quitting a job for the family

Just stumbled over an interesting blog post by Max Schireson, CEO of MongoDB, about him stepping down from his CEO position to spend more time with his family. He describes that his wife - a professor at Standford - often gets asked how she juggles her career with her family (three kids, 14, 12 and 9 years), but that he never got asked that question. So now he is stepping down from his "crazy full time" position to just a "normal full time" position and the comments to his post are full of applause and admiration for this decision.

It is a big decision, one not easily made and one that will certainly cost him a bag of dollars. And it is great that he wants to spend more time with his family and less with traveling between southern West Coast and northern East Cost of the US. But I wonder how one can even end up in such a crazy constellation. Three kids, a professor at Standford and a CEO of a super growing company - this sounds like a safe way to get a stomach ulcer and a heart attack before turning 50. My admiration goes mostly to his wife, who certainly did the large chunk of family work during the last years, while being a professor at the same time. Her career will speed up like crazy now that she has her husband around much more.

And I wonder what comments a female CEO would get if she'd decide the same way. A lot of applause and admiration? Not sure about that.

it can be a pain

A warning ahead: this will be a post about breastfeeding. Not related to my university work on a first glance but somehow very much related to it.

When you are pregnant in Australia and you choose to join a birth prep course, you'll notice very fast that Australia is the country of the Breastfeeding Association. They have their 50's anniversary this year, so Australia has been very aware of the advantages of breastfeeding early on. In our prep course we heard a lot about the wonderful, wonderful bub-mum-breastfeeding relationship and how we all will love it. And that it is the very easy, nature intended way to feed your child. And how we all will love it so much! There were a few words about mastitis and how to prevent it, but besides that everything sounded like sunshine, happy birds in the sky and unicorns.

This all might be true for a lot of mums, but as you might guess, it's not true for me. Unfortunately! 

During the last few months I've learned a lot about the dark side of breastfeeding and that there can be much more tricky stuff involved than mastitis.

My bub and I had difficulties in the feeding sector pretty much from day 1. He was a very sleepy fellow and it took him quite long to learn that sleeping and feeding does not work concurrently. During our time in hospital I had at least 10 midwives (all very lovely ladies) examining my boobs and the attachment technique and we tried all different sorts of things to keep him awake when finally attached.

Back home we continued practicing, as I was told, it is just all about practice. I can't even tell anymore when the pain started or if it was always there. Pain during feeding and pain in between. Some days better, some days worse. It took a few weeks until I realized that the pain will not go away with more practice. My GP then diagnosed a thrush and we started treating both my son and myself with different types of medication. Additionally, I tried everything that potentially could reduce the risk of re-infection. Sterilizing dummies on a daily basis, washing our clothes with Canestene, changing breast pads after every feed,... . Nothing seemed to work. 5 weeks and about 350 feeds later I stopped the medication. My GP suggested that I should see a dermatologist and the same suggestion came from the lactation consultant, who at least could assure me that we don't have any attachment problems anymore.

However, getting an appointment with a dermatologist is nearly as hard as getting a date for High Tea with the Queen - or at least it felt like that. 8 weeks waiting time is very long if you are in pain on and on again. I seriously thought about the option to fly home to Europe as it would be much easier there to get an appointment. By now I spent a lot of my day with pumping milk, bottle feeding and sterilizing the equipment again. (My deepest respect for all mothers who feed their babies fully with pumped milk. This is an unbelievable commitment.) And I spend a lot of time with crying. Crying because of the pain and crying because it all seemed so hopeless and the happy birds and unicorns seemed like not meant to be for me.

