How do you write a paper?

That's the $64,000 question, isn't it?  How do you write a paper of your reserach, that is publishable? Having only done it once before with a huge amount of help from my MS Advisor, this is my first foray into it. I'm thinking about this because just today, inbetween slides, I hammered out what I think will become the first paragraph of the introduction.

When I start to write a paper, it's very hard for me to get the first bit out.  Writing things like this blog is just stream of consiousness, which I find easy.  That first paragraph is rough. For me, it's like jumping into a pool you think is cold. You walk around the pool, you think about how quickly you'll be able to get out of the pool, you dip a toe in to confirm it's as awful as you think it is. And then, with a running start and a primal scream, you run forward and blindly stab at the keyboard! Now you're in, and you notice all the steam around you, and the water, while not warm, is by no means frigid. It won't be so bad.

Scientific writing requires a whole different thought structure and sentence syntax compared to more conversational writing.  There's the school of thought that says you should write a paper in the order of Methods, Results, Discussion, Intro.  And I think most people subscribe to that.  But I find it easier to write Intro, Methods, Results, Disc.

These are my novice views on writng for scientific publication. Anyone want to share their thoughts on writing a paper? Want to tell me I'm doing it all wrong? Have at!

The First?

So I did this small study my first summer here, while I was still thinking up a disseration topic.  I took a bunch of rocks, plopped them in a stream and then collected the algae every day for 2 weeks and looked at the nutritional quality of these early colonizing benthic algal communities.

The results were actually mildly interesting. People suggested I write it up, which I am in the process of doing right now.  I didn't really research it that well when I came up with the idea, so I'm going back and doing a lot of the research I should have done.  The interesting thing is...I can't find any studies that did anything like what I did.

Really? I'm the first to do this?  In over 50 years of intensive stream research, which birthed some of the greatest minds in ecology like Gene Likens, Bob Wetzel, and Ray Lindeman?? Really?!?

I'm sure I'm missing something.  I've used every permutation of relevant search terms I can think of.  What else could I use?

• Early colonize/ation/ing
• Successional
• Periphyton/Benthic algae/al
• Nutritional quality/stoichiometry

What else is there? 

I am the future 20%?

Recently, Scientific American (the magazine of Sigma Xi) published an article discussing why there aren't more women in the top positions of STEM fields, across academia and private industry. It's a really fascinating read and you can see it here.

Of all the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) Fields, only Biology (and this is overall) is almost equally staffed by women as men.  In other more math based fields (chemistry, physics, etc), women make it in to post-undergrad positions at rates of 35% or less (or so, I'm doing this from memory)

The article then explores reasons why the female populations of these fields drops from about 35% or so to maybe 20% as tenured faculty. And the main reason they come up with is having children drastically changes things.  The take home message for me, was that I have a 20% chance of making it to be faculty if I choose to have children.  Childless women have a much greater chance of making it in academia.

Hubby would definitely prefer the childless route, and it would make things easier.  And when I think about all the women I personally know in faculty positions, I think slightly less than half of them have children.  And everyone who does have children had them within the last decade when it has become more acceptable to bring young children to work.

Of course the most obvious success story of having children and being wildly successful in academia is Dr. Isis and I hope that I one day end up at a university that is as (seemingly) supportive as hers.  I've never been at a university where when a faculty has a baby, some administrative foot came down and made prohibitions about bringing them to work.  Maybe I've been lucky with my experiences, but maybe it's just not an issue anymore.

Well, 20% is staring me in the face.  That's an 80% chance that I won't make it. That's a scary statistic.  I've put a lot of time, money, and effort into my education and future career, and to read an article that says I've got a 20% chance of making it after all this? I don't know how to feel about that.

Fuck the statistics, I'm gonna make it!!

Ode to my Passion

Well, it's Valentine's Day, and in honor of the tradition of going and buying a card that other people decided what it said, I'm going to share with you all a bunch of other things people did that express my sentiments. 

So first, stating the obvious...

http://richmondschoolbiology.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/i-love-algae.jpg?w=440&h=330

And now, a sonnet from PhD Comics...

http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive/phd021111s.gif

Happy Forced Affection Day!! (but seriously, hubby better have some flowers or a nice take-out dinner....)

Happy Darwin Day!

Happy Darwin Day everyone!  Time to celebrate the man who brought about the most cohesive theory in all of biology and forever gave religious people something else to hate.

http://library.csuohio.edu/graphics/blog/darwinday.jpg

For more info, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_Day

I Found Mae West!

When I was first learning about diatom taxonomy, my MS Advisor told us that this particular diatom had been named the Mae West Diatom because of it's distinctly feminine shape.  Since then, I've only ever seen pictures of it, never found one myself....until NOW!!

Here she is, my own Mae West!


Gomphonema acuminatum

 She's all blurry because I got her on her side, but ain't she purdy?

It's Dangerous to go Alone

I was recently asked to write a budget for some "professional development" funds that I receive as part of the fellowship that I'm currently on. In it, I asked for $1000 to pay an assistant.  But I phrased it as "Since it is unsafe to conduct field work alone, I would like to mentor a female undergraduate to promote women in science." (this is a women in science fellowship I'm on btw).

So my Advisor comes up to the lab to ask me about that. And he says, "if it's so dangerous to go alone, why are you asking for a woman? Shouldn't you be asking for a big strong man?" (he's being sarcastic)

"First of all, that's sexist. Second of all, this is for the Women in Science fellowship. It's got to be a girl"

"Maybe you should ask for something more than an assistant. Like a gun."

"You mean like the Komen pink hand gun?"

And hilarity followed. I was brilliant.  I have Komen's new slogan....

"Doctor's don't kill cancer. ((cocks gun)) I do!"

But really, back to the whole girl assistant thing, this was the image I had in my head during the whole conversation:

http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/002/258/1143362243714.jpg?1242243718

p.s. I know the Komen hand gun thing was the manufacturer and not actually Komen...but it was still funny in the conversation.

See? It's a meme so it must be true

No really, this is what science is like...

http://chzscience.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/funny-science-news-experiments-memes-so-thats-how-it-works.png

Taking a domestic day

No lab for me today.  Gotta take care of the rest of my life that is falling apart. This is the problem with two people in school more than full time; your time gets allocated to the important stuff that happens most often (going to school, exercise, eating). And the important stuff that only happens occasionally (cleaning, groceries, laundry) gets postponed constantly.

Well, it's been postponed one too many times!  The carpets are filthy, we haven't done laundry in over 3 weeks, there's no food, and the bags of things for errands are piling up. I was going to go to yoga this morning, and I foolishly thought I could drive there.  I can't say I wasn't surprised when there was no parking anywhere, but I was still disappointed.  Next time I'll take the bus.

As a side note, I don't know how well this yoga thing is going to work out.  I dislike waking up at 8am (happens naturally) and then sitting around until a 10am yoga class to get my workout on. I'm much more of a get-up-and-go person.  Hm, gotta at least make a good faith effort, right? I paid $20 for this Groupon!

Not Neitzsche

So, I'm back to counting diatoms again, and I'm reminded of how much I hate counting Nitzschia. They're really hard to key out and it annoys me.  So Hubby made me a picture

Lol, he's so funny..!

Is this what success looks like?

I'm a grad student that one day hopes to be a faculty member.  So is this what I have to look forward to?

• Drowning in data to analyze
• Trying to write a paper
• Still writing funding apps (with minimal success)
• Involved in department politics
• Classwork done at the last minute
• Angry at my barely existent social life

Am I doing something right? Or wrong? I can't tell!