A Cat Nap

Well, it’s summertime, and somehow it seems that for me summer and home organization/improvement seem to go together.

Last year, I renovated the bedroom - painting the walls a lavish, dark red, and adding real bed and dresser furniture, care of my lovely momma. There are still a few upgrades I want to add to the bedroom - a new mattress, for one, a few more bins/baskets for some excess clothes we tend to keep out, and some wall art. I dream of getting this nice space-saving sewing workstation, too. Admittedly, it’s not the same color as our current bedroom furniture, but it folds up small (essential in a NYC apartment), and it’s on wheels, so I can easily wheel it out to the living room if the hubby is sleeping. Maybe I can get it later this year for my birthday (I’ll be 25!) or our 2 year anniversary.

This year, Husband and I are both spending lots and lots of time at home. He’s been working from home for a year and a half now, and now it looks like I’ll be joining him. I work from home many hours a week on T! stuff, and I also do data analysis for the lab from here too. If I start pursuing freelance science writing, I’ll be doing that from home as well.  This also means we use the kitchen more since I’m home more to cook and prep food. (Husband typically feeds himself, but rarely chooses to cook anything elaborate.) We’ve accumulated a fair number of things that no longer fit on our various media shelves, and we also have new business related things that we need to store. So I’ve been thinking mostly about how I can upgrade the living room and the kitchen.  Finally, I’ve also just been thinking about what our living patterns have evolved into and how we could make more efficient and fun use of our living space.

So today I made up an organizing list. I started by writing out everything I could think of that needs a place to store. I categorized them by room, including closets as rooms. Then I thought about what we actually use daily, monthly, or only seasonally, and planned the storage location accordingly - making the things we use most often the most easily accessible. Next, I considered what would be the best storage solution for each item - drawers, boxes, bins, or shelves. I chose drawers or open-lidded boxes or bins for things we use often, and boxes and shelves for everything else. Things used only seasonally will be stored in lidded boxes on high shelves, in closets and out of the way.

I’ve picked out items and made a plan for everything. Now to buy the storage furniture and containers - a little at a time. Even though I can’t buy it all right now, I enjoy planning and organizing so much that I don’t care. I ordered a little bit of it, some really cheap organizers from Amazon.com, and I’m on my way to more efficient living…

So I’ve been doing some research lately, for myself. Personal research. The type where you have no doubt that it’s useful and of what it’s applications are. The topic? What it’s like to leave academia, in particular to leave science academia. Possibly, what it’s like to leave science research. I’m looking for information on people who have made that choice, how they made it, and if they’re now happy with it. Below I’ve linked to some articles I’ve found, and I’ve tried to parse them all by general area. I hope that some of my readers may find this information useful as well! Also, if my lovely readers have any tips for resources, I’d be appreciative!

Research and teaching careers at small liberal arts colleges still appeal to me, I think:
There is a great brand new CHE article: A Research Career at a Liberal-Arts College:

The department offered me a competitive salary and a teaching load of two courses a semester, comparable to what I would expect at a major research university, as well as a generous pot of start-up money and the promise of a one-year sabbatical after my third year on the tenure track.
…
Ultimately I did get the chance to leave for the supposed promised land of a Research I university. Instead I stayed. I stayed because I realized that most of the advice I had been given as a graduate student was just plain wrong. I believe the general disdain for the liberal-arts college that I heard back in 2001 is alive and well today, preventing aspiring researchers from even considering positions at such institutions.
…
In my own case, as a result of a low teaching load, generous internal grants, and two years of junior leave to take advantage of external fellowships, I was able to do the research and writing for a second book and several peer-reviewed journal articles. I successfully came up for tenure in my sixth year.
…
But the truth is, some of those universities offer comparatively lower salaries, less generous leave policies, fewer internal resources, more service commitments, larger bureaucracies, and, when graduate advising is considered, higher teaching and mentoring commitments. In exchange for those considerably poorer labor conditions, many universities proffer the cachet of being at a Research I, the highest totem on the status pole of academe.
…
But for serious scholars committed to living in the world of ideas, the ability to carve out of one’s professional obligations enough time for reading, thinking, and writing should be the true measure of whether an institution is conducive to research — and not simply whether it is called a “research” institution.

