Postacademic Holiday Toast

To all of my fellow post-ac friends, cheers to a holiday season free of leftover grading, revising of obscure article submission footnotes, adjuncting woes, tenure-track job market depression, and snowlflakey student emails arriving on December 26 whining about how they deserved an A insstead of the B you thought was already too generous:

Peaches and I started with scotch and cookies, pictured above. Let's raisse another glass to a 2013 filled with adventures, reinventions, recalibrations, imagination, exploration, and liberation ... and good food, good drink, and good times!

Are you a generalist or a specialist?

There's an old saying: The generalist learns less and less about more and more until he knows nothing about everything. The specialist learns more and more about less and less until he knows everything about nothing.

Which one are you?


Einstein and Franklin from here



How I know I've become fully integrated into the science nerd world at the Petting Zoo

Yesterday and today, I've been sneezing and blowing my nose a lot. Clearly, I've caught some sort of cold -- some sort of run-of-the mill, ordinary upper respiratory infection otherwise known as the Common Cold.

You know what my first thought was when I realized this? "Oh, wow ... I could have a coronoavirus. Cool!"

Seriously, I thought this.

One of my current analysis projects is a mini report on how science informed public policy during the 2003 SARS outbreak. I've been reading a lot about coronoaviruses. It was a new and peculiar one that caused SARS, but garden variety coronaviruses also cause about 30% of cases of the common cold.

So ... cool! Sort of ... except for the sneezing and coughing ...

When I first left academia just under 2 years ago, I never thought that a year into my postacademic life I might be spending time thinking about things like reinsurance, which was something I thought a lot about at Think Tank. I'd never even heard of reinsurance before! But, then, a year ago, I never imagined that one year later, i.e. now, I'd be thinking about coronaviruses. I'd never heard of a coronavirus!

You know what I think I might like best about my particular variety of postacademic life? Learning new stuff all the time:



a coronavirus



Academics and Post-Academics Need to Talk More

Over at mama nervosa, Lauren sparked a great discussion with her post about academe not solving its problems soon enough to help current grad students. It even caught the attention of MLA president Michael Bérubé who dropped by and chatted with Lauren's regular post-ac readers in the comments.

That dialogue affirmed for me how much I'd like to see more exchanges happen between academics and postacademics, and I'd especially like to see graduate students participate -- or at least listen in -- as the perspective might be eye-opening for them.

Here's the rest of the comment I wrote over there, along with some additional reflections:

When I was in grad school, I had zero contact with people who had left academe, particularly those who had excelled, loved what they did, finished, woke up, got fed up with the sickening realities of the job "market," and left. My department only tracked people who got tenure-track jobs. Both professors and graduate students thus viewed the employment situation through rose-colored lenses because they weren't getting a full perspective that included what happened to all those people (and now I am one of them) who just disappeared, either before or after they finished. And the stronger you were as a student, the more you excelled, the more encouragement you got to "stick with it" -- publish one more article, get one more fellowship, teach one more class, try the job market JUST ONE MORE TIME!

This perspective needs to change. Here's why:

It's misleading. I am guessing that most professors do not intend to mislead their graduate students, especially their best and brightest, but this kind of advice does so anyway. Disguised as encouragement, this advice makes graduates students (and new Ph.D.s) believe that success in the profession rests entirely on their shoulders. Especially if they have already experienced a fair amount of success at things that were mostly up to them (published articles, won awards and fellowships, taught good classes), they believe -- even with just a little encouragement from the senior colleagues they respect -- that the same will be true with the tenure-track job market. And, well, it just isn't. Believing so is what JC refers to as magical thinking.

It's damaging. A lot of  graduate students haven't really grasped that sticking around their departments teaching their way through an interminable dissertation does NOT 1) enhance their chances at getting a tenure-track job later or 2) enhance their nonacademic marketability if the tenure-track thing doesn't work out. The only thing it does do is contribute to the vast supply of underpaid serfs whose silence and acquiescence perpetuates the very system that will ultimately deny them the dignity of a full-time, decently paying position when they earn the credential that supposedly finally qualifies them to do the work they've already been doing for a decade! And please note, I am NOT blaming gradaute students, but they are a link in the chain of magical thinking. And they are the ones most hurt by that kind of thinking. The chain needs to be broken.

It causes graduate students to make poor choices. For the most part, graduate students start down the path of earning a Ph.D. because they're passionate about research, teaching, or both. But that passion shouldn't stop them from taking a hard, pragmatic look at their career prospects. As I've written before, passion sometimes isn't the best life strategy. Graduate students accept "funding" in the form of TAships and adjunct teaching because they mistakenly think it's saving them money. They figure that because, besides the pittance of a salary they earn, their tuition is usually part of the package, they're getting a pretty good deal. But they're not. Many take out loans anyway because the salary isn't enough to live on. And the reality is that, once you finish your coursework, the tuition for your research credits (what you sign up for usuaully as you're dissertating) is insignficant. A Ph.D. in the humanities is not an M.B.A. Look at the numbers for your program. Let me put it to you this way: The salary I was earning at the secretary gig I took upon leaving academe was quite modest by nonacademic standards, but if I substracted from it A) the amount of my gross annual adjunct pay earned during my last year in academe and B) the amount of tuition remitted for dissertation credits, I would still have had almost enough left over TO PAY ANOTHER ADJUNCT TO TEACH MY CLASSES! Why, I ask myself today, did I stick around after my courseowrk ended, when I could have gotten out, gotten an entry level nonacademic gig, and paid for my own research credits if I wanted to finish -- all while making a living wage and creating a nonacademic professional track record?

If the only people you talk to are other academics, you don't readily arrive at this perspective. You convince yourself you need to be immersed night and day in academic pursuits in order to remain "competitive." You convince yourself, every year, that it's just a "bad year" and things will improve, and you have to stay in the game to take advantage of those improvements. And you convince yourself of the either/or fallacy that you're in it for love and not money.

I think it was a turning point for me when I heard that last one from a full prof on my committee who was earning $95K a year. Yes, it's true, no one goes into academe for the money, but I'd bet you a good bottle of scotch no prof earning that kind of salary loves what they do enough to take an $80K pay cut. I'd bet no assistant prof earning $55K would take a $30K pay cut. No, it isn't about the money, but you do need to make enough to live on, and in the DC area at least, $15K a year doesn't cut it.

OK, I've digressed into money, which wasn't really my intention. The point of this rant is that your thinking gets distorted when you only talk to other academics. That goes for graduate students and professors alike, but graduate students are the ones getting the short end of the stick. Professors telling graduate students they should just "reject" academe is a step in the right direction but really doesn't go far enough, especially if those graduate students really are passionate about their academic work and talented at it. Leaving isn't -- or wasn't for me, at least -- about rejecting something I cared about. It was about taking a pragmatic look at the big picture and realizing that my passion and talent for academic work was only a very small part of that picture.

Both graduate students and professors need more contact with those of us who have left, which is why the project Currer Bell, Lauren, and JC are planning is a great idea. Will more contact, information, and honest conversations cause more graduate students to reconsider and walk away from their programs? Possibly, but that's a very good reason that these conversations should happen. If they get a few graduate students to rethink how they're spending their time and preparing for the future during the decade of their adult lives they're "still in school," all the better.

Too Many Cooks Spoil the Broth

Poof! (sorry if you missed that one ... )

Another reason post-acs have such a hard time finding nonacademic work

Despite strong intellect, post-academics -- in the humanities in particular -- are a bunch of weirdos. We read 500-year-old books for FUN, for crap's sake! And take Foucault to the beach. I include myself in this bunch, of course, and when it comes to just being like everybody else, well, we sometimes have difficulty fitting in. "No, dear coworker," I find myself saying even here at the Petting Zoo, "I didn't watch the football game on Sunday. Your lunchtime kickball team in the park sounds great. Thanks for inviting me, but I haven't played kickball (or soccer or frisbee) since I was 11, and I'd probably fall on my ass and make a fool of myself. And no, I haven't seen that movie yet that everybody else has. What did I do this weekend? Er, I listened to a new recording of Beethoven's late quartets, took a walk, and then went for a drink at the hipster bar but didn't talk to anybody."

