Making my own history.

When Alberto at Minority Postdoc emailed me to ask if I'd be interested in writing for the Pride edition of the Diversity in Science blog carnival, I initially said yes, that I'd be delighted to write a post. But then I had a great struggle finding topics to write about. Not because I don't have plenty of experience being a member under the LGBT umbrella, but rather because I can't think of ways that my bisexuality and my science have intersected or influenced the other. I have known that I wanted to be a scientist since middle school. I have also known (in some way, though maybe not always explicitly) that I was attracted to both of the normative genders* since middle school. Since then, however, it is hard for me to come up with examples where the two paths have crossed in any significant way.

On Twitter, Kevin Bonham posited that this may be a testament to the liberal nature of academia. I'm not entirely sure that that's true, although I don't deny that academia is one of the most accepting environments that I've ever been fortunate enough to belong to. I have always been "out", but often people will subconsciously normalize me as being "straight like them" because the subject of my sexuality never has the chance or reason to come up. The people in science that I have had the opportunity to come out to have been overwhelmingly accepting, though.

One of the suggestions for the carnival mentioned talking about mentors. When I was in high school, I knew a woman who was a wonderful mentor to me. Her profession was in the life sciences, and through my interactions with her I fostered my love for zoology. I had always been a science nerd as a kid, but it was the work that I did with her that really solidified my desire to be an animal biologist, even if I didn't realize it until halfway through college. This woman was absolutely stunning, smart, confident, liberal-minded, and a tad bit geeky. In short, she was everything I wanted to be at 17. I modeled myself after her in certain subconscious ways (I even picked up some of her vices in college), and there was a wonderful familiarity about her that I couldn't shake. I admit it; I probably had an enormous crush on her. She was married, but she really struck me as the kind of woman who couldn't have escaped college without having at least one lesbian fling. I think we tend to know our own kind, but she never came out and told me one way or another. My mind may be playing tricks on my memories, who knows, but I consider her my first and only queer science mentor. It almost doesn't even matter whether she was actually queer or not. Like it says at the end of the movie The Watermelon Woman, sometimes you have to create your own history.

Actually this brings me to a good point, though, because women like me are sometimes hard to pinpoint. They say that gay people are an invisible minority, and I think that as a bisexual woman in a committed relationship with a dude, I might be the invisible-est. Like I said above, we tend to be able to recognize our own kind, but sexuality is such a private matter that it very rarely comes up in conversations with the people we do science with. My graduate school buddies all know I'm bisexual, but none of the faculty do, nor do my students. I can't help wondering if maybe I was the unwitting queer science mentor to some other bisexual girl that I had in one of my classes. I'd like to think so. I certainly have gotten my share of strangely personal anonymous student evaluations. Who is to say that they were all from dudes?

The only place where I really feel like I have queer science peers is on the internet. A significant portion of the friends I've made through science blogging have come out to me as bisexual in private conversations, even ones I would never have guessed (married, babies, etc.). Part of me really wants to ask whether there's something inherent about science blogging that attracts the queer girl demographic, or if we are just representative of a large silent minority of queer lady scientists that nobody knows about because we keep our shit to ourselves.

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* A note on labels: Some people dislike the term "bisexual" because it imposes a false binary on gender, and prefer the term "pansexual" instead as a term that encompasses all gender permutations. I think this is a valid argument, but I still choose to use the term bisexual because my sexuality does fall fairly hard along the normative gender binary. I like feminine girls and masculine dudes, so classic gender roles are what I seek in my relationships. I do not deny the existence or validity of other gender permutations; they just don't get my rocks off.

The year to come

I have blogged before on the transition into grad school and my progress in the past year, but this month's Scientiae is about looking in the future to the year to come.

This coming year is going to be pretty wicked. By this time next year I will hopefully have become a published scientist, defended my thesis, gotten a job in government or industry (please oh please oh please), and moved into a much better apartment or townhouse.

The published scientist bit will hopefully be happening sooner rather than later. Next week I'll be sending the first draft of a manuscript to my advisor and collaborator, and if everything goes as planned, we'll be submitting it before the summer is over. I plan to aim high; Advisor thinks it might be PNAS-worthy, and I'm inclined to agree. They published a semi-related paper by my collaborator two years ago, so I'm hoping that lightning will strike twice. I'll start there and then work my way down, probably to the comparative zoology and physiology journals, if it isn't accepted.