But what are my chances of finding a job like hers?

The plausible career paths look less and less appealing the more I look into them, and I think the chance of securing one of the few jobs I’m interested in may be too low to justify the time put in towards reaching it. From CHE’s September 2007 article, The Real Science Crisis: Bleak Prospects for Young Researchers (tagline: tight budgets, scarce jobs, and stalled reforms push students away from scientific careers):

But for many of today’s graduate students, the future could not look much bleaker.

They see long periods of training, a shortage of academic jobs, and intense competition for research grants looming ahead of them. “They get a sense that this is a really frustrating career path,” says Thomas R. Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health.

In particular, I find the following excerpt of the article speaks to me.

Melinda Maris also sees hints of that dark future at the Johns Hopkins University. Ms. Maris, assistant director of the office of preprofessional programs and advising, says the brightest undergrads often work in labs where they can spot the warning signs: Professors can’t get grants, and postdocs can’t get tenure-track jobs.

Such undergraduates, she says, “are really weighing their professional options and realize that they’re not going to be in a strong financial position until really their mid-30s.” In particular, those dim prospects drive away Americans with fewer financial resources, including many minority students.

Although I’ve been in this lab since my undergrad years, I didn’t know all the details of what was going on around me back then. So I didn’t realize that it was very hard to get grants and to find jobs. It’s the second paragraph that weighs strongly in my mind. If I stick it out long enough to actually get myself a tenure-track job somewhere, I’ll be in my 30’s by the time I reach a strong financial position. Even then, how much would I make at a small liberal arts college? The average female assistant professor at Sarah Lawrence is $61,700. Well if you’re trying to raise a family on that in NYC, you’re gonna want your spouse to contribute too.

I’m so tired of living the way we do, and I know it will get better soon if Husband’s investors come through (which it looks like they will), but still it’s been so hard and it will take us a while to dig out of the debt and I just…need to look into if it’s worth it, to keep doing this grad school thing for such cheap pay. I could make more money private tutoring and teaching ice skating!

I think maybe I’ve been pursuing this career as a science professor because it seems so noble and grand, but I’m really scared that it won’t be attainable without making concessions I’m not willing to make.

Once you narrow it down to the places I think Husband and I are willing to live, the number of schools and departments where a job such as I would want might exist could probably be counted easily. Maybe even on both hands. If there are 20 such institutions in places I’d like to live…well that might be the most I could get. And then, the chances that they’ll be hiring anyone, and that I can convince them to hire ME, out of the huge numbers of candidates they’ll likely have….well, the odds seems low, don’t they?

I’m thinking of finding out information directly from and about those actual places in order to further assess what the chances are. I worry that they aren’t good enough to go through another 3 years of grad school just for that chance.

Which brings me to looking at what else I might do with my PhD, or, if I’d rather just go do something else now, with my MS in hand. So the next question is:

What are the other things I’d like to do, and do they require a PhD?

I’ve been thinking a lot about what I love most about what I do these days, and far and away the first thing is mentoring undergraduates. Then, I like teaching interested students. I like science research, but…really just parts of it. I like the benchwork but not so much the data analysis. I can write well, but writing technical science papers bores me. I can’t imagine I’d like writing grant applications very much, and it seems like that takes up an enormous amount of the research time new professors have.

And when I think of what I like to teach, I can’t help but answer that it is not this material that I’ve been studying for the quals, but rather high school and first year undergraduate level science of a sort similar to what I do now. (Note that I could, however, get my PhD in the discipline I’m in now and then teach in that related discipline). I don’t like preparing lectures, writing or grading tests or homework problems, or dealing with students who only care about getting A’s. Although I might be able to mentor more and create more intimate relationships with my students at a small college, I would still have to do large amounts of the parts of teaching that I don’t like. And there are jobs that are more just mentoring and less teaching, or where I don’t have to do the boring parts. For example, one-on-one tutoring of high school and college students.

Another thing I love to do is to manage long-term projects and teams that work on those projects. I’m good at it, and that’s a valuable skill. I also like to research a topic and to organize the information in an easy to understand way, which is also a valuable skill.

