Even in Kyoto

One of the interesting parts of being a scientist is that it requires wearing a lot of different hats.

There's the "Field Biologist" hat, which involves traveling out to exotic locations (like Tucson) to track down obscure organisms, braving the hardships of the wild and the vagaries of the weather. I spend lots of time with maps during this part. This part is awesome.

Then there's the "Experiment" hat, which overlaps with some of the other hats but mostly seems to involve collecting and analyzing data (how I get to this point involves wearing some of the other hats). I like this one because it involves a lot of tangible things: measurements, numbers written on pages, set time frames, chemicals in test tubes, color changes, and occasional exclamations of, "BING!" or "It's SCIENCE!"

Then there's the "Grant-writer" hat, which is how I get money to wear the other hats. It involves convincing other people that the things I do are worth spending money to do--that they contribute to some broader theoretical framework in some way that expands our understanding of the world around us, or some other such nonsense. This alternates between being stressful and rewarding (in my mind I go, "This is a useless waste of time" and then "This explains EVERYTHING!").

Then there's the "Educator" hat, which involves things like blogging about ants, writing popular science articles about them, getting interviewed for podcasts or TV shows, bringing ants into classrooms, or talking about ants with my friends or students. This is inspirational.

There's also the "Mathemetician/Statistician" hat, for figuring out how to make sense of the results of experiments. Mmm, number-crunching. Very rewarding when I finally figure out how to do something.

The "Librarian" hat, for finding out about related research and keeping those publications organized. (Appeals to one's meticulous side)

And the "Manuscript-writer" hat, for making sense of the mathematical outcomes. This one often causes a lot of hair-pulling. Oh sure, I can write, but it can be hard to avoid self-censoring.

Oh, and I shouldn't forget the "Zookeeper" hat, which refers to both mentoring activities (<--joke) and taking care of ant colonies. Somewhat mundane, but necessary. Okay, maybe mentoring activities should fall under a separate "Mentor" hat.

Oh, and there's a "Performer" hat in there somewhere, too, for the presentations I give either here at school or at professional conferences. High stress but ultimately inspirational, especially when other people get fired up by my work.

So it's no wonder I feel kind of busy sometimes.

Today, I am hoping to accomplish the following:
1. Send a draft of my dissertation proposal to 3 of my 5 committee members.
2. Submit a travel grant for a conference in October, which also requires writing a poster abstract.
3. Rewrite 4 articles for Ask-A-Biologist (mercifully brief, but 'twill still take time).
4. Feed and water all of my ant colonies.
5. Make sure my undergraduates feel generally happy and as though they are making good progress (because they are).

It's already 1:00, and I've been able to make some, but not all, revisions to my proposal draft. Wish me luck with the rest.

I woke up tired this morning, but convinced myself to go rowing anyways, and as usual, rowing did not disappoint. It wasn't the most exciting of mornings, but I'm glad I got out there.

Then I came home and used up some leftover buttermilk to make buttermilk pancakes, complete with Herman and sprinkled with poppyseeds and sesame seeds. Oh, and topped with strawberries and whipped cream. Let's just say that I like breakfast, a lot.

Then I went in to school, and finished grading my students' exams, as I'd promised I would. By the time that was finished, I had just enough time to eat a bite of lunch before heading over to hear the first part of a lecture by Peter Singer.

I'm almost glad I wasn't able to stay. I found his supposedly ethical arguments for the humane treatment of animals to be illogical and therefore irritating. I, for one, can think of much more reasonable approaches for thinking or arguing about the subject instead of having to rely on concepts of consciousness (how about a more general concept of relation to the world around us? Why should animals--and only certain animals, at that--get the special treatment?). But I had to run off to office hours, which provided a convenient excuse to leave. For questions, the lecture organizers handed out 3x5 index cards to be passed to the front, so after hearing the brief segment I stayed for, I simply asked why Singer relied on this shaky concept of consciousness instead of appealing to a broader aesthetic. It would have been nice if he had gotten to the question, but I'll never know. Honestly, Elaine Scarry's approach (see On Beauty and Being Just), or Wendell Berry's perspective or David Abrahm's viewpoint would make for a more pleasing argument, in my humble opinion. Yet somehow this guy is a well-renowned dude at Princeton. Go figure.

