I'm about 100 pages into Howard Zinn's "People's history of the United States." It's interesting, but not very new or shocking, and irritating when it gets sentimental. One of the things he mentions in his chapter on the Colonies is how white people would often end up living with Indians and choose not to return to white civilization when given the chance, whereas no Indian chose to join white civilization.
This idea caught my attention because I believe that people's choices reflect their values. We hear so much about our American values being destructive, and yet many many people choose to come to America, and not just people who are suffering or are refugees. My family came as refugees, yes, but many people came for work or grad school and tried to get green cards and stay. So I wonder a little bit sometimes why people criticize our country so much and yet choose to live here.
Furthermore, there are things like better healthcare and sanitation that people accross the board seem to want. I learned this from the book "Three cups of tea," written about a philanthropist who builds schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan. It seems that women dying in childbirth is pretty sucky, and if someone could prevent this then it seems like everyone in that woman's community would be happier. But perhaps that isn't true. Maybe the cost of better healthcare and nutrition isn't worth it.
Saturday, September 22, 2007
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Eggplants and Salmon
Ever since our vacation to San Diego, where I stumbled upon Julie Powell's book "Julie and Julia," acquired one of Julia Child's cookbooks at a used bookstore in La Jolla, and experienced 2 weeks worth of fine dining, I've been getting in touch with my culinary tastes. I used to think of baking as the ultimate thing to do if I want to cook, but the trouble with that is that we don't actually eat that many baked goods, so my baked bread would often sit there and grow old. Since I don't like to waste food, it becomes difficult to refine a baking process when the end result won't be consumed.
Now that we've moved, and grocery shopping is much easier, and my attitude has changed a little bit, I've come to realize that two foods that I really like, and also can cook fairly frequently because they are normal meal foods, and not desserts, are salmon and eggplant. So learning how to cook these two foods well will be my tentative culinary goal for the time being. Right now I have some mashed up chinese eggplant baking in the toaster oven under parmesan and manchego cheese. We'll see.
Now that we've moved, and grocery shopping is much easier, and my attitude has changed a little bit, I've come to realize that two foods that I really like, and also can cook fairly frequently because they are normal meal foods, and not desserts, are salmon and eggplant. So learning how to cook these two foods well will be my tentative culinary goal for the time being. Right now I have some mashed up chinese eggplant baking in the toaster oven under parmesan and manchego cheese. We'll see.
Gluttony and quantum mechanics
My dearest husband is out of town as of this morning, and I am already revering to my undergraduate habits of stuffing myself full of starchy sugars late at night and plugging away at quantum mechanics. Part of me hates me for this gluttony; another part of me appreciates the freedom (to stuff myself) and the freer thinking that being home alone seems to afford me from time to time. Of course I can't let this continue indefinitely if I want to fit in my pants in a month, but fortunately Robert's absence is only for 4 days.
I tried cooking the eggplants I purchased on Saturday. They were bitter and not so tasty. My quest to cook eggplants well will soon have to become a real quest, since I love eggplant but seem to be less than successful at preparing them well.
I had two minor epiphanies over the last two days. The first one happened yesterday; it's the more significant of the two. We had a substitute lecturer in quantum, one of our Professor's grad students. I stayed after class and asked him about the dot product of position and momentum space, which was necessary in order to do one of the homework problems. After he helped me over the hurdle I was stuck at, I asked him how to go about thinking about this problem. I basically said "I understand what you did but I would never have come up with it myself. What am I not understanding?" He proceeded to explain basic rotations to me, but I was still confused. So I asked him if there was a good reference to read up on this. His response:
"There are lots of references, but it's far more valuable to try to figure it out for yourself."
Oh my. What a thought. There are several thoughts here, actually. One, that I can figure out for myself what the dot product of position and momentum should be. Not too much to ask I guess, given that someone somewhere had to figure it out for the first time. Second, that I should figure it out. That's reading books and being studious is the intellectually lazy way to go. I suspected that all along, that turning to books when something puzzled me wasn't making me a better scientist, but here it was spelled out for me. Duh! Just because books exist doesn't meet I have to read them. Sometimes I should try to figure out what's in them for myself.
The second epiphany was realizing that I love talking to people, but don't like working with them. I like working independently. Unfortunately, I don't like being alone or lonely; that makes me feel isolated. There is a fine line through the desert of interpersonal communications that must be tiptoed if I am to be a happy and successful graduate student.
I tried cooking the eggplants I purchased on Saturday. They were bitter and not so tasty. My quest to cook eggplants well will soon have to become a real quest, since I love eggplant but seem to be less than successful at preparing them well.
I had two minor epiphanies over the last two days. The first one happened yesterday; it's the more significant of the two. We had a substitute lecturer in quantum, one of our Professor's grad students. I stayed after class and asked him about the dot product of position and momentum space, which was necessary in order to do one of the homework problems. After he helped me over the hurdle I was stuck at, I asked him how to go about thinking about this problem. I basically said "I understand what you did but I would never have come up with it myself. What am I not understanding?" He proceeded to explain basic rotations to me, but I was still confused. So I asked him if there was a good reference to read up on this. His response:
"There are lots of references, but it's far more valuable to try to figure it out for yourself."