Articles recounting experiences of leaving academia and academic science:

I have recently discovered the ongoing saga of Micella Phoenix DeWhyse, who has been writing updates on grad school and then post-doc life for Science magazine since 2002. You can see an index of all of the chapters here. Most recently, she is very excited to have found a job outside of academic science. She tells us about it in her latest installment, Educated Woman, Postdoc Edition, Chapter 15: This Strange, Funny Feeling:

At long last, it has finally happened. I have been blessed with a job opportunity (which I have accepted), and I am damn happy about it. For a while there (as many of you could see; it was raw and in the open), I had no confidence, little hope, lots of numbness, rage, angst, and dread that my life would suck forever. I know, it sounds like hyperbole or extreme neurosis, but from the e-mail I get I know I’m not alone. Anyway, now that the guilt about leaving academic-type science has lifted and I have a new and shiny place to go (that I actually want to go to, instead of just fleeing from the current place), I feel like a new human being.

Also, this article recently ran in CHE about someone who left academia many years ago for his family’s business.  This was interesting to me as an example of how the skills I’ve learned are useful even if I, say, leave science research altogether.

For the immediate future, I will stick it out. Let some time pass, try to get back into research, and just look around and analyze my options as the summer begins. Hopefully Husband will bring in some more cash, and I’ll get my summer stipend payment, and we’ll be a little more comfortable. The quals will be further behind me and this experience of grad school itself won’t seem so raw, and with distance, all things are clearer. But the information gathering has begun, and the question is being analyzed.

There are so many museums in NYC that it’s hard to know about all of them, or even many of them.  I’ve been living here for over 5 years now, and I still learn of new ones I hadn’t heard of.  Today, I was browsing different sites with quilting ideas (I’ve been LOVING my sewing machine) and one of the pages mentioned the American Craft Museum.  It sounds really neat - apparently there are quilts on display, and I’m sure other crafts that I’d enjoy.  I must go!

Upon further inspection, it appears that the American Craft Museum is now a part of the Museum of Art & Design, which I have heard of.  Still, there are so many unique museums here, it’s really neat!  I’ll have to go to this one on a Thursday evening, which is their “pay what you want”  night.

A friend of mine was recently talking about how she splits up various household chores with her husband, and so I’ve been thinking about it myself. I thought I’d share it here because it’s interesting to me how different things work for different people. To give you an idea of how long we’ve been working on our own balance of chores: Husband and I have been living together for 3.5 years but have only had our own apartment and the chores that go with that for 2 and a half years. And we’ve been married for a year and change :-D.

For Husband and I, it’s always a bit hard to tell if we’re splitting work equally, because we both tend to consider not only effort but pleasure or nuisance level as well, and our individual perceptions of that are not straightforward. So instead of just saying “You spend x hours and I spend y hours and they’re even (or not)” we look at how much we like or dislike those hours.

With cleaning, this has led to an imbalance in hours spent because Husband has a much lower cleanliness threshold than I do. It’s hard to make him clean a room constantly and in a timely manner when I can tell the disorderliness doesn’t disturb him at all. So I settle for asking him to help clean up sometimes, when it reaches a level that I dislike, and he doesn’t mind, although sometimes he’ll ask to do it later in the day. It’s like that for lots of chores - I can get him to split cleaning the dishes (no dishwasher) with me, but it requires that I not mind them sitting there for up to a day. Sometimes, I just feel like I don’t mind it as much - I don’t always see it as a nuisance (sometimes I even find it a bit relaxing), so why should I make him do it when it’s clear he really dislikes it? So I guess we maybe split the dishes like 10% him 90% me in the long run, unless I’m going through a stressful time and ask him to help with it more.

However, he does help out with things that he doesn’t enjoy doing. We don’t have laundry in our building so we drop it off a few blocks away and pick it up the next day or two. We agree for him to do it because neither of us likes it but it requires lugging a heavy cart up two flights of stairs on the way back.  He always makes the phone calls (deliveries, bill pay issues, troubleshooting, etc) and takes the trash out (down the stairs and around the building into the alley…fun).

