The ultimate goal

The theme of this quarter's scientiaecarnival is The Ultimate Goal:

Sometimes we lose track of why we got into science. But, at some point, I'm sure we all had grandiose dreams of all the things we were going to accomplish as scientists. Sure, those goals may have changed as we evolved from naive and idealistic undergraduate students to where we are now, but surely there's some big idea that's pushing us, even in the distant background.

So, what is your ultimate career goal? Do you want to win the Nobel Prize? Cure cancer? Build a better mouse trap? What is it that you want to be remembered for career-wise?

I have been thinking about this one and not writing about it, but thought I might as well get something down.

Why did I get into science? There are all sorts of answers. They include:

• "because my school wouldn't let me take history AND further maths together as 'A'level subjects",


• "because I thought that I had a much better chance of retraining in a humanities/social science discipline than a science discipline, that science required a sort of aculturation that happened best when you were young"


• "because I was OK at it"


• "because my Eng Lit teacher was an uncultured person who didn't like me" (I was very annoying, I'm sure)


• "because modern foreign languages are hard"


• "because I loved maths, but realised I wasn't good enough to be a mathematician"


• "because people told me I wasn't clever enough"


• "because I want to know how things work"

But the one that came to mind on reading this prompt was "because I always wanted to be Mr Spock, not Captain Kirk or Dr McCoy." [yes, this is age-revealing. I didn't like next gen's obsession with meetings or the pointlessness of the 'bad guys' - Ferengi = trivial nuisances, Borg/Q = all-powerful, nothing we can do about it, Roms/Klingons = like enough levels of development and strength that their reasons make sense and they are proper antagonists who can actually win sometimes and lose sometimes. It was too touchy-feely-silly, and it clearly needed a Vulcan. Never watched any of the others enough to get a proper feel for them. I rather like the total datedness of ST:classic because it somehow makes the story stand out better. And also, they're just puppets for me to project onto anyway...].

Spock was a scientist who was not mad or bad or evil or unworldly. Spock didn't need sheltering - he sheltered and protected. Spock was calm (and I longed for calm, for self-possession), he didn't have to do the stressful icky people stuff because he was bad at it and it was OK that he was bad at it, he was strong AND brilliantly intelligent AND moral (most scientists get to be just one in fiction, outside of medicine at least), he was heroic and logical and he got to learn cool new stuff every day. Also, he had the best gadgets. Who wouldn't want to be Spock? Teenage me thought that getting the girl/boy (especially when it was always a one night/one week stand) was totally dull compared to finding new life forms! I mean, can you imagine what Mr Spock's publication list would look like?? (Because Spock has the anti-procrastination mojo needed to write up the damn papers already and submit them, right?). Realising that in the canon the calm of a Vulcan is earned and re-earned in daily discipline only made it even cooler.

And yes, I still want to be Mr Spock in many ways. I want the truth to matter more than anything. I want to be a person of integrity, loyal and true and honest. I want to have friends who like me and will be there for me, despite me being completely my own unique self and therefore sometimes irritating or baffling to them. I want to know things, to learn new things and share them again and again. I want to be a protector and an explorer. I want to be disciplined and powerful and valued. I want to leave my department, my field, my discipline, the world of science, maybe even the society and world I live in, a little fairer and more open to all who want to know, a little less clique-y and intolerant and arrogant. I want to pour out a cleanly love of knowledge for its own sake, to share the simple, profound joy when things fall into place and something new is understood, when a puzzle piece clicks home and a long-misread clue makes new, surprising sense.

I do also want to be a good mentor, a teacher, someone who shares. I want to do good work. The sort of work people will still cite occasionally in 50 years time, even if it doesn't hit top of the charts now. Not sexy, hot, 'now' work - useful, meaningful, foundational work. If my science is useful, has impact, that's a bonus. My purpose is more the sharing of the methods, applying myself to the problems that come before me, teaching others how to do the same, and adding my own little pieces of straw and clay to the bricks that build the edifice of knowledge that in the long term, far away, may cure cancer or cancel poverty or save the planet.