Oh my. What a thought. There are several thoughts here, actually. One, that I can figure out for myself what the dot product of position and momentum should be. Not too much to ask I guess, given that someone somewhere had to figure it out for the first time. Second, that I should figure it out. That's reading books and being studious is the intellectually lazy way to go. I suspected that all along, that turning to books when something puzzled me wasn't making me a better scientist, but here it was spelled out for me. Duh! Just because books exist doesn't meet I have to read them. Sometimes I should try to figure out what's in them for myself.
The second epiphany was realizing that I love talking to people, but don't like working with them. I like working independently. Unfortunately, I don't like being alone or lonely; that makes me feel isolated. There is a fine line through the desert of interpersonal communications that must be tiptoed if I am to be a happy and successful graduate student.
Sunday, September 16, 2007
Science and Writing and Writing Science
I like science a lot. And I like writing, a lot, although not everyone knows that because my fine undergraduate institution completely turned me off of the humanities (with the excellent exception of history). But I'm not interested in writing about science. Why not? Maybe I should be? Why am I prejudiced against science writing and is this prejudice well-founded?
I think my awareness of science writing began with a negative impression. When I was fifteen, I stupidly decided to go to some Nobel Laureate Symposium at the Palace of Fine Arts. It was a stupendous waste of time, and the worst part is that I missed school for it (I suppose it doesn't matter too much now, but it is embarassing to remember). One of the speakers involved there was science writer K.C. Cole, who told a pretty bad story about a friend of hers, was generally socially awkward, and really annoyed me. She was introduced as a science writer. At the time I didn't even know what a science writer was, but from that point on science writers and embarassing emotions have been inextricably associated in my mind.
Subsequent experiences that involved actually writing science, mostly in the form of psuedo-grant proposals to get the Undergraduate Research programs to give me money were reasonably pleasant and successful. Hey, I was proposing the research I was going to do! And of course on paper it would all work! However, when it came time at the end of summers to write reports of my research, there was always a tension between being honest about what I did and making my research look good. And that's where I saw that for many people honesty didn't quite fly out the window, but did get negelected, a bit, for the sake of artistry.
But see, artistry is what writing is all about. The great thing about fiction is that it doesn't have to be real. In fact, it's not supposed to be real because then it wouldn't be fiction. Fiction-at least good fiction--just has to entertain. That's it. Voila. Nothing real, no honesty required, at least not in the literal sense. Some peevish folks--and I am among them-- might request that fiction be "believable" or "true to life" but those are mere luxuries and preference, not hard rules.
I realize that not all writing is fiction. In fact, the writing that we learned in high school, writing essays and research reports and whatnot, was most definitely not fiction. Incidentally, that's the writing that my teachers in high school liked me for, the writing that let me to beleive that I'm not a sucky writer. But the writing that I've always loved was fiction, in the form of big long books that go on and on telling their beautiful made up tales. And even the columns I used to write for the school newspaper didn't have hard rules about truthfullneess. I expressed my opinion, tried to be honest, and never lied, but it was impossible to be completely dishonest about something because I was just expressing my opinion.
In science, there should be hard rules. Such as, first of all, No Lying. No Fiction. No making up pretty stuff that sounds good. And more importantly, no covering up your lack of progress with the tale of exciting applications. [I guess I should note that when I talk about writing science, I am speaking more generally about presenting science--it can include oral presentation as well. This is how my undergraduate Writing and Rhetoric classes have skewed me.] I undertand that people who present science to a more general audince, one that isn't going to go work on your same research question, want to tell a neat story. But I also know, from being in the middle of things, that neat stories are hard to come by. That's why research exists and why research groups are still doing their work. But I can't help but feel that people who present their research at colloquia are not giving me the fully honest story, but rather a dressed up and prettified version of the truth.
And so, because the writing I most love is antithetical to the way I think science should be written, I've developed an aversion to science writing. But maybe I should, instead, try to find ways to write about science that I don't find to be repulsive. I could then convince myself that I am doing a great public service. Robert suggested something about working on educational science for elementary school kids. Science education is important, and is also pretty crappy because it's not very deep. It needs work.
I think my awareness of science writing began with a negative impression. When I was fifteen, I stupidly decided to go to some Nobel Laureate Symposium at the Palace of Fine Arts. It was a stupendous waste of time, and the worst part is that I missed school for it (I suppose it doesn't matter too much now, but it is embarassing to remember). One of the speakers involved there was science writer K.C. Cole, who told a pretty bad story about a friend of hers, was generally socially awkward, and really annoyed me. She was introduced as a science writer. At the time I didn't even know what a science writer was, but from that point on science writers and embarassing emotions have been inextricably associated in my mind.
Subsequent experiences that involved actually writing science, mostly in the form of psuedo-grant proposals to get the Undergraduate Research programs to give me money were reasonably pleasant and successful. Hey, I was proposing the research I was going to do! And of course on paper it would all work! However, when it came time at the end of summers to write reports of my research, there was always a tension between being honest about what I did and making my research look good. And that's where I saw that for many people honesty didn't quite fly out the window, but did get negelected, a bit, for the sake of artistry.