I am pretty confident on the thesis front. As I mentioned before, my thesis is basically written. There's a small side project that my advisor wants me to do that I'll probably tack on to the thesis, but otherwise there isn't much left to do to it other than revise and refine. I don't think many master's degree students are this far along at the end of their first year (certainly not in my department, where it is pretty normal for an M.S. to take about 3 years), so I'm thankful for that. Defending the thesis, however, will be a whole different beast. I hate public speaking. I hate standing in front of a room of people and talking, especially when I have to memorize what I'm saying instead of just winging it. You'd think winging it would be more nerve wracking, but no. My 'teaching' requirement involves me hanging out in a room while students come in and ask me questions about the lecture material, so I've gotten good at explaining things on a whim, but I suck at prepared speeches. I even took a public speaking class! I guess for some people it just never gets easy.

I think I am most nervous about finding a job. I intend to graduate in the spring of next year, at which point I have to decide if I want to get a PhD or a job. Right now I am leaning towards job, and there are several big science companies in my area, but I don't really have any contacts. My high school friend's sister works at one, but as a chemist, not a biologist, so I don't know if she could help me. My grandpa knows the governor, but I doubt that would help me much in getting a government job. Honestly, I have no idea what to do at this point. I have a few more months to brainstorm before I need to get started searching, so I hope something comes to me.

I have been feeling like I've outgrown my current apartment, which I've been living in for four years, for a while now. I think moving into a new place will help me move past the college/grad school mentality and shift into adult mode. I also really, really want a dishwasher and clothes washer/dryer. I don't know how I've lived without them for so long. K and I have already agreed that if we're still together this time next year when our leases are up, we'll get a nice big apartment together. On top of wanting to be around him as much as possible, it's also financially sensible.

So, yes. Those are my goals for the coming year: publish, thesis, job, and apartment. In that order.

Culture shock and grad school identities

In my second post for Samia's zomg grad skool carnival!!!1, I'm going to attack a different question. Samia asks, "How has the academic culture affected your navigation through multiple identities? Was there a culture shock involved?"

When I first became aware of the grad student demographic in my department during my last year of undergrad, the atmosphere was a lot more diverse than it is now. There was a significant population of Latino students, but they have all graduated and moved on to other things. There was also a decent portion of east Asian students, and a few of them are still around, but most of them have graduated as well. There are no brown students, and only two black students. I've noticed a significant whitening of the faces around me in the last two years, which I can't really attribute to anything tangible but I doubt (I hope) that it is on purpose. The population is, as a whole, heteronormative, which isn't a huge problem really because I present as heterosexual right now. My labmates know my true orientation, but it doesn't really come up much. There are more girls in my department than you would see in the more physical sciences and even in a lot of biological science departments, but I think that's partially due to the nature of ecological science and how it seems to attract more girls than any other branch of biology. Everyone I've spoken to in my department is a bleeding heart liberal. I like it that way.

I think one of the things that stuck out to me almost immediately about grad school was that virtually every single female grad student that I met was in a long distance, long term relationship with boys they had to leave behind when they moved to BigStateU. About half of them were engaged to said boys, but I don't believe many of them were already married. This was awkward for me, as I was fresh out of a failed long term relationship with someone I thought (at one point) that I'd probably marry. I had also drastically fucked up my first date with K right before grad school started (funny story, our first date was the summer before grad school, but we didn't start seriously dating until November because I'm kind of an idiot-- maybe I'll tell that story someday), so I was pretty bummed out about relationships in general. Whenever we got together in casual groups, the conversation would generally drift over to complaining about two-body issues, etc, and I felt like I had no place there. I had the opposite problem. Then... of course... K and I actually got together and I became the girl everyone hated because her boyfriend lived just off campus. :)

Actually, that brings up another issue. I felt like I was a much better student when I was single than I am now. I spent long evenings at the office when I was single because, well, I didn't have anything to look forward to coming home to. I didn't mind staying late and working extra because I just didn't have any other priorities. Now that K and I are quasi-living together (he has an apartment but he doesn't spend much time there), I come home as soon as I can on most days, and I rarely work from home. It makes me feel guilty that I don't spend evenings working anymore, and it makes me feel like I'm falling behind everyone else. But if I spend too much time working in the evenings, I feel like I'm neglecting my relationship. All this stress and guilt lowers my libido, and then nobody is happy. I'm still trying to figure out how to reconcile this girlfriend-vs-student stuff, but I don't see any easy answers in the immediate future.

One major bit of culture shock that is probably unique to people who go to grad school at their undergrad institutions is the transition from taking undergrad classes to teaching undergrad classes. When I'm talking with my human physio students, and they tell me about something they learned in introductory bio last year, it amazes me when I think to myself, "Oh my god, I took that class SEVEN YEARS AGO." Everything those students are going through, I already went through at least five years ago. It is weird, because it helps me relate to them, but it also keeps me separate from them. I keep getting very jarring reminders that, culturally speaking, undergrad life and grad life are very different, even though it is all taking place on the same campus, in the same buildings.

