I really thought I had the finances figured out. I was convinced we were doing well, ahead of the game, and that we would be able to afford a baby, particularly the high cost of full-time daycare, with minimal scrimping. Hubby didn't believe me, so I set out to produce a budget spreadsheet that would prove it.
Well, I went and proved myself wrong. Dammit. So on Mothers' Day, of all possible days, I learned that I really can't afford to become a mother any time soon, at least not while I'm in grad school. This made me very, very sad. I'm estimating another 3 years here in PhD-land, then I guess I'll move on to a post-doc. It seems bad form to get pregnant the instant one is in a new position with a higher salary, so I'm guessing another year of waiting and settling in there before we start trying. That's 4 years! I want a baby now! I already put it on hold for a year for Hubby's master's degree, and I'm sick of waiting!
Hubby saw how upset I was and switched from his usual fiscal conservatism to trying to convince me we can make it work. He's so confusing. I don't know what to do. We have a lot of debt (mostly student loans) that make our budget really tight, so we're considering talking to a financial advisor about how we can shift things around, or refinance, or whatever it takes to get some wiggle room in the monthly budget. I'm really not the least bit concerned about baby gear or basic supplies, since we can get a lot of things secondhand or as gifts, but the daycare...that's like a 3rd mortgage payment (our student loan payments already add up to a 2nd mortgage)! How does anyone do this?
Monday, May 11, 2009
Thursday, April 9, 2009
it all depends on funding
Hubby and I have come to the semi-firm conclusion that we will start trying for a baby as soon as I get word that the lab, and my project specifically, has funding for at least 3 years (i.e., long enough to get me through the rest of my Ph.D.). So, with that in mind, I'm hoping extra hard that the T-R01 we applied for in January will come through this summer. Otherwise, I have to wait to hear back on the R01 renewal we'll be submitting for the first time on June 5. Of course, the likelihood of that going through on the first try seems slim to none, so we'll presumably resubmit it Feb 5, 2010 and maybe get it funded in fall of 2010...in fact, we better get it funded by then, as that's when the existing one runs out. I just realized the other R01 (the one that has nothing to do with my project) is going to run out even earlier, meaning we have to get it renewed on the first try...or else. WTF has Beloved PI been thinking, waiting so long to start applying?!? Note to self: end procrastinating ways now, long before becoming responsible for other people's livelihoods. Speaking of which, I'm late for work again and have grant paperwork to fill out... Joy! Just to clarify, the grants I'm currently working on are stimulus package related and thus would not meet the 3 year requirement mentioned above to allow the commencement of baby-making activities. Sadness.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Summary Statement and My Future Career
So I got my summary statement back on that fellowship application, detailing why the reviewers chose to give me the same score on what I felt was a significantly improved application. The real reason is that Reviewer #1 is a moronic douchebag who clearly has no experience in my field and chooses to ascribe his/her lack of understanding to my (and my experienced co-mentors') lack of understanding. He/she fails in basic understanding of what I am proposing, despite everyone else (including reviewers 2 & 3) praising my very clear writing style. For example, although my central hypothesis is highlighted in italics on the specific aims page, Reviewer #1 wrote a line saying that "The overall hypothesis is a bit out on a limb, that stimuli are more [mystery adjective] in [mystery disorder]," which has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH MY ACTUAL HYPOTHESIS! Since reviewers 2 & 3 correctly interpreted my hypothesis and proposed studies and gave more intelligible feedback (such as the dreaded "overly ambitious"), I feel pretty confident that my writing cannot be faulted for Reviewer #1's complete lack of reading comprehension. Does that count as an unfair review? Can I appeal somehow? I mean, this bastard is the one introducing my grant to the rest of the panel, and you know he's not painting a nice coherent picture. I have one revision left, which I will submit in August, but I seriously don't think it's going to go any better unless Reviewer #1 is out of the picture.
