A bit surreal

Just received notice that one of my journal articles was rejected--with a note that I should familiarize myself with the work of Leslie Madsen-Brooks.*

headdesk

*There is, of course, the chance that one of my grad school profs or former colleagues was the anonymous reviewer, in which case ha ha ha--thanks for the shout-out.

Fun with Name Profiler

Ah, I could play with this world names profiler all day. . .

Here are maps of my parents' surnames. When I say my people are from icy climes, I'm not kidding:



The map does explain the origin and utility of my ridiculously straight hair, however: no droplets from this morning's freezing fog are going to cling to it--they'll slip right off.

Methinks my Dad's people find Mormon missionaries to be highly persuasive:

Because it's time for a meme, dammit

Created by Oatmeal

(Velociraptor quiz as seen at The Seacoast of Bohemia)

Created by Oatmeal

Clearly I haven't been to enough concerts.

Wonder

Cross-posted from TerraFirma Creative

Here's the prompt for Day 4 of Reverb10:

Wonder.

How did you cultivate a sense of wonder in your life this year?
(Author: Jeffrey Davis)

When I consider wonder, I think primarily of two things:

• being in awe of, or delighted with, something in the world.


• being intensely curious.

These are two of my favorite states of being.

I think these two poems by Gerard Manley Hopkins artfully capture my own sense of wonder. Go ahead--read them aloud to get their full effect.

God's Grandeur

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; Bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

The Windhover

To Christ our Lord

I caught this morning morning's minion, king-
dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird -- the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!
No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.

Do you know what makes those poems different, other than their lovely imagery? Their sound, their diction. Hopkins tried not to use words derived from Latin, and the result are poems rich with Anglo-Saxon sounds and rhythms, sounds from a time and place that's foreign to me.

And so: wonder.

Words

Words are how I cultivate a sense of wonder in my life. I notice things, and I try to put them into words: November, the last orange leaves still snagged on twigs, coated by a heavy dusting of snow. Mountains rising suddenly beyond the city, glowing that western-dry-grass gold in the last sun. Iowa, and its threat of sky. Tracks of unfamiliar mammals in the backyard snow.

Sometimes I fail. And that really underscores the wonder of a thing--when I can't adequately capture a moment in words.

Wonder for me comes when reality exceeds my expectations, at the seam of the urban and rural or natural worlds. Boise has been full of these moments: a badger in the yard. The first snowflakes I've seen in a decade. A river behind my office; a giraffe beyond that, peeking over the zoo's fence.

Negative capability

That's what John Keats called that state "when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason." For me, wonder engenders negative capability—it happens when I've transcended that left-brain moment of "how does that work?" and shifted into the right brain's "rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!" It's the moment beyond questioning, a moment of beholding. A moment of contentment.

Even though I'm reflective by nature, it can be hard for me to just sit silently with things. But sometimes what I'm building—be it a lesson plan, an article, a business, a happy childhood for my son, a personal theology—needs that moment of reflection, needs that space where I can observe in wonder at the thing-in-itself, the untouched thing before I've tried to fix or alter it. It's a space where I don't need to worry about reaching after fact and reason, where I'm fine with uncertainties, mysteries, and doubts.

And you?

Where do you find wonder?

Photo by William Warby, and used under a Creative Commons license.

By request: on professoring

A friend just nudged me for an update on "professoring." Consider these, then, random paragraphs of the very very early tenure track:

Teaching is going pretty well, I think. I have the usual mix of students who clearly enjoy the courses and are getting a lot out of them, those who are aiming for a B or C, and those few (especially in my lower-division general ed offering) who might be disaffected by just about any history course they take.

The student profile here, however, is very, very different from anywhere else I've taught. I don't have the institutional data with me--it's on my desk at work--but here's what I recall:

• Number of students (grad + undergrad) at the university: 19,993
• Average student age: 26
• Overwhelmingly white
• lots of married students and students with kids
• 30% Latter Day Saints
• Most selective public institution in Idaho, but (prepare yourselves for cognitive dissonance)...
  
• 4-year graduation rate of 7 percent, 6-year graduation rate of 28 percent (yes, you read that correctly)
  

In other words, I'm not in the UC Davis classroom anymore. That fact is in many ways a relief, as these older students often bring deeper analytical skills to class discussions--although the writing skills of students here are on average even more dismal (many of them have let me know they never had to write a thesis statement in high school, whereas I very clearly remember learning that skill in 7th grade). I'm really enjoying working with older undergraduate students; my sense of my upper-division public history course is that most students are in their mid- to late-20s, with a smattering of students in their 30s and 40s and about the same number of traditional undergraduate age.

