Seven PhDs

So a few days ago I stumbled across Josh Raclaw’s tweet:

Watching Thor: Ragnorok and never get tired of hearing Bruce Banner brag about his 7 PhDs like it’s a sign of brilliance and not just poor career planning, dude. Like, maybe do the one PhD and then some postdocs, guy.

— Joshua Raclaw (@joshraclaw) March 3, 2018

And this is the result:

Reasons Why Twister Is The Most Pro-Science Blockbuster

Twister is one of my top five films of all time. If it’s not in yours you need to rethink your priorities. Now it’s not necessarily the most scientifically accurate movie of all time, but I think it’s one the most positive depictions of science, and one of the best depictions of science community I’ve ever seen.

Here are the main points of my thesis:

• The research group fights about what music they listen to when they drive, with one group favouring showtunes and the other favouring rock.
• Dustin (Seymour Hopkins‘ character) is the the token “good at emotions” character, always rushing to make sure everyone’s okay
• There are (repeated) arguments about how to store equipment
• There is one who is always on the phone fixing problems (Jami Gertz’s character). Every research group has one of these people.
• Someone in the team has a family member really good at cooking and the whole team adopts them.
• There’s a lot of bitterness about that one person who went after the money instead of the science.
• Nobody has a particularly good work-life balance.
• No one can decide whose responsibility it is to write up the papers.

 

And to conclude, the true reason Twister is the best depiction of science culture ever:

Academics Supporting Academics

If you hang out in the academic circles of Twitter or the blogosphere[1] you’ll find many frightening stories about the cutthroat and ruthless nature of the world’s self-appointed thinkers. Bullying in academia has its own Wiki page (don’t be too shocked, academia is also an industry that hosts regular edit-a-thons of Wikipedia), and is frequently the topic of thinkpieces in your favourite left-leaning media (again, don’t be too surprised, we’re also an industry that writes for a living).

Bullying in academia is a problem, and early career researchers are frequently left unsupported. But this is not the only story. I’ve heard tales from my own university that make my skin crawl, but I think it’s equally important to highlight when things work well. I have always been incredibly lucky to work in supportive teams, and I’d like to think I help to support my colleagues, so if you want to change the culture of your academic workplace, here are the things that work for me:

1. Ask for help

SRUC recently hosted Temple Grandin for a series of talks, and I was invited to talk about my research as part of an early career day. I’m not the kind of person who gets nervous about talking, but presenting your research, that you’ve just written a book on, to one of science’s biggest characters is not a normal kind of talk.

I asked for help.

My colleague, Jess Martin, pictured to my left in this Tweet, sat with me as we flicked through my slides. She gave me some brilliant advice on my slides, and then she gave me some tips for coping with nerves during presentations. I think it’s important to point out that these are skills I have, I win competitions (and book deals) on these skills, but that doesn’t mean I don’t need help sometimes. As academics we like to  believe we are experts, that we have irreplaceable skills. If we don’t believe this then everyone is our competition . . .

.@JMICAWE Great couple of days hosting the inspiring Temple Grandin & discussing animal welfare #WomenInScience pic.twitter.com/jD2nFGPvRx

— Heather Bacon (@AW_Vet) February 17, 2017

Here’s the thing, every woman in that photo could do my job better than me if they put their mind to it. We are a strong team, not when we scrabble for funding scraps, but when we sit down together to see where we can learn from one another.

 

2. Acknowledge your colleagues

She won’t thank me but I want to call Jess out specifically here. Jess is one of these people who will always have time to help you if you ask for it. Jess also uses peoples names.

In a meeting, when Jess wants to echo someone’s idea she says “Jill’s point was a good one…”. I’ve started trying to do the same. “I agree with Bob”, “I missed what Alice said, can you say it again?”

I often find myself in meetings where there is a spread of paygrades around the table. You and your fellow early career researchers will not be on the radar until you all start speaking about your achievements. Don’t push your own agenda at the expense of others. When Bob makes a good point, tell people it was Bob’s idea.

 

3. Think about wellbeing

I have another set of colleagues, Kirsty Hughes, Sharon Boyd and Jessie Paterson, who are very engaged with workplace wellbeing. They organise various sessions to get us thinking about things other than work. I’m going to be talking about video games for my team later this month. They’re not mandatory, but they’re there. Just before Christmas my boss was teasing me for me affection for glitter as we made some Christmas cards, and then we pondered our approach to one of my current projects.

Good bosses are very important here, and another place where I’ve always been incredibly fortunate. But even if you don’t have a supportive boss, think about how you and your colleagues interact. Working in Scotland my colleagues and I are big fans of the pub debrief, but there’s plenty to be said for walk-and-talks out in nature, for crafting sessions and opportunities to explore hobbies.

Hobbies teach skills you can bring into the workplace, my photography and videogaming are both things I can use in my role, but that’s not the real gain here. Work shouldn’t make you sick. It’s as simple as that.