All of this has served to yet again remind me how random, unfair, and futile this funding system seems. I really don't want to devote my life to a career as a professional grant writer, which seems to be the primary job of PIs. I hate writing. I'm not terrible at it, but it's slow and painful. And it's just all the more painful when you feel like the work you put into it is not necessarily proportional to your chances of receiving funding. Writing about science is not what I like about science. I want to actually do the research - run the tests, analyze the data, etc. And I enjoy serving as a mentor and teaching others how to do what I do. Wouldn't that sort of direct hands-on and face-to-face work be a much larger proportion of a career as a research specialist, technician, staff scientist, or whatever else you might call it, than as a PI? I feel like the only thing that is driving me to run my own lab is that that's what you're "supposed" to do when you get a Ph.D. and that people will be disappointed in me if I don't. For example, I had a conversation with Beloved PI a while back about staying in his lab after I graduate. Now, this is something we joke about on a regular basis because he loves me and I have a pretty special skill set that will be difficult to replace. So at first he said that would suit him fine, but then he took it back and said he couldn't do that to me. A post-doc friend who was also there for this conversation expressed a similar sentiment, that I shouldn't waste my intellect or something like that. I don't feel like it's a waste to be true to my own priorities, including not taking on so much responsibility as the head of a lab so that I can leave work at reasonable hours and appreciate time with my family.
All of this has served to yet again remind me how random, unfair, and futile this funding system seems. I really don't want to devote my life to a career as a professional grant writer, which seems to be the primary job of PIs. I hate writing. I'm not terrible at it, but it's slow and painful. And it's just all the more painful when you feel like the work you put into it is not necessarily proportional to your chances of receiving funding. Writing about science is not what I like about science. I want to actually do the research - run the tests, analyze the data, etc. And I enjoy serving as a mentor and teaching others how to do what I do. Wouldn't that sort of direct hands-on and face-to-face work be a much larger proportion of a career as a research specialist, technician, staff scientist, or whatever else you might call it, than as a PI? I feel like the only thing that is driving me to run my own lab is that that's what you're "supposed" to do when you get a Ph.D. and that people will be disappointed in me if I don't. For example, I had a conversation with Beloved PI a while back about staying in his lab after I graduate. Now, this is something we joke about on a regular basis because he loves me and I have a pretty special skill set that will be difficult to replace. So at first he said that would suit him fine, but then he took it back and said he couldn't do that to me. A post-doc friend who was also there for this conversation expressed a similar sentiment, that I shouldn't waste my intellect or something like that. I don't feel like it's a waste to be true to my own priorities, including not taking on so much responsibility as the head of a lab so that I can leave work at reasonable hours and appreciate time with my family.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Noob mistakes and a generally craptastic week
First, let me express my thanks to everyone who has discovered my blog and left encouraging comments. I must say, though, that I think I've made a noob mistake in setting this up. My blogroll is ridiculously huge! I can't believe there's this whole community of women scientists online that I never knew existed. But alas, there's no way I can keep up with all 50 top women in science blogs from that phlebotomy school's list, plus everyone else I stumble across. How do you ladies do it? I just got Viigo installed on my BlackBerry so I can access the RSS feeds whenever I have a spare moment, but I've signed up for so many of them that it doesn't seem to be keeping up properly, and even if it did, I could never keep up with the reading. Since I'm particularly interested in reading about the lives of scientists (especially pre-tenure) who are also mothers (particularly of young children), I think I will have to cut my blogroll down to just those blogs. If anyone knows of a list just of those...
Meanwhile, I will tell you a little about my generally craptastic week. I should note that I am probably going to include enough information here that anyone who knew me personally would recognize what's going on in my life, but if you do identify me, please be discrete. Beloved PI has enough shit to worry about without anyone putting ideas in his head about me going on maternity leave and then permanently cutting down my hours.
So, this week, I got the score back on the 2nd submission of a pre-doctoral fellowship application. It was exactly the same unfundable score as the first submission. The most frustrating part is that I felt like I had done a really nice job of revising it and responding to all of the reviewers' criticisms. It was significantly better than the original and definitely worth funding. I was really optimistic about it, and [Beloved PI] even admitted that he had been "quietly confident" that I would get it. I was really pissed the first day, went home a bit early to get hugs from Hubby, have a few glasses of wine, and sleep it off. The next day my reaction had mellowed to disappointment and disillusionment with the process. The only thing Beloved PI could say to try to comfort me was that it wasn't personal, it's all just a crap-shoot. That's really not very comforting when I think about spending the rest of my career constantly dealing with such a screwed up system.