As I've mentioned before, I'm teaching two new-to-me courses, one of which is new to the university: the first "half" of the American history survey (which covers from the beginning of time to 1877) and an upper-division public history course. Next semester I'm tackling two also-new-to-me courses, a graduate seminar that introduces public history to students in the department's Master's in Applied Historical Research and a capstone senior writing course. This semester's survey course is kind of killing me, but I know I'm working less than do a lot of people teaching the course for the first time. Refusing to perform 50-minute lectures three times a week (or even once a week!) helps, as does my belief that students needn't memorize facts--because it means I myself don't feel obliged to establish a comprehensive understanding of 400+ years of U.S. history in a mere 15 weeks. I've been emphasizing critical and creative thinking skills. Best teaching decision to date: having students read Clarence Walker's 2010 book Mongrel Nation: The America Begotten by Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, a slim volume that allows for all kinds of discussions of race and class in early America as well as the current political fascination with the Founders and Constitutional originalism.

I've agreed to sign on to a couple of grad student thesis committees, probably chairing both of them--one on the Master's of Applied Historical Research track and one in the more traditional M.A. program. I suspect I'll gain several more grad students after I teach the M.A.H.R. course in the spring.

Next academic year I'll take over the department's internship program for undergraduate and graduate students. I'm inheriting it from a professor emeritus who appears to have kept the program in very good shape, so I'm not too worried about it.

I've been spared departmental committee work this year, but I am taking over advising the undergraduate history club and its attendant spring conference-going. I've also taken a 16-hour student advising workshop, joined a very interesting faculty interest group on community outreach, and signed on as P.I. to a really interesting NSF grant application that needs an historian of women in science. I also just committed to serving on an advisory committee for the campus's observance of women's history month. Plus, next month I'll be stepping in at a Northwest women's history conference to cover for a faculty member from another Idaho institution; I'll be chairing a session and participating in a roundtable discussion.

The faculty interest group on community outreach promises to be very, very fruitful. Without giving out too many details on a project that we just hatched: a faculty member from another department has a small army of undergraduates he wants to put to work in community outreach, and he knows he wants the students to work with a particular population and to engage in some kind of writing, but he wasn't sure what should be driving their work. I offered to collaborate by helping the students learn to interview members of this group and construct a public history project that draws on both student research and first-person narratives from the group. Assuming we can get a couple of local agencies to participate (I think they will, as it would highlight their work) and can get IRB approval (it's sort of a sensitive population), I think it'll be a terrific project, the kind that births not only journal articles and conference presentations but also exhibits, podcasts, and lovely books of the coffee-table variety that seem to be popular locally.

I've also been helping several students from a colleague's class, as they're required to talk to another history faculty member about the context surrounding famous court cases. So far I've talked with students about the Mountain Meadows massacre, the Scopes trial, Sacco and Vanzetti, the Stanford White murder, and Margaret Sanger. It's been a nice way for me to very quickly review different eras in U.S. history, some of which I haven't had to think about much in the past few years.

I also sent off a journal article today, and I printed out a chapter of the dissertation from which I hope to harvest two or even three articles, as it's a looooong chapter packed with not-quite-fully-formed ideas that I believe merit further development. I'm also occasionally visiting the university library's archives to work with the papers of an Idaho woman who was an amateur mycologist, and I hope over spring break to visit the Smithsonian again, or maybe the New York Botanical Garden, to see the papers of a couple other women. I have the tiniest embryo--more of a zygote or blastocyst, really--of an article about California women gardeners and nurserywomen in the first half of the 20th century, but I'll need to visit an archive or two in southern California to really flesh it out.

My colleagues are excellent, alternately funny, warm, and quirky, as good professors should be. My new-kid-on-the-block antennae are picking up some vibrations of tension and dissent, or rifts among or between certain faculty in the department, but nothing too troubling. I love my job (except for grading, of course), and I feel extremely fortunate to be here.

Plus, Fang likes it here, too, as does Lucas. I now have an Idaho driver's license that's good for 8 years, and I hate hate hate taking tests and going to the DMV, so I figure we'll be here at least 8 years. :)

How cool is this?

A family sent a video camera into space using simple materials (and an iPhone):

Homemade Spacecraft from Luke Geissbuhler on Vimeo.

(as seen at Pacing the Panic Room)

Weighty thoughts

. . .or, rather, thoughts on weight.

When I met Fang, I was just about to turn 24, and I weighed 138 pounds. That is insanely thin for me; in high school, even when I was hyperthyroid, I weighed as much as 165 pounds. Last night, I stepped on the scale and found I weighed 182 pounds, which is quite a bit out of a reasonable BMI range for someone my height. (Yes, I know BMI doesn't work well as a measure for everyone, but in my family, it seems a fairly useful way to begin to measure fitness.)

So I joined Weight Watchers online--last night, just after stepping off the scale.

Today, I carefully tracked what I ate and charted my activity levels for the first time, debiting and crediting points depending on the food and the activity.

I feel like crap, all hypoglycemic and hyperthyroidy. Yay.

I biked into work today--a pleasant enough ride in the cool morning with a couple of downhill stretches. This afternoon I rode my bike home, 4.9 miles with the sun beating down and temperatures in the upper 80s but feeling like the 90s, about 0.5 miles of that uphill. I am desperately out of shape, and walked through the front door all red and blotchy, sweaty, heart pounding, and feeling faint.

