Impact
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about how to make an impact.
First, there’s my research. By now, I’ve written a lot of papers, and people have cited them a fair number of times. So that’s good. But I am surprised by which papers have become popular (=cited more that others). They weren’t necessarily my favorite papers, or the ones that I felt proudest of, or the ones that were most creative or required the most work. I couldn’t have predicted that they’d be popular.
Then, there’s teaching and mentoring. I haven’t done a lot of formal teaching, but I have done a variety of tutoring and volunteering here and there. For a year I tutored Spanish-language GED students. You would think that would be very useful, and yet I’m not sure that any of my students even passed the GED in the end. (Due to the way the class was organized, new students were constantly coming and going, and they had widely varying levels of formal education, making progress difficult.) Quite possibly, the most useful mentoring I’ve done so far only took one hour. A few years back, I ran into a classmate who looked a little down. We got to talking, and it turned out that she was really unhappy in her research group and wanted to switch. I gave her a few tips, and she found a new group. A few weeks ago, she told me that she is planning to graduate this year, and that she didn’t think she’d still be in a PhD program if it hadn’t been for me. I was really touched. I really didn’t do much at all! I just happened to help a tiny bit at exactly the right time.
I like it when I feel like I’ve had an impact on other people’s lives. As an aside, I do wonder sometimes whether that is gendered– why am I not as happy and proud about my paper citations as I am about helping others? Am I too timid to aspire to be a Great Scientist? (The male students writing to ask me for research positions all claim to be aspiring to this goal!)
But anyway, my biggest impact might be the least expected of all. Next week I will be a bone marrow donor. Before you all pat me on the back for my tremendous sacrifice, let me point out that this does not involve giant needles, "spooning" out of marrow, or excruciating pain. Thanks to recent medical advances, all I have to do (more or less) is get a few shots and then donate blood. Through no effort of my own, I happen to have the right genetic makeup to be compatible with my sister’s immune system. And so, right now, my cells might possibly (hopefully) save her life. Pretty dramatic. How’s that for unexpected impact?
Wow! That is quite a way to make an impact; hopefully it will work. About making academic impacts tho - that’s a tough one. I’d really like to have my research KNOWN and it *ought* to be because it is totally novel, but is it important in the grand scheme of things? Nah, not really. So then there’s teaching and mentoring
so satisfying when your students actually thank you for making them think. That’s what makes me want to keep going.
Comment by Field Notes — October 23, 2007 @ 8:45 pm
Woah. Good luck to you and your sister.
Comment by femalecsgradstudent — October 24, 2007 @ 4:59 am
Good luck to your sister. Yes, great advances make it a lot less risky for you to donate and for her to receive.
And good for you with the mentoring. I have lots of these one-hour discussions with people, where I know I’ve changed the course of their careers or at least managed to keep them from quitting (yet).
I think it’s a really good question why we don’t feel more sense of accomplishment/fulfillment from our publications. For me, I think it’s the lack of feedback. People say thank you when I help them find a new lab. Nobody thanks me and I get very little congratulations on my papers.
Comment by MsPhD — October 25, 2007 @ 7:15 pm
Good luck with the transplant! I was matched as an anonymous donor twicw, but red tape got in the way both times- I matched on the Australian list while in America, and then matched an American 2 years later while in Oz. In both cases, by the time they figured out how to disentangle all the resulting issues, the donor no longer required the donation. I really hope that means they found someone else, but with the anonymous system, you never really know what happens…
Comment by Lab Lemming — October 27, 2007 @ 10:32 pm
All my best to both of you
Comment by S — October 29, 2007 @ 4:45 am