 

4. Go home!

Don’t be part of the culture that normalises sleeping under your desk. Go home at a reasonable time. If you are sending an email to a colleague and you see their out of office is on, it’s very easy to delay an email so it gets sent when they’re back, and it takes very little extra effort on your part. Turn off email notifications on your phone, turn off your inbox’s ability to pop up every time a new email hits your inbox. If you have a short question why not visit your colleague’s office, instead of sending an email?

Don’t fall into the trap of saying “this is how it was for me, this is how it’ll be for my students”. I hope the future generation has a better life than ours.

 

5. Reflect on feedback

This is the one I find most challenging. I like to think of myself as amazing at all times, but I’m not. I do things wrong, I lack several skills, I have a long way to go. I found my Higher Education Academy application to be a revelation in this sense. I still struggle to take feedback on board, but I like to think I’m getting there.

Trying to hear feedback as about the work, and not about me, is not easy. On the whole academics are good at things and don’t like failing, but our work is always about failing. You’re never going to answer that question perfectly, you’re never going to be perfect. Let yourself be messy, let yourself fail, give yourself space to grow. How else will you know when you need to go to your colleagues for help, or when it’s time to stop bashing your head off the keyboard and go for a walk?

Self-reflection isn’t easy, but there needs to be a lot more of it in science.

FluffySciences in 2016

So it’s not quite Friday, but I think it’s time to post the last FluffyFriday of 2016 anyway!

2016 was a big year for me, professionally speaking.
First and foremost, 2016 was the year I wrote my book: Animal Personalities. It’s not 100% finished yet, but the first draft was completely laid out by the end of November. I now have five months with which to edit that into some semblance of sense, but I’ve definitely been enjoying getting my evenings back this December.

Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, I jumped disciplines when I became a Veterinary Education Researcher. As intimidating as this might have been, the last six months have been amazing fun and very fulfilling. The challenges of education research are gripping and I have been loving the opportunity to dig into concepts and methodologies that are new to me in a way that I just didn’t have the time to do when I was splitting my time between MSc coordinating and research.

And most recently, although I’m no longer spending the majority of my time teaching I was encouraged by Edinburgh to apply for my Higher Education Award fellowship. I’ve surprised myself at just how proud I am of this achievement. It’s lovely being able to point to something that says your teaching is recognised, especially given how important its become to me. I also found the process incredibly rewarding, and fully intend to blog a little bit about it in the coming months (if the book doesn’t get in the way).

With all these little things bubbling away in the background it’s not surprising that this poor little blog has been somewhat neglected. 2016 was our poorest performing year with ‘only’ 1600 odd visitors in comparison to 2015’s 2000 visitors and 2014’s nearly 3000 visitors. People stumble onto the blog searching for ‘BCG Scar’ (you folks are looking for Badger Fortnight) and ‘danger of using punishment’ (you folks are looking for the discussion on Positive Punishment). One person also found us searching for ‘general science, dumb.com’. I hope you found what you were looking for, my friend. The most popular post this year was 2013’s Christmas post ‘Why Do We Care About Animal Welfare?’ with ‘I’m a Tetrachromat‘ coming in second. The most popular blog post from this year was ‘Purity, Application and Function: The Real Problem In Science‘ which I’m still quite proud of.

Finally – many people seem to be checking the Book Page for updates this year. I hope that by this time next year there’ll be something there for you to explore.

Have a lovely festive break if you’re having one, and FluffySciences wishes you all the best in 2017.

Ch-Ch-Changes

There are more changes afoot at FluffySciences! Because after six very happy years with SRUC it’s time for me to move on …

 

Yes today was, technically, my last working day at SRUC. On Monday I start a new role as a research fellow in veterinary education at the Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies.

I’m really excited to be starting this new role. It’s a group I know well and whose work I’ve often admired, so it’s a delight to be working with them more closely. And it’s a subject I’ve been interested in for some time. But of course it’s sad to be leaving SRUC and my lovely colleagues. While we’ll still work together it’s a strange thing to be leaving a group who I’ve been working with for longer than I was in high school!

You hear a lot of horror stories as a PhD student about unsupportive and unhelpful groups. I feel like I owe it to everyone to talk about the other side of the coin. When you’re lucky enough to work with a supportive group they can help you achieve so much. They listened to me ramble about definitions of animal personality for years and their feedback was always honest and constructive. They gave me opportunities to work on MOOCs and learning objects and so many interesting little bits and pieces of research. And of course they took me to amazing conferences all around the world and bought me beer and cups of tea and cakes whenever we were all out together.

