How consumerism stole my Christmas

Caveat: My family and friends (even the grandparents) are generally good at curbing consumerism. If you are someone who gave us a present, we are not blaming you for stealing our Christmas. Overall we had a lovely Christmas. This is just a rant about over consumption in general.

Remember the anticipation that Christmas brought when you were a child? Counting the days until Santa came, thinking about what gift you wanted him to bring, and the delight on Christmas morning when you saw that he had eaten the cookies and finished the milk? That’s the type of Christmas I wish for my children. But this year it was an uphill battle and I blame consumerism for hijacking Christmas and holding Santa hostage.

Our preschooler is old enough to understand Santa, but young enough to believe in magic, so we were very excited about Christmas this year. However, he had a few questions. Why Santa is everywhere (parties, malls, street corners), when he’s supposed to be in the North Pole preparing? It is a reasonable question. We fielded that by saying that these are Santa’s helpers. But why do Santa’s helpers hand out gifts (that were not asked for, or needed) before Christmas has arrived? No matter what we answer, this kills the anticipation for Christmas morning. Why does Santa bring so many gifts to family gatherings? The overwhelming amount of gifts means that time, which used to be spent talking to each other and playing with the kids, is now spent opening presents. There were so many gifts that even the adults were overwhelmed. Then, after we tackled the mountain of presents from Santa, we parents made the mistake of opening each present in front of the person who gave it. Despite good intentions, that was a bad move. Our poor preschooler was completely overwhelmed. He seemed happy as he tried to play with everything he was given, but by the end of the day his attention had been pulled in so many directions that he was frantic. He was up the whole night with night terrors (very scary for him and us) and had tantrums from exhaustion the next day as well. Luckily the baby slept through most of it. Where are the days when kids played happily all day (and for days after) with the one or two gifts that they asked for?

Most troubling is the fact that I know I am not the only one drowning in stuff. I also know that manufacturing and shipping it all uses huge amounts of energy and resources, which we humans are quickly depleting. My kids don’t need a mountain of toys; they need a habitable planet to inherit in the future!

You can call me Grinch and you can call me Scrooge, but next year we are laying down some rules. First - one gift per child. This sounds Draconian, but with so many people insisting on giving us presents, the kids will still get a small mountain of stuff. Second, grandparents are entitled to request an extra gift from Santa, but that needs to be delivered to our house. Third, if the kids show any sign of over-stimulation after opening a few gifts, then the remainder of the presents will be opened, a few at a time, over a period of days. Finally, we adults need to communicate with one another about gifts for the kids ahead of time. Hopefully next Christmas will be less overwhelming and instead of a mountain of presents, we’ll have a roomful of adults who are truly present - there for the kids.

Year in Review 2010

I hope 2010 has treated you well. For us it has been a busy and happy year. Here is my annual “year in review” to summarize memories and to keep you up to date.

Personally, the highlight of the year was the birth of our second child, who arrived, much to our delight, in our home. He is a wonderful addition to our family! We remain very happy living in the heart of a big city where we can walk or bike everywhere. This year we took the kids to many holiday events within walking distance of our home and attended many of our co-op’s social events. As our eldest son grows, we enjoy these events more and more. Halloween, the children’s holiday party and the building of the gingerbread village were favorites. Our preschooler is thriving in day care and is already learning how to write his name and the letters of the alphabet. Hubby and I have spent another year watching our older miracle grow, and we look forward to ongoing joys with the new baby, and the interaction between the two boys.

Professionally, I continue work as a post-doctoral researcher and have had the pleasure of working with great people who helped immensely in the lab while I was pregnant and also made it possible to engage in an exciting side project involving fieldwork in the USA and exciting new lab techniques. Hopefully we’ll be able to continue that research in 2011. The location of my lab also gives me practical perks like onsite yoga and biking to work, both of which I continued to do until a couple weeks before the birth of the baby. Hubby continues to pursue self-employment endeavors in music and sound design, and is also exploring other options, which may provide more stable work. With two kids, we can’t give up on the dream that one of us should have health benefits!

