Request for Pre-Prints

Yahoo! I received my first request for a pre-print of my first published article and I haven't even received it from the publisher yet.

I found out late last night when I was up late from having slept most of the afternoon because of the flu. I can't quite recall why I checked the email that I provided as contact info for the article, I think it was because I thought some of my etsy street team email had been going there too. Well, lo and behold, there it was - a request for my work!

It was/is so validating. It makes me want to revise and submit my dissertation for publication right away because it is a much stronger piece of research than my earlier work. I love my research. No one in the world is doing it but me, and it is such an interesting topic that more people should be studying it. I wish I could tell you all about it but I want to stay pseudo-anonymous for a while.

The researcher who contacted me isn't in my exact field so that is exciting too. He studies a different species - Barbary macaques I think. They are so neat. I would love to see them in the wild someday when I go to Morocco. He attached his own paper to the request for the pre-print, which was something I hadn't thought of doing before, but it strikes me as a great way to get your research "out there." That's another reason to revise and submit the Diss!

I am really hoping this might lead to some research collaboration. I would love to have access to people and equipment for fecal sample analysis of glucocorticoids.

Collecting poo samples is the real dirty work of any good primatologist. I won't be a real one until I get my hands on some fresh dung.

Why??? Why you should finish that dissertation!

You should finish that dissertation because:

1) You have already successfully jumped through so many hoops to get to the point of the big D that you ought to jump through that last one.

And -

You will learn something.
Something insightful - about your ideas. Did they pan out? You want to find out, don't you?

You *can* do it.
No matter how pathetic and inadequate you feel about your research or your position in academia (graduate school is a pride swallowing, belittling, gut-wrenching, losing all sanity venture) you are good enough, you are smart enough, and god dammit you are worth it.

Take it from someone who has finished the Pretty Huge Document:
It is way more satisfying to have a Pretty Huge Degree than to be All But Done.

No one likes leaving behind lose ends. Tie 'em up and get the heck out of there. ABD is All But Dungeon if you don't get your butt out of there.

When you're done, you get to be called DOCTOR.
People respect that credential. You're 90% of the way there, why not do the last 10%? It will be worth it to hear your dad say "What's up Doc" when you call.

You get to wear the garb.
It is freaking cool to wear the doofy hat and walk around like a dork on the day of the hooding ceremony. When I graduated, I got to wear a kick ass costume and even had the chance to be hooded by a President of the United States so I wanted to finish! Who wouldn't be motivated to finish just to potentially get goosed on stage by Bill? We all have our light at the end of the tunnel ;-2 You know what your dream is. Chase it.


It doesn't really take that much effort.
You have been percolating the ideas and preparing for years. Once you sit down to actually write it, you'll find that it gets easier and easier the more you have written. I wrote mine in ONE MONTH. I wrote the preliminary document that I put to my committee in a month, they approved it, I started collecting data, and then when I had processed the data, I found that I wrote the results up and the rest of my dissertation in ONE MONTH. That is all that is standing between you and DONE. One measly month. Anyone could do that.

You *can* do it.
That bears repeating. The impostor syndrome virus lurks around academic halls, but you are immune to it. That is, once you finish your dissertation. You will no longer feel like a loser. When your students don't give you the respect they give to "real" profs, you can flaunt the degree in their face. You can make them call you Doctor. It changes everything. Your colleagues will know you had the grit to finish, and they will want to collaborate with you more now than ever.

[edited to add]:
When you get your first request for a pre-print, you will hit the roof and then you'll want to revise and submit your dissertation for publication because it is way better than your earlier work!

Graduation!

I actually have a PhD now!

There's so much to say about the trip back to NH for the event - seeing 2 U.S. Presidents speak, what my advisor said about me at the luncheon, getting hooded and walking around town in the garb, recovering my golf clubs from the storage unit, the lost luggage (including the PhD diploma!!!!) . . .


The Luncheon
My dad came with us to NH for the event and was a good sport about traveling. He hadn't been on a plane for decades. The weather was crap, but typical NH. We got in at about 2am and had to wake up early the next morning for the "new PhDs" luncheon.

The luncheon was interesting. Evidently it's the occasion for advisors to talk about their students and their students to rebut. I was a little worried about what mine would say about me but she was amazingly complimentary. I was genuinely surprised.

The Graduation Ceremony
We took my dad out to the coast for lobster that night and woke up bright and early the next day to get to the stadium for the graduation ceremony. We left at around 7am so that we could park for a ceremony. We had to walk about a mile to the stadium. Then we waited, got rained on, and waited some more. I was off by myself with the other graduating PhDs.

Bill Clinton and George Bush spoke. I had an amazing seat - at the edge of a row right in front of the stage. I had only one person in front of me. I hoped that the Presidents would walk down our aisle but they went down the next one, shaking hands along the way. It would have been so amazingly neat to be able to meet them, but it didn't happen. While waiting to get hooded, I was so full of anticipation. Not knowing what these ceremonies are like, I invented a picture of what the hooding would be like.

