It’s not going to stop ’til you wise up.

Long-time readers may know that I’ve struggled with health problems in the last couple of years, mostly related to a self-destructive uterus. It’s mostly controlled now, and I’m no longer debilitated by pain or anemia.

But three separate times in the last two years, before my condition was effectively treated, I’ve had to take opiates for the pain.

I was recently looking at some photographs taken of me from one of those times, and I was struck by how different I looked. I looked…this may come as s surprise, but I think I looked beautiful. Relaxed. Happy. I was smiling the way a  young child smiles, unselfconsciously.

And I knew, instantly, that it was the drugs.

Advertisement

I don’t like me when I’m angry: rage, sustainability, and activism

The first time I went to a therapist, it was because I was angry all the time. It was during grad school, so there were plenty of sources of stress in my life, but what worried me most was the anger. I was fighting with my family. I had a short fuse about everything — random interactions, small infractions, selfish people, rude people, clueless people. Socks left on the floor. Empty ice trays. Inane administrative red tape. Mistakes.

At the end of our first session, I was diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder. In my case, anxiety and stress were translating into anger, especially at small things I couldn’t control. My therapist and I spent the next several weeks coming up with a set of tools and practices to process my anxiety in more healthy ways, which would turn the dial back from anger to calm. Each week, I would have different homework, as I slowly built my tool kit. The first week, I was asked to take a break from venting.

I was surprised, because I’d always thought of venting as healthy — it’s a way to process and release steam, like a safety valve (which even the name implies). But when my therapist asked me, “Do you ever feel better after you vent?” I realized I didn’t. Venting would wind me up, rather than cool me down. Instead of venting, he said, try just stating how you feel about something, and leaving it at that. That was six years ago, and I’ve found that letting go of venting has been one of the healthiest things I’ve ever done.

And then, I started this blog. 

Figuring Out My Next Steps

I’m nearing a point in my post doc where I think I’m ready to finally start applying to faculty positions. I’ve gotten a few publications out, I’ve built a lab pretty much from the ground up, and I’ve mentored students in the lab ranging from high schoolers up through grad students. I’ve gotten leadership positions within organizations in my field, and I’ve managed to secure a chunk of time using the equipment at a national lab. Right now, it’s also the time of year when positions are advertised for the few months before the November and I’d have to wait another year for the next one. And though I’m ready to start applying, I’m a bit concerned about leaving.

Field season safety: a tale in two parts

Field season is coming up fast as the spring semester winds down, and even though I’m done with fieldwork now, it’s on my mind as my labmates gear up for theirs. Field season safety in particular is on my mind. There have been great recent articles and blogs about the dangers of sexual assault and unwanted contact while conducting fieldwork, especially in remote locations or isolated conditions. But I want to focus on two different, potentially overlooked and very American aspects of safety: cars and guns. Today I’m just talking about cars and road safety, and my next post will be about guns.

Working in the “field,” wherever that may be, often requires driving to field sites. For my own research, I was often driving for more hours in a given day than sampling at each site, due to the distance between field sites and frequency of sampling. While the sheer number of hours I’ve logged behind the wheel may be at the far end of the spectrum, driving for at least two hours per fieldwork day is common for others in my lab and department.  Since fieldwork is often collaborative, the driving is also often split between the research team. This means that undergraduate students, technicians, graduate students, and postdocs all rotate driving shifts throughout the day and across the field season. I never gave much thought to trusting my field crew with driving and our field vehicle until an incident a few years back. Two undergraduates who worked for me and I were in the car. One of the undergraduates was driving, and as he was pulling out from a field site, he took a weird angle going up a short hill (this was not on a paved road) and our vehicle rolled over. Fortunately, no one was injured and we were traveling so slowly (since we had just started the vehicle) that the car was not totaled. However, it was a deeply humbling and frankly terrifying experience for everyone involved.

Scientist by Nature

Some jobs are just jobs.  They don’t define you in any meaningful way.  When I worked various jobs at restaurants or clothing stores in college, I didn’t feel that it was part of who I was.  I didn’t identify wholeheartedly with being a waitress or a cashier.

Some jobs are more than that; it isn’t just what you do, it reflects part of who you are.  “Scientist” falls into this category.  Science isn’t just what you do when you are at work.  For many scientists, it becomes part or our identity, and our choice of becoming a scientist reflects something about our way of perceiving the world around us.  As children, we were the ones driven by curiosity to tinker, experiment, and try to solve all of the riddles we saw around us.

I took my scientist’s perception of the world for granted throughout my undergraduate and graduate education, having been surrounded primarily by other scientific thinkers.  I didn’t recognize in myself anything unique, because I was only around other people who viewed the world as I did, thinking critically and analytically about pretty much everything.

After graduate school, I followed my husband to a small town lacking a scientific community.  It was then that I began to notice that I, not so much disagreed with people, but that I went about acquiring and filtering information in a way unlike many others.  Conversations about things relating to science and the environment didn’t proceed the way they had with my peers in academia.  Finally it hit me – oh, it’s because I am a scientist!