So it has been a pleasure and a privilege, and I’m looking forward to seeing what the next chapter of my research career brings. FluffySciences will continue, probably with a little bit of a shift in focus, but it will remain a blog obsessed with proving that even the soft, fluffy sciences like educational science are thorough and evidence based. Keep an eye out for my application to the Higher Education Academy Fellowships, I’ll be working through Edinburgh’s programme to get there and I’ll mirror all the self-reflective work as examples on here. And of course the book will still be under development.

Goodbye, SRUC, I will always be grateful.

Chronicles of Athena – Lockout 2016

There I was, happily trotting off to the cinema to see ‘Spotlight’, when I heard an almighty yowl behind me.

Edinburgh tenements have a common stairwell, colloquially known as the ‘close’, with an exterior door at the bottom. I was at the bottom of my close, two neighbours had just passed me on the way up, when Athena decided to make her unhappiness known. Oh dear, I thought to myself, while my neighbours gave me an odd look. Athena has always been vocal and does call out to me when she hears me speaking in the close, but I always have a sneaking worry about separation anxiety.

Nothing to be done now, I think, and keep on going. Three and a half hours later I return, and funnily enough I don’t hear Athena calling out to me at the usual spot (where I think she must know the sound of my step on the stair).

No, because Athena is sitting huddled on the doormat outside my flat’s front door. And when she sees me she howls again.

Poor little Athena slipped out right on my heels when I left for the cinema and spent the better part of four hours in the close feeling miserable. We’ve now fed her plenty of treats (and she’s been tweeting about the experience . . . somehow). All is well.

But if Athena had been a different type of cat, one who’d decided to explore further, or was less sure of the close that she’s explored before, who knows what would have happened? Thankfully, she’s microchipped. It’s so important for responsible pet ownership for your animals to be traceable.

If you’re in the UK the RSPCA has a guide here. And for the US, the AVMA has their guide here.

Speak to your vets about keeping your pets traceable, make sure your records are always up to date, and double check your doors on the way out. Or your cat tweeting threats of negligence might just be the least of your worries . . .

 

Sorry Athena – will get right on that bacon for you.

Fluffy Friday – Growing Up

My radiator exploded tonight. Which is a convoluted lead in to the Syrian refugee crisis.

I didn’t intend on writing this post. I intended on spending tonight doing some fancy things for our upcoming MOOC. As it was a bit chilly, I put the new radiators on high and sat down to keep designing thumbnails . . . until hot water started spraying out the top of the radiator.

A few frantic googles told me what I’d already guessed, turn off the radiator and the boiler, and I phoned my amazing installation company to get their voicemail. They called me back immediately, on a Friday evening as well, and promised to be over soon.

I waited for the engineer, anxious and upset. This was so unfair, I thought, what have I done to deserve hot water spewing all over my floor? And then the engineer arrived, and very kindly completely turned my radiator off, restarted my boiler, and drained the broken radiator. This wasn’t the engineer’s radiator, or their installation, this was entirely their kindness showing up on a Friday evening to do something that any self respecting adult should have been able to figure out for herself. They calmed me down and reassured me, promised to get in touch after the weekend.

And I was left with the strange realisation that my whole life I have been coddled and protected, lived in a world where hard work is rewarded with help, and where fairness and justness matters.

The refugees fleeing Syria have tried everything they can, and there is no fair reward, no kindness shown to them. My greatest upset today, something that brought me close to tears, was having some hot water stain my carpet. The strength of my emotional reaction to a silly radiator problem is shameful, when children are drowning trying to escape a war.

I have no reference for how these people are feeling. My personal disaster scale is so completely skewed to the other side that their experience is almost infinitely impossible for me to grasp.

The Guardian has a practical advice list. I will write my MP. One of my colleagues is collecting resources to donate. But I feel very sober today as I wonder if there’s a Syrian postdoc out there, wishing that the worst problem in her life is a leaky radiator.

Fluffy Friday – Virtual Nature

Ahh it’s the end of the week, a new paper was accepted, the exam boards are all finished up, and I’ve marked my second last thesis, time to kick my feet up and chill out with a nature documentary .  . .

A nature documentary made in Grand Theft Auto V! ‘Onto the Land’ is a lovely little piece of machinima, and it contains all the great tropes of nature documentaries. And of course, if you live in Edinburgh, you’ve got to support Rockstar North.

Watch ‘Onto the Land’ here:

Fluffy Friday – More Animal Welfare Teaching

I am on annual leave this week, which is glorious, particularly as there are so many developments in the pipeline at work. Lots of exciting things coming up. Look out for MOOC news coming soon, as well as some news about what we’re doing for World Animal Day in October.

There may or may not be a post next week, depending on how much fun I get up to on my annual leave, so while you’re waiting, why not vote on some possibilities for the future.

Go to Strawpoll to vote!

Fluffy Friday: Parrot welfare

This is an amazing and brutally honest post about parrot welfare. I hugely recommend you read it.

http://natrashafierce.tumblr.com/post/124864611236/dont-get-a-parrot