Yeeaahhh ... Great way to make friends.

Well, apparently, that's not how you find a job, either, according to this new study. Apparently, companies are more likely to  "choose new workers much as they would choose friends or dates, zeroing in on shared leisure activities, life experiences and personality styles."

So, if you're a would-be post-ac with weirdo academic-y tastes, hobbies, and habits and you're having a hard time finding that new, perfect, nonacademic, exit-strategy job, maybe the key isn't anything more than getting a personality makeover -- or at least pretending until you get hired somewhere, where everyone, of course for sure,  will learn to love you for just exactly the unique and special person you really are.

I walked into a glass door ...

Yep ... Wish I could say that was a metaphor. But no. Friday after work, I wandered into a shop on my way home. It had double glass doors, one of which -- the one through which I came in -- was open to the street.

Unfortunately, the other was closed and spotlessly clean. How was I supposed to know? On the way out, I was futzing around with the trinket I bought, putting my wallet away, and totally lost in my own thoughts, when SMACK!!!##$%#####????????!! I walked right into that door, banging my forehead, nose, and knee.

Hopefully, that store did not have a security camera, but, even if they did, at least I'm not alone!

Fortunately, only my knee actually showed a bruise. The reason I was in the shop in the first place was to find an evening bag to match the dress I was wearing to a holiday party on Saturday hosted by the company Peaches works for. It was a fancy party -- the kind you get your hair done and break out the hooker heels for. A bruise on my face would have totally made the evening bag irrelevant.

I wish I could turn this into some sort of metaphor for you ... Hmmmm, maybe I have not yet lost the gift ... You enter academe innocently enough. You wander around, admire the work around you, try things on for size, narcississtically admire yourself, feel ashamed of the size of your ass (too large or too small -- it's always something!), maybe walk away with a trinket, maybe a piece of paper ... the view out on the street looks so lovely with all those holiday decorations winking and blinking at you ... and then SMACK!!!##$%#####????????!!  You walk into the cruel reality that you can't stay any longer but getting out HURTS!

Ouch. I swear, my nose still hurts, bruise or not.

*     *     *     *     *

On an unrelated note, have any of you ever heard of UnCollege? We should start something similar for graduate school. Particularly for those of us in the humanities and social sciences, just because we love learning does not mean graduate school is our only option. We should be creatively thinking about ways to pursue knowledge AND have a life, whilst opening doors for ourselves rather than walking SMACK!!!##$%#####????????!! into closed ones.

Use "use" not "utilize"

I've been having the "use" vs. "utilize" argument with people at the Petting Zoo ever since I got here. Have I bitched about this before? It's entirely possible.

It's "use," goddammit, if you're writing -- or speaking -- everyday, ordinary-person English. "Utilize" says in three syllables what you could say in one and makes you sound pretentious. Using it more than once in the same sentence makes me want to pull out your tongue and twist it all the way around your neck, utilizing the offending organ to strangle you.

Here's what Grammar Girl says:

Bonnie says that as a copy editor she often reads fluffed up marketing material full of big words that try to make the writer sound important or knowledgeable. She usually just changes them to normal, unimpressive words that get the point across without much fuss. One of these words she changes often is “utilize,” as in the pretentious-sounding sentence “If you utilize this brand of printer, you will go far.” A sentence like that sounds fluffy and overly important, and it gives readers the impression that you’re trying too hard. Most of the time you can avoid the verb “utilize”; “use” works just fine.

So if you’re in marketing or PR, you can just use “use”; it’s probably not a good idea to utilize “utilize.” In a similar vein, please avoid the word “utilization.” It does your sentence no good. Surprisingly, “utilize,” a 19th-century loanword from French, does have very specific and valid uses, mostly in the scientific world. The word “utilize” often appears “in contexts in which a strategy is put to practical advantage or a chemical or nutrient is being taken up and used effectively.”  For example, according to the American Heritage Guide to Contemporary Usage and Style, you might hear “utilize” properly used in a sentence such as “If a diet contains too much phosphorus, calcium is not utilized efficiently.”

So if you're a science writer, you might find yourself using the word “utilize.” If you’re just a regular person writing a regular sentence, you should probably just stick with the word “use.”

You would think scientists would at least think to bring up the particular science usage. Or maybe just concede this one to the collective yet minority wisdom of their own comms, public affairs, and humanities people? But no. The loudest and lamest excuse I've heard to date? Apparently, "I would rather be utilized than used" is as good a reason as any to overuse "utilize."

Granted, we have democracy around here, but so much for evidence-based decision making.  And the active voice.

Blaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrggggggggghabaaaaaarrrrf!!!!!??!!!!!!!!!%%%€666ggggggrrrrrrrrrrrrbleah

I fucking HATE being sick! I hate doctors. I hate needles. I hate hospitals. And I FUCKING hate cranberry juice cocktail in lunchbox sized plastic juice packs!! You all better put out some decent blog material in the next day or so or I'm going to die of fucking boredom. That is all.

Airborne Pumpkins

Well, my trip was cancelled. Both the event and the flights. Good thing I ended up NOT going up Sunday. Now what I'm most looking forward to are airborne pumpkins! NPR (my local station anyway) was warning people about taking in Halloween decorations before the Frankenstorm's full force hit, particularly pumpkins, because "they could become airborne." I cannot get the image of flying pumpkins out of my head and I really really want to see one!

Impending Frankenstorm: Readers, do you have any travel advice?

What is with this monster Frankenstorm? It's supposed to make landfall somewhere along the mid-Atlantic early in the morning on Tuesday. I'm supposed to fly from DC to Boston around 7:00 AM, but I have a pretty strong sense that flight will be cancelled. Regardles of where Sandy comes ashore, travel all along the East Coast is going to be a mess Tuesday and probably for most of the day Monday, too. I can't decide whether (no pun intended) to just wait and see, which could mean missing the work thingie in Boston scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday, or to be proactive and change my flight to, like, Sunday to get in ahead of the weather.

For the work thingie, it isn't absolutely crucial that I be there, but it's a once-a-year thingie and the powers-that-be have said it would be good for me to go -- not so much because I'd contribute anything but because I'd learn a lot about some Petting Zoo people, plans, dynamics, operations, and such. The Petting Zoo covers my travel, but they do request that we keep expenses "within reason." If I change my flight to Sunday, there's going to be a change fee and two extra nights in a hotel, which gets expensive in Boston, plus all the extra meals. It goes from being a $350 trip to closer to $1000 trip.

I'm sure the Big Dolphin would approve the extra expense, but I have the misfortune of having a conscience about such things. I really want to go, but since it's not crucial that I go, can I really justify the extra expense and the hassle to myself?

Meh. Stupid Frankenstorm! Readers, what would you do?

A Day in the Life

In the last few weeks and months, a number of you post-ac bloggers have been posting about what it's like in the 9-5, nonacademic work-a-day world -- notably, reassuring would-be leavers that there is a pretty decent world out here and it's not nearly as bad as the cultish culture inside academe would have you believe. These posts illuminate how, yes, there's more free time and money but also plenty of interesting and likable coworkers with whom to interact and not-half-bad-at-all tasks and challenges with which to fill your days.

Along the same lines, very little about my "next NEXT job" these days resembles the boring, cubicled-in, quiet-life-of-desperation imagined by many inside academe, nor does it much resemble the alternative universe of the secretary job that first got me out of academe and which the first year and a half of this blog chronicles.

