A new baby! And other lab musings...

Congrats to Post-doc Friend on the birth of a baby girl!  This is an especially sweet occasion because of previous fertility issues and miscarriages.  It feels really good to see her so happy after all that she’s been through over the past year or so.  Hopefully we’ll get to see the little one today!  (I tried to knit some booties, but didn’t check my gauge, so I ended up with not so cute booties that would fit Bigfoot Baby.  Oh well.)

In other news, I’m sitting here collecting my first crappy data this week.  I had been on a roll since late last week, generating awesome data out the wazoo.  Of course, we all knew it would end.  Life’s just like that. 

I finally got around to reviewing Post-doc guy’s paper last night.  It sucks.  Okay, that’s not entirely true.  The data is interesting.  Let’s just say that brevity and organization are not his strengths.  Crazy man wants to submit it to a fairly high tier journal, but I don’t think that’s going to fly.  I understand why he thinks it’s so interesting and splashy enough to be accepted there.  On the other hand, it’s directly related to my favorite project and I was bored to tears.  If I had been reading the paper after it’s published, it would be one of those where I make it through a paragraph or so of the intro and then resort to just looking at the figures and legends.  I guess you could say the text didn’t add much.  And that’s not good. 

Now back to the data collection already in progress.

Can I do this?

I had a really crummy week last week.  One of those I-hate-science-why-would-anyone-do-this-to-themselves-I’m-never-getting-out-of-bed-again kind of weeks.  But TM was awesome and perked me right up on Friday night just being awesome like he is.  So this week I’m trying to have a more positive attitude.  I’m trying to believe that I can actually do this, that I’m actually good at this, that I am a competent, even capable scientist.

And then there were babies.  My extended family added two new baby boys to their ranks on Saturday.  Babies always kind of shake me up because I want one so bad, but at the same time I know that now is not the time.  We are totally not ready to go there on so many levels, but I still have a hard time being patient, especially when there’s a fresh one (or two) around. 

And so the combination of those two things, a crappy week and two new babies, got me to thinking about women in science.  (Like that’s something new.  Thinking about women in science and gender roles and all of that has taken me over lately.  Hijacked my brain.)  It dawned on me over the weekend that there are no tenured female faculty members in my graduate program or my department that have children.  None.  I have been at this university for almost 7 years now and I can think of a grand total of two tenured mothers.  Two.  I didn’t go looking for more…it’s not like number of kids is right there under someone’s directory listing.  But still!  Even if I include non-tenured faculty, I can only come up with one more.  (Of course, it goes without saying that there are almost endless numbers of male faculty members that are tenured and have children.)

The thing is, though, I’m not bitter about all of that.  I’m not angry about it.  Well, not right now.  I’m not upset about it.  The thing that really bothers me is that I have no good female scientist role models.  I want to be an academic scientist.  I also very much want to have a family.  Is that possible?  When I’m down like I was last week, I look at this whole situation and I think, “If there are this few women that are successful academic scientists and mothers, why should I think I can do this?  What makes me different than all the other women that have tried before me?”  Am I really arrogant enough to believe that I can be different?  Do I have any reason to believe that I can not fail?  How can I believe in myself in the face of all that? 

But I’m trying to have a good attitude.  Trying to just keep pressing on maybe not think about it too much.