He never cooks dinner for us both (maybe once a year he’ll make a tortilla pizza that he gets into), but I don’t cook when I don’t want to. He either makes himself something simple (his menu options are usually: ravioli; beans, cheese, tortillas; cereal and milk) or orders food. He’s a creature of habit so this is good enough for him. He never asks me what’s for dinner, and genuinely treats it as a special thing when I do make dinner, even when I do it as often as 2 or 3 times a week. But the rest of the time we just take care of ourselves for food. Sometimes if he wants something and I only sort of want it, I’ll agree to make it if he keeps me company in the kitchen, but he doesn’t help cook. We just talk while I do the work.

So our cake-cutting algorithm has led us to this, for most household chores: It likely won’t get done if I don’t ask for it to be done. Sometimes it’s done better and faster if I do it myself (cleaning bathroom, floors, dishes; cooking). But, he always acknowledges the work that I do, and would never, ever ask me to do any of it because he wanted it done. He says thanks when I do different things around the house, and I make sure to do the same for him, even when they’re small things. (i.e. Thanks sweetie for remembering to refill the ice cube trays!) This definitely helps us to avoid feeling unappreciated.

My point is, if you just look at what he does and what I do with regards to cooking and cleaning, it would seem uneven. But, we talk about it often enough, and he takes on some chores I don’t enjoy and runs various errands for us both. We’ve tried out arrangements where he did higher amounts of housework, but I was constantly being the household manager and it just didn’t feel right to me because it was adding stress. He always appreciates when I do do things and never minds or asks about them when I don’t do them, so up to now, this has worked for me.

A big thing is we don’t have kids yet, so who knows what will happen then?!

What is your household chore split up like, or if you live alone, what would you think is acceptable?

We just learned that one of our deliveries was supposedly delivered on Thursday.  That means they left it outside our door again.  And this time, it had fun things in it, so it’s gone.  Woohoo!

There is now a sign on the outside of our apartment building bearing the symbol of the NYC Police Dept, with a clip-art picture of a cat burglar, warning us that there have been numerous apartment break-ins recently in the area and that tenants should be extra careful and reported any suspicious activity to 911.  We found this sign the day after one of our packages which had been left outside our apartment door (which they are NOT supposed to do) was opened when I found it.  Good thing it happened to be the package with the $10 cake caddy instead of the much more exciting video games that we are expecting to be delivered.  This was not the first time a package had merely been left on our doorstep - even those that require a signature are sometimes merely left outside our door or with a random neighbor whom we’ve never met.  But this was the first time that our suspicion, that this wasn’t safe here, was confirmed.  And then the very next day I see the sign on the building’s door. Lovely.  Perhaps we’d better start looking for some renter’s insurance, so at least we’ll be insured against theft.

Do you think my cat understood when she meowed at me and I told her “I’m sorry, Fluffy, but we only have enough wet food for one can a day and I gave you your can this morning”?

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When I’m feeling alone about my work-life balance concerns, in particular my strong strong STRONG desire to become a mom and how I might manage to still become a scientist, I find my blogosphere friends to be so comforting. In particular, I love to read the archives of PhD Mom, because she had her first children in grad school and her husband, like mine, is in computers, and I like to read about how that worked out for her. Thanks PhD mom, for having written so many great and honest posts that help me feel less alone!

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My husband rocks. I had already talked to him earlier about how I was feeling down, but now I talked to him again for a bit more, and he’s just so supportive, I couldn’t ask for anything more. We talked about the different options I have (I’ll be getting my master’s in January), and basically about how it’s up to me what I want to do. If I want to drop out of school, get some other sort of job for a while, and work on having the baby as soon as we are healthy enough, fine. If I want to stick it out until I get my PhD, that’s fine too. If I want to try and have a baby before finishing the PhD but stay in the program, fine, but I just need to make sure that I’m not putting more on my plate than I can realistically handle and setting myself up for a major meltdown. If I want to stay at home with the baby after I graduate and take time off from the work force, we’ll work it out. If I want to find a part-time job, we’ll work that out. And if I want to stay in academia full-time and continue to pursue a professorship, he’ll be there for me as well, my teammate and coach and best supporter. But it’s up to me, and I need to do what makes me happy, and that’s what he thinks too. And it’s so great, to know that I have this wonderful partner who will do whatever he can to help me achieve my dreams and my happiness, while I do the same for him. I love you, Husband.