I'm wondering how women, who have to work, can deal with this. Of course from a practical point of view you can always switch to formula. But it is more what it does to you mentally, when your wonderful breastfeeding relationship is just not at all wonderful, but a struggle and a pain. If you have to go to work you can't have a mental melt-down once in a while. And it is not just a few women who experience difficulties with the "most natural thing". Reading through kazillions of internet forums on this topic and joining the breastfeeding support group around here showed me that I'm not alone with my struggle - which in principle is quite sad. A lot of women struggle for months and months to get this breastfeeding stuff on track. Why do we do this to ourselves? For myself I answer that with: I want to see the unicorns, esp. with all the pain I've been through, I grab every option that shows up on the horizon and promises that after the next treatment it will be ok. I want to know what it was supposed to be like from the beginning. Sounds a bit self-destructive, doesn't it? I had planned to continue working on my paper drafts while at home. Instead I've been spending a lot of time in doctors practices and with the sterilization of the pump. Not quite what I had expected from my maternity leave.

A few days ago I had another mental breakdown and I went to the medical center eve though I knew my GP wasn't there. I wanted to see if I could find a way to get an earlier dermatologist appointment, maybe convince the GP in charge to make an appointment for me. The GP in charge was a guy in his early 60's. Not a women as I had hoped for. He looked at my boobs, said that he doesn't think that my problems are of dermatological nature and prescribed some medication against Vasospasm. Since I'm taking the medication I'm nearly pain free, it's such a bliss! I don't know why neither my GP nor my lactation consultant have suggested this treatment, even though they knew of the Vasospasm problem. I'll have to ask next time I see them. And still I don't believe that this is for good now, that we've found the source of the pain and treat it. Still I'm scared everything will start all over again.

Looking back on the last few months there is one thing that strikes me: I've talked to a lot of women about my problems - midwives, my GP, lactation consultants,... and the way they tried to encourage me to keep going was always the same: "your baby is growing so well, you are doing the right thing, hang in there,...". When I talked to the male GP, he was the first to mention that he can imagine that this is all very difficult for me and that he could understand if I'd decide to stop breastfeeding. And it was a relief to for once be seen as a "normal" person, who is in pain since a long time and not as a mother with the duty to feed her baby.

Today I started thinking about the paper drafts on my desk and which one I'd like to tackle first -  for the first time since months. It's a great feeling!

 

"don't leave before you leave"

About a year ago I saw the TED talk of Sheryl Sandberg's "Why we have too few women leaders". I then thought that she makes a lot of good points in her talk about actively taking job opportunities and promoting oneself. I had some long discussion with friends about this talk and the whole "leaning in" concept, about the level of responsibility the government or the society has to improve the chances for women to succeed in the work force and how much women have to contribute by themselves if they want to be successful (which can mean very different things for each individual). 

Shortly after I saw this talk I got pregnant. I started thinking a lot about how to combine my work with my pregnancy and how my career could "survive" maternity leave. The sentence out of the above talk that really stuck in my head back then was "don't leave before you leave" and I found it very helpful at that time. Especially during this awkward period where only my partner and I knew that I was pregnant. I got quite a few request for hosting students and starting collaborations during this time, which not only fell in the "being pregnant" time but as well in the "having a newborn" phase. At that time I did not know if I would have any maternity leave at all, because Australia's laws don't support paid maternity leave for temporary residents. And I could not ask anybody about it yet, because my supervisor did not know that I was pregnant and the risk that he would hear it through the grapevine was too high. Additionally, I thought about what would happen if I'd loose the baby. Then there would be no maternity leave period anyways and every project I would have declined until then would really be a setback. So I decided to not leave before I leave and took on every project and every student and every other chance that came along the way as I would have done without being pregnant. 

In most cases this has served me very well. I had two great exchange students during the last eight months, who have been very productive, I've been promoted and I got my pretty massive review paper accepted - all of which I am very proud.

Now my maternity leave starts and even though I have left the office I have not totally left work. This is certainly one of the disputable advantages one has in academia. I don't have to be in the office to do my work. I can equally well work from home. And so far I really like that! I can't even imagine how it must be for someone in a job that you can't take home with you, where you are truly forced to stop working. I'm able to keep up to date with all my projects, comment on paper drafts, do a bit of writing myself and at the same time enjoy the "being on leave" mood I'm in. This is certainly an advantage of my current position and funding situation and it would be very different if I would be in less secure position.