So, in the interest of sharing and motivating, I'd like to contribute to the growing body of stories from post-acs that tell a story about the very decent kind of work you can do once you grant yourself permission to leave and, time permitting for those difficult first steps (which might take a few years -- took me a year and a half to just get this far!!), you get on your feet and inside the nonacademic front door.

*     *     *     *     *

Before I tell you what "a day in the life of recent Ph.D." looks like, I should first give you a little background so you can compare the different stories we are telling about rather different types of jobs and work environments.

So ... I work at this place I've been calling the Petting Zoo. Don't read too much into that -- it's just a name I figured I could riff on. The PZ is a well-established nonprofit with about 65 people in our DC office. Despite being located along the infamous K Street corridor, the PZ, like many other nonprofits also situated around here, is not filled with evil, money-driven lobbyists eager to sell off themselves and Congress to the highest bidder. While there are a few lobbyists who work for the PZ, most of the "policy" work done by staff, myself included, isn't lobbying and doesn't involve any sort of messing around on the Hill.

So, what do we do? Well, that depends on one's job title. My job falls within the category known as "analyst." There are research analysts, which is sort of an oxymoron given that what all analysts spend their time doing is researching and writing reports, and there are policy analysts, science analysts, and so on. I have an interesting and probably unique adjective preceding the "analyst" part of my job title, but you get the idea. A fair chunk of my time involves researching and putting together reports -- or, as we've been calling them lately because "report" is somewhat limiting in scope, audience, and content, "analytical products."

Does that sound too frighteningly like academe? Think again!!

While being an analyst is a good job for a recent Ph.D., the job itself doesn't require one. Most of the analysts at the PZ do have Ph.D.s, mostly in the sciences, but a lot of analysts around the nonprofit world, generally, gained their expertise in other ways, either through working their way up through other, related positions (e.g. research assistant or associate) or some type of professional master's degree.

The last thing to note, before I tell you about "a day in the life," is that Expanding Habitats, the PZ program I work on, is very new and very different from anything else here. There's a fair amount of creativity and flexibility, as well as a certain amount of instability -- I don't know if the program or my position will be funded after the first two years, which, coming from the precariousness of academe, is a little scary, but whatever ... It's not something I'm choosing to worry about right now. The salary is decent in the meatnime, and after two years, I'll have a better resume and more prospects ...

For right now, there's an energy to the way days go that I like. Expanding Habitats inherited a number of incomplete research projects from a program, Surviving in Captivity, it absorbed. We are just now finishing those up and, finally (after the 3 months I've been here!!), looking ahead to what's next.

*     *     *     *     *

So, here goes today, "a day in the life of recent Ph.D.":

6:30 AM - 7:00 AM

Evil Fluffy Orange Cat wakes me up by jumping on my chest, head-butting my chin, and purring loudly in my ear. I shoo away Evil Fluffy Orange Cat and put a pillow over my head. Evil Stripeyy Orange Cat promptly also jumps on the bed and attacks Evil Fluffy Orange Cat. They battle for a while. The winner is the one that finally does something evil enough to get me out of bed. For some strange reason, they ignore Peaches.

7:00 AM - 7:30 AM

I feel a claw in my thigh and rouse myself to find EFOC has ESOC in a headlock. They both jump off the bed and race each other downstairs as I follow groggily behind. I feed them, make coffee, drink the coffee, listen to NPR, and make my way back upstairs to the shower.

7:30 AM - 8:00 AM

Shower, get dressed (nothing too special as we have a business causal office environment -- not a suit and not jeans but somewhere in between), wake up Peaches (who gets to leave a little later), and say good-bye.

8:00 AM - 9:00 AM

My usual route to work is to take the bus, which I catch 2 blocks from my house, ride about a mile and a half, and then walk another 6 blocks to my office. Sometimes I walk the whole way -- it doesn't require leaving that much earlier and I'd like to get in the habit of it -- but today I took the bus.

9:00 AM - 10:00 AM

I get to my building right around 9, take the elevator up to the 8th floor, drop my bag off in my office, turn my computer on, and go down the hall to the kitchen to grab a cup of coffee. Back at my desk, appropriately caffeinated, I read through my email, finding a message from Enviro Shark, another analyst (with a Ph.D. in environmental engineering, as I think I mentioned before), with a link to a 45-minute documentary ze recommends because of the way it frames a particular issue. Expanding Habitats is considering similar ways of framing issues in our analysis. I decide the documentary is work-related enough to justify watching it, and I spend the rest of the hour doing so.

10:00 AM - 12:30 PM

At 12:30, Enviro Shark, Skeletor (a research assistant with an M.S. in neuroscience), and I have a phone conference with the Expanding Habitats program manager, who has a Ph.D. in microbiology (though no more works as a micorbiologist than I do as a literary scholar) and works from the Petting Zoo's Office in Other City. The three of us - Enviro Shark, Skeletor, and myself -- are the core of the Expanding Habitats analysis team, and we are talking with Program Manager today to flesh out some ideas for one of our upcoming, more time sensitive projects. Before that call happens, I need to spiffy up a template I created the other day (the larger project involves a series of smaller ones that would all have to conform to a set structure and framewrok for analysis), read through an archive of possible topics, and comment on some comments Enviro Shark and Skeletor made on an earlier draft of the template. Also during this time, Enviro Shark, Skeletor, and I exchange some emails regarding possible topics. We haggle and argue a bit, each pushing for the topics we think would be best. At 12:25, I send around a list of the things I think we need to talk about during the conference call.

12:30 PM - 1:30 PM

The conference call with Program Manager takes place in my office. My office is decent sized and has two windows, albeit ones looking out on other buildings. Everybody has their own office here, mostly with windows, except interns and assistants, who have cubicles nicer than most of the office space I had use of as an adjunct. The main reaosn we're in here today is that I'm taking the lead on this particular project and we had a similar conference call in Enviro Shark's office yesterday regarding the project ze is taking the lead on. The call goes well. All of us get along with each other and with Program Manager, and we share with hir what our ideas are and ze fills us in on what ze has been thinking. We talk about the template and possible topics. We're all more or less on the same page, having clarified a few things, and we end the call with a to-do list for the next two weeks or so.

1:30 PM - 2:30 PM

Lunchtime! I head downstairs, past the K Street construction, to an Indian place I like. I eat and then take a walk, mulling over project ideas, because I'm not ready to sit back down at my desk yet.

2:30 - 5:00 PM

The rest of today is spent at my desk. I have more email to read and respond to. I get distracted for a bit eavesdropping on Senior Pink Elephant, who occupies the office next door, and is on an annoyingly loud call but regarding a topic of interest. Then I review some data I had collected for one of the Surviving in Captivity carryover projects we'll be finishing up in the next few weeks (data about a particular type of policy government agencies subject their employees to that we're analyzing). I look over a scorecard I've been keeping in Excel and double-check my scoring on the agency I did a little over-hastily at the end of the day yesterday and make sure I didn't miss anything. After that, it's getting on towards 4:00, and I search for a hotel room in Other City, where I'll be traveling next week. PZ has a travel service that's great for air but sucks for hotels. I have my plane tickets but still have to book a hotel. When I traveled last week, I used Hotwire, which worked out great. Nothing good today, but I suspect I'll find something before I leave town Tuesday morning. By the time I get done scoping travel, it's after 4:30. Since there's nothing pressing I need to finish this afternoon ... well, why not write a blog post about what I did today?

*     *     *     *     *

And, well, here it is 5:30, and I am itching to go home! I think I will walk, at least part way, pick up a bottle of wine and maybe dinner. Not sure I feel like cooking, but we'll see. The nice thing about walking is that I pass TWO grocery stores and multiple wine shops. Then again, sometimes I just want to get home ...