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On this week of last year, I had just gotten over the scariest incident of my life as of yet - that in which my fiance didn’t return home from his bachelor party. It was 9 or 10 am on Saturday, and finally I gave in to my inner desire to stay calm and hope he’d call me back, and decided to call his friend. “Friend, is Husband crashed there with you?” “Flicka, is this a joke?” “No, Friend, he’s not home yet” “Oh god. I put him on the subway to go home 4 hours ago. Oh my god, flicka, where is he?” …silence, as I begin dry-wretching.

A long, long 45-60ish minutes later,

• after a visit from some cops who think I’m some dumb wifey whose husband-to-be got cold feet,
• and after our male friend took them in the hallway to explain that yes, even he who had been at the bachelor party with the husband-to-be is worried about him and that he wouldn’t have just run away,
• and after those same cops, incidentally, while they were here, found some smoked…ahem, illegal substances… and then hid it in the corner for me, telling me I shouldn’t leave that stuff out when I invite cops over, (Yes, Officer, I’m so very sorry, Officer, I was just so stressed out about my fiance who disappeared, very drunk and alone, in New York City during the night that I didn’t think to hide that, I’m so sorry, Officer),
• and after yet another winning moment wherein we think we’ve found him at a hospital but it turns out it’s his father (who shares his name) who’s in their records,

finally, finally, my husband-to-be arrived home. With a bag. In which was a toasted bagel. Yes, toasted. Because it hadn’t occured to him that me and his friends were all freaking out, and he thought, mmmm, yes, please do take the time to TOAST that bagel for me. As it turns out, and as we had suspected after many hysterical moments, he had fallen asleep on the subway. On the wrong subway, as he was too drunk to notice that the express was running local. And he had been robbed, of his cell phone and whatever money he had (he got the bagel with a few quarters from his back pocket), so he couldn’t call when he woke up, 3 hours after boarding the train, about an hour and a half from our home and on the wrong subway line.

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Also, at this time in general of last year, I was in twice as many classes as now, but doing less research, studying for midterms, managing to turn in homework sets, and putting the finishing touches on a very do-it-yourself wedding. Our anniversary is coming up this Sunday. Imagine, a whole. year. of marriage. Wow.

The New York Times has a feature on the web today, in which they interviewed numerous 17-year-olds to see what their lives are like. It doesn’t take long to check out as each of the teenagers only has a few paragraphs, but I think it’s an excellent display of the diversity of life in New York City. To me, it’s when one looks at this, at these teenagers and how incredibly different their lives and future prospects are even at the young age of 17, that one should understand that we must do all we can to fight for equality and equal opportunity. The difference between the oral histories is vast, and really gives one a sense of the great range of poverty and wealth that one can find in this one city, in New York City.

Take, for example, the oral history of Jason Monegro, a hard working kid from the west Bronx who says:

Work at the time was a duty. I had to work, because if I didn’t, there wouldn’t be food on the plate.

His story reminds me of some of the members of my husband’s family, who are hard-working Latinos who struggle to pay the bills and provide food and shelter for their family.

On the other side, there is the story of Maria D’Onofrio, who lives on Staten Island where life is more like upper middle class suburbia than one might expect in New York City. In her oral history, she talks of her Sweet 16 birthday party:

You don’t have to be popular to have a Sweet 16. Most people at my school have them, but not everyone has big ones. It depends on the person. Mine was at the Old Bermuda Inn. The place was booked over a year in advance. There were, like, 150, 160 people — a lot of family there that I didn’t even know.

Then there is the story of a girl, Zy-Tasia Gaines, from Queens who is a lesbian, and what life is like for her living in New York City.  When I was in high school, I participated in the Gay-Straight Alliance, and we tried to help create an accepting atmosphere for people of every sexual orientation.  As I read her story, I can’t help but feel that she’s lucky to live here in NYC, where there is such a thriving LGBT community available for her to come into her own in, and yet still I’m struck by the crazy amount of prejudice that still exists today over homosexuality.   She shares:

A lot of my friends stopped talking to me, and a lot of them still don’t talk to me. My girlfriend in Chicago, I’m her first girlfriend. So when we came out in school, as a couple, everybody said: “See what you did to her? Now you’re going to bring two people down to hell.” I’m like, “O.K.” And her parents really made me feel bad. They were like: “You’re ruining our family. She was fine before she met you.”

