Dr. Shellie

I love work travel.

When I was a grad student, I used to travel a lot for fun. Since I was spending my own (meager stores of) money, no hardship was too great if it reduced the cost. I took the train through Europe, trudging through each city with a heavy pack from the station to the nearest youth hostel. In Hungary, the hostel had overflowing toilets and shit on the floor. In Japan, I  took overnight bus rides to save on a few nights’ lodging. In Sweden, it was too expensive to eat anything outside a supermarket. In Mexico, my grad stipend stretched a bit further, and I sprang for the nicest meal in town– which only cost $15. Sacrifices and all, it was great fun. 

Now I travel a lot for work. This is an entirely different activity that should be called by an entirely different name. The whole principle of WorkTravel is that when you yourself are not paying, anything can be justified on the principle of increased efficiency. A shuttle van takes twice as long to get to the airport as a taxi? Well, surely my time is worth the $20 differential! Going to a conference? Well then, it really is most convenient to stay at the $289 hotel three blocks away, rather than rent a car an drive in from the $89 hotel in the suburbs! There is no time that I love capitalism more than when sleeping in a king size bed with a plush, leopard-skin throw in a room decorated with tasteful modernist art in the city’s newest boutique hotel.

The capitalist economy knows that WorkTravelers will pay to avoid hassle. Want to avoid loud, bumpy subway rides and hauling your suitcase up three flights of stairs to transfer lines en route to the airport? You will pay for a cab. Don’t like listening to Christian talk radio* or getting quizzed on Bryan Greene’s PBS special on string theory** by overeducated-but-underemployed cabbies? You will pay for a limo. Not only do you avoid smudging your fine WorkClothes on the dirty, vinyl seats and breathing in stale cigarette smoke, your accommodating limo driver will not even speak to you. Want to avoid the overzealous, sales reps for Discovery Toys en route to their annual sales conference in Rio, who hone in on the parents next to them in security check and hand out flyers for "Completely educational products! And we always need more sales reps in your area! Oh HOW CUTE. How OLD is he???"? Well, if you want to avoid the Discovery Toys people, you buy your own jet.***

The only problem with WorkTravel is that it’s raising my standards. No longer am I content to stay in crappy youth hostels and eat bread and cheese. Where are my crab cake appetizers, reimbursable by work? Where is my spotless marble bathroom with tub for long soaks? And I sure can’t afford this kind of thing on my own time– not on a postdoc’s salary! I’m grateful for WorkTravel, but I miss my long backpacking trips, when the world seemed to be mine — for a whole two weeks and just 1000 dollars.

* Caller: "It’s just that I believe in freedom for religious minorities in all contexts, including the public schools." Host: "So if another kid’s parents accept Satan as their personal Savior, you want them to be able to talk about in class? I don’t think so. Next caller."

** Yes, this really happened to me. You know, since I’m some kind of scientist, PhD-type person.

*** Once I overheard some very, very rich guys discussing the issue. Apparently, at some point it actually becomes "cheaper" to have your own– along the lines of the "if Bill Gates drops a $200 bill on the sidewalk, it isn’t worth his time to pick it up" sort of thing.

If you would like to be reminded that humans come in all shapes and sizes, visit a swimming pool.

I was pointed to this nifty story by AWIS’ Washington Wire. Northwestern University sociologist Eszter Hargittai studies people’s opinions of their own Internet proficiency. During her research,

Hargittai noticed something she had not set out to find: that although the online skills of men and women were roughly equal, women, as a group, rated their proficiency significantly lower than did men.

"Not a single woman among all our female study subjects called herself an ‘expert’ user, while not a single male ranked himself as a complete novice or ‘not at all skilled,’ " Hargittai noted.

The implication?

"By underestimating their ability to effectively use the Web, women may be limiting the extent of their online behavior, the ways in which they use the Internet and, ultimately, the career choices they make," said Hargittai.

The ability to brag about your own skills is also a key factor for success in academia. It would be nice to think that you could sit quietly in your office or lab, doing good work, and the world would eventually notice. And to some extent, you can do this much more in science that in some other fields– eventually someone may need exactly the results you came up with, and will find the papers you have written. But unfortunately, it seems that a certain capacity for exaggeration is necessary at every level– in explaining to job search committees why your work will "revolutionize" the field, for example. Assuming that women are less likely and willing to do this then men (see Woman Science Professor’s post on differences in confidence between male and female graduate students, for example), what can we do?

Idealistically speaking, I’d love to say that we should work to build a climate where people are evaluated on their abilities and contributions and not just on their ability to bluster. We should. But I am thinking more short term. I think that we need PRACTICE. Similar to Woman Science Professor’s idea about a phrasebook for how to respond to annoying/harrassing comments… how about a phrasebook for describing the impact of your own work? All welcome to contribute here, men too!

One thing that may be helpful: pretend you are talking about someone else’s work– that can make it much easier to brag! I am not saying we should lie. But it’s useful to learn some self-promotion skills.

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Hydrofluoric Acid

Do you know what happens if you spill hydrofluoric acid on your skin? Initially, you feel nothing. You might not even notice. But gradually, the fluoride ions pass through your skin, and attack the calcium in your muscles and bones, destroying them. Sudden death can even result from concentrated acid burns. And so, if you suspect HF exposure, you must IMMEDIATELY rinse the contacted skin and continuously rub a gel made out of calcium gluconate into your skin while racing to the emergency room.

So why the hell would anyone choose to work in a job that requires you to handle hydrofluoric acid? Well, turns out that its corrosive properties are also quite useful in a number of scientific contexts, and if you wear the proper protective equipment (chemically-protective apron, face shield, safety glasses, chemically-resistant gloves) and work in a ventilated hood, the risks are minimal. And so, in the same way that we catch a glimpse of car wrecks on the side of the highway (ambulance lights whirling, an unwanted glimpse of a stretcher) and think "how terrible… they were probably driving too fast," Death-by-HF must be something that happens to other people. On with it– there is science to be learned.

One of the staff members in my lab (who appears to love her job) likes to say, "We have toxic gases in here that are SO BAD that if you smell them, you are dead already." I suppose she has put her faith in the toxic gas alarm going off long before that point.

What other risks to you learn to see as normal?

Update: See properdoc’s post for a close call…

…not to worry, it’s not too late. There’s a fascinating article in Wired magazine on the work of University of Chicago economics Professor David Galenson. His research tracks the value of famous artists’ paintings as a function of artist’s age when painted. The conclusion? Artists can be classified* into two types: ones that peak early and then decline into old age, and those that steadily gain in productivity throughout their lives, producing their most valuable work right before death.** Of course, the article would have you believe that this trend is a universal feature of human behavior, applying equally as well to indentured servants!

*No variance on the graph shown in Wired. Intelligent comments on the statistical analysis are welcome here.

**Unfortunately, this does not imply that anyone who hasn’t done anything yet in life will be brilliantly successful later on!