Women in the workplace

Yesterday my friends and I talked about our futures, and it was simultaneously comforting and discomfiting to hear their thoughts on what follows after graduate school. I realized that when I started grad school, it was with a real leap of faith that during school I would discern what I wanted to do after graduating. Well, here I am, needing to think ahead to graduating, and I still don't know. My fellow female academics have a broad range of aspirations after grad school, but I worry that we are too turned off by the Research I lifestyle and will contribute to the persistent gender gap in the sciences. Is it possible, I wonder, to be a Research I professor and NOT be a workaholic or have the full support of a stay-at-home spouse? (research suggests that the most successful male faculty are those with stay-at-home spouses) Is it possible to do good, useful science in a non-competitive fashion? (this question is triggered by D's comment that she isn't interested in doing experiments just because they'll make a splash)

My thoughts kept going back to something figment80 described learning when she did her research for her master's degree: most workplaces are structured (physically and psychologically) around the needs of the male body. F80 studied breastfeeding in the workplace, which often requires a lot of negotiation and rethinking on the part of businesses. Mull over that idea for a while. Also mull over the fact that according to a report I heard on NPR yesterday the US is one of the few developed countries without decent maternity leave. And while you're at it, think about workplace goals and competitiveness and aspirations and how women have been shown to operate in such environments.

I am inspired by many of the women academics who are a generation ahead of me. I am not always convinced that I'm cut out to follow in their footsteps, but then again a part of me wonders if I have an obligation to do so out of a stubborn desire to see women and minorities succeed in academia. (and this doesn't even begin to get into the question of what is meant by equality in the first place) I suppose that if I continue to recognize and promote my values through my work, I will be happy with what I do.

More Miranda July lovin'

I can't get this page out of my head. If you've looked through the whole site, you know what I mean. I almost want to make it into an icon of some sort, or maybe I'll steal it and use it as my desktop. But perhaps that would make MJ grumpy since it was her idea originally. I don't know how she manages to do it, but she's always up to something interesting, even if she's opposed to dancing fetuses. But that's not my story.

I just have to work on my own creative spark, really.

Signs and portents seem to be pointing towards a trip to the bookstore one of these days. Yes, perhaps this weekend, if I have the time to spare.

This evening, biking home after meeting up with crume, the world was quiet and the wind roared wordlessly in my ears.

He said he thinks he would be happy with a small house and land to turn into a garden where he could grow plants to cook delicious food. It made me picture a small house perched on a hill in Montana, with tall grasses bending and rustling in the wind. One thing many of us have agreed upon, we want to get the hell out of Phoenix before we turn into shells of ourselves and crumble and blow away. Perhaps the solitude of living in the countryside is more comforting than the isolation of the neverending, impersonal suburb slashed open with pavement.

It's exhausting sometimes, to try to explore this disemboweled city as the summer begins to bake. Part of me likes it here in the middle of the summer, when things have quieted down and people go into refrigerated seclusion. I get more thinking done, yet at the same time I don't need to think as much.