On one hand, I hoped that one or both of the Presidents would assist with the hooding like Gore did years ago when he spoke. On the other hand, I hoped we would get the same kind of hooding that the honorary doctorates received, but nope. They did have us go up on stage, and have the hood placed on (by our advisors), but they just read off our names, put the hood on (two seconds) and that was that. Once we had all walked across stage they did the whole "By the power invested in me by the trustees of the university.... blah blah blah, I pronounce you blah blah blah" while we were seated.

I have to say that I was disappointed by how perfunctory the hooding was.

The Presidents took off right before all the PhDs got up on stage to be hooded. That was a disappointment too.

Oh well. I think I just expected too much.
-- Kind of sounds like graduate school!

We walked around town afterward; my dad really wanted me to keep the garb on so I did. I figured why the hell not; it cost enough! While we sat and had coffee and bagels several people came up to congratulate me and say they saw me on TV. Apparently it was televised on NH public TV. According to my family I was the only graduate who got a close-up shot on the big-screen projector.

To celebrate we ate at my absolute favorite restaurant. I had my absolute favorite food: lobster ravioli. And, for the first time I ate the whole serving. I was so stuffed, but it was worth it. Who knows when we'll be back again.

We had clam chowder at our favorite clam shack the next day, went birdwatching at Plum Island, and showed my dad the Bush compound in Kennebunkport, ME.

The Golf Clubs
On a whim we stopped at the apartment buildings we lived at TWO YEARS AGO to see if the golf clubs I had forgotten were still around. Much to my surprise they were. They had been in an unlocked area in an UNLOCKED shed. We also spotted a dining room table, chairs, and lamps we had to leave behind because we didn't have space in the U-Haul. I thought about checking the clubs but ended up giving them to my friend who came up from Baltimore for graduation. She's more likely to actually use them. I just asked her to give them back to me if she ever doesn't want them anymore because they are the clubs I used throughout high school when I was on the golf team and the sand wedge and putter were graduation gifts (for my BA).

Lost Bags
We flew home bright and early. I had to check my bag at the door of the airplane because the flight attendant insisted there wasn't enough space. I never check luggage for fear of them losing my stuff. So, what do know? They almost lost the bag and also my dad's bag. My diploma was inside! I wasn't terribly worried because nothing in my bag was truly irreplacable. I could get a new diploma printed (at a significant charge). What really made me anxious was that they had the bag I was planning to use for our Japan trip. Fortunately we got the bags back a day later. The airline had a courrier drive them to my house - about 200 miles away from the airport. My diploma was still inside, unharmed.

Clinton's Speech


Bush's Speech

Dissertation Defense - The Verdict Is In

Although I've had a few days to reflect on the while process of successfully defending my dissertation, I can't say that I have any profound thoughts on it. It was a lot of work, but in the end, it was completely manageable. Other than one melt down over whether my SPSS spreadsheet was so screwed up once it got imported into SPSS that it would be worthless -AND- the many numerous small assaults on my patience with detail, it was a relatively emotionally easy task to deal with.

The hardest part of all of this for me has actually been the rift that has erupted over time between me and my mother that stems from our vastly different levels of education and corresponding values.

Yes, I may have a Pretty Huge Diploma but as my mother reminded me not too long ago, she has "a PhD in street smarts" as if to say that was better and that I lacked the life knowledge that really matters. Why she really feels so insecure in comparison to me I will never know. For me to understand that would require us to actually talk without self-protective defenses. I am capable of laying down my quills in the name of peace-making. I hope some day she is too.

My experience of having difficulty with a family member because I am educated is certainly not unique to me. Later this month the author of Limbo: Blue-Collar Roots, White-Collar Dreams,
Alfred Lubrano, a reporter working at the Philadelphia Inquirer, will come to speak on my campus. His book is a combo of autobiography and interviews of fellow "Straddlers" as he calls them who walk a fine line between their working class roots and their white collar life, not really fitting into either. A summary of the book can be downloaded here.

"This country always celebrates the idea that there is enormous opportunity here to move up from one's station in life, to achieve greatness from the most humble of roots. But for those who are the first from a traditionally blue-collar family to enter college and move into the white-collar workplace, there is a darker side to success when they find themselves alienated from both their own family and their strange new middle-class world."

I don't know if I agree with the conclusion of one review of the book that proposes class values is a subject even touchier than race or gender, but I do think this is a subject that ought to be discussed along with race, gender, and sexual orientation.

The movie Spanglish provided my first opportunity to realize that my education might alienate me from my family. I recall one scene from the movie in which the working class mother speaks to her school-oriented daughter on a bench waiting for the bus to take her daughter off to get an education. I can't recall exactly what the mom said, but I remember she expressed anxiety about whether they would still be able to relate once her daughter moved into the other (white, educated, English-speaking) world.

I'd like to think I can navigate both worlds, but it is a struggle to straddle them well. I can relate to being an outsider who doesn't really fit into either one. Although it's uncomfortable, I find that I actually gravitate toward that place. My dissertation topic is a perfect example.

