I generally think that people–even faculty–have the right to take care of their family, broadly construed, and to do a good job at it, and even, as far as possible, to arrange their schedule so that they are both effective in their work and good family members. And so, in honor of Mother’s Day in the US this weekend, let me plug the myriad contributors to the #scimom meme on Twitter and numerous blogs.
#scimom is sort of a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup opportunity, wherein two blogging communities who don’t often talk to one another–moms and scientists–are invited to comment on their overlap. It’s an active hashtag on Twitter, and David Westcott‘s been posting links to Delicious. One of my favorite examples is from Kate Clancy, whose Context and Variation blog I’ve linked to regularly in this space:
At the beginning of each semester, my husband and I sit down with our schedules: our regular faculty meeting times, lab meetings, office hours, teaching hours, and how much time we want to exercise. We also look at our daughter’s schedule, since she has swimming twice a week. Then we slowly work out an equitable arrangement of pickups and drop-offs that we stick to, with the closest thing we can approximate to religious fervor, for the whole semester. I no longer go out for social coffees or lunches and stay at my desk the entire day (though at least I am standing). When our daughter goes to sleep, I often work for a few hours, though I certainly don’t do this every night unless I have a major deadline approaching. This is the reality of my job if I want to be a mom and academic.
This is pretty much the same thing as in my family. The only difference is that my wife usually goes to sleep shortly after our son does, and then gets up at 3AM or so, while I usually stay up until 1 or later, and then go to sleep. Which has been hard to sustain over the long haul, but it lets us be present, engaged parents, as well as decent academics.
The #scimom discussion’s potentially a valuable one, because it makes visible the idea that the two roles of mother and scientists don’t have to be mutually exclusive, and helps improve the climate for mothers in higher education. All of which is just a longwinded way of saying, happy mother’s day!
On to the links!
- if you liked my post on Neal Bascomb’s book about the FIRST robotics competition, The New Cool, then you might also like my interview with him over at GeekDad.
- Archive is a journal that “focuses on the use and theory of archives and special collections in higher education,” and its first issue is now available online.
- Relatedly, at MEDEA there’s an argument that “The Academy needs to Be More Social”: Sadly, it seems like most digital SC still takes place through anti-social media channels such as listservs, thus missing opportunities for discussion and collaboration and helping the information to reach wider audiences. In this post, I argue that scholars should at least try to learn to be more web-savvy and take advantage of the multitude of free tools that are out there.
- I think I feel the same way about cloud computing and Slavoj Žižek–both are simultaneously indispensable and somehow unreliable. Fortunately, Žižek’s here to explain it all: The paradox is thus that, as the new gadget (smartphone or tiny portable) I hold in my hand becomes increasingly personalized, easy to use, “transparent” in its functioning, the more the entire set-up has to rely on the work being done elsewhere, on the vast circuit of machines which coordinate the user’s experience. In other words, for the user experience to become more personalized or non-alienated, it has to be regulated and controlled by an alienated network.
- I’ve been meaning to link to Stephen Ramsay’s “Life on the Command Line” for a couple of weeks: I don’t do anything with GUI apps anymore, except surf the Web. And what’s interesting about that, is that I rarely use cloudy, AJAXy replacements for desktop applications. Just about everything I do, I do exclusively on the command line. And I do what everyone else does: manage email, write things, listen to music, manage my todo list, keep track of my schedule, and chat with people. I also do a few things that most people don’t do: including write software, analyze data, and keep track of students and their grades.
This week’s video features Michio Kaku on “The World in 2030″ (via the Institute of Physics blog:
Two bonuses: Via @wendyphd, “Obvious to you. Amazing to others,”, by Derek Sivers, and Existential Star Wars, which is awesome.
Have a great weekend!
Photo by Flickr user Beige Alert / Creative Commons licensed
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