It has also been a year full of travel. Last winter I visited Seattle for a conference and then went to the Netherlands to see a close friend defend her thesis. A month later the whole family went to the tropics to visit the “abuelos”, and in the middle of that vacation I flew to a conference in San Diego to give an invited lecture. Over the summer we did several family trips to wilderness parks close to home. Then in August (in my third trimester), I flew to Brazil to attend a conference and spent a few days in Sao Paulo. The trip was aided by an easy pregnancy that allowed much walking around and even some hiking through spectacular Araucaria forests!

We are very happy with the blend of personal and professional experiences we’ve enjoyed in 2010. Next year will bring job and grant applications for both of us. We know that our next career steps will be time and labor intensive, but we hope to preserve our home life balance. For my part, I believe the balance makes me a better mother and a better scientist!

Happy holidays and all the best for 2011!

Balancing family, work … and plumbers !?!

Does anyone else find it disconcerting that the older one gets the faster time seems to fly by? Today I looked at my newborn and realized that he isn't a newborn anymore. His face has lost that scrunched up look, his cheeks have filled out, and he's about 4 cm longer already. With my first child this newborn stage seemed to last forever. It was a hazy, slow moving, magic time when I interacted only with my husband and the new little life we had made together. This time it seems more a fast moving blur than a slow moving one. To counteract it, every day I make a concerted effort to slow time down. I gaze at my baby and try to memorize the way he looks and feels and smells.

Part of the racing time phenomenon is probably due to my growing older. Part of it is likely because we have a fast moving older child to care for as well. Part of it is that I am trying to keep up with work more this time around. This is mostly by choice. I like to be “in the loop”, so I keep up with emails, and things keep popping up. But I battle with myself a bit every time I take something on (even little things) when I know I should be sleeping.

Finally, this time around, rather than being left alone, we have had some unforeseen annoyances (not crises, nothing huge, but annoyances). In addition to having a baby and a pre-schooler, we've had contractors fixing the plumbing in our unit. Obviously we did not plan this. The contractors are working on the whole building and could not change their schedule for the birth of our baby. Because of this we have had to evacuate our home due to noise, dust and fumes (including a few days when the baby was < 2 weeks old). To minimize the disturbance to our lives, on days without extreme conditions, we try to stay home. But yesterday was an example of how ridiculous things can become, even on the “easy” days. The baby had a rough night and I was up with him every hour. Then, bright and early, the contractors showed up. Our older child was home and full of energy, so things were chaotic. Then the contractors set off the fire alarms. With the bells ringing and three plumbers already running around, the superintendent arrived, and then the fire fighters, in full gear, came tromping in! So much for a peaceful mat leave!

I love newborns!

The baby has arrived and it is so wonderful having a newborn around again! I really love this phase (even with the sleep deprivation). I love that I don’t have to focus on anything except this warm cozy being that needs me as much as I need him. I love smelling him, and looking into those newborn eyes, and smiling at those tiny newborn smiles. Even though I am committed to work/home balance – so much so that I labored and gave birth wearing a work related T-shirt as a symbolic reminder to myself to keep work and home in equilibrium – I love that in these first few weeks I really don’t have to concentrate on work. I can if I want to and if the circumstances allow, but I don’t have to. I am free to focus 100% on loving this new little human and integrating him into our family.

Balancing Pregnancy and Lab work

Although this is the first time I’ve mentioned it on this blog, for the last nine months I have been pregnant. Indeed, this is part of the reason why I’ve hardly written anything – hopefully people are still checking this blog and will read this :-).