I showered, drank a ton of water, and ate dinner. Only after I ate did I step on the scale: 178 pounds. No wonder I feel like crap; my body shed four pounds over the course of 20 hours.

People following Weight Watchers are supposed to lose a lot the first week--allegedly mostly water weight--and then lose a pound or two each week thereafter. I suspect I'll feel pretty happy with myself in a couple of weeks, but this first week is going to suck.

Things I'm noticing:

• Riding 4.9 miles in work clothes in the warm sun, on somewhat roughly paved streets, some of it uphill, in a state where auto emissions laws seem significantly more lax than in California, is very different from riding on smooth bike paths, mostly in the shade, for two flat miles. I didn't think it would be that different, but hoo boy, for me it is.
• I'm going to need to dedicate myself to more exercise. Fang has agree to take Lucas into preschool one day a week, and he already keeps him home one day, so that means I can bike into work two days a week, for a total of about 20 miles/week. It's not a lot, but it's a start, and it's equivalent to a full week of commuter bicycling in Davis.
• I need to get up from my desk in the middle of the day and take a walk. There's a decent path by the river that I could walk, or I could treat myself to an occasional lunch-hour trip to the zoo, which is only about a five minute walk from my building.
• I need to plan ahead so I have some kind of exercise I can do when winter sets in, and especially when it's dark before or after work. I'm loath to ride my bike here in the dark, even with lights and reflective tape, as Boiseans are nowhere near as attuned to bicyclists as are people in Davis. In Davis, drivers frequently looked over the right shoulders before turning right. Here, not so much, so I'm being extra cautious.

Want to help me reach my goal of shedding 30 pounds?

If you've been on Weight Watchers before, I'd love to hear about your experiences--what should I try to do, avoid doing, etc.? And if you live in a part of the world where it gets too chilly to exercise outside (I have asthma, and very cold air is my lungs' kryptonite), how do you stay active?

Idaho Moments #387 and #388

In a local TV ad, a car dealer just promised to give a gun to anyone who buys a truck.

Photo by Marj Kibby, and used under a Creative Commons license

The state wants to allow residents to shoot an endangered species on sight. One reason, they say, is that elk herds are declining. Hasn't anyone read Never Cry Wolf? (Probably not--the K-12 schools here apparently are underfunded, and not many people go to college.) Methinks we need Farley Mowat to come talk some sense into folks.

RBOC, Reflective Late Summer Edition

I'm putting all my intellectual effort these days into course planning and harvesting articles from my dissertation, so all I have in me are random bullets:

• Lucas and I were pulling dandelions from the lawn yesterday, and a bee or wasp stung me right in the middle of the palm of my right hand. Thank goodness the critter didn't get Lucas. If I recall correctly, this is only my fourth bee sting, but hoo boy is it by far the worst. My hand has been swelling over the past 24 hours, and I can't make a fist, plus--oversharing alert!--the hand just started breaking out in hives. I almost went to an urgent care clinic, but in light of our new high insurance deductible,* I'm going the Benadryl route instead.** The pharmacist said not to take Benadryl until the evening because it'll knock me out, so I'm waiting until Lucas goes to sleep, but meanwhile I can't use my right hand for anything but typing, and even that is a stretch. It's made me VERY grumpy, but it also means I haven't had to grade papers. :)

• Someone who matters tremendously to me just let me know she's pregnant after trying for what seems to me to be a reasonable amount of time, but which I'm sure to her felt like for-ev-er. I'm very excited for her and her husband. As soon as she's told a few more people and is into her second trimester, I'll blog about it more openly.

• Lucas's development is proceeding in leaps and bounds. His drawings are becoming more and more complex--check out Fang's blog if you're interested, as he's been posting several pieces of Luke's art--and his language, too. Today he wrote his last name flawlessly, without any prompting. We're also getting a bit more insight into how his mind works. For example, on Friday, Fang told Lucas they would watch an episode of a Batman cartoon at 5 p.m., and he showed Lucas a clock with hands on it. Fang reminded him when the small hand was on the 5, they would watch the show. Lucas pointed out there was a dial on the back of the clock, and they could turn it right away to make it point to 5 so that they could watch Batman immediately. Ha!

• We had to administer a series of questions and exercises to Lucas for his preschool teachers. One of them required us to ask Lucas to "Draw a boy or a girl." Fang did this exercise with him while they sat across the desk from one another, and Lucas proceeded to draw a person, only he drew it upside down, so that it was right-side-up for Fang.

• These latest developments, coupled with others, worry me--I fear we might have a gifted child on our hands. Oy. I'm not sure I'm ready for that, particularly in a state not known for funding quality public education.