Seeing the students who came to office hours one last time was touching and a bit sad. I'm going to miss this bunch--they were enthusiastic, sharp-witted and fun. But it will be good for them to move on. I can only hope that something that I've said, advice or otherwise, will stick with each of them and have a positive influence on their lives.

Then I got to have a nice chat with a faculty member who is full of insights, and then ate a bit of dinner before heading over to ceramics, which I realize I'd been looking forward to all day.

You see, last week, I played around with some stains, just to see how they worked since I've finally switched to light-colored clays where stains will actually show. After staining these first four porcelain pieces, I glazed them, and today I finally had a chance to see the results of my labor. And the results have been astoundingly beautiful. I might even take some pictures. I think I've finally found the art that I've been after, that combination of ceramics and painting, and on top of that, an outlet for my fondness for black silhouettes, which started back when I was drawing with compressed charcoal.

After admiring my handiwork, I got to work throwing, which went quite well. I'd bought a bag of B Mix with Sand the week before and had started working with it then, but didn't get very far, so tonight was my first real big test run with the stuff. Compared to the porcelain, and even to the Jamaican (black clay) I'd been using before, it's strong and resilient, though its surface develops a somewhat odd texture. I had one of those nights where I was pleasantly surprised by the fact that yes, I could throw, and am not doomed to a life of throwing bowls.

I threw three tall cylinders, which will be turned into pitchers, as well as some spouts, and now it's the end of a long day and my hands are tired from the work. But it's a good feeling.

For those who might wonder, I think the feeling of flying by the seat of one's pants (what's the etymology of that phrase, anyway?) never really goes away in academia. Or maybe that's just how my lab and I function.

Yeah.

I'm incredibly grateful for the proposal-writing seminar that I organized and that a professor volunteered to lead. Incredibly. It leaves my advisor and me much less room for dithering. In part, it's painful to run up against such deadlines, but in the long run it's basically the only way to get myself through this process. (I'm grateful for the pain, I suppose).

Obliquely, I'm referring to the fact that I have to have a one-page proposal prospectus put together by 10 am today, and to the fact that I have just barely managed to pull all of the components together just now. We'll see how it goes. I suspect the very first complaint will be that it's too densely worded.

I have to say, I'm eternally grateful for the fact that I required my students write a draft of their lab reports, and then helped them with revisions before having them hand in final copies. It's a relief to be able to have intelligent conversations about their ideas as I grade instead of having to sort through whether or not they've captured the basics for the assignment. Of course, I've only read through two of approximately 42 reports so far...

I keep on blogging today because I'm trying to work on my dissertation proposal, which means that I'm seeking out distractions instead. Actually, I *feel* like things have been going okay so far today, which is probably even more important than thinking I'm making progress or actually having any measurable indicator. This feeling could be because I don't have any particular pressure to show a definite product for my effort today.
( cut for blathering )
Anyway. I'm impressed if you read the above blathering, but if you are in similar straits, perhaps it's useful to you. The interesting part of the day is that I figured out a nifty new way to look at some of my data (new to me, at least). I'm working on trying to understand the relationship between leafcutter ant colonies and their fungus as the colonies grow, and so I measured colony size and fungus size every week for two months in 25 colonies (with more than a little help from my friend myrmecology, of course). My challenge at the moment is how to depict these things in a way that will allow me to ask and answer interesting questions. There's a positive relationship between colony size and fungus size, but that in itself isn't all that exciting. It's the changes over time in the two factors--are they systematic and regular (fungus and colony grow together), or crazy and irregular (colony grows, fungus shrinks, fungus recovers, colony grows)? And how does that relate to the way that other things grow? I can't say much more than that at the moment, but I'm working on it.

