The Voice of Attenborough

Discovery today: reading dry, jargon-filled environmental assessment reports can be made infinitely more enjoyable if you imagine that your reading voice is that of Sir David Attenborough. And just because, here's a clip of Attenborough himself trying to scare a sloth:

Realizing You and Science Need to See Other People

Remember when you were young and you took a book out of the library that was all about SHARKS and you became completely enthralled by nature and you wanted to know MORE and it made you really excited? You had a favourite shark (Great White. Obvs.), you learned some of the species names (total nerd in the making), and you thought that working with Sharks, with nature, as a SCIENTIST would be the coolest ever. I miss that feeling, you guys.  

The hard truth: Science and I have grown apart as of late. As fellow scientists, I know that might be difficult for you guys to hear, but it’s something that’s been gradually eating away at me for a while (not unlike a shark…  you know, one of those gradual-eating sharks). At first I was very hesitant about posting this because I didn’t want you guys to think I was abandoning Science like a dead-beat dad, or badmouthing her behind her back, or was ungrateful for the paid Science-y position I find myself in today. But then I realized you guys don’t think like that. Duh. 

Flashback montage: Back in the day I was interested in a lot of topics at school (see nerd reference above) – not just Biology and the Sciences, but also Art, English, Film/Communication, and Maths, among others. I was also never one of those people who’ve known exactly what they’ve wanted to do since birth (seriously, how annoying are those people). Instead, I vividly remember thinking that the perfect career wouldn’t be one career, but a career mosaic where each day of the week I’d have a different career: Monday I would be a Veterinarian, Tuesday I would be an Architect, Wednesday I would be a Writer, etc. To be honest, I still think like that. So when the time came to choose a career path in high school, I had a lot of options because I liked so many different things. Decisiveness was never my strong suit, and still isn’t. I can’t say that Science was my first love (sorry, Science), but I decided to pursue it because I was very interested in it, I was good at it, and (here’s the kicker) it seemed more stable/predictable/within-my-comfort-zone than a creative career path.  

My love affair with Science lasted throughout undergrad and grad school, but once I defended my thesis, Science and I went through a rocky period otherwise known as “burn-out”. We sorted out our differences and I pursued Science-y jobs, but it was clear that our honeymoon phase was over and I started to develop a wandering eye. Now here I am in a Science-y job and my heart just isn’t in it. I thought this job would patch things up for us, but that hasn’t been the case. Maybe I just need to find something Science-y that is also creative (does Science have a good-looking sister or friend?), or maybe it’s time I start the transition to a Tuesday career. What do you think guys? Aren’t sharks awesome?

Won't somebody please think of the bees?

I have an irrational fear of yellow/black things that fly. Big hairy spiders? NO PROBLEM, I will catch them and shoe them out the door.

          

http://www.ablepestmanagement.net/learning-center/wolf-spider

Kingston ghetto bugs that used to hang out under pillows that were haphazardly thrown on the bed (whilst making said bed) only to rush under my covers. NBD, I will smush them, and send them back from whenst they came.

                                      

But wasps? Hornets? Bees? I turn into a pathetic creature that whimpers and points and makes my 2 year old dog chase them out of the house.

                                    

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Apis_mellifera_flying.jpg

The things is I LOVE honey. I have about 5 variety's in my pantry at present. Cranberry, wildflower, lemon, Manitoba, Chilliwack, you name it I probably have tried it. I I like the concept of honey bees, and I am really worried about them. The honey bees are dying. I have heard it be attributed to a number of different things: temperature changes, increased use of herbicides, nice green lawns = no flowers, and/or a virus or some other pathogen. No matter what the reason(s) they honeybee industry is collapsing, and people are starting to have to fee them sugar syrup in order to produce the same volume of honey.

The most recent problem? Bees in France are using M&M sugar coating byproducts as a sugar source (rather than flower nectar) and consequently, the honey is turning blue or green (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19835847). 

                                 

http://tribune.com.pk/story/446842/bees-have-a-taste-for-mms-candy-beekeepers-discover/

Won't somebody PLEASE think of the bees?

Two of my all-time favourite things (Attenborough and Armstrong) combined at last!

Click and Drag

Just a very quick share,

Yesterdays XKCD comic blew my mind. Below is the link and a single image from about 40 minutes of clicking and dragging.

http://xkcd.com/1110/

Fake it ‘til you make it

I think the comment at the end of Ryan’s post makes my topic all the more relevant. Ever heard of imposter syndrome? Well you’ve got it. So too do I, and 90% of graduate students. Imposter syndrome is where competent people find it difficult or impossible to internalize their accomplishments. They constantly dismiss their success calling it luck, a mistake, good timing, or a deception (smoke and mirrors). People find it impossible to believe they are actually good at what they do, and remain convinced that they are frauds and do not deserve their success.

Imposter syndrome was originall coined in 1978 by Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes after they realized not only had they experienced imposter syndrome, but so did hundreds of other students.