So, there you have it. A day in the life of a post-ac. I will go home, reconnect with Peaches, Evil Fluffy Orange Cat, and Evil Stripey Orange Cat, probably watch Survivor or some other bullshit TV, relax, maybe do a little yoga, and go to bed somewhere around 10 or 11.

Not bad, eh? No anything like what the cultists in academe would have you believe. My evenings vary a little. Sometimes Peaches and I go out to dinner. Yesterday I went to a yoga class before heading home. Sometimes I might read for a bit instead of watching TV. But you get the idea: no pressure to do more work like grading papers or revising some stupid chapter that just can't wait until tomorrow, no anxiety about planning what to do in class the next day, no worries about whether I'll get assigned that extra class next semester and have more than $50 in my checking account, no nightmares about meeting with advisors or committees ...

Just a normal, work-a-day life.

Wetlands and Dogs

From the retreat earlier this week:

Wetlands ...

Dogs ...

Wetlands AND dogs ...

Today is the all-day meeting about holding effective meetings

We're on a break right now. I cannot believe this is going to go on until 5:00!!!

And at lunch, the omnivores ate all the fucken vegetarian sandwiches while I was out of the room for 5 minutes trying to answer the bazillion emails I had.

AAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrggggggggggghhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!

This is way worse than the normal, terrible, inefficient, stupid meetings we usually have. Because those, mercifully, hardly ever last more than an hour.

*headdesk*

*     *     *     *     *

UPDATE: 5:02 PM

Let's just say, it's a good thing there weren't any sharp objects in the room! Time to go home now ...

From Somewhere in Essex County, MA

I've never been on a workplace "retreat" before -- or any kind for that matter. New concept. But Expanding Habitats, being a new program and all and having more than a few internal and external tensions, the powers that be decided it was worth the effort and expense to get everybody together outside of civilization for a few days. I think the general idea is to brainstorm and bond.

So, here we are. It's raining lightly, and the air coming through my open window smells like pine and fall leaves and the bonfire we just put out.

I actually got into Boston yesterday -- spent the night in Cambridge, somewhere between MIT and Harvard. And then everyone met up for lunch today and drove out here to Essex.

We spent the afternoon talking in-house work stuff -- how to get Expanding Habitats to play better with the other programs at the Petting Zoo. And then we had dinner and drank a bunch of wine and strategized about how we're going to approach the absolutely immense task we've set for ourselves of getting the public and policymakers to take science more seriously.

The problem isn't more or better information communicated in more or better ways. That's been the communications failure of the past. The challenge is engaging the public on its learning curve more effectively, getting them to discuss and consider the choices --  a specific set of them -- for action with their consequences and implications clearly set forth.

That's Dan Yankelovich, liberally borrowed from. Go read him if this problem interests you.

Tomorrow morning, some of us are getting up early to meet up with the Big Dolphin, who will be taking hir dogs for a walk out by the water. The Big Dolphin knows a lot about the water and the creatures that inhabit it -- and the ecosystem it's part of and the people who live within it and influence it. Ze has promised to tell us more about these things as the sun rises and the dogs do what dogs do.

Then we will return and eat breakfast and reconvene our discussions of strategy ... and maybe we'll all have a better idea what we're doing for the next 6 months to a year when it's done.

I guess this is how retreats go.

I fly back to DC tomorrow evening - just as the debate is getting underway.

Well, that went over like a lead balloon ...

Team Science over here at the Petting Zoo is trying to get some work done on Spaceship Landing Recognizance.

In fact, Outreach Lynx is going to be in Southern State all next week trying to garner support for SLR but doesn't really know how to get it from conservatives and has explicitly ASKED me if I knew anyone that might help with these efforts.

As it happens, SLR is actually something my old friends at conservative New Think Tank are somewhat interested in. They're interested in it for completely different reasons than the Petting Zoo's Team Science, but they're more or less on the same page when it comes to getting policymakers and the public to pay attention to it.

Now, this therefore strikes me as an opportunity for some sort of right-left collaboration -- something along the lines of "I'll scratch your back, you scratch mine." You give Team Science some credibility for talking with conservatives in Southern State's legislature, and Team Science gives your free-market ideas as a means for dealing with SLR more credibility with liberal audiences. However, unfortunately, while these free-market solutions to SLR are more or less supported by environmentalist groups, they aren't something the general population at the Petting Zoo is familiar with.

So, long story short, I talk to Former Colleagues at New Think Tank today and tell them about the Petting Zoo's SLR efforts in Southern State. After some silly but predictable jabs at the cover art on the SLR memo I show them, they agree that, with a little reframing, they could support the Petting Zoo's efforts -- or at least arrange some sort of meeting between Outreach Lynx and the person that works for them in Southern State.

But what happens when I propose this to Outreach Lynx? In fact, all I proposed was, "Do you want me to introduce you to these people I used to work with so that you can talk with them about how you might work together to accomplish mutual goals in Southern State?"

What happens when I send this email? Initially, I just told Outreach Lynx that I had some ideas and would ze want to hear about them. Outreach Lyunx replies enthusiastically, "Why yes!! Tell me of your ideas!!!" When OL hears WHERE my ideas are coming from and who ze would have to talk to, ze stops talking to me. Suddenly, after a few happy, perky, interested emails, there's no reply. Nothing. Nada.

Radio. Fucking. Slience.

 

Why? Because didn't you know that People Who Think Differently are EVIL.

It is sad, but, unfortunately, there are more than a few crustaceans here at the Petting Zoo who want conservatives to support Science with a captial "S" -- can't understand why anyone would be against Science -- just so long as they don't have to TALK to them, to "those people."  Eeeeeeewwwwww!!!!!

Harrrrrruuuuuuumpphh.

Now do you understand what's difficult about my program, Expanding Habitats? There are dangers and risks associated with Expansion beyond our standard zones of captivity. Expansion is scary. Not everybody here is ready to leave the cages of their fears and prejudices. It's true that those cages were originally built for self-protection, but now they're barring progress.

*     *     *     *     *

Did I mention that Passionate Public Interest Lobbyist also came to me the other day in a fury because I had merely TALKED to someone inside the Lions' Den? PPIL says, "How dare you! Who do you think you are? The Lions do eeeeeeevil things on the Hill. Terrible, just terrible things!! Don't you know how risky it is for you to go there and say you work for the Petting Zoo? They will twist everything you say and turn it against all of us. You haven't worked long enough at the Petting Zoo to fully appreciate how dangerous it is. And you don't even care because you aren't PASSIONATE. You are disrespecting boundaries the Petting Zoo has worked a long time to protect because that's the only way we get to preserve the illusion that we're right about everything!"

OK, so that last part isn't quite what PPIL said, but it's true enough.

*     *     *     *     *

Fortunately, the Big Dolphin is on my side and said I should keep talking to whomever I want to. That's what Expanding Habitats is all about ...

I have to take blogger training?????

If I want to write for the Petting Zoo's blog, I have to take their blogger training course.

Ironic, no?

It's some sort of two-hour session where they indoctrinate you about what you can and can't say.

I've been here for two and a half months, and they're just now getting around to telling me that it'd be great if I wanted to blog. Woot! There's another training session coming up, oh, in another month or two.

Things move slowly around here. Have you noticed?

I'd be utterly offended of it weren't for the fact that EVERYBODY has to go through this "training," including Passionate Public Interest Lobbyist (whom I wrote about the other day), who worked as a journalist for longer than I worked in academe before coming here. All the other communications and public affairs people, several  of whom have extensive publication records, have to take it, too.

Apparently, scientists have even bigger egos than writers. Possibly it makes them feel better about their own writing skillz if EVERYBODY has to get the blogger training.