During my last pregnancy I was in the last stages of writing my thesis and I found that to be a wonderful time to be pregnant. The physical demands of writing are minimal and I found that I could juggle my writing schedule around the times when my brain was most functional. Importantly, since I was not teaching or supervising students while writing, I had only one person to worry about – me. This pregnancy has been different from the first both at work and at home. On the work front, I am now a post-doc and given the short duration of post-doc funding I was not in the writing phase while pregnant (otherwise the grant would have run out before the baby came). Also I am now working in a molecular lab, which meant that to continue collecting data I needed to manage working with chemicals that may be dangerous during pregnancy. I was also working closely with students and colleagues on projects, which meant taking responsibility for more than just myself. Finally, on the home front, I now have an active pre-schooler to take care of, which makes the goal of “rest when you need to” pretty laughable – I rest when he lets me :-).

Nevertheless I think this pregnancy has been very successful in terms of work/home balance. There are several reasons for this: First, I was fortunate enough to receive funding to have someone help out with the hands-on lab work in the project, which allowed me to avoid the hazardous chemicals while still keeping the project going. Second, I work with great people who were cognizant of the fact that I might have to do less in the lab and might have “baby brain” at times, but that I wasn’t trying to let my pregnancy put my work on hold. Third, on the home front both my toddler and my husband are pretty awesome and supportive. So, despite being much more tired during this pregnancy than the last (and getting sick more as well) – I have had a pretty smooth ride. So smooth that I was able to attend a major conference requiring an 11-hour flight and 3-hour bus ride halfway through the third trimester!

Likes and Dislikes

Inspired by a post from Girlpostdoc I have written a list of my likes and dislikes about academic science. What a great exercise - I highly recommend it.

Likes
• Intellectual engagement (i.e. time left alone to read, write and learn new things, but also time spent with others pursuing those activities)
• Creative work that is always different
• Flexible hours and duties
• One-on-one and small group teaching
• Travel (for fieldwork and conferences)
• Publishing - I enjoy getting page proofs and I love it when a paper comes out
• Churning out data – I get great satisfaction when things are going well
• Refining methods to make them more efficient and comfortable
• Data entry (weird I know … but when combined with other things I like it)
• Exploring data (taking a look at those first results and using them to decide what to do next)
• Debating how science is done and how it is taught – philosophy of science
• At a deep level I like to have adventures and then tell people about them (usually via writing and sometimes pictures). In a way that is what science is. Each new project (or subproject or question) is an adventure, you need to plan the best way to do it (write the grant), do it (collect the data) while making decisions and changes along the way, and then consolidate all the new information and tell people about it (analysis, presentation at conferences and writing).

Dislikes
• Tight job market for tenured and tenure-track positions
• The extreme workload (which can unbalance the work-family equilibrium) when on the tenure-track (or so I’ve read and heard)
• Job insecurity and lack of benefits in untenured jobs (i.e. post-doc, adjunct researcher, sessional lecturer)
• The ivory tower syndrome: the feeling that I am reaching a small group of people about a very narrow topic – scientists who find time to reach the public are real inspirations for me
• Constantly dealing with rejection (it gets easier after a while, but it remains unpleasant)
• Geographic limitations when looking for a tenure-track job (Am I willing to live in a place I hate for a job?)
• Dispassionate “soulless” academic writing (although I’ve realized that the some established scientists have managed to keep their writing both passionate and academic)
• Having to do things over and over without results (i.e. when a method just doesn’t work and I can’t figure out why)
• The way that science frowns upon intuition when it is often the basis of new hypotheses. Sometimes I think the baby gets thrown out with the bathwater when new ideas fly in the face of the status quo.

A rant

Picture this. It is 8 in the evening and your phone rings. You are a young mother with a toddler vying for your attention. As a post-doc you make an OK salary but you have to cut corners to make ends meet since you have a family. It doesn’t help that you are fully taxed on this salary despite being ineligible for benefits such as a pension, unemployment insurance, dental care etc. That is your situation as you pick up the phone. A representative from your Internet (and phone) provider is on the lone offering you a contract. For the past year and a half you have been avoiding contracts because you don’t want to get locked into a bum deal. But you know your student discount rate is ending soon, so you listen to the person on the phone. The person knows that you are on a student (or near student) income and that you have a toddler to support. This representative of the corporation tells you that if you agree to a 1-year contract you can keep your current service and price. This sounds like a good deal so you repeat the terms – same service, same price – and agree to the contract. The person on the phone informs you that there will be a $100 charge if you break the contract. OK.

