Closer to Free

I was driving to work the other day, and the BoDeans "Closer to Free" came on the radio.



Three thoughts came into my head:

1. Although I am much less well informed since I've switched to listening to the music station on my commute, I am also no longer arriving at work already despondent about my fellow humans and their ability to get along. And sometimes a song I really like comes on and I actually arrive at work in a better mood than I was in when I left home. So overall, I think the decision to postpone my edification about the world's events to a lunchtime online news break has been a good one.

2. The technological advances just since my grad school days (when this song came out) are astounding. I remember the first time I heard this song. I was out to dinner with my then boyfriend. We were heading back to the car and this song came on the radio station that the shopping center was playing. It struck me immediately, and I made my boyfriend stop and listen to the entire thing. But they segued directly to another song without naming the song or the artist. So I cajoled my boyfriend into calling the station to find out what it was. I hate making phone calls, but I really wanted to know what the song was. Nowadays, there's an app for that. It seems like a trivial thing, but it is actually really cool and amazing that you can hold your phone up to capture the ambient music and it can tell you what the song is. Of course, I don't have a smart phone, so I'd still have to enlist help... but you get the idea.

3. OMG, the BoDeans are right. I just want to be closer to free.

OK, let me explain that last one. The memory that popped into my head to go with that line was from the first stop on our big trip, which was in French Polynesia. We had booked into a little fare in Moorea, right on the beach. We were finding French Polynesia less idyllic than we'd anticipated- basically our experiences in the Cook Islands had set the bar a bit too high. Moorea was beautiful, but we were there in December, whereas we'd always gone to the Cooks on the shoulder seasons, so it wasn't so hot and humid. Neither of us is particularly fluent in French. We prefer beer to wine, and it being French Polynesia, wine was far more prevalent (and cheaper). We'd had some hiccups getting to our lodgings, and once there discovered that we weren't close to much. Except the beach.

The view from our patio

Luckily, it was a lovely beach, next to the sort of beautiful shallow lagoon that I associate with Polynesian islands. So we weren't really complaining, but we were still definitely adjusting to the realities of the sort of travel we had undertaken- i.e., on a tighter budget than our usual shorter trips, in which we for once might prioritize saving money over saving time. 

On our first full afternoon, we went for a swim in what was essentially our private patch of lagoon. According to the diary I kept at the time, the snorkeling was underwhelming. I don't actually remember that, but I have a very clear memory of floating in the warm water next to Hubby and thinking "we have four more months of this" and getting an incredible, almost transcendent feeling of freedom. (I did not, incidentally, record that thought in my diary, which just shows how sometimes the most memorable part of traveling is not what you think is important at the time.)

In actuality, we did not spend the next four months swimming carefree in various bodies of water. That wasn't really what I was thinking about, anyway. We had four months to do with what we pleased, and that level of freedom was intoxicating at that moment.

I don't remember any other moments like that from that trip. But I can remember one other time in my adult life in which I've felt that same transcendent freedom. It was when I left the East coast town that was home to my first post-PhD job to come back to San Diego. I can't remember exactly how much time I had between jobs- maybe 4 weeks? My sister drove across country with me, and I remember how wonderfully free I felt as we drove out of town in my sporty (but practical!) little car, with the sun roof open and U2's Joshua Tree blaring from the stereo.

One of the things I love about travel, even now with kids in tow, is the way it lets me taste a bit of that freedom. Heading out for a one or two week vacation isn't as liberating as taking a four month leave of absence or driving across country in between jobs, but it still gives me the thrill of stepping outside of our usual routine, and it still offers up the possibility of doing what we want to do and not what we have to do for awhile.

This raises the obvious question of why I don't try to make my entire life more free. In one sense, I do- as I tried to explain in my much misunderstood post about buying happiness, one of the most satisfying things I do with my money is buy freedom, in that having a hefty buffer in the bank makes me feel less tethered to my job.

But I'd be lying if I said that I feel anything close to transcendent freedom on a day to day basis. I am not sure if that is even possible- perhaps having a routine to disrupt is part of the basis for the feeling. Any fabulously wealthy (or fabulously frugal) people who do not have to work want to weigh in on that?