• This weekend I took Lucas to the local birds of prey center. The folks there don't rehabilitate birds, as do many raptor centers; rather, they breed, raise, and release endangered birds. They have a very intimate bird show--the hawk's feathers actually brushed repeatedly against my legs, and the crow took a dollar bill from Lucas (the bird can't have quarters because they're shiny and he hoards them)--and some raptors that can't be returned to the wild for various reasons, including a couple of California condors and some really neat eagles. Despite all the bigger birds, Lucas was really taken with the crow.

• Jacob has finally noticed the five or six squirrels that frequent our backyard, but still has a pretty sedate reaction to them. He's recovering nicely from his neuter surgery, which he had last Thursday. He's tipping the scales at more than 85 pounds now.

• Tomorrow afternoon Fang will take Lucas to observe a martial arts class to see if it's something Lucas might want to try. Meanwhile, I'm plotting to take the boy to Friends meetings and First Day school. Would having ninja-level martial arts skills disqualify 18-year-old Lucas from conscientious objector status with the Selective Service?

• This conversation just transpired between Lucas and Fang:

Lucas: Daddy, will you do something with me? We can do something you like.

Fang: Sure. What do you want to do? (thinking he'll get out the guitars and play some music)

Lucas: (very sweetly) Well, you like to watch superheroes on the TV, right?

The boy knows how to work his dad, that's for sure.

• Fang is trying hard to be more social, which he admits has always been a challenge for him, even though he's very good with people. He was waitlisted for a guitar class offered through the city's community education program, and he found out today they opened up an additional section of the class. He starts next Wednesday, and he's enthusiastic about meeting some like-minded people. He went to a Smashing Pumpkins concert with one of my colleagues last week, and they seemed to hit it off; they seem to have plenty in common to gripe about, if nothing else. (Waves to colleague, who sometimes reads this blog.)
  

• Overall, I'd say what has most characterized our first two months in Idaho is resilience, and really, we're not a resilient people. (The phrase "highly sensitive" is a more apt descriptor.) I'm really happy about that, as these are the times that try a family's souls--a big move, a new job, pay cuts, new social circle, no support network to speak of, a new preschool, a Cliffordesque lab who thinks he's still the size of a shoebox. My colleagues and new friends here have been a huge help in easing our transition, and for that I am exceptionally grateful.

*Thank you, State of Idaho, for lengthening the new-employee health insurance waiting period from 30 days to 90. Much appreciated!

**I've never taken Benadryl, but I'm going to take my first pill in a few minutes. Fang is a little too excited about this prospect--he knows I can react strongly to new meds, and he's crossing his fingers for a good show. Will it include further crankiness, slurred speech, or giggles unbecoming a bee-sting victim? I'll keep you posted. (As if.)

. . .and things I don't love so much

Weather today and tonight in Boise:

• 104 degrees (tying the record high)
• Humidity this afternoon

Current weather alerts for the region:

• Record temperatures
• Air quality alert (yellow--the alert, not the air)
• Severe thunderstorms
• Fire weather
• High winds (50 mph--not so bad as last weekend's 70 mph)
  

Tomorrow's forecast? 78 degrees and pleasant.

Welcome to Idaho. It's like Iowa, only with more consonants.

You've got to respect any region whose local broadcaster offers this list of potential weather challenges:

(from KTVB.com)

Urban wildlife sighting #2

While I was out in the yard with the dog this morning, I heard the neighbor's dog barking and thought it was trying to push its nose under the fence.

"Hey," I thought, "That little dog looks a lot like a badger."

So I climbed up onto the fence to get a better look.


Tip: Hanging over your neighbor's fence with a camera might be an awkward way to meet your new neighbor, unless you have an icebreaker like, "Say, did you know you have a badger in your yard?"

I'm a little worried that the badger didn't seem afraid of the dog. Or, really, me.

Bats are fuzzy

Lucas and I went on a bat walk (really more of a drive) in the Yolo causeway last night. Here's the freeway bridge that connects Davis to West Sacramento:


The bridge has expansion joints that are perfect urban bat habitat. Our guide told me there can be 50 bats squeeze into a linear foot of expansion joint. The bats are tiny, as we learned in our orientation session:



Three photos above: Mexican free-tailed bat. Click to embiggen!

Chomp! Nom nom nom.

Above: Brown (very fuzzy) bat. The bats in these photos are captive because they have injured wings and aren't able to return to the wild. This particular brown bat has learned to love mealworms.

Just after sunset, the bats fly west from underneath the eastern end of the bridge, emerging to the south side of the bridge near this tree:


We saw three long ribbons of bats emerge, in waves about five minutes apart from one another. It was pretty spectacular. We're talking thousands and thousands of bats.

Definitely click to enlarge these sunset photos if you're into bats.

If you live in this area, definitely sign up to take the bat walk and talk with the Yolo Basin Foundation. But hurry--all the spots are almost filled.

A snippet of scorn

As I'm writing and endlessly revising my job talk for this coming week, I've come across some gems from the archives that I know some of my women scientist readers in particular will enjoy. I may share others, but this anecdote is particularly galling to me right now.

