Isis the Scientist

My children are assholes. I say this with a heart full of love for them. But despite my limitless affection for them, I can assure you that they are assholes.

Figure 1: The assholes in question. Photo taken before 6 am.

On a weekday we get up at 6:30 am to get to work and school on time. On those days, it takes a force equal to the gravitational pull of a gas giant planet to peel those two wackaloons out of bed. On the weekend, though, they are inevitably up by 5:45 am. And the worst part is that they’re happy to be up and about the day.

“Good morning, Mommy! Can we please go make some breakfast together?”
“Fuck you. I’m sleeping (said inside of my head).”

Now, you might speculate that this is largely driven by the older one who is eager to wake up play, but I have data to the contrary. I have kept track of which little asshole woke up first over the last 13 weekend days. 46% of the time it was the older asshole. 54% of the time, it was the younger one.

I hypothesize that there is something about the circadian rhythm of the child, perhaps regulated at the genomic level (we can arbitrarily name the implicated gene ASS-1), that makes them wake up early on the 6th and 7th day of every week.

If one of you brilliant scientists can figure out a way to knock out that gene, or work some siRNA-type magic, I’d be eternally in your debt.

I, for the first time in my life, just put concealer under my eyes. I feel like a Kardashian.

The goal is to have five papers in review before EB. Hence, the need for concealer.

Little Isis is going to need some concealer too. He just woke up, toddled in to my room and queried, “Mommy, if I am a very quiet boy, can I play Wheel of Fortune on the iPad?”

Yesterday I apparently shocked the Twitterverse. In reply to InBabyAttachMode‘s question of why my blogging frequency has been less than people might desire, I replied that being a mommy and a scientist is not really compatible with much else. She asked if I think we’ll ever regret mommy sciencehood and I told her that I suspect that we will. I was also open that I wasn’t sure I would be in academia in six to nine months.

{{Cue the moment when Dr. Isis stomps on the hopes and dreams of ladies everywhere}}

InBabyAttachMode wrote a blog post about the conversation, and this comment line really piqued my interest:
“…it makes me feel that if they can’t do it, then neither can I.”

I started to write a comment, but given the number of emails I am also receiving with comments like “but, you seemed so successful…”, I figured a blog might be more appropriate.

I want to be clear again that whether or not I “can” do something is not the issue.

For me, it really has nothing to do about whether I “can’t” do it. By all feedback that I get from my colleagues, I am a fairly well-respected member of the scientific community, a good teacher, etc, etac, etc.

The question for me is what I find fulfilling and how important is that to me compared to how I am rewarded. I’ve been within the walls of the ivory tower for more than a decade and I’m at a point now where I have the opportunity to really consider whether I want to try something new. It’s not unusual in every place but academia for people to look at their careers and say, “Is this really what I want to be doing?” The fact that my career pondering was so shocking to people on Twitter, I would argue, is reflective of mores and atitudes that are unique to academia.

It’s been interesting to me to look back at the endless optimism I blogged with five years ago. It’s not entirely gone, but it has certainly evolved toward practicality. Being an academic scientist (for me) does necessarily mean sacrificing some time with my family. I applaud the people who can do their job in forty hours. That has never been my reality. So, if I am going to be working as hard as I am at the expense of time with my family, it’s worth asking whether it’s really something I want to be doing. Right now I’m not so sure it is. But, maybe it is. As I shared with someone by email, maybe my grass really is the greenest. Or, maybe I’d rather be a fighter pilot, or a porn writer, or a French chef. When we’re training, we are so focused on reaching the dream that it’s impossible to realize that, holy fuck, this is a job that a lot of people do until they die.

But, I’ll tell you, dear readers, that I have also found the reactions of the scientist-o-sphere in general to be disturbing. I have been nothing but honest with you all about my optimisms and my failings, but I am not the holy grail of women scientists. The fact that I have chosen to reconsider my career and happiness is by no means some indication that women in general can’t be successful or happy in science.

You can’t rest your hopes and aspirations for an entire profession on the shoulders of a single person. Franky, it’s not fair to her and you’re likely to be disappointed.

…because that crazy dame knows that she’s in my heart. I saw this early this morning and thought that she needed a new theme song for all of her bad ass nature outreach.

With love, I present…

Sometimes I think that it must be hilarious to work in our hospital’s paging center. We have both the ability to text page from our computer and have our paging service staff find individual people. Cell phones are moderately effective in the building and I probably abuse my paging privileges. I am also a crappy individual because I almost always set my paging status to “unavailable”. I hate getting paged.

Yesterday I returned some things to one of my favorite stores called Maurices. We have a dress code in the hospital, so I’m always on the lookout for clothes that are both professional and practical for having to go down to the lab.  They’re a pretty great spot for things like that.  While I was finishing, the lady at the register said to me, “You really have a great figure. We just got a new dress in and it would be perfect for your shape.”

This is the dress:

(Here’s a link to the dress)

I tried it on and the shop ladies went wild over it.  I bought it and am wearing it today, but I am still a fat kid on the inside and was having second thoughts about the wisdom of pouring myself into this very form fitted dress.  That lead to this morning’s irrational text to my friend in cardiac imaging lab:

“I need you to come check and see if I look like a sausage.”

No need to sign it.  She’ll know who it was.

I can only imagine what the folks in the paging center must think as they see these zoom by.