Regardless, I'd still like to try to feel a little closer to free every day, and I've been thinking about that a lot as I think about my ideal life configuration. Obviously, choosing to have kids has restricted my freedom somewhat, as has buying a house. But if I think about what makes me feel the most trapped these days, it is not anything to do with the kids- paradoxically, they often trigger a feeling of freedom, because their fresh perspective jolts me into seeing the everyday wonderfulness of our lives. Nor is it the fact that I need to work to help support my family. I actually like working and can't imagine living a life in which I wasn't trying to create something most days. The choice of the word "create" may surprise you, but I consider informatics (and science, for that matter) to be intensely creative endeavors. I am trying to create systems that will help other scientists create knowledge.

No, what makes me feel trapped is my interactions with other people- and not all other people, just some of them. The ones who don't play well with others, to be precise. If I reduce it to essentials, I am tired of dealing with other people's immense egos, and working around other people's inflexiblities.

Of course, unless I decide to switch to a career as a hermit philosopher, I'm unlikely to get away from these problems. But when I think back on the times that I've been happiest at work, one of two scenarios was in play: either I was working with a really tight team, who all pulled together for a common goal and among whom mutual respect was a given, or I was working as a contractor. Apparently, if I am paid by the hour I have much more patience for long meetings to negotiate an agreement that any sane person would have given me in 20 seconds, even when my negotiation partner is treating me with an obvious lack of respect. When I put it like that, I'm not sure why that realization surprised me, but it did.

The other thing that makes me feel trapped is the expectations of the modern work place in terms of how I work: when, where, in what environment. I wish I could just arrange my work life in the way that I find most productive and enjoyable, but I have to make compromises with what my colleagues need from me and what work culture expects.

I'm not sure what these realizations will mean in terms of my emerging life plan. But each little realization about what makes me happy and what I want moves me a step or two closer to figuring out how my puzzle pieces best go together, and that in itself makes me happy.

And in the meantime, I think I'll keep the car radio tuned to the music station.

Trip Story: The Road to Austin

We had several options for how to drive between Houston and Austin. I had a friend I wanted to visit who lives near the route that goes through Brenham, though, so we settled on taking US-290. The stop in Brenham was great. It was nice to see my friend and her husband, and how could I not love the fact that the coffee shop we met at was called the Mobius Strip?

And of course, we made the pilgrimage to the Blue Bell factory. We skipped the tour, because our timing wasn't right. But Pumpkin and I enjoyed an ice cream, and Pumpkin and Petunia enjoyed the souvenir shop. Petunia picked out a pen that smells like ice cream. Strangely, it is often the only pen I can find in the kitchen. It works well, but the sweet scent always takes me by surprise. Pumpkin picked out an ice cream scoop with a bottom shaped like a cow's udder. It also works well, and amuses Pumpkin and her father.

But the highlight of the drive was actually this road sign, which we passed not long after leaving Houston:

To understand why, I have to take you to Singapore, and our decision to try cooking for ourselves one night, in the apartment of the friend we were staying with. He was off on a long weekend to Indonesia with his girlfriend, but gave us directions to the nearest shops likely to stock things we recognized. We bought pasta and various other ingredients. My husband found a six pack of Tiger beer. And I found Kickapoo Joy Juice.

It delighted me, not so much for the taste- a bit like Mountain Dew- but for the ridiculousness of the name. So, of course, coming across a Kickapoo Road almost 10,000 miles away delighted me, too. Of course, the Kickapoo are a Native American tribe in Texas and Oklahoma, so the road name makes far more sense than the soda name.

Still, this is one of the things I like about travel- the unexpected connections. My husband has a tendency to look around some new place and saying how it reminds him of some other place, because of various reasons that always seem a bit of a stretch to me. This drives me a bit batty, to be honest, but I understand the underlying impulse. You travel the world, thinking the point is to see how different the various places are. But as you go, you realize that seeing the similarities is one of the rewards of travel, too.

Weekend Reading: The Thoughts on Books and Publishing Edition

I came across several things related to writing and publishing books this week. The fact that there are parts of all of these things that I agree really captures how I haven't really formed a coherent set of opinions about books and publishing!