In part of my talk I'll examine ranch owner and businesswoman Susanna Bixby Bryant, who founded the Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden on part of her ranch property between Los Angeles and Riverside. Bryant wanted to create an arboretum of native Californian flora, and she wanted it to be both comprehensible to the public and useful to scientists. California's botanists were thrilled to have a wealthy landowner demonstrate such support for a botanical project, but some were not so enthusiastic about letting the public tramp around the garden.

How bad was their scorn? Pretty bad. Willis Linn Jepson--you may know him from the Jepson Manual if you've ever botanized in the American west--had this to say in a 1929 letter when he learned that Bryant planned to be director of the garden she founded, provided land for, and hired and paid the staff of:

We have then, in that case, a problem presented which has many difficult aspects. You have not only had no training in the scientific field of botany, but the professional ethics and canons governing intercourse among botanists, a code several thousand years old, is a closed book to you. When you stepped from the field of business and society, where you are quite at home, into the field of Botany you were delighted to find certain privileges awaiting you (privileges quite foreign to the ranch or office) but you do not realize that with those privileges go heavy obligations. Frequently you do things in the name of Botany from which you would naturally refrain in the world of business.*

Bastard.

I couldn't find an image of an older, wiser Bryant glaring at Jepson, so the following will have to suffice as my interpretation of her likely response.



* Jepson to Bryant, 16 Feb. 1929, Rancho Santa Ana Botanical Garden archives, folder “Willis Linn Jepson,” no letter #.

Thanks for all the fish

As if to exact revenge for my using its brethren as a metaphor and allegory in a recurring dream, one of my fancy goldfish today insisted on swimming upside down.

Which, even if you've never owned a goldfish, you know isn't a good thing.

But it enriches the metaphor. Piggy's upside-down antics first sent me into a suck of despair--I can't stand to see animals suffering, or appearing to suffer--and then to the web, where I learned (and here's where the metaphor gets enriched exponentially) that upside-down swimming is not necessarily a sign of imminent death.

It's usually constipation.

So I spent the morning learning about how to make a goldfish poop, and then anxiously waiting for said poop and for Piggy to just start swimming upright dammit.

Piggy, in her hospital bowl--upright

And if you're ever in the market for goldfish laxatives? The secret is shelled peas.

Storm basin

A couple weeks ago when I walked by the local storm basin a few blocks from my house, I noticed that the water levels were way down, with many large islands showing. Today I happened by there and wow! what a difference a storm makes. These photos aren't taken from the same location, but they give some idea of the change in water level. (They're taken with my iPhone, so the quality's not too great.)

Before:



Before:



After (click to embiggen--it's pretty!):

Let it. . . ???

Check out tomorrow's forecast--I've never seen the snow icon on my Mac's dashboard. Too bad it's mixed with rain. I don't want sleet. . .



The last time I remember it snowing here was in January 2002, and it was a pretty little dusting, though I must admit I was unprepared to ride my bike through it. Brrrrrr!

Teaching while Mentally Ill

(Cross-posted at BlogHer)

Imagine trying to teach while voices in your head are telling you your students are trying to kill you. That has been a reality for Elyn Saks, a professor of law, psychology, and psychiatry and the behavioral sciences at the University of Southern California's law school. This week Saks published an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education documenting her personal experiences with mental illness in academia.

Over the past few days, links to the article have been moving through academics' e-mail inboxes like wildfire. There's good reason why. Not only does Saks share some pretty startling experiences and talk about how she has overcome these challenges, but she also opens an interesting discussion on whether, when, and to whom an academic with mental illness might disclose her illness. Here's an excerpt:

The first question you must ask yourself is whether to tell your chair and dean. I can think of arguments both in favor of that, and against.

One of the pluses would be the psychological benefits of not having a secret and being able to be open. More practically you might be able to get extra support, or formal accommodations under the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA). You would serve as a model for other academics in your department and your students.

There are, of course, real pitfalls to telling, too. There is a tremendous stigma, still, around mental illness. People may believe, consciously or not, that you are unreliable or even dangerous, and they may fear you. They may think you can't do the work or your scholarship isn't good, even if it is very good. That may not be intentional on their part but can nonetheless have a big impact on your work life and your prospects for tenure.

Saks is the author of a memoir, The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness. (You can read a review of the book by a writer who has schizoaffective disorder herself at Femi-Nation.)

Mental health has become a big issue on college campuses. Campuses with unusually high rates of suicide have worried about distressed and distressing students for several years, and the shootings at Virginia Tech in the spring of 2007 raised awareness nationally of student mental health.

That said, aside from mental health centers for faculty and staff on some campuses, there has not been significant attention paid to the mental health of those who teach students. Anecdotally, there is evidence that mental illness in academia, particularly depression and anxiety disorders, are not uncommon. Years ago, I attended an academic talk on mental health, and the presenter mentioned he was studying four disorders in a particular (nonacademic) population: major depression, bipolar illness, schizophrenia, and dysthymia. Someone asked what dysthymia is—it's mild-to-moderate, long-term depression—and those in the room exchanged knowing glances. Finally, someone said, "Ohhhh. . . It's what we all have."

