April 10, 2012 - IB Women in Science Meeting Minutes
Dr. Bree Rosenblum biography:
- Took time after undergrad: taught middle school, travelled
- Grad student in IB, MVZ
- Husband and two kids
- Post-doc at LLBNL
- Assistant professor at U of Idaho
Advice:
- Be nice to yourself
- Take your work seriously, but not yourself
- Work doesn’t have to be your identity, you just have to invest in it
- You can make time for yourself and your family
- Manage your energy – be productive when you are working, then take time for yourself
- May have to prove yourself first in grad school before you have this luxury
- Recommended Book: Getting Things Done by David Allen (http://www.amazon.com/Getting-Things-Done-Stress-Free-Productivity/dp/0142000280)
- Prioritize things/deal with things quickly
- Protect periods of time when you are productive ruthlessly
- Mornings – B.R. reads and writes papers and grants
- Be forgiving of yourself: sometimes you have bad days/weeks
- Accountabilibuddy – groups of 2 or 3 people who keep each other academically accountable and on a timeline
- Imposter syndrome – everyone feels this
- Make the decision early on that you belong in academia, remind yourself when you feel insecure
- It is not always the smartest people who do the best in academia
- Finish stuff – good ideas, execute them, FINISH them
- Accept imperfections – it’s a job, you DON’T have to be perfect at everything!
- Further along the academic path, you will be able to more easily compensate for your weaknesses through collaboration
- Be prepared to deal with weirdos/sexism
- Take the middle ground if you get inappropriate comments
- Stand up for yourself, but don’t do so inappropriately
- Balance respecting authority while standing up for yourself
- Get support from department or OMBUDSMEN
- Protect yourself as much as possible from repercussions
- Forget about it – don’t back-analyze too much
- Bring a female perspective to academic culture
- Is being a good person compatible with being a successful professor at a place like Berkeley? Try to make it so!
- Tip for writing: stream of consciousness! Don’t over think – write drafts, push through
- Throw away your first draft – use it to make an outline that is more refined that includes references
- Writing graveyard – keep old versions of writing so that you can go back to them
Questions from WIS members:
- How do you make yourself do the hard stuff, especially when real life is hard to (like you have a kid)?
- Let some things go when times are crazy, take breaks
- Break up the hard stuff – write for 30 minutes every day, but keep in the habit
- Give yourself a reward afterward
- Challenging at large institutions like UC Berkeley to get two TT positions for academic couples
- Smaller institutions may be more friendly to academic couples because they are getting more for their money and may be able to attract better talent
- How do you deal with interviewing while pregnant/with young children?
- Inappropriate comments/questions may arise!
- Have confidence, be polite, don’t let people bother you
- How do you address illegal questions about family during academic interviews?
- You don’t want to answer the questions, but you also don’t want to antagonize the people you are talking to
- “That will be a great thing to talk about it if I get a job offer!”
- Negotiations: important to be a strong negotiator
- Start negotiating AFTER you have an offer
- Don’t mention family/personal issues during the interview stage
- Having a family in academia:
- Flexibility of academia can actually help in childcare
- Autonomy is also a helpful
- Delaying childbirth can have cons – difficult to get pregnant at older ages, parenting as an older adult might not be for everyone
- What made you decide to go into academia, since you entered grad school considering alternative career paths?
- “Cynical answer” – that is what graduate school at UC Berkeley trains students to do
- “Positive answer” – Really enjoys research, teaching, variedness of academic life