First up, Jeff Atwood at Coding Horror has turned a bunch of his most popular blog posts about programming into an eBook... but he still thinks writing a book is a waste of time. (He is writing specifically about technical books- I don't know what he thinks about other types of books.) He has some really good points about how people get technical information and the relative pay off of writing a book versus, say, writing code.

Another blogger I read is also writing a book- Moxie of AskMoxie (the first parenting blog I read regularly, and still an oasis of "different approaches for different kids and families" sanity in a sea of judgmental obnoxiousness) is going to put out a parenting book. I'm sure she will draw on old posts, but it also seems like she's doing a lot of writing just for the book. This week, she had a post with her planned table of contents and one explaining why she's self-publishing. It looks like I'll be past the parenting time period she's writing about by the time the book comes out, but I may buy it anyway, as a way to pay her back for all of the support and sanity-saving venting and advice I got from her site in the early years. I don't always agree with her on everything- most notably on homeopathic remedies and various chemical related health scares- but on the core parenting advice, her site is a great resource, because she gives her opinion and then hosts a great discussion with lots of other opinions and ideas.

Next, Ginger at Ramble Ramble has a short plea about how to really help authors you love. Back when I put up a weekend reading post with links to short eBooks I'd enjoyed, Calee (who runs Xist Publishing - the company that published the kids eBooks I reviewed back when I first got my Kindle Fire) suggested I post some of the same comments I had on those books on Amazon. I am ashamed to say I still haven't done that... although it is on my list of things to do! In my defense, I can tell from my Amazon Associates stats that my post led to the sale of several copies of each of the books I mentioned.

Speaking of Xist Publishing, they are running a promotion around signing up for their email newsletter. And now is a good time to disclose that I'm going to have a book coming out Xist Publishing at some point- they've accepted the story I tell Pumpkin at bedtime, and it is with an illustrator now. I decided to go with a small publishing company like Xist for several reasons: (1) I didn't want to have to go the usual "find an agent, send my story off to a lot of big companies route." Not for any philosophical reasons, but because I don't have the time. If Calee hadn't liked the story, it probably would just stay something I tell my kids! (2) I like the production quality of the books Xist puts out. Frankly, I think it is better than what a lot of the big houses are doing for their kids books, and it is certainly better than what I would have done on my own. (3) Even if I could have found an illustrator on my own (a big if, and believe me, there was no way I could have actually illustrated the book myself), I liked the idea of having someone to run the marketing, etc. Marketing is not my strong suite, and even if it were, it isn't something I enjoy and want to spend my "spare" time on.

Basically, I agree with Scalzi on the value of specialization and having people do the things they are good at. Except, as Moxie described in her post... sometimes that leads to good stuff not getting published, and I'm all for good stuff being published.

But speaking of Scalzi (and his traditional publisher, Tor)... he's got a serialized eBook coming out soon, which I think is a really interesting idea. I think we'll see more of this sort of innovation in the future. Or at least I hope we do.

So I guess if you put all of this together I think that there is space for a lot of different approaches in publishing, at least for the time being. What about you? Do you have a coherent opinion on publishing these days? Or even an incoherent one? Tell me about it in the comments.

Not Necessarily California Dreaming

I've had a lot of work/career things going on this week, none of which I can blog about, but which are combining to consume most of my mental space- which is why I've sort of been AWOL here.  But in amongst all the practical and operational thoughts, I found some thoughts about what I really want out of life sneaking in, and this thought popped into my head: when my girls are older (i.e., old enough to really appreciate travel), I'd like to take a month off every summer and travel with them. It'd be ideal if my husband could come, too, but not absolutely required. Maybe he'd only be able to join us for part of the time.

This obviously raises some interesting questions about how to be able to afford both the time off and the expense of the trips.