Many commenters on Saks's Chronicle article shared their own experiences. Wrote one,

Thank you for this brave and thoughtful piece. I struggle with chronic depression and find that academe is probably one of the best places for me, because of its relative flexibility (compared to many other workplace environments). However, I'm still not quite ready to be "out." I agree that coming forward would probably be a good thing, but it also presents more risk than I'm ready for. I really admire you!

Another has faced greater challenges:

I very much appreciate your article and walking the reader through an actual experience you probably have had many times. I suffer from chronic mental health issues, although not to the severity that you do. But nonetheless, they do have an affect on my ability to work at times. I do not feel safe in disclosing any of it to my academic employer. I often hear comments in the work place about people who "are depressed or whatever" are just weak and need to toughen up. I have attempted to get consideration for my "general health issues" in scheduling of courses and my duties as a program chair without much success. In fact, I have found the responses to be hostile. We need more people like you to come out into the open and speak up so that more of us in the shadows can also come out, without resorting to ADA or legal action, which I know in the end will be used against me one way or the other, because I don't work in an institution with tenure (proprietary college). Thank you.

A commenter on a post at Historiann shared her own experience of not getting support when she needed it:

Fried from post-partum depression but afraid that taking a semester’s unpaid leave would jeopardize my future tenure bid, I jumped back into my job 8 weeks after giving birth–with disastrous results. (My female chair’s attitude: “I made tenure as a single mom. You have to give up your life and do what it takes. DO IT.”)

It's tough for graduate students, too, whether they teach or are students. Wrote one woman with a disability that may be a mental illness on the blog Rate Your Students,

Ever since my diagnosis, I have prayed to every god imaginable that I could be "normal" again. And most of the time, I am. I'm properly medicated and as healthy as I can be. But, you have *no* idea how humiliating it is to approach a professor (especially a mentor or a "shining star" in your field of study) and say, "Hi. I'm abnormal. This here sheet of paper gives me accomodations for which most students would maim a nun. Please, oh pretty please, don't put as asterisk next to my grade when I earn yet another A." Because that's how I feel - I work my ass to the bone taking an overload of course hours, studying endlessly, researching for seminars, while working to pay bills and to gain experience - but every time I EARN an A, part of me feels like I don't deserve it...because there's still a socially accepted stigma about mental disorders (as is evidenced often on this blog.)

The grad student blogging at PhD Depression also connects the ways an academic life, and particularly the pursuit of a PhD, can contribute to a major depressive episode.

Dr. Isis also has a must-read post in which she responds to a scientist suffering from depression. In it, she not only offers sympathy, but also some concrete suggestions for accommodations, including some that may be made under the Americans with Disabilities Act. She also links to a post by computer scientist Mark Chu-Carroll, who also has depression. His post is also worth a read, as in it he considers why people have no problem watching him take pills for one illness but not for another:

Somewhat over 1/2 of the people who hear that I take an antidepressant express disapproval in some way. Around 1/3 make snide comments about "happy pills" and lecture me about how only weak-willed nebbishes who can't deal with reality need psychiatric medication.

I confess to being thoroughly mystified by this. Why is it OK for my stomach, or my heart, or my pancreas to be ill in a way that needs to be treated with medication, but it's not OK for my brain? Why are illnesses that originate in this one organ so different from all others, so that so many people believe that nothing can possibly go wrong with it? That there are absolutely no problems with the brain that can possibly be treated by medication?

Why is it OK for me to take expensive, addictive drugs for a painful but non-life-threatening problem with my stomach; but totally unacceptable for me to take cheap harmless drugs for a painful but non-threatening problem with my brain?

What about you? How have you seen mental illness addressed on your campus, in your or your child's classroom, or in your workplace? Is it stigmatized? And what are you doing to cope or to help?

Praying Mantis

This photo may be blurry (damn iPhone camera), but it's the only proof I have that last weekend I was the cool mom at the playground in the park, doing a little entomological interpretation for the kiddies. I was moving the mantis from the play equipment, where it was in danger of being stepped on, to a bush. It was pretty cooperative critter, and I was thrilled that a tiny little girl was the most eager to hold it.

Most of the mantids I see around here are light green, so it was fun to find a brown one.

Will breast cancer gene lawsuit end gene patenting?

(An earlier version of this was posted at BlogHer)

Earlier this month, the American Civil Liberties Union joined the Association for Molecular Pathology, the American College of Medical Genetics, the Boston Women's Health Book Collective, and numerous other plaintiffs--including individual breast cancer patients--in filing a lawsuit against Myriad Genetics, the U.S. Patent Office, and the directors of the University of Utah Research Foundation. Myriad Genetics has patents in the U.S. for the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, the presence of which has been linked to an increased risk of breast or ovarian cancer. The suit alleges that such gene patenting is unconstitutional, in large part because "ease of access to genomic discoveries is crucial if basic research is to be expeditiously translated into clinical laboratory tests that benefit patients in the emerging era of personalized and predictive medicine," and such patents restrict the use of the genes.