Two weeks later you get your Internet bill and the charges have gone up nearly 30%! You are not pleased. This is not what you agreed to. You call the Internet (and phone) provider. You are armed with the confirmation number and the name of the person who first offered you the deal. The phone company tells you they are very very sorry for the inconvenience, but there is nothing they can do. Either you pay the extra 30%, or your bill goes up by a mere 10%, but you service is decreased by 40%. So less service for a higher price AND you are locked in for a year. You NEVER would have agreed to this, but you were blatantly lied to. Well this happened to me. A certain company with a 4 letter name starting with B and ending with L essentially phoned me at 8 pm and lied to me to lock me into a year long contract. This is worse than false advertising, its fraud. I don’t think large corporations should be able to treat clients this way. I told them on the phone that I intended to tell everyone I knew about this. I know as a single person I can’t do much. But at least I can warn you.

Seeing the magic in the everyday routine

It has been awhile since I last blogged and I apologize. Life has been good, but lately we seem to have gotten lost in the day-today routine. Both Hubby and I are happy with what we are working at, but I think lately we’ve both been frustrated that things are not progressing as fast as we might like, or that the details are not working as we had planned. It is so easy to get bogged down in negativity, even when life is good. It seems like we’ve been dragging ourselves from one task to the next without enjoying the tasks themselves. So today I’m trying to remind myself that even though the pace and details of progress at work might not go as planned, there still is progress. And this progress is being made in part because I’ve enlisted the help of some great people while at the same time giving these people opportunities they might not otherwise have. At home as at work I need to pay attention in order to see the magic of life amid the cooking, cleaning and preparing that needs to be done. Our toddler is doing amazing things these days. When he wakes up in the morning we can hear him singing to himself and conversing with his stuffed animals. When he is finished with that he starts calling out to us and asking questions like “Are you still sleeping?”. His imagination is wonderful and he has tea parties, cooks us imaginary food, and pretends to be swimming underwater or flying. He does this without fancy toys, simply using ordinary kitchen tools, blankets and his mind. He dances for us, and he sings, using just about anything as a play microphone. We have conversations (albeit simple) about the things we do together on the weekends and he tells us bits and pieces about what happens at daycare. At night when it gets dark he earnestly tells us “It’s night again”. He is growing and maturing in leaps and bounds, and it is wondrous, even with the messes and tantrums and seemingly endless chores. We just need to look harder and see the wonder in the everyday routine.

Student-Professional Social

I did my PhD in a place where PhD students are considered employees - they do not pay tuition and are paid a salary for their research endeavors. Therefore, I thought I had already jumped the mental hurdle between considering myself a student and considering myself a professional. However, this week when I got invited to a Student-Professional Social as a professional rather than a student, I was flabbergasted. Although I couldn’t accept the invitation since I have to leave the conference early, I couldn’t help trying to picture myself sitting at the tables with the “big wigs” (professionals). I kept seeing myself standing in the corner, trying to muster the courage to introduce myself. I may have gotten my PhD, but that doesn’t mean I’ve gotten over shyness in conference situations. Every time I want to join a conversation, or ask a question, or introduce myself to someone, I have to talk myself into it. And here was an email asking me to sit at the tables with the professionals! Of course I do not consider myself a bigwig. I was invited because I had been invited to give a symposium talk (and this was on the recommendation of my PhD supervisors). But still, maybe its time to realize that I truly am a professional now, not just in terms of getting paid to do research, but also in terms of having some expertise that others might be interested in. But of course I’ll always be a student as well, we all are because as scientists we are always one the boundaries of our knowledge. We are always learning.