So I started thinking about how I could make it happen. Remember, this would be something I'd do starting in about 5-7 years. Here is the list I came up with:

1. I could downsize the dream to two weeks per year- that'd be no problem
2. I could negotiate the right to take time off w/o pay and to take such a long vacation with my boss
3. I could be an independent contractor in my current field, and try to arrange my projects to give me a month off every summer
4. I could make a career switch into a more flexible career- i.e., something that I could do from hotel rooms in the evenings during my month of travel (assuming my kids aren't staying up super late by then). This would probably require accepting a smaller income, but that should be manageable once the kids are both out of day care.
5. I could move to a country where a four week holiday is the norm, not a wild dream
6. I could start my own business and staff it with the goal of everyone being able to take a month off every year. (This would also require a career change- I don't think I'm likely to start a biotech. But then again... I have a friend who did, so never say never!)

What do you think? Have I missed an option? Do you have any sort of wild, almost achievable dreams like this?

Don't Be Afraid of Plan C

Yes, that's me

My twitter feed on Sunday was awash with references to the Washington Post article about the difficulties many young scientists are having finding jobs. Several people agreed with underemployed industry scientist quoted at the end, saying they will also steer their children away from careers in science:

"Haas, the former drug company chemist, has even harsher words. She plans to “get out of Jersey and get out of science” when her daughter graduates from high school in two years. “She’s very good at everything, very smart,” Haas said of her daughter. “She loves chemistry, loves math. I tell her, ‘Don’t go into science.’ I’ve made that very clear to her.”"

It made me stop and think: what would I tell my daughters?

There is no denying that the scientific job market is incredibly tough right now. The assumption that many scientists of my generation had- that if you were good enough, an academic position could be yours- is now completely false. The statistic quoted in the article, that only 14 % of bioscientists land professorships within 5 years of completing their PhD, makes that clear. To be honest, the assumption was already wrong when I was leaving grad school almost 15 year ago, but I think the situation has gotten worse over the years.

There is also no denying the fact that the industry job market has been shedding jobs at an astounding rate lately. I have obviously never bought into the idea that an industry career was a lesser option than an academic one, but I do think that having a strong industrial job market helped absorb some of the pressure produced by the incredibly tough academic one- and that strong job market is gone, replaced by a much different one, more prone to booms and busts. This has hit a lot of fields hard, but I think it has hit chemists like the one quoted in the article especially hard. They were once at the top of the pharma totem pole, with a well-paying, stable job practically considered a given if you got your PhD from the "right" place and were willing to relocate to New Jersey. They now face a reality in which pharma is contracting, biologics are siphoning away a growing slice of the resources, and a lot of chemistry work is being outsourced to China and India.

So I agree, the scientific job market is grim. As I mentioned in my post with advice about how to break into industry, right now, you can do everything "right" and still struggle to find a job. I do not blame young scientists at all for feeling like they have been left holding the bill after the collapse of a giant Ponzi scheme.

But there is also no denying that for me, getting a PhD in science was a great move. I like the career I have now, and that career would not have been possible without the PhD, even though many of the positions I've held did not really need me to have that level of training. Others did, and for others still the PhD was required to be hired, if not to do the work. I also look back on my experience in graduate school as a mainly positive one, which expanded my knowledge and built up my confidence. Even if I'd never held a job that used the skills I acquired during my graduate studies, I do not think I'd regret the time I spent getting my PhD. Certainly, if I eventually decide to make a career change and leave science (something I am considering, for reasons unrelated to the job market situation) I will still feel like having a PhD helped me get to where I want to be in life.

I am not sure where people like me fit into stories such as the one in the Washington Post. I am no longer doing scientific research, but I often use the scientific knowledge and solid reasoning skills I built up during my graduate work and in subsequent positions. I do not run a research group, but I do run a group. Strictly speaking, I am not doing the work I trained to do, but I view my current work as a reasonable (and satisfying) progression from my training.

However, I am also not convinced that my current career path will carry me through until retirement, which is at least 25 years away. I haven't decided what that means to me, but I think that I've picked up plenty of transferable skills along the way, starting back in graduate school, so the fact that I may need to reinvent myself sooner or later doesn't really bother me. I also don't think that the situation would be much different in most other careers. We live in interesting times, at least from a job market standpoint, in which a lot of the things that previous generations could count on are changing.