The ACLU suit points out that

Because of the patents, defendant Myriad has the right to prevent clinicians form independently looking at or interpreting a person's BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes to determine if the person is at a higher risk of breast and/or ovarian cancer. Because of the patents and because Myriad chooses not to license the patents broadly, women who fear they may be at an increased risk of breast and/or ovarian cancer are barred from having anyone look at their BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes or interpret them except for the patent holder. [...] Many women at risk cannot even be tested because they are uninsured and/or cannot afford the test offered by Myriad.

The suit gives several examples of ways that some of the plaintiffs have been put in jeopardy by the patent. Particularly upsetting to me was this anecdote:

Plaintiff Lisbeth Ceriani is a 43-year-old single mother who was diagnosed with cancer in both breasts in May 2008. Ms. Ceriani is insured through MassHealth, a Medicaid insurance program for low-income people. Her oncologist and genetic counselor recommended that she obtain BRCA1 and BRCA2 genetic testing, because she may need to consider further surgery in order to reduce her risk of ovarian cancer. They submitted a blood sample to Myriad on her behalf. However, she was notified that Myriad would not process the sample. Even though her insurance has informed her that it would cover the BRCA genetic test, Myriad will not accept the MassHealth coverage. Ms. Ceriani is unable to pay the full cost out-of-pocket and, to date, has not been tested. Without the genetic test results, she cannot determine the best medical course for herself.

What the hey?

Women bloggers have latched onto the story like metastases to lymph nodes.

In her article "Enough with Patenting the Breast Cancer Gene," Rebecca Skloot (of the blog Culture Dish) writes of the literal cost of patenting to scientists and patients.

In a survey done a few years ago, 53 percent of laboratories had stopped offering or developing a genetic test because of patent enforcement, and 67 percent felt patents interfered with medical research. It costs $25,000 for an academic institution to license the gene for researching a common blood disorder, hereditary haemochromatosis, and up to $250,000 to license the same gene for commercial testing. At that rate, it would cost anywhere from $46.4 million (for academic institutions) to $464 million (for commercial labs) to test a person for all currently-known genetic diseases.

Click through to Skloot's article to learn more about the history of patenting genes--and why it's possible to patent genes at all in the first place.

Over at the Huffington Post, Joanna Rudnick, who has tested positive for the BRCA1 mutation, shares a video interview with Dr. Mark Skolnick, the founder and chief scientific officer of Myriad. Rudnick writes that "the lab was beautiful and state of the art, but Skolnick's answers surrounding the ethics and detrimental consequences of gene patenting were unsatisfying, leaving more questions than answers and leading to where we are now with the ACLU challenge."

Stephanie Anderson, writing on an intellectual property blog, explains the key issues in the case:

What seems to be the main issue is not that patents should be unavailable whenever genetic sequences are at issue, but that the USPTO’s policies and understanding of biotechnology and science has not kept up with the pace of the industry itself. I coincidentally worked in a genetics laboratory for several years some time after seeing the documentary about BRCA1 and 2. Like my initial very strong pro-patent beliefs when I was involved in research, part of the problem with many patents is their overly broad nature. As the root of more and more diseases is being attributed to mutations within our genetic code, gene patents run the risk of limiting research if a disease is known to be caused by a genetic mutation. If gene patents are defined too broadly, patent holders theoretically could prevent research on proteins produced in the body associated with a disease because the proteins were encoded by genes. As has been stated by bioethics experts, patents are a privilege, not a right. Unless the USPTO steps in and clearly identifies what exactly is being patented so to limit patent protection appropriately, research will undoubtedly be stifled to some extent.

Will the lawsuit succeed? Arthur Caplan, director of the Center of Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, thinks Myriad will prevail. He explains why the law may in this case be on the side of the patent holder and not the patients--even though it doesn't necessarily make ethical sense:

The notion that patents interfere with free speech by restricting research communication presumes that the constitution recognizes research as a form of free speech and that Myriad has done anything to block researchers from speaking and those are pretty iffy presumptions.

Tossing out the Myriad patents would indeed imperil thousands of other patents, and courts tend not to want to cause that much turmoil.

That forecast offered, those bringing the lawsuit have an important point. Patent offices and courts in the U.S. and other countries have been granting patents on genes without thinking hard enough about the social and health implications of doing so. If companies sit on their patents and restrict licensing, gouge consumers, or fail to develop their patents by improving their tests or therapies then government should step in and yank the patent.

Patents are not given for any reason other than to encourage innovation which advances the public good. They are a privilege — not a right.

What are your thoughts?