The Tyranny of Very Good Writing

A Post-Academic in New York City has an interesting post up about thesis statements and how they undermine good writing.

I don't disagree with this, nor with PAINYC's conclusion: "It’s better to teach students – and to remind ourselves – to admire ambivalence and contradiction and to think of writing as a way to cultivate those things, not abolish them. That is what very good writing – a rare and beautiful thing – should be: a reflection of a commitment to knowing nothing at all and to writing forever into that void."

To be clear: I am not currently teaching writing and don't ever expect to be doing so again. However, I did teach it for going on a decade, and one of the things I never really resolved was how to teach students what "very good writing" is at the same time I was teaching them pragmatic ways of tackling the kinds of writing tasks that would most likely be required of them in other college courses and beyond.

Because "very good writing" as PAINYC describes it above -- and I basically agree with this definition -- is not the kind of decent, clear, concise, good-but-not-great writing nonacademic, nonliterary, non-artistic, non-scholarly writers need to practice.

When I was transitioning out of academe, before I started the secretary gig at Think Tank, I had a few interviews for writer/editor jobs. When these would-be employers asked for writing samples, I was somewhat surprised that they didn't want examples of "very good writing." They wanted mundane things. They wanted to see my course policies, assignment sheets, one-pager handouts, not my published academic papers or creative experiments. They didn't want ambivalence and contradiction. They wanted clarity, simplicity, and precision.

When I write today at the Petting Zoo, ambivalence and contradiction are not the goals. While I'm certainly not under the tyranny of a thesis statement or any other such formulaic bullshit, I also do have specific things I need to communicate. Putting together a report starts with a question or set of questions. With collaborators, I collect data with the objective of answering those questions. We analyze the data and draw conclusions. Writing the report requires communicating what we found -- answering the questions. While answering those questions might lead to other questions and other research and other reports, the task of writing itself in any given report is the opposite of generating ambivalence and contradiction, unless the research itself is inconclusive, in which case we still have to communicate that inconclusiveness in clear and understandable language.

So, as someone who appreciates and values and studies "very good writing," I struggled, as a writing teacher, with reconciling how to get students to at least recognize "very good writing," if not practice it, and how at the same time to cultivate the kinds of "decent" writing skills they would most likely have to practice in the rest of their college and professional lives.

Staring into the void of writerly oblivion is a beautiful thing, but it's also dangerous, especially if your goal is to get out of academe. It's a lot like staring at the sun. Before you know it, you won't be able to see anything at all.

"Isn't there anything you're passionate about?"

At a happy hour, one of my new Petting Zoo colleagues asked me this question: "Aren't you passionate about anything?" I was somewhat taken aback. Why, what could ze mean? Do I have to be passionate about something? If so, am I supposed to proselytize?

 I'm not sure I've been passionate about anything since my earliest years as a graduate student before academe's shine wore off. I think there was maybe that paper I wrote back in 2004. I was very passionate about turning that into my very first peer-reviewed publication. And then I published a few more and nobody cared. The butterfly flapped its proverbial wings and nothing happened. Oh, and I was pasionate about teaching, too. For a while. Until it became impossible to continue doing it without being a financial burden on other people.

 YaaaaaawwwwwwwwwwawnZzzzZzzzzZzzzzzzzZzzzzzzzzzzz.

Passion hasn't really been particularly useful as a life strategy for me.

 My goals these days are much simpler and less stressful than being passionate about something: 1) not be bored, and 2) earn a living wage while not being bored.

 So far so good!

All in all, not a bad show ...

The conference is officially over. I managed to escape the closing reception after only two drinks and early enough to get a full night's sleep before heading out in the morning to fly back East.

Schmoozing went well. Met some potential collaborators who are interested in just the things the Petting Zoo is hoping to develop in months to come. And learned -- as I've been suspecting -- that the Great Problem of Our Time is social, cultural, and political rather than scientific. The Problem isn't a lack of information or understanding but a lack of credibility and trust.

Why? And what to do about it? Those are the questions we need to be asking ...

Also, Enviro Shark and I did have a chance to talk, and my suspicions about the tensions between Expanding Habitats and Survival in Captivity were not figments of my imagination. While I feared I was being paranoid, in fact I was spot on. But the good thing is that Enviro Shark now "gets" where I'm coming from, and I think we have a solid alliance that will prove useful in the weeks ahead as far as settling the tensions and moving forward.

All in all, a pretty decent conference experience. Wish I had more time to see the sights, as it is beautiful out here in the mountains, but I am looking forward to going home.

Godammit!

I was hoping to make it through an entire conference for once without anyone mentioning Foucault. But godammit, somebody had to go and do it yesterday! One more day to go ...

Perverse

I cannot tell anyone at this conference that I used to work at Think Tank. They'd spit in my face or throw their drink at me or something.

I realized this yesterday when I was talking to someone, telling hir about the Petting Zoo, how I had just started there recently, and how Expanding Habitats was an awesome program. Then ze asked, "What did you do before Petting Zoo?"

I opened my mouth and was about to say I worked at Think Tank, and then I looked at hir and thought about what hir work was and what people had been talking about all afternoon, and I just said, "Oh, I was at Grad U doing a PhD and then teaching for a bit after."

It's weird, let me tell ya. And the road ahead will be difficult. Because, you see, one of the goals of Expanding Habitats is to get people talking to each other. But if people on either side of this issue loathe each other so much that someone who merely worked as a secretary, briefly, for the "wrong" side is tainted goods, that's a problem. And it is, I can tell you from having been now on the inside of both sides, a problem on both sides.

I really need to write that book I think ...

Perplexing

If your goal is to get the public to take science seriously, what difference does it make if the motives of some of the actors that help you accomplish this goal differ from yours? If your own motives are communitarian, making the world a better place, and theirs are individualistic, making themselves richer, so what? If working together nonetheless gets you farther towards this common goal than you'd otherwise get on your own, why should you refuse to collaborate?

(Note: I'm out West at a conference. I spent this afternoon on a university campus. Time for short reflections only but two things are eminently clear: 1. I'm glad I no longer work at a university, and 2. Far too many academics are well-meaning and thoughtful people, but they are out of touch with reality when it comes to what is required to get things done in the public sphere. More to come ... )

When they start to recognize you're not totally full of crap ...

After some of my whinier posts recently, I figured I should let readers know that I actually do like it here at the Petting Zoo. A lot of us post-acs, especially in English, get frustrated when the nonacademic world questions or doesn't recognize our madmadwordsmithing skillz acquired through so many long years of bad romance with that sick and twisted lover academe calls "Language and Literature Studies."

Let it be known, however, that my fellow Petting Zoo critters are beginning to realize how nice it is having an Almost English Professor at their beck and call -- especially one that once listed "animal studies" on her CV as a research interest. (Seriously, I shit you not! Could you not tell from all the recent animal metaphors and earlier animal posts?)

Here are three things I did in the last day or so that validate my existence here, at least for the time being:

• Started -- and then settled -- a kerfluffle over when to use the adjectival vs. the atrributive noun form of a certain word. The result was a change to the title of the Flaming Kangaroo Gas event title on our website and in the program and all the promotional materials. In other words, I used my knowledge of the English language to make my fellow critters look smart rather than stupid or pretentious.
• Drafted the speech that Expanding Habitats' Big Dolphin is giving at the Flaming Kangaroo Gas event. FKG has both public and behind-closed-door components, and the speech is sort of a big deal because it introduces the public part and must accomplish several goals in only about 600 words: introduce Expanding Habitats to the public, introduce Big Dolphin as EH's leader, introduce the event itself, introduce the keynote speaker (who is a former member of Congress), and please the EH major donor (as in seven-figure donor) who is sponsoring the event. That's a lot! And it was only after acomplishing a series of smaller, totally insignificant writing tasks that -- presto! change-o! -- suddenly, recent Ph.D. (go figure!) is the go-to person when other critters  want something written well and written quickly.
• Worked with a colleague -- we'll call hir Enviro Shark -- on hir PowerPoints for an upcoming presentation and had some input, from a humanities perspective, that ze hadn't thought of.

