What I've learned

1. Physics should be fun, like a video game. When I started doing physics, I thought it was a religious calling and that physics was all about doing important things. Looking back, I realize that I invented the idea of a religious calling because I was afraid of my parents disapproving of me doing physics. I went to an elite college where the professors were all super-competitive and serious about science. My motivation for doing physics was horribly warped. A friend of mine told me that when she was excited about research, she would work enthusiastically all night. She said, "It's like playing a video game."
   
2. Collaborate with a good friend. Science is so much more fun if you can hang out with your friends and do research at the same time! By friend, I mean someone of your level, not your advisor. When I came to grad school, I wasn't used to working with people my age. I had only worked with professors and senior postdocs. Relationships with senior people tend to be very formal. If you want to grow as a scientist, you need to have some freewheeling discussions where anything goes and no one feels embarrassed about anything.
   
3. If you can, find a friend of similar cultural background and gender. This is extremely important if you are a minority. Your cultural majority friends may be the most well-meaning people in the world, but they can't see your whole perspective, only a part of it. It took me a long time to learn this, because I had a very strong ideal that everyone should be culturally neutral, gender neutral, and age neutral. I used to look down on the "women in science" meetings because I thought "these women are bunch of wimps, can't they toughen up?" (The other reason I disliked "women in science" meetings was because the majority of the women were of a different culture from me. So I was a minority within a minority.) The unfortunate reality of the world is that it is much easier for women to be close friends with other women. Similarly, it is much easier for people of the same cultural background to be friends. I was on a hockey team where no matter how much I tried, I never belonged. My teammates were women, but we didn't have anything else in common: different age, different education, different cultural background. Sometimes, a good commonality to bond over is simply sharing the experience of being a minority.
   
4. Don't work through deep depression. It's true that when something bad happens, you should keep going to work and keeping up the routine. But don't do this for deep depression. It's the equivalent of trying to run a 10K race on a broken leg. You only make things worse. Not only do you fail to accomplish anything, you will end up destroying your confidence.
   
5. When you are in trouble, make sure you talk to people who can *actually* help you. These seems kind of obvious, but when you are in a panic, you usually go to whoever you feel most comfortable with. That person may not be someone who can actually help you. If you are having problems in the workplace, you need to talk to people at your current workplace, not your old workplace. If you are having problems with family, you need to talk to people who know your family well or have the same cultural background as your family.
   
6. If you are have a multi-cultural heritage and/or unconventional upbringing, life is even more confusing. My nationality and ethnic background are very different. This is a classic American problem. In addition, I have a gender related problem (hard to explain). My mom was not a good role model for me, so I adopted my dad as a role model and tried to imitate him. I feel uncomfortable around conventional women, but I don't quite fit in with the boys either.
   
7. Lay down your burdens. Bad things happen to everyone, but we have to let go of the past and forgive people. I think I always knew this lesson pretty well, but I mention it for completeness.
   

[Additional note: One of my friends said my post made me sound biased towards certain types of people. I don't want to make it sound like I can only be friends with women or Asians. If I see a Hispanic male walking down the street, I don't think to myself, "Well! There is no way I can be friends with that guy." I strive to be gender-blind, race-blind, orientation-blind, age-neutral, etc. I simply notice that in hindsight, among the friends I gravitate towards most, we seem to have some strong common connection. It's almost possible that I went through a phase where I found it hard to fit in and decided out of bitterness to construct a theory to explain my troubles.]

Undergrad community in the Carleton physics department

A few years ago, I complained about the lack of community in my department. This morning, I read a post by Prof. Melissa Eblen-Zayas about the undergrad community in the Carleton physics department. Carleton College is a prestigious liberal arts college in Minnesota.

In particular, she notes the distinction between tightly knit and loosely woven communities. Tightly knit means the stereotypical hard core physics majors who do all their problem sets in the student lounge until midnight and try to sneak into lab to get more data. (I know, my undergraduate department was like that.) Loosely woven means people who just do physics as a major and spend time on other extracurricular activities, for example, being on an athletic team or being part of a theater group. Prof. Eblen-Zayas thinks there should be both a tightly knit and a loosely woven community in her department. She speculates that women science majors prefer a loosely woven community, so they end up choosing a major like biology or chemistry instead of physics. I'm not sure if there's room for two types of communities in a small school like Carleton.