I think NYC really is an amazing city, and I’m glad so many different types of people call it home.  I only wish people all across America could be so used to interacting daily with people of all these different types - from different socioeconomic strata, from different countries, from different family backgrounds.  People need to accept other people as they are, and realize that many of the things that make us who we are are things that are out of our own control anyways; what matters is how we deal with them.  So many Americans deal with difference by thinking it’s the other person’s fault that they are different, and it’s a shame.

So lately I’ve really been wanting a baby.  I’ve written about this before; it’s been particularly strong this month.  I think one reason might be because they refilled my birth control prescription with a different generic brand, and even though it’s supposed to all be the same, they do have different effects sometimes.  I’ve been having various unwell feelings all month (like nausea, sweating, and headaches) that can be explained by hormonal changes, so I suspect that this brand is affecting me.

In addition to the feeling that hormones are really affecting my body, a new couple-friend whom I met last spring and kept in touch with all summer is having a baby.  Like right now, as we speak.   I visited their apartment earlier this week, and when I walked into the bedroom and saw the empty crib and the baby swing and other stuff all ready for the baby’s arrival, I felt so emotional that tears came to my eyes.  Lately I think about what a wonderful father Husband will be and what a wonderful mommy I will be, and I just can’t wait to bring a little being into the world, our little being.

We are, of course, far from being able to afford it right now, as we are in more debt than just credit-card at the moment.  I get a stipend payment in September, and I shall be using it to pay overdue rent and rent for the whole semester too, so that will eat up most of the check.  Still, as depressing as it is to barely see the money, it’s good that it is enough to pay both our back rent and our rent through December, so we will feel much better once that is taken care of.  Living in NYC and a fairly minimal life, the rent is by far our largest expense.  All week I have been visiting and talking to new students who have just moved into apartments through the campus housing office, and although their apartments are cheap for the neighborhood, I can’t help but feel that since we struggle to pay our rent out here in our burrough of the city, we just couldn’t have afforded a one bedroom on campus.  Our rent is only 2/3rd that of the average rent for a one bedroom through campus housing, which in itself is probably only 3/4 of the rent of a one bedroom in the neighborhood that isn’t through campus housing.  Ah, to live in NYC.

Well, the bedroom is almost finished painting. Yesterday I painted a lot - I finished the trim, but ran out of trim paint for the last 3 cubic feet on the door. Then I got to painting the walls - 1/4 of them were still white, the rest needed more coats of paint. So now half the room is completely done, with 3 coats of the paint. We used Raspberry Truffle from Benjamin Moore. I actually used the new Aura paint, but that was because when I first went in, the salesperson told me that it was so good I didn’t need primer and I only needed one coat. He also sold me only one gallon even though I was sure I’d need more, because he said it goes on the walls so thin. I was skeptical, but he assured me, and so I took it and left. Well, 2 more gallons later and I’m out of paint and need more again. Moral of that story? Don’t believe salespeople when they make outrageous claims about how good the new paint is. One thin coat? Hah. Took 3 coats on each wall, and as I’m about out of paint again and not finished, in the end it’ll be about 3.5 gallons of paint for the whole room. My original calculations were that I’d need 3 gallons of paint plus tinted primer, so I guess in amount this isn’t that different, but the Aura is expensive and it’s been annoying that they keep telling me “No, you’ll only need this one gallon, more than that would be overkill” and then I have to make another trip to the store to get more paint, and if I had bought it all at once, it would have been mixed all into one container to ensure that the paint color exactly matches for the whole thing.

Here’s a picture of a corner that is finished, with part of the door in the picture, which is just about finished:

One thing to note, however, is that the amount of light in the picture is not the same as is naturally in the room; I had the lights on AND the flash, so the paint looks brighter than it actually appears in the normal lighting in the room. Still, you can see the walls are nice and even now. Once the furniture and other decorations are added, I’m pretty sure it will look awesome! (I was going to say it’ll be the best room in the apartment, but as this is a 1-bedroom, that’s not saying much.)