What's especially awesome is that Enviro Shark's presentation is at an upcoming conference we're both going to. It's interdisciplinary, and I would have submitted a paper proposal myself had I not started here months after the deadline had passed. The fact that they're letting me go anyway -- basically to schmooze, promote Expanding Habitats, and support Enviro Shark -- totally vindicates my choice to blow off that other conference I almost paid my own way for a few months back. It'll be fun to go to a conference without the pressure of either presenting or being on the academic job market. And it'll be especially fun to have the chance to bond a little with Enviro Shark.

Enviro Shark is a recent Ph.D., too, in environmental engineering. Ze is a type 1 leaver who only finished hir dissertation because ze couldn't stand the thought of not finishing. Ze immediately got out without ever going on the academic job market. Ze also got hir job here as a research analyst around the same time I started the secretary gig, which maybe tells you something about the relative ease with which science people and humanities people make their escapes.

Anyway, Enviro Shark is part of the Survival in Captivity crew and no doubt felt some of the sense of dislocation and irritation when Expanding Habitats took over, but ze hasn't been here all that long and seems to be adapting rather well -- not as hot and bothered as Senior Pink Elephant (who has been keeping, mercifuly, out of my way).

 So ... yes, it's been a good week, and the conference, too, which I leave for Thursday morning, will be good, too ...

New Look

Not sure I like it, but design isn't really my greatest talent. I've been contemplating moving to Wordpress, but I'm too lazy and busy to deal with it right now, so I'm experimenting here a little. I wanted to preserve the theatrical theme (I still feel like I'm role playing) and color scheme. Don't be surprised if things change again

Meetings Suck

Here at The Petting Zoo, people have a love/hate relationship with meetings. On the one hand, they like meetings enough to schedule them frequently. On the other hand, sometimes we have an hour-long meeting on Flaming Kangaroo Gas, and before not three days have gone by, we have another hour-long meeting on the same thing. As interesting as Flaming Kangaroo Gas may be and as important as it may seem to talk about it frequently, two (or even three!) meetings that close together don't accomplish anything. People go through their "to do" lists from the previous meeting, and simply state that they have started Whatever It Is but not finished. The meeting ends and everyone resolves to continue doing Whatever It Is they already know they're supposed to be doing and report back at the next meeting.

Gah. Somebody diligently takes notes (today it happened to be me, but we take turns), noting tasks for everyone, and the notes get circulated so everybody double knows Whatever It Is they're supposed to be doing that they already know they're supposed to be doing and have now just wasted another hour NOT doing.

You know you have a problem with meetings when the notes for consecutive meetings are more or less the same.

Everyone, you get the sense, feels somewhat imposed upon, but no one, including the meeting organizers, will speak up and say, "Hey, there's not a whole lot that's happened since the last meeting, so why don't people who need to do so just touch bases informally and we'll re-convene all together next week." Most people know how to send email, and, better yet, why not go drop by your colleague's office? It's right next door or maybe just two doors over.

But that gets me to the other issue. As I mentioned in a previous post, there are some tensions brewing just under the surface between the old program, Survival in Captivity, and the new program, Expanding Habitats.

There's a lot of passive aggressiveness on the part of the Survival in Captivity people, and, while I understand the reasons for it, it's really getting tiresome. After a certain amount of time, you just move on from these things, but that doesn't seem to be happening. They resent having to expend effort and time on Flaming Kangaroo Gas, which is an Expanding Habitats event upcoming in the next few weeks. They resent having to work with staff hired exclusively for Expanding Habitats, like me. And they seem to resent the general philosophical directive behind the misison and goals of Expanding Habitats. And this is all despite the fact that Survival in Captivity still exists as a program, and nobody lost their job when Expanding Habitats took over. And, really, the only thing that's changed is the leadership and a push towards creating public dialogue over policy rather than pointing fingers.

Some people, it turns out, aren't very good at dialogue, even among their coworkers, it seems.

Possibly the thing that irritates me the most about these Flaming Kangaroo Gas meetings is Senior Pink Elephant's attitude and immature behavior. SPE is one of the people most loyal to Survival in Captivity. Describing SPE's tone and body language and behavior as "resentful" understates the bitterness SPE expresses. While everybody is frustrated by these stupid meetings, most behave like grown-ups. SPE, on the contrary, will go to meetings and PASS NOTES to the other pink elephants, snicker, and nod and smile at them, as if we were all in high school. The other pink elephants just look uncomfortable and, when the meeting finally ends, carefully pick up those little slips of paper -- no doubt filled with snide comments -- so as to make sure nobody else sees them. SPE never does anything really big, but these little things undermine collegiality, which is maybe SPE's subconscious goal. Like, for example, at today's meeting, somebody in Expanding Habitats said they didn't get the email about Flaming Kangaroo Gass Solids that was sent around this morning. Instead of simply forwarding the email from the iPad SPE also obsessively plays with at meetings, which would be the civil, grown-up thing to do, SPE says dismissively, "Yes, you did. It was sent to everybody. Whatever. It's not important that you see it anyway." Somebody else did forward the message, but that kind of bitchiness lingers. Did I mention how tiresome this all is? It's toxic. It's spawned this whole bitchy post, which I needed to get out of my system before getting back to Flaming Kangaroo Gas tasks (that I could have done earlier but was at the meeting).

Did I mention also that SPE especially hates me because 1) I was hired specifically to work on Expanding Habitats, 2) I am not a pink elephant, and 3) I used to work at Think Tank, which makes me, ipso facto, either evil or crazy.

So, even if I'm being a little paranoid, I feel like a fair amount of SPE's passive aggressiveness is directed at me, especially since the other two main Expanding Habitats people -- the people, also, that hired me, know my background, and respect what I bring -- are in Other City Office. In other words, my allies only participate in meetings via video or phone conference, and I really don't think they pick up on this pepto bismal colored Pink Elephant shit, even though it may almost all (except for the Think Tank part) be actually directed equally at them.

I really do try hard to be civil to SPE, because, quite frankly, I would prefer to work in a civil environment. I'm willing to let stuff slide. I go out of my way to say hello and otherwise be polite. But, really? For how long? Even in academe, as petty as people could sometimes be, I never had to put up with this crap. Maybe I was lucky, but the closest workplace situation for me was a retail job I had in college. One of my coworkers there resented me because she thought I "stole" her customers. In fact, she ignored "her" customers, but I talked to them so neither of us would get yelled at by the manager. And I was just better at selling because I was actually NICE and POLITE and CIVIL and FRIENDLY and DECENT to the customers. When I got promoted from sales associate to sales supervisor, my coworker got into all this stupid passive aggressive stuff, like leaving messes for me to clean up or actively pissing customers off by being overtly rude to them because she knew I would get blamed, since I was "supervising." Fortunately for both of us, she quit after not too long.

Maybe SPE will just up and quit, too. SPE getting fired would be even better. Are there some job gods out there who would accept the burning of a pink elephant effigy?

You know what's ironic? The environment and people at Think Tank/New Think Tank, as I've blogged before, despite our differences, were entirely civil, polite, decent people to work with. There was nothing like this situation with any of them. Ever. And you know what else? It's that kind of civility that allows people to forge valuable and loyal relationships in this small little world where Who You Know Matters More Than What You Know. You want there to be people for whom you will go out of your way and who will go out of their way for you. You never know when that sort of thing will pay off, but it's worthwhile to work at because, in the long run, it's as important as showing up and doing all the other stuff you're supposed to.

