Impostor Syndrome and Family

Thank you to Scicurious for hosting a carnival on this subject.

As a woman in engineering, I expected to feel impostor syndrome quite strongly, but so far, I just haven't. I can find myself in a room as the only woman, and I barely notice. Am I some magical super-confident oddity? Not really. But even if I don't think I'm the best at ___, I still feel like I deserve to be where I'm at most days.

As I've been reading some of the brilliant posts around the internet, it seems that authors largely find in one of two categories: "best students" who no longer are, or people making a large leap from their background.

I've talked before about my SciGrandmother, and my other family members in STEM fields both in and out of academia. Clearly, I'm not making a large leap away from my background. Even at GiantU, I have a family support network, in the form of an aunt who is a professor in a biological field. She helped me find a mentor in my own department to help me deal with some of the nonsense that is my advisor. Having someone who is not a formal chain-of-command mentor has been incredibly helpful. When my own advisor was editing at the rate of molasses, he was willing to read my manuscript and give me feedback about organization and writing style, even if he didn't know all of my science.

As far as the "best student" thing goes, I've never been the best student at everything, thanks to my sister. It's been a life-long competition, with me winning some subjects and her winning others. We're fairly close in age, and very even in ability. I've had years to get used to having someone who was better than me. I'm better at math, she's better at writing. I'm better at music, she's better at drawing. And eventually, I've gotten to the point where that's ok. The best days are when one of us can say to the other "It's so helpful having a sister who's better at ___ than I am".

Lastly, I'm often just too damn busy think "I need to do x, y, z, alpha..." to think I'm not good enough. If I can't do everything, it's probably because there's so much of it. Every so often, I lapse into thinking I'm incompetent because I haven't finished everything, and then I vent to a lab mate, and they remind me I'm working on 3+ projects.

So what advice can I offer others? Find and cultivate a support network of various stages and fields. Find a peer you can vent with, find a mentor who's not your advisor (admittedly, this can be very tricky), make friends in other departments and other groups. Find someone who will tell you that what you do is awesome (that isn't a family member). Have trouble reaching out to people? Join Twitter, read blogs, form a virtual support network. Seriously, the blogosphere is full of supportive people from all sorts of career stages, even if it's dominated by biologists.

Ada Lovelace and Inspiring Women

Happy Ada Lovelace Day, everyone!

I've talked before about some of the women I find inspiring as a scientist, my mother, my grandmother, and Professor Millie Dresselhaus. Today, I'd like to talk about some of the other women who have inspired me as a scientist.

Until I reached high school, every science teacher I had was female. Actually, until college, I had exactly one male science teacher. Of those women, the one who I remember best and inspired me most was my 8th grade science teacher. It was the first year we were really focusing on chemistry, instead of biology or earth science, and Ms. George did fantastic demos. She was energetic, and sarcastic enough to handle a bunch of 12 and 13 year old students. The day she lectured about dihydrogen monoxide, I was falling out of my chair trying to muffle laughs while she very sincerely talked about how much of this dangerous substance was being dumped into our oceans.

She also wasn't afraid to push students who could have coasted. The final lab of the year was meant to combine all the different analysis techniques we'd been learning to identify the components in a jar of "sludge". She had a list of possible ingredients on the wall. Most students were given a jar with 5-6 components. My partner and I got a jar with 9 (there were 20 potential choices).

So thank you, Ms. George, for making me work!

My SciGrandmother

I've talked previously about my #STEMmom, but I also have a pretty awesome STEM grandmother. My paternal grandmother was a research assistant for my grandfather, and later, my step grandfather, both of whom were experimental psychologists. After completing her Master's degree, she was dissuaded from finishing a PhD. However, she stayed in science doing significant research for many years, as evidenced by her publication record on audio and visual perception. She was fantastically supportive when my aunt went for her doctorate in neuroscience, and is pleased as peaches that I'm going for my doctorate. I'm very proud to have her as a grandmother.

However, as an engineer, I hear an awful lot of my peers malign psychology and the other social sciences as not "real science". The infamous Coburn report spends a significant fraction of its length attacking social sciences in particular, and proposes eliminating the entire Social, Behavioral and Economics Directorate. Yes, other agencies fund similar research, but other agencies also fund work in the physical sciences (i.e., NIH, DoD, DoE, etc.). The physical sciences strive to understand the universe: social sciences strive to understand humanity. Just because you don't need to know calculus doesn't mean it's not "real science". The scientific method still applies. In good experiments, there are still control groups and sample size considerations. Results from social science research have changed how we approach special education, our understanding of how people interact, how we perceive people with mental illnesses. There's more to psychology than Freud...

Woman Scientist Profile: Professor Mildred Dresselhaus

Professor Dresselhaus may be a Condensed Matter Experimental Physicist at MIT, but as a materials scientist, I'm claiming her for our side.

I first became aware of Prof. Dresselhaus at a conference, where she was giving an invited talk on the state of thermoelectric materials research, one of several areas in which she is considered a significant innovator. She's also one of the premiere researchers in carbon science, having worked in the field since ~1973, studying superconductivity in intercalated graphite compounds, and written four books on the subject.  She was involved in critical experiments to validate the structure of of single-walled nanotubes using Raman spectroscopy.  Her most recent projects have studied bismuth nanowire fabrication.  Her list of career awards is intimidatingly impressive (including the US National Medal of Science), but my favorite thing about Professor Dresselhaus?

She never stops looking forward.

(If you haven't seen Meet The Robinsons yet, you're missing out!)

She doesn't sit on her ample scientific laurels and drift into an emeritus haze. She keeps finding what she thinks is new and interesting. To hear her give a talk is to be inspired about all of the possibilities for increasing our understanding of the universe. She asks hard questions when she sits in on a talk. She is a woman, confident in herself, and her work, and she's awesome!

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If it isn't obvious, I'm still playing around with different directions to take this blog. To some extent, I plan to talk about daily grad student life, but I'd also like to try and explain what about materials science in particular is so awesome.