However, I could not keep up all the projects that I agreed upon six months ago. Some exchange students for this year have their stay scheduled at the end of my leave period and it would be unfair to them if their supervisor was not officially in the office during their stay. So the organizers had to find new supervisors for them and I'm not sure how many minus points I got for my decision on their mental scale. Some paper with collaborator will get delayed significantly  - again I'm not sure how much lower I will ranked by them in the future. (as a side note: I recognized that my American collaborators did not congratulate when I told them about my pregnancy whereas the European ones did - I'm not having enough statistics on that to state this as a cultural difference, but I thought it was noteworthy).

Overall, "Don't leave before you leave" has done a great service to me and I think I'm in a pretty good position now to take some time off and get the family business in order to then hopefully return back to office and lab in few months without a massive productivity setback on my CV. Fingers crossed!

men have been taught to grow out, women have been taught to grow in

This poetry slam says a lot of true things! Starting questions with "sorry" is just one of them.

invited!

Whoot! Today I got my first invitation to a professorship job interview! That is quite amazing!

The non-amazing part is that they don't want to cover any costs related to this interview. Which wouldn't be a problem, if the interview was in Australia. But because it's in my home country this would mean I'd have to spend quite a bit of money for flights. And then it might be that I was just invited to fulfill their "invite more women" quota and I don't have a chance anyways.

But wouldn't both be an argument to cover my costs? Either they invite me because they actually are interested or they invite me to fulfill their quotas - both ways it would be a win-win if they'd really invite me!

higher chances for women?

Uh, I have been really quiet for a while. Mostly because I was on conference/job hunt travel and before that it was the usual craziness to get your students on track and everything else more or less done before leaving.

Now I'm back, jetlag is pretty much conquered and I've already spend a decent amount of time in front of my office computer. The weeks away were full of different impressions, not only because I went to a really big conference so pretty much everybody was there and the whole socializing and catching up gives a colourful picture already. But the impression that stands out the most and makes me thinking a lot comes from the job-hunt part of the travel.

As the end of my fellowship slowly dawns I thought about my options afterwards, esp. the ones including getting closer to home again. One possibility to transfer back to my home country and continuing on the academic track would be if I'd applied for an early career research fellowship. The specific one is a pretty big thing and includes enough money to pay yourself, a Post-Doc and 1-2 PhD students for 4-5 years, plus money for equipment, travel and what else is needed for successful research. It's a personal award, but one needs a host professor, who'd be willing to have this person + project planted in his department. The likelihood that such a project gets funded increases if the reviewers have the impression that the hosts labs and experience fit very well to the proposed project. That's why I visited a few groups, who work in related fields, to talk to the professors, see their labs, get an impression what it would be like to work there, see if the personal chemistry fits and if they would be willing to host me. Overall, these trips were very positive and interesting for me and I see several options where to settle down with my next project (in case it gets funded). 

But there is one thing I heard at each of these visits, that makes me thinking and that is the sentence: "You have a bonus when it comes to applying for this fellowship, because you are a woman." I'm sure everybody meant this in a very encouraging way: "You should apply, because you even have a bonus which increases your personal success probability." And in the beginning I thought that this is really great for me. But by now I'm wondering if it is actually true! And if it is not true, what does this sentence really mean? Everywhere you go you hear that women in STEM fields nowadays have higher chances, because universities get asked at every project renewal why there are not more women in leading positions. And men in my age feel threatened by that. So people seem to believe, that women have higher chances to succeed. Even though in the Schools in my home country I have worked in so far there is no sign of increasing numbers of women in the permanent staff ranks - just the temporary positions are given to women quite often.

In Australia there is a huge awareness for this topic as well, but looking at the success rates for grant applications, the women chart usually shows lower numbers. And while still a third of our students up to postgrad level are female (which is a lot for a science/engineering field) the number drops to 12% for the academic staff in our School (including both fixed term and permanents). The leaky pipeline...? No sign of "higher chances" just yet.

