The idea-for-an-experiment generator

Yesterday, Scicurious wrote a very honest post about how she thought that she didn't have enough ideas to write grants and stay in academic science. This is something that I hear around me every now and then (mostly from women). I have given this some thought before: how brilliant do your ideas have to be? Because I think that is what people mean when they say they don't have enough ideas: that they don't have enough brilliant ideas. But honestly, I think that the percentage of brilliant ideas in science is maybe 1-2% of all the science that is done. I think that the bulk of science is to repeat something with a slight modification to come up with something 'new'. For example instead of looking at the dopamine system in behavior A, you now study the opioid system and you have another grant proposal. Of course nobody admits that this is how they come up with new experiments, but I have a sneaking suspicion that most PIs will have a variation of the machine below in their office somewhere. 

The optogenetics experiment generator: pick your opsin, roll the bingo wheel for brain region A, spin the wheel of fortune for brain region B and roll the dice for your behavior of choice. This generator can be modified for experiments in any field of life science and beyond.

Like a deer in the headlights

I often think about what kind of qualities a scientist should have. I think a scientist should be curious, adventurous (science-wise, not necessarily bungee-jump-wise) and inventive. But lately, it also seems like an important part is to be resilient to stress about having an insecure job. As I said before, whether or not I will have the position I want in the homecountry depends on whether I get a grant (any grant) before next year when we are moving back. This type of insecurity, that I know almost every scientist faces, does not make me work better. To be honest, it stresses me to the point that when I have to write a grant, I can’t because I keep thinking: ‘this has to be awesome, or else’. I think some people excel under pressure, but I’m currently not one of those.

You have to understand that I was raised in a country that has a lot of social security. Everybody has healthcare - and with that I mean real healthcare, not the one where you have to co-pay 20%, leaving you bankrupt after an expensive procedure – and it’s a lot harder for employers to fire people with a contract than in the US. Deep down, I did not envision being older than 30, not knowing where I would work next year or whether I would be able to afford a house.

You also have to understand that wanting to get a grant funded to secure a position seems to be my type of nesting. Being pregnant has amplified these feelings enormously, because I seem to want to imagine what life will look like when this prospective baby is born, and moving countries when he or she is only 5 or 6 months does not really help in this process.

It would help if Dr. BrownEyes would have be a millionaire, or at least have a job that we would know he could keep and that would bring in money, but he doesn’t, because he’s also a scientist. This is great, and his enthusiasm for science is one of the things I like about him, but it doesn’t help in my anxiety about getting a job.

So does this make me a bad scientist? It did for a while, because I really felt like a deer in the headlights trying to write grants and papers, but now that I know that I can at least get bread on the table doing another post-doc that gives me some room to breathe, and to be good and creative while writing grants again. But why aren’t there more scientist-jobs for people who don’t love insecurity about grants and their future (and the future of those in their labs)??

Imposter mommy

As I've written before and commented about here, I don't really feel like an imposter as a scientist. But now that I think about it, I do feel like an imposter when I walk around with BlueEyes. For some reason I always assume that people must think that I'm the nanny and not his mom. I think this happens in part because BlueEyes goes to a relatively expensive daycare that we are only able to afford thanks to a scholarship, so most of the other parents are 5 to 10 years older than we are. They come into the daycare professionally dressed for their 'real' jobs, whereas I walk in my flip flops and jeans to go to the lab.
The imposter feeling has faded a bit now that BlueEyes is getting older and I feel more like a mom (yes that took a bit of time to sink in). But I still occasionally wonder whether people think I'm the nanny...