Scientists and Motherhood

(Another older post from BlogHer)

Any job can be complicated by pregnancy or motherhood, but scientific careers may be in their own special category. Depending on the field, you've got exposure to toxic chemicals, radiation, or all manner of microorganisms in the lab; the multitudinous dangers of field work; and the odd and sometimes exceptionally hours required of some experiments or observations in the lab and field.

Many science bloggers reflect regularly on what it means to be a mother and a scientist. I wanted to share some of their posts here, as even those of us who are not scientists in any conventional sense can learn from their experiences.

drdrA writes about family-friendly labs--meaning labs that are supportive of men and women who are parents. drdrA believes her own lab is family friendly, but she wonders how that policy will affect her chances of gaining tenure:

I was having a conversation with some science friends recently- about this crossroads of 1. maternity ‘down time’ = lost productivity for 3 month stretches with 2. labs with reputations for family friendliness. See, those labs with reputations for family friendliness – end up having way way more downtime, than those labs that don’t,….. because the ‘family friendly’ labs end up having whole runs of employees on maternity leave. In three month blocks. Take my own lab for example- let’s just say I’ve had a lab for 5 years (now I’m just making shit up)- and I’ve had 4 employees out on maternity leave… for three months each-… that’s an entire productive person year gone… during the most critical (pre-tenure) time of my career.

And that’s just for the maternity leave itself. When my younger daughter was born- she was ill for about the first year of her life. I slept at my desk, took her to the doctor, and wandered through my project, as only a person enduring a solid year of complete sleeplessness could. Poorly. I use this to illustrate that when your lab members become parents and the maternity leave is over, it may be back to business as usual- but ‘business as usual’ after the baby may be dramatically different than ‘business as usual’ AFTER the baby…and changes in productivity can stretch on beyond maternity leave. These changes in productivity are compounded in ‘family friendly’ labs that carry the weight for the rest of academic science.

The Urban Scientist points us to an article in Scientific American that in turn points us to a study by the NSF that suggests some reasons why more women aren't tenured science professors. The study looks at tenure-eligible women scientists in six disciplines in major research universities. Oddly, the report does not address (and states as much) what may be some of the biggest challenges to women's success in the sciences, namely "the constraints of dual careers [and] access to quality child care[...] In particular, the report does not explore the impact of children and family obligations (including elder care) on women's willingness to pursue faculty positions in R1 institutions."

Dr. Isis writes a thoughtful response to a letter from a postdoc who wonders how many children she should have. Here's an excerpt from her response regarding scientists and babies:

Now, to address something that is unique to this question, do people with advanced degrees have the responsibility to have more babies to destupify the human race? I sincerely hope not. If that were the case, Isis the Scientist might not be here. Neither of my parents have a degree, let alone an advanced degree. I was raised, in part, during my teenage years by two wonderful non-English speaking family members who never went to college and worked as laborers. My uncles are still laborers. But, my brother and I went to college because my family told us that an education was important. Not because they already had advanced degrees. I'm not so sure brilliance always begets brilliance. Trust me. I've met some pretty stupid scientists.

I mean, can we all just agree on the complete wackaloonery of the idea that PhDs and MDs have a responsibility to spawn more? Do I need to adress it further? Frankly, mama's tired and I want to get to the important part of the question.

Nicky at Grad Ovaries also blogs regularly about pursuing science and motherhood simultaneously. From a recent post:

And you know, I get that the world doesn't revolve around me, and having a baby is a choice that I made and I can't expect everyone to make lots of allowances just for me. But at the same time, I also believe that having a baby is a normal part of life, that it's the price you pay for employing human beings. And I'm also angry, because in my particular field, students take leaves of absence ALL THE TIME for other personal purposes, like starting a company or working somewhere for a year or traveling the world, and nobody blinks when they interrupt things to leave for several months and then come back and spend two months talking about it, before finally getting back to work. My leaving to have a baby isn't all that different, except that yes, I continue to take care of the baby even after I returned to work. But AdvisorA never had children, and just kept making side remarks about women and choices and careers and being taken seriously. And it pisses me off.

Last but not least, Pat of Fairer Science points us to a column in the Chronicle of Higher Education, "Family-Friendly Policies May Not Help as Much as They Should, Conference Speaker Says." The article cites Karen R. Stubaus, director of Rutgers Office of Institutional Diversity and Equity, who suggests that family-friendly policies like being able to slow down the tenure clock after having a baby means women's careers proceed at a slower pace, which in turn delays salary increases and promotions. Comments Pat,

I would call this a dirty, little secret but while it's dirty, it's not little and neither is it a secret. The idea that in some institutions women are punished for choosing to follow institutionally approved policies stinks. Dr. Stubaus may be right that "the environment isn’t what it needs to be for female academics to seek the relief family-friendly policies offer;" but isn't that what Offices of Institutional Diversity and Equity are supposed to change? If rather than fixing the problems, we discourage women from taking advantage of family friendly polices, for their own good, then the environment will never be what it needs to be.

What are your thoughts? What are the challenges motherhood presents in your own field of work or study?