At the moment I think the sentence "women have higher chances" is just interpreted wrong by the people who don't make the decisions. It does not mean "women have higher chances compared to men", because it does not make sense to hire a woman just because of her gender, if there is a more qualified man available.   It just means "women have higher chances compared to women 20 years ago", which maybe means that my application will not directly go in the bin but gets a decent amount of attention. And if I stick out enough it maybe even goes one the pile for the next round. But I don't think that any woman would be hired or get funded instead of a man if she is not obviously better than him - even though as a woman you get told otherwise and even though men freak out because they don't know how to compensate for the lack of "female bonus". This is all very disturbing and misleading - I hope we can settle for something a bit more honest and relaxed in the next 10 years. And if I'm wrong, I'd like to see the statistics!

The Australian way of academic fashion

Scicurious on Neurotic Physiology wrote this interesting bit about the male/female double standard when it comes to "what to wear" in a university setting.

The topic got a lot of comments, mostly agreeing that the pressure to dress nice for work is much higher for female academics than for their male colleagues and is needed to be taken seriously by colleagues and students. Many of the commentators come from a US background and reflect pretty much my impression of dress-code behavior on American conferences. The few non-US contributors draw a bit of a different picture: that it is not so necessary to be neatly dressed-up including nice bits of jewelry and make-up to feel comfortable and to be taken seriously at work - neither for men nor for women.

The Australian way on the fashion topic is a bit special though: on the one hand Australians care a lot about what they wear and how they look. Not only when they go to a horse race, but at the beach, in the shopping malls, for a quick dinner at the Asian restaurant around the corner and for work as well. Australians wear stuff to work that I'd consider wearing for a cocktail party. Women usually appear better dressed, but men have a good sense for style as well. But in academia these social rules don't seem to apply. Here everybody dress as they please and looking at the university-wide professor and post-doc level you can find a great mix of everything. I haven't seen anybody in holey sweatpants yet, but both women and men cover the whole range from comfy clothes up to "nearly too nice for work". The (mostly male) post-docs and young academics in my institute are usually dressed in a nice "buttoned shirt and comfy pants" way and this is sometimes so inherent to them, that they forget to dress up when they go to an American conference.

I don't think that Australia is the "holy land" where people (in academia) are not judged by their looks, but it's maybe a bit more relaxed than in the US. And this setting gives me a great playground to experiment with work fashion and to pimp my tomboyish wardrobe without risking getting too much attention for it in one or the other way.

 

culture clash or what?

Since a few months I have a new colleague in my office: smart guy, very focused and concentrated, but always nice and friendly. Somebody you can chat with for 5 minutes and then go back to work. 

All seemed well and the sun was shining innocent in our office and no one expected the thunder storm that recently broke out - or at least I didn't!

A PhD student and I had a discussion in our office while NewColleague was there and suddenly NewColleague switched on his music. At first I thought that was not on purpose, but he didn't stop the music after a few seconds. So I thought, that might be a "hint" that our discussion is disturbing him and I asked him about it, but he negated - twice! So I told him, that his music is actually disturbing us and if he could switch it off. Ooohhh, totally wrong move! He just went so crazy, telling me in a very aggressive way, that there are rules - internationally accepted rules! - for offices and people should stick to them. But he of course could not make people stick to these rules and yes, sometimes discussions turn out to be longer than expected, but still... one has to stick to the rules. And if a discussion takes longer than 15 min, one should leave the office for that, there are meeting rooms and coffee shops for these occasions,.... . 

I couldn't make out his point from what he was saying, because he never said, that we are actually disturbing him. He just went on about internationally accepted rules and that he sticks to them. I told him several times during his speech that in case I'm disturbing him, he must tell me that. But he didn't! And as I thought it was very rude of him to "educate" me in front of my PhD student, I was not willing to follow his un-spoken wish. Instead I turned around after he was finished and continued my discussion. He interrupted us once more to continue his speech and after that I again turned around and continued talking to my PhD student. And finally then he managed to say, that we are disturbing him and we should leave the office - what we then did.

The temperature in the office dropped by a few degrees.