I experienced imposter syndrome feelings in graduate school. I would take an important examination and be very afraid that I had failed. I remembered all I did not know rather than what I did. My friends began to be sick of my worrying, so I kept my doubts more to myself. I thought my fears were due to my educational background. When I began to teach at a prominent liberal arts college with an excellent academic reputation, I heard similar fears from students who had come for counseling. They had excellent standardized test scores grades and recommendations. One of them said, “I feel like an impostor here with all these really bright people.”

Impostor syndrome was once thought to be common in carrier driven women, but has since been shown to occur in men, and most often in graduate students.  

For the first 3.5 years of my PhD I was convinced I didn’t belong. I felt like I was sailing on other people’s coat tails. HOW COULD I COME SO FAR AND NO ONE NOTICE I KNEW NOTHING ABOUT MICROBIOLOGY, FORESTRY, OR SOIL (FYI I am soil microbial biologist in a forestry department). Am I getting over it? Slowly. Either that or all I care about is graduating and getting the hell out of dodge.

I wonder if it has anything to do with the lack of praise or acknowledgment as we grow up. In Elementary school and high school we get gold stars, A’s and “Nice job” written in the top right hand corner of a paper. These days I rarely get told I have done a good job (I can count on one hand), no one seems gets told. Everyone is smart, hardworking and doing interesting things, and maybe it is awkward to go around and tell everybody they are doing a good job.

That being said, some people are not good at what they do, some people are all smoke and mirrors (Oh god, am I one of them? Guys, I think I might be a smoky mirror, a competent graduate student in disguise).  

The University of Waterloo addresses the Imposter syndrome on their Center for Teaching Excellence website: http://cte.uwaterloo.ca/teaching_resources/tips/imposter_phenomenon_and_grad_students.html

They suggest a number of good strategies for managing imposter syndrome. Below I have reiterated a few:

 

Strategy	Description
Break the silence	Speak out about your feelings. Knowing there is a name for these feelings and that other people suffer from them can be very reassuring.
Separate feelings from fact	Everyone feels stupid from time to time. Just because you feel it doesn’t mean you are.
Develop a new script	Rewrite your mental script from “I am an impostor” to “I may not know all the answers but I am smart enough to figure it out.”
Reward yourself	Learn to pat yourself on the back when you deserve it. Don’t hide from validation!
Fake it ‘til you make it	Take a chance and “wing it;” this is not a sign of ineptness, but rather a sign that you are intelligent and able to rise to a challenge.

 

The three I like the best are 1) just because you feel stupid doesn’t mean you are, 2) learn to pat yourself on the back (someone else probably won’t do it for you) and 3) fake it ‘til you make it.

I think part of being a good scientist is being aware of how much you know, and still pushing ideas past those limits. Most ideas are bad, but once in awhile you’ll hit on something good.  

What makes a great scientist?

I’ve been thinking recently as to what makes a great scientist. Of course, I’ve been thinking of this instead of concentrating on my own work, which is Lesson #1 of how to be a good scientist: Stay Focused.

But for reals, what is the metric that you use to judge a researcher that you truly admire? Is it number of papers published? Number of grad students supervised? Or something else, something that you can’t quite attach a number to?

I was listening to a CBC program yesterday on Lord Selkirk (which, by-the-by is a pretty fascinating story) and heard a phrase describing him as having “a mind perched in the clouds, but feet firmly on ground”. Now, this is a somewhat common (and more-somewhat cheesy) phrase that I’ve encountered from time to time and never really gave it a second thought. For some reason, however, the program’s use of this phrase (basically a dreamer who was trying to ‘do good’ while remaining humble and realistic) struck me as the perfect recipe for what I consider a “Great Scientist”, someone who is innovative in their thinking and unselfish in their approach. A great mind that doesn’t get wrapped up in his/her own ego.

A think a good line of evidence for this idea is how one’s feelings towards an admired researcher can change when you discover that they are anything but the type of person I have described above. I have never encountered this problem, but do know several grad students who have met their ‘academic idol’ at a conference only to discover that he/she was a colossal jerk-wad (they describe the experience as akin to asking your favourite baseball player for his autograph, only to be shoved aside by his entourage).

On the opposite end of the spectrum, I recently had the chance to write a letter of support for a former mentor (someone I consider to be a ‘Great Scientist’) who had been nominated for a mentorship award. This was actually a really cathartic experience, as it gave me the chance to express my gratitude towards this mentor who had taken me (with my less-than-stellar transcript) under her wing and taught me how to be a researcher. What really struck me though was that every other letter of support from former students said the same thing, that this mentor valued hard work and pushed her students to be good researchers, but never at the expense of developing strong personal relationships and being compassionate human beings. Even after she had WON the award, this former mentor was quick to defer all praise, saying that she had always been fortunate to have amazing students apply to work in her lab, and that “you can’t make a silk purse out of a cow’s ear, you can only make a silk purse from silk”. Worse yet, she wasn’t just saying this, she truly meant it.

You guys, “I AM A COW’S EAR”. Some days I think I’ve only made it this far in science through a healthy dose of smoke and mirrors. Who knows how long this will last, but in a profession full of constant competition it’s still nice to see that people at the top can keep it real.