Do you know what else is ironic? At Think Tank/New Think Tank -- because it was a small place, an open office, and a collegial environment in which people could just walk over and talk to each other about Whatever It Is that needed to get done -- there were no goddammedmotherfuckingmindblowinglyborrrrrrrrrrrrrrrring meetings EVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Petty Schadenfreude

Just before I arrived on the scene, the Petting Zoo got a freebie they just couldn't pass up: The use of a major public venue to host an event that would normally cost about fifteen grand for use just in the morning. Now, that's pretty sweet, but the catch (of course there's a catch!) is that we could only have it on a certain day. Planning such an event would normally require at least four months. Six would be better. What did we have? Two.

Yes, TWO months to put something together that would normally take SIX. On the plus side, this event is in DC, whereas we expect future events in the series (this is the first) to be held around the country with partnering orgnizations or institutions or even museums. So, we don't need to coordinate those types of logistics. However, the hard part, as far as I can tell from these my first six weeks on the job, is getting Important People to participate.

For better or worse, the public part of the event is coming together reasonably well. Important People like media attention, right? Most of those speakers are confirmed, with the exception of a Republican keynote. We have a Democrat, but it's proving rather ... well ... "difficult" to find a moderate Republican counterpart. That is, someone who would please certain organization higher-ups who think there needs to be more talking with "others" without causing donors to barf up their breakfast.

People are working on this, however, and, well, it ... just isn't really my problem becase -- in this town where who you know counts more than what you now -- I am a nobody and know nobody.

Which is not to say I'm not making efforts to make this event a success anyway. My role is to work on the non-public portion of the event, which is a workshop thingie of sorts, in the afternoon following the public part. It's in the same venue. In a beautiful conference room, in fact, overlooking the Capitol. Lunch will be catered by Fancy Celebrity Chef's Catering Company (leftovers will go to Mama Duck and her gourmet-fed babies who live in a wading pool on the roof, but I digress!).

We're trying to get 20-30 Important People to show up and talk at each other for a couple hours and come up with a sort of public document that everyone signs on behalf of their Fancy Very Important Organizations and which is ultimately presented to the next administration as a set of policy recommendations.

Turns out it's hard to get 20-30 Important People to show up and talk at each other for a whole afternoon when all you're giving them in return is Fancy Celebrity Chef's funburgersandmixedgreens, which they can very well go buy for themselves should they wish to eat such things.

So, the petty schadenfreude ... Yeah, well, so we divied up the list of people we want to invite. I had a handful of possibilities and alternates to pursue. A few academics and a few other types. The academics, surprisingly, have been relatively easy to get in touch with and talk to. We'll have a few of them. The "other types" I volunteered for are in an industry dealt with frequently by Think Tank. I figured I'd at least have an excuse to send an email and do some friendly name dropping.

The result? Total. Cold. Shoulder. As in, no response at all or a blatant blow-off: "Sorry, who-the-fuck are you again and why are you bothering me? No, I'm not available. I'm traveling. Can't rearrange. Now, go fuck yourself."

Not sure how that's going to work out. It kinda reminds of high school, actually. The social dynamics of it, that is. Whatevs.

But, so, the schadenfreude ... Yes, well, turns out it's not just me, Dr. Nobody Who Knows Nobody, that's gotten the ole fuck-off reponse. People Who Know Important People aren't getting their repeated and increasingly desperate voicemails answered, either. Woohoooo!!!??!!!???!

Is it totally perverse of me that I take some pleasure in this? Probably ...

I do, sincerely, want this event to go well. And, the truth is, it probably will go just fine. We have far from exhausted the list of possible participants in this workshop-thingie-do. It just amuses me in a sick-ish way that these people who think they're Special are being ignored, too -- and by people they expected would talk to them.

At least I was expecting to be ignored. Water off a baby duck's back ...

"Quack, quackk! Aren't we teh cutest?"

Blue Flamingos and Pink Elephants

This next "next" job hasn't been too bad so far for the past month and a half since I started. As you may have surmised from my relative lack of blogging, I've at least been busy enough. But I have a few minutes to spare today, and since I originally started the blog for purposes of venting, I shall vent.

At the time I started, The Petting Zoo (that's what I've decided to call this new place where I'm now working in my new, non Think Tank, non secretary job) was experiencing a time of significant transition. Upheaval, some might call it. A new program (Habitat Expansion, let's say), the one I'd been hired to work on, was eating in its entirety another, older program (let's call that one Survival in Captivity). Noobody from Survival in Captivity lost their jobs during the transition, but there was some reordering of priorities. And, maybe more importantly, Director of Survival in Captivity had made a bid for the job of Director of Habitat Expansion but an external candidate ended up getting it.

Transitions can be good times to start new jobs because there's a lot of flexibility in terms of the roles you carve out for yourself. I'm still grappling with all that and think in the long run it will work out for the best, but it's a little hard to know where I fit in right now, especially given the under-the-surface yet still perceivable tensions between Survival in Captivity and Habitat Expansion, which are now one and the same.

Add to these tensions the fact that one of the more senior people from Survival in Captivity is a Pink Elephant, only hires other Pink Elephants (including interns -- there's a stableful), and seems to find it weird to have to deal with Non Pink Elephants.

I happen to be a Blue Flamingo. If I were a Blue Elephant or a Pink Flamingo, there'd be less of a problem.My elephant-ness or pinkness would provide common ground.  But no. I am a Blue Flamingo and can not change either my blueness or my flamingo-ness. While I have no problem personally with Pink Elephants, it irks me that Semior Pink Elephant, while capable of interacting superficially politely in the course of getting work done, seems to despise the presence of Blue Flamingos and wish them to go away or at least not have to be bothered with their stink and feathers in the Pink Elephant Stable.

So, amyway ... I don't really have a purpose here other than to vent. I'm not going anywhere, and Pink Elephant isn't going anywhere. But the stableful of Pink Elephant interns is emptying out at the end of this month when they mostly all go back to school, and Senior Pink Elephant and I will probably have to intereact more then. And that will be annoying. Maybe Senior Pink Elephant will have gotten used to me by then????

Meh, I doubt it ... Right now, I just wish SPE, who is a loud talker and a hall walker, would STFU!!!

A Happy Marriage of ...

Pop culture and space science:

Academic Accent?

At an event the other day, as people were chitchatting over coffee before the presentations began, somebody asks me: "Where are you from?"

Me, thinking ze is asking where I work: "Organization X."

Other Person:  "No, I mean, I work with diplomats, and I'm good at picking up accents. I thought when you spoke I detected a bit of an accent. You're from here then?"

Me: "Huh???? Yeah. I am from here. Born and raised."

Other Person: "Oh, must be an academic accent then. I used to have one myself, but I lost it over the years. Haha!"

Me: "Yeah, I'm gonna go sit down now ... away from you. I think the presentations are about to start."

I walk away and sit down safely -- so I thought -- between two already occupied seats, but Other Person follows like a puppydog and sits right down in the row in front of me. Apparently ze wants to continue the conversation. The presentations have not started yet.

Other Person: "So, where was it you said you worked?"

 Me: "Organization X, but I just started there a few weeks ago."

Other Person: "And where were you before that?"

Me, thinking Think Tank and New Think Tank might be liabilities too complicated to explain in this environment: "I was at Grad U, stupidly teaching my way through a PhD in English."

Other Person, overcome with delight at hir clever detective work: "I knew it! You really do have an academic accent!!"

I stared momentarily at Other Person in disbelief. Thankfully, finally, the event began, as the moderator stepped up to the podium and told everyone to shut up.

*     *     *     *     *

An academic accent?????!?! WTF is an academic accent!! Have any of you ever heard of such a thing?

Maybe it really is true: You can take the post-ac out of academe, but you can't take academe out of the post-ac.