I was always part of a tightly knit community from birth (nuclear family) to college (my living group, undergrad physics department), so I have always preferred my work and social circles to be tight. Maybe that's why I had problems in grad school. Our department is loosely woven, though some experimental groups can be tight. I'm getting more used to the loosely woven scheme, though I can definitely say that tight knit is a better fit for me.

Science outreach for girls

I volunteered to help out with an outreach program that involves introducing major physics concepts to middle school girls. I find a few things disturbing about the program.

First, the professor running the outreach program is a woman and the outreach program is a requirement for her NSF grant. Are there men doing this outreach programs as a requirement for their NSF grants, too? It would be extremely unfair if female professors were required to do outreach in addition to all their other responsibilities. Frankly, no tenure committee will care if a professor does outreach. It seems like a way for female professors to have even less time for their research. Certainly, the male assistant physics professors in my department are not doing any outreach.

For this outreach program, the male volunteers are supposed to stand in the back while the female volunteers are in the spotlight. I find that a bit disconcerting. In real life, male and female scientists work together. I don't really see why it's necessary for the male volunteers to hide. In fact, it seems a bit like lying to me; just like how people write children's books trying to push their political views (e.g. saving the environment). Brainwashing children is evil.

Title IX in science?

Many scientists (both men and women) have proposed the idea of enforcing Title IX in academia. Here is an article from the perspective of a chemist. The idea is to replicate the success of Title IX in high school and college sports.

It's a good idea in principle, but I see some problems. In particular, athletic teams have a very high turnover rate and there isn't much at stake. Unless you have a nationally ranked basketball or football team, athletic teams are not a big part of the university budget. In contrast, university faculty jobs are lifetime tenured positions. For a Title IX plan to work, I think we would have to give up the tenure system. If you have an all-male math department, what are you supposed to do? Hire women for the next thirty years? Hire adjunct women professors?

Tamar Schlick on women's issues in science

I'm a member of a women scientist group, made up of mostly biologists, some chemists, and me -- the lone physicist. The group recently hosted Professor Tamar Schlick of NYU for a discussion about women's issues in science. Schlick studies computational biology and holds a PhD in applied mathematics. The discussion was actually quite general and not really so much about women's issues.

One point I remember was about politics. There is a lot of politics in academia, but that's true of almost any job. Some departments cross-list female professors from other departments so they can claim to have more women professors. There might be the crazy department head who gives assistant professors the worst teaching assignments. And as an assistant professor, you can't say no to anyone senior until you get tenure.

There was also an interesting discussion about interdisciplinary science. While it's exciting to speculate about the possibilities for interdisciplinary work, it's quite difficult to organize the people and resources to make it happen. Being an outstanding interdisciplinary scientist is different from being an outstanding one-discipline scientist. You only have to be, say, the 90th percentile in several fields rather than the 99th percentile in one field.

I asked Prof. Schlick what she thought good mentoring was. She said that the best mentors give you advice about the big picture (which I assume is career related guidance and ideas about what research problems to pursue). Technical advice is easy to get; sometimes you can even buy it (e.g. software administrators).

In general, Prof. Schlick appeared to have a balanced view about the obstacles women face in academic science. I got the impression that there are obstacles, but you just have to deal with it and roll with the punches. There are definitely unique problems that women face, but we can have a rational discussion without resorting to the kind of hysterics raised by Nancy Hopkins (the MIT scientist who told reporters that she left Larry Summer's talk because she was feeling ill).

The right attitude

Over the past year, I've seen many articles written either by activist female scientists about the injustice women face in science and engineering or conservatives labelling these activists as whiny feminists who have an unbalanced perspective.

So it was a refreshing breeze when I read the following article in the San Francisco Chronicle. I hope that the women of my generation and younger will find science and engineering welcoming fields in which to pursue their dreams.

Perspectives on the Larry Summers controversy

I'm frankly tired of discussing President Summers's remarks, but I thought I should get some personal closure on the topic by writing one last post.