A few days later the discussion continued, after I - not very diplomatic, I know - reminded him of his internationally accepted rules, after he had a discussion in the office, which exceeded the magical 15 minutes. There was nobody else in the office at that time and he got so mad at me, interrupting half of my sentences, was offended, when I asked him to repeat something, because I didn't understand it through all the anger,... .

I offered that we could set up some rules together with the other colleagues in the office, but he said, that's not necessary, because I am the only problem in the office. As I did not agree to his point of view, he decided, that it's a waste of time talking to me and dropped out of the discussion.

The temperature dropped below freezing temperature and there it is.

I know that I could have been much more perceptive in this situation and could have stopped the escalation of the topic. But if I would have given in, while my PhD student was there, I would have lost my standing with both of them - and the situation was just to surprising and ridiculous and rude!

I'm not sure where NewColleagues sudden emotional release came from. I never had any problems in the various offices I worked in and none of my "older" colleagues ever mentioned, that I'm disturbing them.

Three theories:

1) It's a woman-man problem, as I'm the only woman in the office and NewColleague has a problem to fit in his big Ego into the same room with a woman, without being accepted as superior right away.

2) It's a culture problem, as he comes from an Asian country, where people are maybe not used to being direct, when they feel disturbed. From his point of view being direct might be impolite and so he sent subtle signals to express his discomfort. I, on the other hand, don't have the sensing abilities to deal with this, as I never needed them - this might as well explain, why my other colleagues never said something so far, as they come from Asian countries as well ( that's a very generalized statement, of course)

3) I am an unpolite and rude person and was just lucky so far with the offices I've worked in, that the people could deal with it.

Any other suggestions?

women and technical stuff

During the last two weeks I encountered two very different situations, which both fall under the topic "women and technical stuff".

1) the situation that was more familiar to me:

I asked one of our lab managers if we have a drill, because I need to drill a hole in a table. He said, that for sure we have one and I can have it any time after properly being inducted in the schools workshop. Then I could even use all the other fantastic tools that we have there. And the he asked, if I'm good with tools, because maybe it would be a better idea to ask one of the guys - means one of my PhD students - to do that for me. After reassuring that I have seen and used a hammer and a drill before without hurting myself, he agreed to give me the induction for the workshop.

 2) the situation that pleased me more:

A piece of equipment broke down in the lab and because we thought, there might be a problem with the labs electrical grounding, an electrician came by to have a look at it. Even though there were two male lab managers in the room he nearly exclusively talked to the person in charge - me.

Ever since the first time I got a washing machine delivered and hooked up, had questions about my Internet connection or wanted to buy a mobile phone, there were men, who ignored me and talked to my male companion instead or - if there was no male companion - lectured me about technical stuff as if I had been living in a pink, glittering Barbie world before. I got used to that by now and mostly I don't take it personally - I just think its stupid.

However, once in a while there are guys like the electrician, who just take your questions seriously and try to help YOU - not the random guys, who happen to stand beside you.  And I have the impression these kind of guys are slowly becoming more...   

I really like that! It makes my day! 

the "little girl"

A few month ago a new PhD student started in our group and as she decided to work in my field I became her co-supervisor. She is pretty smart and picks up new stuff very quickly. She is always well prepared for her meetings with our professor and gives nice talks in the group seminars, where she appears as very confident about her topic. But beside this "confident PhD student" there as well exists the "little girl". As soon as her talk is over the "little girl" takes over, which means, she does not just walk back to her seat, but she sort of runs with tiny girl steps. Sometimes the "little girl" even shows up during meetings and makes the "confident PhD student" press her hand on her mouth, giggle and blush for no specific reason. But what concerns me the most is that, even though the "confident PhD student" asks all sorts of questions about her project and even defends her ideas, when the boss doesn't agree right away, the "little girl" is too shy to tell him, when she literally doesn't understand a word he says, because her English is not yet good enough. So she sits in our meetings and smiles and nods, just to ask me directly after the meeting what the last 10 minutes were all about.

Luckily, she is at least not too shy to ask me about it later on, but I really wonder how I can move her, to tell us right away, when we talk too fast, with too much accent or just not accurate enough.