I'm currently battling a moderate cold. It's not terrible enough that I can declare, "I'm sick!" and stay home and shirk work, but it has made me disinclined to get up early and row or ride my bike (besides, I can still point to last weekend's adventures as justification to take a break). Altogether, I can't even really complain, as it's the first time I've been sick since The Mono. That doesn't make illness enjoyable, though.

Right before I fall asleep, I am reading The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, by Haruki Murakami, as recommended to me by trifold_flame, and it is a pleasing novel for its concreteness and vagueness. It allows me to imagine my own version of scenes with a pleasing photographic quality even as I read the story of someone else. I think this has to do with the mention of everyday objects, particularly foods: a ham sandwich, coffee, hard-boiled eggs. Also, alleyways, houses, tall grass, raindrops.

I have been away from fiction for so long.

Meanwhile, I am tempted to also let myself fall into the grips of a work of non-fiction, a book about a particular set of studies of leafcutter ants in Panama. It's written for a scientific audience, and yet has the pleasing story-telling quality achieved by a set of good writers who write to illuminate and not impress. The difficult balance is that this book blurs distinctions between work and leisure, and I must consider it in conjunction with other considerations for my time.

For quite a while there, I was caught up in trying to treat my time as a precious thing, saving it for something, trying to allocate it cleanly to this or that. But if it is too cleanly compartmentalized, my personhood is severed (this part belongs to work. this part belongs to rowing. this part belongs to cooking. this part belongs to ceramics. I am fragmented.). In contrast, when I do things like riding to Tucson, I feel more restored to myself, especially as I watch the sun arc across the entire sky in the cycle of the day.

I recently bought new sheets, which I put on my already-too-comfortable bed last night. I blame them for the fact that I had a difficult time getting out of bed this morning. It doesn't help that my plans for the day involve a lot of thinking--I feel as though I'm trying to give birth to entire new ideas all at once, and, frankly, I'm not sure my brain is up to the challenge. I was able to convince myself that I wouldn't be able to get much done if I was tired, and so I slept.

Aside to Manuscript of Doom II: The Sequel: I will be quite glad when you are out of my life. Thinking about one subject is difficult enough--thinking about two simultaneously often makes me want to cry.

I get the feeling that I shouldn't feel so reluctant to talk about my research, but whenever anyone asks how it's going it always seems like an overly complicated question to answer. Actually, Berry's writings have been somewhat comforting and helpful on that account. If one accepts the idea of the unknown and unknowable, and gives up the illusion that science=progress, it changes one's goals as a scientist. In some respects, I think I'm letting go of the idea of making some tremendous revolutionary breakthrough with my research on leafcutter ants, and am instead hoping to emerge with an appreciation for what I can and cannot know about these diminutive farmers.

It has been an odd work-week. I spent all of Monday and half of Tuesday working on the Manuscript of Doom II: The Sequel. When I got tired of that, I stopped. On Wednesday, I spent basically the entire day tracing fungus areas in a set of 25 photos--the measurements will help myrmecology and me determine the amounts of fungus present in leafcutter ant nests as part of a larger project on the subject.

Then I spent basically the entirety of yesterday and half of today rehousing the leafcutter ant colonies that are getting too big for their britches and giving them their food and water and blankies and tucking them in all nice and cozy for the holidays. The ant care work was good for me--it's easy to lose touch with how the colonies are doing unless one checks in on them in a systematic fashion.

Then I wrote up a big list of all of the projects I'm working on and typed up a five-page list of all of the references (research articles) that I have put in the "add to my brains" pile. With the aid of the list, I won't have to carry the entire pile around anymore.

And with that, I think I'll go home. This week wasn't exactly what I expected it to be, but I feel like stuff got done and I'll be ready to dive back in when I get back from Seattle.