First, here are some other people's perspectives from various personal conversations.

One woman graduate student (in science) told me that she didn't feel discrimination. However, her work and accomplishments were constantly undervalued because certain men believed her success was solely due to affirmative action.

Another woman graduate student (in science) said that she had been discriminated against and often felt like she didn't quite belong in her field. However, she said that these were minor issues compared to the "two-body problem." She is getting married to a fellow scientist. It will be extremely difficult for both of them to get great jobs and have a family.

A woman graduate student (in humanities) felt like Larry Summers's comments were yet another manifestation of men questioning the ability of women. Formerly, these type of speculations had been directed towards women in humanities but now the arena has shifted to science.

Another woman graduate student (in science) defended Larry Summer's comments. She thought the public outcry was disappointing and found Nancy Hopkin's behavior particularly disturbing [Hopkins walked out of the conference and phoned the Boston Globe to report Larry Summers's remarks]. She said there was nothing wrong with speculating about genetic differences between genders. She thought that, rather, the most troubling issue facing women in science today is the difficulty for a woman to do science and have a family at the same time. For the moment, she has chosen to be a mother rather than continue her scientific career.

A male friend told me that there is discrimination all the time against women and men. The women shouldn't be treated as a special case. In the long run, though, arguing about discrimination is a waste of time. Every person is an individual and should be judged on his/her own merit. We all have our advantages and disadvantages in both genetics and socialization, but it's up to us to make the best of what we have.

As for myself, I agree most with the last two comments. If you have enough self-confidence and motivation, discrimination can be largely ignored. It's up to society to raise its children with strong characters and constitutions so they can grow up to realize their full potential, whatever that may be.

Statement by the presidents of MIT, Stanford, and Princeton

The presidents of MIT, Stanford, and Princeton have prepared a response to Larry Summers' comments. They are all scientists or engineers. Two of them are women.

It's a bit politically correct and has strange wording like "our nation will be considerably less than the sum of its parts." However, I think the main message is right. I like how the authors emphasize that we don't just want more women in science and engineering, we want to make sure that the really talented ones who are interested in science and engineering, that these people stay in the system.

Washington Post article about women in physics

To get some perspective on Larry Summer's comments, the Washington Post asked Professor Meg Urry to write an article about women in physics. She's a tenured professor in the Yale astronomy and physics departments.

The article relates Urry's personal experiences with discrimination throughout her academic career. The article is well-worth reading. The other articles I have read on this topic have always been rather vague and abstract whereas Urry's writing is very personal and eye-opening.

Larry Summers' comments on women in science

Larry Summers, the president of Harvard, recently made some comments about women in science at an academic conference. Allegedly, he said that women are discouraged from pursuing science because 1) they don't want to work 80 hour weeks and because 2) women are innately less inclined towards science and/or less able to do science. (Here I am using science as a generic term for math, physics, chemistry, biology, neuroscience, psychology, economics, etc.) There was supposedly a third reason, but it was not reported.

Since I am a woman scientist, I've decided to write my comments here. America is a nation of free speech and Larry Summers should have the right to voice his (unpopular) opinion especially in an academic venue that is closed from the public. If Summers had made the same speech in front of an audience that included adolescent girls, the critics would have a right to protest since these statements would have been damaging to a young girl's self-esteem. But that was not the case.

I don't completely agree with Summers' statements themselves (assuming they were accurately reported.) He seems to imply that genetics is more important a factor than social/environmental influences. In Asian culture, no one believes in talent, only in the value of hard work. Thus despite their minority status in America, Asians are very successful. I don't have any hard facts in front of me, but I think this is a fair statement. Everyone knows that talent has to be nourished for a person to realize his/her full potential. Behind every star pitcher is a legion of family, friends, and coaches. As for the 80 hour/week barrier, I agree that is a problem, but I don't know how significant it is compared to the genetic and social/environmental factors I just discussed.

It is unfortunate that no one has an actual transcript of the Summers speech. Harvard supposedly has a tape, but refuses to release it. Without knowing what Summers actually said, it's difficult to judge whether he was merely being academic or really being offensive.