But see, artistry is what writing is all about. The great thing about fiction is that it doesn't have to be real. In fact, it's not supposed to be real because then it wouldn't be fiction. Fiction-at least good fiction--just has to entertain. That's it. Voila. Nothing real, no honesty required, at least not in the literal sense. Some peevish folks--and I am among them-- might request that fiction be "believable" or "true to life" but those are mere luxuries and preference, not hard rules.
I realize that not all writing is fiction. In fact, the writing that we learned in high school, writing essays and research reports and whatnot, was most definitely not fiction. Incidentally, that's the writing that my teachers in high school liked me for, the writing that let me to beleive that I'm not a sucky writer. But the writing that I've always loved was fiction, in the form of big long books that go on and on telling their beautiful made up tales. And even the columns I used to write for the school newspaper didn't have hard rules about truthfullneess. I expressed my opinion, tried to be honest, and never lied, but it was impossible to be completely dishonest about something because I was just expressing my opinion.
In science, there should be hard rules. Such as, first of all, No Lying. No Fiction. No making up pretty stuff that sounds good. And more importantly, no covering up your lack of progress with the tale of exciting applications. [I guess I should note that when I talk about writing science, I am speaking more generally about presenting science--it can include oral presentation as well. This is how my undergraduate Writing and Rhetoric classes have skewed me.] I undertand that people who present science to a more general audince, one that isn't going to go work on your same research question, want to tell a neat story. But I also know, from being in the middle of things, that neat stories are hard to come by. That's why research exists and why research groups are still doing their work. But I can't help but feel that people who present their research at colloquia are not giving me the fully honest story, but rather a dressed up and prettified version of the truth.
And so, because the writing I most love is antithetical to the way I think science should be written, I've developed an aversion to science writing. But maybe I should, instead, try to find ways to write about science that I don't find to be repulsive. I could then convince myself that I am doing a great public service. Robert suggested something about working on educational science for elementary school kids. Science education is important, and is also pretty crappy because it's not very deep. It needs work.
Saturday, September 15, 2007
All Female Research group
I've been in my new grad school lab for 4 weeks now, and the biggest difference from my previous lab is how many girls there are! I sit in an office with 2 other girls, both second years, and there are 2 other grad school girls and one postdoc girl (woman, really, as we all are, but no matter) who sit in the other office. In fact the lab is probably split male-female about 50/50 but the girls are more social and we interact with each other more. Furthermore a lot of the male postdocs don't socialize so much with the rest of the group because they are a lot older than us, so this leaves me surrounded by an unprecedented level of estrogen.
It's fun. I've learned more about some people in 4 weeks than I learned about some of the guys in my old lab in 16 months, and it's not because I was antisocial or reclusive in the old lab. I'm not trying to suggest here that i've met my grad school soulmates. I haven't. I don't think I'm going to have grad school soulmates. I try to be friendly and nice and listen and be open, and I like everyone and people seem to like me just fine, but I'm very much making my own path as far as the science goes, with taking physics classes and working in a chemistry lab and not really finding a mentor for myself inside the group just yet. (That's something I need to get on, incidentally, but that's a subject for a different post). But the point is that working with girls, or at least with these girls, means that there's more conversation and interaction. I feel a lot more comfortable asking silly science questions, and also sharing personal stories. In my old lab, no one knew I was married for about 4 months, and the professor didn't know until he had to write my grad school application letters. Here everyone knows, because I've felt comfortable enough sharing things that begin with "my husband..."
On the other hand, I feel like all this socialness wears me out a little bit. I'm always worried about saying something awful that will offend my labmates and alienate them for weeks. I know that people have their differences and I'm not worried that sasying something offensive will ruin my career prospects or anything like that, but I do want to be on good terms with people and it takes energy to watch what I'm saying all the time.
It's fun. I've learned more about some people in 4 weeks than I learned about some of the guys in my old lab in 16 months, and it's not because I was antisocial or reclusive in the old lab. I'm not trying to suggest here that i've met my grad school soulmates. I haven't. I don't think I'm going to have grad school soulmates. I try to be friendly and nice and listen and be open, and I like everyone and people seem to like me just fine, but I'm very much making my own path as far as the science goes, with taking physics classes and working in a chemistry lab and not really finding a mentor for myself inside the group just yet. (That's something I need to get on, incidentally, but that's a subject for a different post). But the point is that working with girls, or at least with these girls, means that there's more conversation and interaction. I feel a lot more comfortable asking silly science questions, and also sharing personal stories. In my old lab, no one knew I was married for about 4 months, and the professor didn't know until he had to write my grad school application letters. Here everyone knows, because I've felt comfortable enough sharing things that begin with "my husband..."
On the other hand, I feel like all this socialness wears me out a little bit. I'm always worried about saying something awful that will offend my labmates and alienate them for weeks. I know that people have their differences and I'm not worried that sasying something offensive will ruin my career prospects or anything like that, but I do want to be on good terms with people and it takes energy to watch what I'm saying all the time.
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