I have finished grading exams at last. They're dangerously simple to grade--I deduct points without writing comments, which means I have to be extra-vigilant about reading carefully (reading carefully naturally happens when I grade with comments, but that whole enchilada is much more painstakingly time-consuming).

Overall, I'm happy with my experiment in exam-writing. Their final exam was written around the theme of global warming, although much of it ended up being about Sonoran Desert Toads (I'm sure the herpetophiles enjoyed that). It was also a bit more open-ended than the previous exam, which is always a double-edged sword.

Their responses to a question about the peer-review process were nice to read, but for a couple of questions it looks like either many students didn't read the questions all that carefully or I need to do a slightly better job with the wording. They also had nice, thoughtful responses to a question about research on global climate change (namely, why are studies showing definitive biological consequences due to climate change so rare? How does this affect predictions based on models of climate change?). So that was good. It's such a nebulous concept that I think it's useful to give students some more concrete ideas/thoughts to hang their hats on. And if these students won't think critically about things like climate change, who will?

Altogether, though, I must admit I'm glad to be finishing up with the semester. I didn't quite click as well as I'd like to click with my classes, so I won't miss them much (don't tell them!). Things were reasonably amiable, but the spark just wasn't there. C'est la vie.

Today's work went amazingly well, for a change, which means I might even get to lounge about just a bit before finishing up my stack of grading, writing an exam, and getting prepared for my committee meeting on Monday.

I spent the morning doing more tiny activities: first, I used a fancy machine to grind up samples of leaves, oatmeal, polenta, and ant trash into fine powders. The samples are placed into small plastic tubes along with a miniature marble made of a very hard plastic. These are loaded into a machine that shakes them up and down and back and around at an extremely high speed. In theory, the plastic ball smashes against the material until it is pulverized. In practice, sometimes the plastic ball gets stuck and has to be unstuck by hand and reloaded and shaken until it can't be shaken no more (which is to say, I've come unglued and have started crying and kicking my heels against the floor in frustration--rarely happens, but ugly when it does).

In contrast, today's samples pulverized nicely on the first try, with the exception of the polenta. There always has to be an exception, doesn't there? I finally gave up on the polenta in light of the fact that I already have some data on their phosphorus content.

Step two in this whole enchilada is to weigh out tiny specks of the freshly created powder into glass test tubes. That's how you can tell I do science--there are lab coats and test tubes involved. Oh, and later on there are strangely-colored liquids (fuschia and blue)--but I'm getting ahead of myself. Weighing the powder is not as simple as it might sound. Sometimes the air here is so dry that static electricity causes the leaf-motes to be flung through the air instead of sitting in place to be weighed. So when I put a sample on the balance, it registers a weight, and then the weight gradually decreases and decreases and never settles on a number. On top of that, the balance (scale) that I use to weigh samples can be finicky at times. The first time this happened, it took me a long time to figure out what was going on, and this, too, involved a lot of crying and heel-banging. A wise and patient lab technician's counsel cleared this problem up last time (put samples in teeny-tiny plastic tubes with closeable lids for weighing), but the solution is time-consuming.

Today, the solution wasn't even necessary--no particles flung themselves around, and I was able to use the faster tin-foil weighing method instead of the tubes. Hazaa!

The upshot of all of this is, I was anticipating a 10- to 12-hour day of weighing, if I were lucky. Instead, I finished in 4.5 hours. Oh, and I figured out how to listen to KEXP while weighing, which made everything just that much more civilized (fun, almost).

In case all of this makes you really want to trade lives, well, you might want to wait until after Monday, because the whole process is nowhere near finished. Now that the samples are in the test tubes, I can begin the analysis to measure their phosphorus content. But I won't start that until Sunday because it's another 10-12 hours of work. And only at the very end of that day will I know if the whole process worked, or if I'll have to start all over again.