test only the hypothesis: "rats freak out when they have microwaves beamed at them." 

Today I had an idea. That’s what I love about doing science. There you are, going about your regular day-to-day business, making headway on your various "to do" lists when BAM! An IDEA! And once you have that idea, how obvious it all is! And yet just a moment before– nothing. In the flash from nothing to something, the seed for your next experiment…