Meanwhile, I will tell you a little about my generally craptastic week. I should note that I am probably going to include enough information here that anyone who knew me personally would recognize what's going on in my life, but if you do identify me, please be discrete. Beloved PI has enough shit to worry about without anyone putting ideas in his head about me going on maternity leave and then permanently cutting down my hours.
So, this week, I got the score back on the 2nd submission of a pre-doctoral fellowship application. It was exactly the same unfundable score as the first submission. The most frustrating part is that I felt like I had done a really nice job of revising it and responding to all of the reviewers' criticisms. It was significantly better than the original and definitely worth funding. I was really optimistic about it, and [Beloved PI] even admitted that he had been "quietly confident" that I would get it. I was really pissed the first day, went home a bit early to get hugs from Hubby, have a few glasses of wine, and sleep it off. The next day my reaction had mellowed to disappointment and disillusionment with the process. The only thing Beloved PI could say to try to comfort me was that it wasn't personal, it's all just a crap-shoot. That's really not very comforting when I think about spending the rest of my career constantly dealing with such a screwed up system.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Okay, on with the introductions
Yay, how exciting! People already came to visit me! :-) Okay, so I guess that means I better go ahead and introduce myself...in an anonymous sense. As the blog description says, I am a 4th year PhD student in [Life Science] at [Excellent U]. And as implied by the pseudonym, I very much want to "have it all" in the sense of both a happy family and a sucessful career in scientific research. I should clarify that I am not yet a mommy (or expecting), nor a full-blown scientist, although at some level, I feel ready on both fronts.
On the baby front, I have always heard that there is simply "no good time" for kids in an academic career, and that you should "just do it when you're ready." Well, Hubby and I have been married almost 3 years; we own a 3 bedroom house in a nice suburb with good schools; we've practiced our parenting skills by raising 2 dogs; we've never been partiers or had much in the way of social lives that we wouldn't be ready to give up; our friends (not counting my fellow grad students) are having babies; and if careers weren't an issue, we would probably already have a baby.
However, despite my excitement about the possibility of becoming a mother, I'm terrified of doing it during grad school. I guess mainly this is because the two women in my program who have had kids during grad school are not doing so well academically. I really don't see myself in either one of them (they don't seem very self-motivated, which I am), so I think I may have better chances of working it out, but it's just not comforting. So part of my motivation in starting this blog is to seek out new role models and advice about this question of whether it's a reasonable choice to have a baby during grad school. There's so much more I could say about my conflicting feelings about everything, but I think you get the gist, so I'll leave it at that. I'm open to any and all opinions or tidbits of wisdom you'd like to share.
On the baby front, I have always heard that there is simply "no good time" for kids in an academic career, and that you should "just do it when you're ready." Well, Hubby and I have been married almost 3 years; we own a 3 bedroom house in a nice suburb with good schools; we've practiced our parenting skills by raising 2 dogs; we've never been partiers or had much in the way of social lives that we wouldn't be ready to give up; our friends (not counting my fellow grad students) are having babies; and if careers weren't an issue, we would probably already have a baby.
However, despite my excitement about the possibility of becoming a mother, I'm terrified of doing it during grad school. I guess mainly this is because the two women in my program who have had kids during grad school are not doing so well academically. I really don't see myself in either one of them (they don't seem very self-motivated, which I am), so I think I may have better chances of working it out, but it's just not comforting. So part of my motivation in starting this blog is to seek out new role models and advice about this question of whether it's a reasonable choice to have a baby during grad school. There's so much more I could say about my conflicting feelings about everything, but I think you get the gist, so I'll leave it at that. I'm open to any and all opinions or tidbits of wisdom you'd like to share.
Blogging
Okay, so I'm new to this blogging thing, so I realize I haven't had time to say anything interesting yet. Thankfully, I'm sure no one is listening yet. How do you get readers anyway? Well, meanwhile, I just wanted to mention that this list rocks, and has been my inspiration for starting my own blog. I intend to add almost all of these to my "blogroll"...whatever that means.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
New Blog
I'm starting this new anonymous blog to vent...but I should really be at work now...er...should have been there an hour and a half ago...so I'll introduce myself later.
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