Race, Gender, Class, Culture, and Climate Change

This study analyzing social and cultural obstacles to climate change found that among the "six Americas" (alarmed, concerned, cautious, disengaged, doubtful, and dismissive), those people most dsimissive about addressing climate change because they are convinced either it doesn't exist or isn't a problem are most likely to be

high-income, well-educated, white men. They are also more likely to be very conservative Republicans who are civically active, hold strong religious beliefs and are the segment most likely to be evangelical Christian. They strongly endorse individualistic values and oppose most forms of government intervention.

Hmmmm. Fancy that! In other words, the group whose social, cultural, and economic dominance is most likely to be challenged by A) the environmental consequences of climate change and B) collective actions to mitigate those consequences is the group most resistant to the facts.


It's also interesting that the group most likely to be "alarmed" about climate change is older, well-educated white women with higher than average household incomes, while lower income women of color are the most likely to be "disengaged" from the issue altogether. In other words, socioeconomically privileged women can afford to overlook the "dirty" sources of their status (e.g. the oil company executive husband) while personalizing the exploitation of the environment (recall, traditionally Nature = Woman). However, socioeconomically underprivileged women have more pressing priorities, like reliable jobs, healthcare, and childcare, and cannot necessarily afford to question -- no matter how valid the basis for their questions -- the status of the ruling class.

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While the majority of Americans actually fit into the categories "concerned" or "cautious," rather than "dismissive," "disengaged," or "alarmed," I'm still pretty well convinced we're screwed.



Why? Because even poeple who are "concerned" enough to do things like bike to work and maintain a compost bin in the office kitchen are only willing to accept inconveniences they deem appropriate -- it's great having low-flush toilets, you know, as long as everyone still gets to eat factory farmed burgers for lunch.

*     *     *     *     *

Like I said. We're screwed.



Via

Shit. I may have just convinced myself to give up cheese. 



Post-Academic Quote of the Day

I never thought about Jane Goodall as a post-academic before, but despite all the honorary degrees she has earned since finishing her actual Ph.D., I think she still counts, given that her research was all done outside the bounds of a traditional academic appointment. Here's a little nugget of wisdom from an interview with her that speaks to what we might do with all that academic learning once we've left the campus behind:

So when I got to Cambridge, I wasn't there because I wanted to be a scientist, I was there because Louis Leakey felt I needed a Ph.D. and he was right. But I didn't actually care about academia, and I knew they were talking rubbish. I knew they were wrong, so what I did at Cambridge was learn how to express what I knew in a way that did not leave me open to be attacked.

Being able to think critically about the world around you and express yourself to people who might not want to hear what you have to say but need to -- asking impertinent questions in the right kinds of situations without getting your ass kicked or getting fired -- these could be the most valuable takeaway from academe.

What do we do with this knowledge? I don't know ... I guess it's up to us to figure out.

RIP Sally Ride

I don't know about you, but I admired Sally Ride a lot when I was growing up. I was deep into middle school hell when she went up for her shuttle missions in 1983 and '84, and I thought it  was just the coolest thing beyond this world that a woman was going into space, even though I didn't really think science per se was all that cool at the time. It was inspiring.

Here's an excerpt from an interview with her discussing the science education organization she founded later, after her time as an astronaut, which essentially took concrete action on all the things she herself represented:

ID: So you put a female face on science?

SR: That’s a good way to say it. We put a female face on math and science. We target both boys and girls, but we emphasize girls. We try to introduce them to female role models. Make the girls appreciate you can be a scientist and be a normal person.

ID: Discuss the intersection of science education and its intersection with innovation – does one beget the other?

SR: They absolutely go together. Basic science research, basic engineering are what lead to some of the innovations that propel the country. Look around, there’s a computer on every desk, everyone has a cell phone. iPods have taken over. That’s just in the consumer-electronics market. These things are part of our lives. We can’t imagine a world without them anymore. Some of our largest, most productive companies wouldn’t exist without a science engineering base – HP, Apple, Microsoft, Dell, the list is endless. This stuff is all around them. It’s in their pink Nanos. It’s in IM (instant messaging). It’s in their cell phones that can take pictures.

ID: What’s at stake should the nation lose its scientific standing?

SR: We’ve always thought of ourselves as an innovative country that keeps at the forefront, a world leader for the last many many decades. We’ve always prided ourselves on innovation. In World War II, the Cold War, the race to the moon – our self-image is being a technologically superior country. Without the new generation having some background or ability to enter engineering or science, we risk losing that. It’s part of our identity. We’re pioneers. We’re innovators. And we’re not producing engineers and scientists in the numbers we need.

Is it too ironic that the organization I now work for -- in fact, both my immediate supervisor, as well as the organization's president -- had been in contact with her just a few months ago? They talked with her about supporting our new program, about being involved in some way. Apparently, she was enthusiastic but not in good enough health to take an active role.

Anyway, RIP Sally! You are an icon that people -- smart girls especially -- will look up to for many, many years to come!!

"We still believe in pirates. Do you?"

My last day as Operations Director of New Think Tank is this Friday, July 13. We held my farewell lunch yesterday, though, since New Think Tank President will be out of town most of next week. 

At lunch, my successor asked what I would most miss most about leaving. Now, I am not a huge fan of such questions, reasonable as they may be. This falls in the same category of questions as "What is your favorite book?" Of course, you can always come up with some kind of answer, but it's always a bullshit answer. So, I gave a sort of bullshit answer that may perhaps have disappointed people who may have cared about what my answer was.

Becauses, of course, there are silly things I will miss (a desk in a former art gallery by a floor-to-ceiling window with an awesome view) and silly things I won't miss (taking out the trash). And I could, of course, add onto these lists ad infinitum, but what would that really tell you? Not much.

Instead, since they say a picture is worth a thousand words, I offer you one of the coolest pictures ever:

New Think Tank President commissioned an artist friend of mine to draw this pirate-themed caricature of the New Think Tank team as a gift to the donor who made it possible for us to split seamlessly from Old Think Tank and start up New Think Tank after the Great Scandal of May 2012.

On the far left is New Think Tank President depicted as the pirate captain. On the far right with the red bandana is me. And on the bottom right with the glasses and beard is the person I've occasionally referred to here as "Other Colleague." The other three are directors of New Think Tank's offices in Ohio, Texas, and Florida.

The guy with the eye patch is -- ooooooooo! evill!!!! -- a former executive director of ALEC who has never been anything but polite, respectful, and an all-around cordial and colleagial person to work with, which is pretty much what I can say about EVERYBODY at New Think Tank and, sadly, a lot more than I can say about more than a few people I knew in academe. While some of my liberal friends (who have often wondered how I could "stand" to work where I did for as long as I have -- WTF people!??!!?) might cringe to hear me say it, I'd rather work with nice people who vote differently than I do than asshats who claim to share my politics but hypocritically reinforce an exploitative and destructive class system in their own workplaces and profession.

(Ahem ... Yes, Academe, you and some of your loyalest servants still piss me off.)

Pirates are sort of a theme around here. I won't go into details, but, suffice it to say, I like working in a place where, unlike in academe's lower ranks, you get to make up your own rules, chart your own course, and keep the treasure you acquire along the way.

That piratical spirit, shared by all of my New Think Tank colleagues, is what I'll miss most when I leave.

But, fortunately, I don't think I'll be entirely leaving it behind. If you look closely at the picture, notice the text at the very bottom. You might have to enlarge your screen to see it, but it's an inside joke of sorts. If you figured out what the Great Scandal of May 2012 was about, you'll get the joke. Even if you didn't and don't, appreciating the spirit of it is enough. The text says, "We still believe in pirates. Do you?"

My answer: Yes, friends, always and forever! Once a pirate always a pirate!! And the best adventures, for me and for you, are yet to come!!!