I don't really remember if I ever had a single scientific goal. I didn't start this journey meaning to end up in Beach Studies. I may not - indeeed, don't intend to - finish my career in Beach Studies or doing the same sort of work I've done for the past twenty+ years. Maybe that makes me a bit of an imposter, a bit of a waste of a space in the academy, but I have pretty much come to terms with it and with my own un-Spock-ness.

Sometimes, a little puzzle piece falls into place for someone else, and I watch their excitement with great pleasure - almost as great as when it happens to me. I get to be as awed as a little child first realising that the moon is both unbelievably far away AND measurably far away, on a regular basis, and to learn new things. Learning is growth, and growth (and nurturing growth in others) is what I think humans are here to do (I could phrase that in terms of growing in God, growing towards God, seeking to be a little less me and a little more Deity every moment). Science gives me rich soil and many opportunities (Great are the works of the Lord, studied by all who delight in them).

My ultimate goal? To become a better person, help others along the way, and reveal truth. Doesn't that sound pompous? Maybe I should stick to saying 'I wanted to be Mr Spock'.

Uninspired by inspiration

Biochembelle at Ever on and on is hosting this month's Scientiae carnival, and I am late. I cite extenuating circumstances (viruses, field weeks) and lack of inspiration. Ironic, as this quarter's call begins "Inspiration is a necessary element to any satisfying career. But where do we find it? Is it in those who have come before us? The encouragement and confidence others give? The goals and dreams we have set for the future?
This quarter's Scientiae topic is Inspiring Women in STEM."

It's a hard topic for me, right now, because the topic sets off all sorts of negative thought cycles, so I apologise in advance for a rather grumpy, self-obsessed and self-pitying response. I guess the problem is with me - I'm not good at being inspired by other people who have 'gone before', because I tend to compare myself with them, come up short, and get grumpy about it.

What AM I inspired by? I'm inspired by wanting to know the answers to questions, by the urge to know how things work and why they are as they are. I'm inspired by my students, by their enthusiasm and curiosity, and by the challenge of working with them to ignite their interest in science and in the world around them, to enable them to break through their own lack of confidence or skill and become fledgling scientists, critical of data and passionate about the search for understanding. I'm inspired by encouragement and collegiality and being appreciated (sadly rarely encountered). But the topic for this carnival is Inspiring Women in STEM, not just inspiration...

An inspiring woman might be one who has a successful work life balance. There are many examples (in the blogosphere and in my field/department/faculty) of women who successfully run labs AND have happy love lives/raise children, but as a childless women those people mostly make me feel inadequate rather than inspired - a) I have failed so far to acquire a partner and therefore am very unlikely to ever have a child (FAIL as a woman) and b) I struggle - to get funding, to manage my people successfully, to escape censure never mind achieve praise from my colleagues - WITHOUT the 'added challenges' of family life so clearly I am Not Good Enough.

An inspiring woman might be someone who encouraged you along your own path. I had an inspiring teacher when I was 10 or 11, in my last year at junior school. She was wonderful, and she probably rescued me from all sorts of psychological damage, and she encouraged me to write and to be proud to be bookish and 'different'. But she doesn't count, because she didn't much like science, although she found someone who was better at maths to send me to when I finished the books we were supposed to cover, so that I didn't get bored. Otherwise, frankly, my interest in and progress through science education occurred in spite of, not because of, any female teachers or academics I encountered (although the tutor who often handed back essays with muddy cat paws on them was really nice and normal, which was encouraging). Most of the women scientists I saw at university were, frankly, a bit wierd - incredibly dedicated, determinedly unfashionable, very very able, and often quite difficult to like, always needing to prove themselves tougher and smarter than the men around them and making no allowances for anyone. Choosing to move fully into science (I seriously considered science journalism and history of science as career and course choices after I became disillusioned with the hard science I'd planned to enter before going to university) was very much despite rather than because of these women. My PhD supervisor, who was male, was more inspiring - he didn't care what other people thought of him, he followed his own intellectual curiosity, he saw no reason why gender had anything to do with one's scientific ability, and he had a lab dominated by women (unusual even in my fairly 'woman-friendly' field). He inspired me to aim to always keep my hand in with bench and field work - which is a sanity-saver at times - but he did dislike how much I like to talk, my tendency to be interested in about 50 things at once, and it's hard to feel inspired yourself when your supervisor is so clever you are always left feeling dumb (he really is something special - people would often ask at conferences what it was like to work with a genius).