I can understand why all of this bothers other people, though, particularly younger people who have not had a chance to build up the career experience and bank account that I have. There is a reason that "may you live in interesting times" is considered a curse, not a blessing. I don't know what the solution is. I've heard suggestions for more permanent staff positions in academic research, and those suggestions sound reasonable, although I do not think that we should kid ourselves: professorships will still be seen as the ultimate goal, and those who want one and don't get one will probably still feel the sting, even if they get a stable position with decent pay and benefits.

I have no clear solutions for industry, either. Our system for paying for the development of new drugs is in a bit of a shambles, and there is enough blame in that to cover all the major players: investors who demand unrealistic growth from such an inherently risky industry, pharma executives who chase that growth in destructive ways, venture capitalists who follow fads in biotech, biotech executives and founders who don't know what they don't know about running a business and fritter away millions in venture dollars, industry scientists who don't like the realities of being in industry and help to fritter away those millions of dollars, governments who refuse to come to terms with the health care costs associated with our aging populations and unhealthy lifestyles, and the general public that expects miracle drugs but seems offended by the idea that someone will have to pay for them. I don't have personal knowledge of other science-heavy industries, but I suspect that those who do could tell similar stories. These are complex industries, run by fallible human beings. Of course they aren't perfect.

Is the answer to shrink the supply of scientists? I don't know. I am uncomfortable with a free society trying to dictate career paths to its members. But I do think we need to be more honest early in the education process about the odds of landing a true "scientist" job, while also purging the silly and outdated judgment that having a science PhD (or M.S. or B.S.) but a non-scientist job is somehow a failure. Someone with an English Literature degree who goes on to do well in a completely unrelated field is considered a success. Why do we insist on viewing science degrees differently? Academic scientists at all levels need to resist any temptation to sugar coat the situation in the interest of recruiting more hands for their labs. And industry scientists- and "sort of scientists" like me- need to be more open to retraining people rather than just moaning about how we can't find the candidate with the exactly perfect combination of skills and background.

Students pursuing or considering degrees in science are, by and large, quite smart people. Given the full and honest story, they will probably be able to work out for themselves whether or not they think a particular course of study is worth their time. The article mentions that physicists have a lower unemployment rate than other scientists. I can remember when that was not the case. It is certainly not the case now because there are more positions in physics than in chemistry or the biosciences. I strongly suspect that it is because the bottom dropped out of the physics job market many years ago, and the supply of physicists has adjusted itself accordingly. I'm sure that if you asked someone doing a physics post doc during that contraction what he or she thought about it all, you would have heard a story of angst, anger, and confusion similar to the ones we're hearing from chemists and biologists now. For that matter, I personally witnessed the initial impact of the boom in offshoring in IT and software engineering. I listened to many a rant about the disappearance of supposedly guaranteed jobs, and strategized with many friends- including the one who is now my husband- about how to stay employable in the new environment. Major changes in job markets suck to live through, no doubt about it.

So what will I tell my kids if they show an interest in pursing a career in science? They are young enough now that the only thing I can say with confidence about the job market they will face is that it will be different from the one we have now. But I doubt the days of stable jobs in unchanging industries will come back. I think I will tell them to pursue whatever subjects interest them, but to keep an eye on the market for the skills they are learning, and to always be open to the possibility that they will need a plan B. Or even a plan C and D. I think that if you told the idealistic young woman I was when I headed off to graduate school what I am doing now, she would say that I'm on plan C- maybe even plan D. But I have a great life, and no regrets. So go ahead and get that PhD if you enjoy the work, but don't do it with an expectation of a guaranteed job in your field at the end of it. Those days are gone and unlikely to return- although you might get lucky, like I did. You won't know if you don't try, and there is no harm in trying if you enjoy the journey and not just the outcome, and can block out the internal and external voices telling you that changing careers after getting a PhD means that you failed.

But that is advice for kids who are 2 and 5 right now. I'm not sure I have any advice for the people caught in the churn right now, other than to keep your chin up. The struggles you are facing aren't saying anything about your scientific skills or intelligence. And don't be afraid of plan C. It might be a pretty sweet plan.