Another way that grad school has changed my identity is the fact that it allows me to be financially self-sufficient. I am lucky enough to belong to a department that funds all of its students one way or another, so my tuition is paid for and I get a pretty decent stipend that allows me to pay all of my bills without any help from my parents, for the first time in my life. All through undergrad I relied on financial support from my parents, and I didn't mind it really, but it is a very cool feeling to be able to support yourself for the first time. It kinda makes you feel like you might actually be a real adult instead of just faking it for the cameras. I think this is perhaps one of the most important shifts in my identity due to grad school. After all the stupid, self-absorbed identity crises and existential crises I had in undergrad, I feel like I'm finally growing up.

What I wish I knew when I started grad school

For the zomg grad skool carnival!!!1 Samia wants to know:

What do you wish you'd known going in? What are you struggling with now? It'd be really awesome if people could address more than just the academic portion of graduate student life. How has the academic culture affected your navigation through multiple identities? Was there a culture shock involved? What kinds of psychological tolls has graduate school taken? What kinds of support systems have worked for you?

Here I'm going to attempt to answer her first question (and perhaps a few of the other ones, too) with a handy numbered list. I might address the other questions in a future post, but for now, here's my advice to new grad students.

1.) Go to every departmental social event. Every single one. This is important because you need to establish a support group with fellow graduate students both inside and outside your own lab. You also need to get to know the professors in your department apart from your own advisor, because you may be teaching for them some day, or you may need to decide who to include in your committee, or you may need to ask them to loan you a centrifuge. They may even GIVE you (well, your lab) that centrifuge when they retire. The more professors you're on a first name basis with, the better.

2.) Start writing as soon as possible. For example, my thesis project is complete, but I still haven't written my mandatory thesis proposal. Not only that, but I have a manuscript I've been sitting on for two years. Get it DONE. Everything you write your first couple of terms will be complete shit, but you can mine the shit later for the gems, which you can work into new drafts. Get as much of that done as soon as you can, because if you don't, you have no idea how much time you'll be spending on it later.

3.) Don't be afraid of your advisor. S/he is not out to get you. I used to be absolutely terrified of my advisor. Every time he wanted to talk to me, I would freak out. I thought I did something wrong, or he wasn't happy with my progress, or... I don't even know what. It was never the case. NEVER the case.

4.) When you start arguing with your advisor, it means you're maturing as a scientist.

5.) You will change your thesis topic three times. That's okay, it happens to everyone. It has happened to most of the people in my cohort and in my lab. It didn't happen to me, but that's because I'm special. :)

6.) Get to know the administrative staff in your department. Bring them cookies. They will make or break you when it comes to getting paperwork through for important things like ordering equipment or reagents, or approving travel funds. You want them on your good side.

7.) Figure out the neighborhoods where the undergrads live, and make sure you live far, far away from there. There are generally small, quiet neighborhoods a bit further away from campus where grad students live in peace, like real people, and not like barbarians.

8.) Even if you aren't required to, take a statistics class. I've taken at least one every term since I started, and I enjoyed it way more than I thought I ever would. You might be surprised.

9.) You will fuck up data. I repeat, you WILL fuck up data. You'll also break some expensive piece of equipment. That isn't the end of the world. And when you do, I don't recommend trying to work with that piece of broken equipment while hiding the fact that it's broken from everyone in your lab for several months... Not that I did that... (What, it was still FUNCTIONAL!)

10.) One of the most important factors to consider when choosing a lab is social fit. That seems stupid, but it really is. It goes back to the support group thing.

11.) Go to seminar. I know, I know, I just made a whole post the other day about how I never go to seminar, but really. Do as I say, not as I do. If your university is like mine, the grad students get to have lunch with the seminar speakers afterwards, and it is a great way to build connections in your field beyond your home department (assuming your department invites speakers who are actually in YOUR field more than a few times a year, unlike mine... *grumble*).

12.) Don't take it personally when your students don't care as much as you do. Don't take it personally when you get negative or conflicting student evals. Don't let teaching suck up a majority of your time, because it is a way to pay the bills, but it isn't what you're there for.

13.) Get a pet, especially if you're moving far away from everyone you know and love. Having something warm and cuddly waiting for you at home makes things better in so many intangible ways.

14.) Impostor syndrome is real, and horrible to deal with. I don't know how to help you with this one, but knowing that you're not the only one who feels that way can help a little bit.