An inspiring woman might be someone who has the kind of career you want, a role model, someone you want to be like in a decade or so's time. I have to admit that most of the role models of that type that I know are negative ones. I DON'T want to be heavily involved in university committees, working my way up the administrative tree, and running institutional reach-out programmes like Professor X, and I DON'T want to be known for my nurturing and teaching prowess only like Professor Y, the first person to officially make full professor on teaching-only grounds at my institution whose empathy with students and caring attitude are frequently praised (a) sets off all my 'gender label' alarms and b) I'm not sure that empathy is really what creates the best teaching). I don't want to act like teaching is irrelevant and research is the only part of the job that counts, like Professor Z. Where are the all-rounders? Probably too damn busy to be visible - or maybe they just don't flourish at my university? I don't know many male ones either despite the much larger number of males above me in the system....

An inspiring woman might be a brilliant scientist. However, I'm not brilliant, and whatever I do in my chosen field I'm never going to cure cancer or make millions through commercialisation. I'm not inspired by brilliant people any more - they upset me, which is in itself upsetting, and I know I will not be like them ever. Why the upset? Partly because I did once think I might have the potential to be very very good, but it's gone - worn away by depression and by coming up on 15 years of a faculty post where a constantly changing teaching load and lack of success at getting funding has steadily let those research musclkes waste. I'm good at ideas, but brilliance is not just about ideas, it's about refining them enough to publish them, getting the funding to hire and train the people who will actually work through their implications in the lab or having the time and energy to so so oneself, and I am lousy at those things. I am a nasty, jealous person sometimes. I look at 'my generation', my friends and colleagues across the sciences from my time at Grad School at InternationallyRenownedUniversity, and I don't see a correlation between intellectual brilliance and success/a profile in science/a large group. I see a lot of very clever women, some of whom were lucky enough to be working in areas where there was a lot of demand and funding and who got jobs at places where they had relatively little teaching or where they were protected through fellowships or other schemes from many of the early career demands and who have gone on to do very well, some of whom followed partners or spouses and now work in academy-ancilliary jobs or teach science in schools, some of whom work in regional universities and struggle to be all rounders, or focus on teaching and service, some of whom work in other kinds of science careers (where again 'success' seems to be very much about luck - getting the right entry level job, being able to move with new opportunities), and I see no relationship between the innate ability of the women as graduate students and current 'measures of success' whether those are acclaim, grant dollars or happiness. In fact, LUCK seems to me to be very important, and that makes it hard not to feel a little squirming of resentment when someone is described as being particularly wonderful, and I look at their luck. Which is not to say I myself have not been lucky - after all, I had decent post-docs, and I got a faculty job after nearly 100 applications, and in many many ways my current job is a good one for me. I was lucky in getting involved in the international working group network, because I got a little new-faculty grant on a topic which purely accidentally happened to coincide with the interests of the working group which had just got a LARGE lump of funding, and I just happened to write an email asking for some reprints on the topic to the one person on the organising group who was keen to invite new members to get involved (she's generous, the others are cautious). And I know that to be luck. Yes, I work, but that's not enough. I do not find people who have been luckier than me inspiring, because I am rather a petty person and I struggle not to either resent their luck or regard their luck as showing how undeserving of luck I am if that makes any sense at all!

This is a poor post and a poor carnival contribution, grumpy and omphaloskeptic and late and, well, uninspired. But it is here, and it is trying to join in the conversation. That, perhaps, is my place in the inspiring of other women into STEM - I'm nothing special, I'm NOT exceptional, I'm moody and I have an anxiety disorder and all that stuff, but I'm here. I have a career in science. Didn't someone say that equality could only be achieved when it was as easy for a mediocre woman to be promoted as for a mediocre man, not just when an excellent woman could be successful? By being nothing special, and being here, part of the furniture, maybe I can help future ordinary, human women to see that there is room for them too. That there is room for competent, for mediocre, for good enough, regardless of gender.