I studied human mutual grooming - think primates and louse picking but translate that into the myriad ways humans groom each other. The topic is brand, spanking new but it's not like no one has ever noticed it before. No one has ever published anything academic on the subject. Finding a "home" for my research in the world of publishing has been difficult. It's psychology but not your typical psychology study because I talk a lot about animals and use theories from evolutionary biology. It's not biology either because zoologists study animals, and as we all know from our culture, people aren't animals. For that reason it's also not primatology. However, my stance has always been that people are primates too so if I review primate literature, use ev bio theory, and study a primate species, my research ought to be considered primatology. But alas, it isn't because I studied the only primate species that doesn't fall into primatology. So that takes me back to psychology. My research isn't classic social psychology because the topic has little to do with behavior change on account of being in a group and my theoretical perspective is evolutionary, not the Standard Social Science Model. However, my work is not classic evolutionary psychology either. I did not use Sexual Strategies Theory to craft my hypotheses. The fatal blow. To make it worse, there's a little journal that deals with nonverbal behavior but they are only interested in behavior that has actually been observed. No one is going to observe people taking a shower together or sqeezing each other's pimples. We just don't groom in public. I am not interested in professional grooming so much as the casual ways we tidy each other's appearance.

As much as my research makes difficulties for me because it doesn't fit any one area, I actually like that it straddles multiple areas. My breadth is a strength.

My committee encouraged me to publish my dissertation. They think my introductory chapter, the literature review, is very strong and could stand on its own as a review article. Evidently I synthesize well. They think my whole dissertation makes a real, genuine contribution, and they think it should be published in its entirety for it to make the strongest statement.

Hopefully one day in the not too distant future I will be able to find an editor and reviewers who think my unique research voice needs to be heard.

Oh if only I knew what to do with the document!?

ONE: Hack it up to create a number of small articles and rewrite the lit reviews/theory so that it fits journals that exist? Yuck.

TWO: Hack it up to create a couple of articles with really brief lit reviews that retain the theory but wait to make a statement later? How boring.

THREE: Figure I won't get a T-T where I actually want to live and focus on writing a book instead that way I will be able to make the statement I want to make? That seems risky and I don't know the first thing about book publishing either.

I think option two is the best choice of the 3. I can always write the book later and it will be much more interesting after I've done the additional studies I want to do! I just need to choose the journal(s).

Since you've read this far, I'll reward you by revealing the results of my study in a nutshell:
People perceive groomers (as opposed to non-grooming touchers and non-touchers) to be better parents, more caring, more in love with the person they groom, and more committed to them.

My dissertation is DONE! Now what?

This morning I submitted my first complete draft of my dissertation to my advisor so now I can sit back and relax until the comments come back. I have just over one week before I have to send it to my full committee. I am not in the least bit concerned or anxious about it. I know I will have to make some changes and I know I will have to boil it all down to a 20 min. talk for my defense, but that is relatively easy.

What has been weird and different about writing my dissertation compared to what many other psychology PhD candidates do? I've done the entire thing 3,000 miles away from my home institution, my advisor, and my committee. Am I getting my degree online? Well, no, and YES. Without the Internet and email, I could not have done this dissertation "my way." Sure, I have done a fair amount of it "their way" which is what you have to do, but I have: a) avoided having to interact too often with my advisor, b) done most of my dissertation on my couch wearing pajamas, c) did it all in a far more pleasant climate, and d) avoided paying about $1500 in fees. That's what I call doing it my way!

I think I can confidently say that I work well independently. That should give me an advantage when I try to land a t-t job at a SLAC given that in those positions, you have to work alone. There is no such thing as a lab full of graduate students and post-docs doing your work for you.

But what is my plan?

Leave academia like so many other women in science? Science Woman lays out an entire laundry list of reasons why people, and women specifically, opt out of tenure-track academic jobs. I can relate to quite a few of them.

I don't know what the future holds for me.
Here's a multiple choice test for all of you clairvoyants out there:

A)
I could work off an on in a "visiting" capacity at the SLAC here and never really make any real money or have a real impact on students and my field, but it would be relatively easy money and I would have lots of free time, comparatively, to write a book, raise a family, and/or explore hobbies. It could be like semi-retirement.

B)
I could work in a non-teaching/adminstrative job at the SLAC and make a decent income doing something valuable and still having a positive impact on students, but I would have constant reminders that I am not teaching when that is what I really want to do and I would have to work in an office M-F including summers. I would not be "bringing my work home" with me as often, but on the balance, I might not have as much free time. I would have tons of money, comparatively, to spend traveling but I'd have to limit it to 2 weeks at a time.

C)
I could work on and off doing odd jobs through temp agencies, earning just enough money to contribute enough to the household economy to kepe us afloat. I would have little job satisfaction and I would have to figure out how to survive and thrive in the real world, albeit only periodically. I'd meet lots of new people, many of which I might have at least one thing in common with, but I'd always have to watch out to not appear to be too smart. I'd probably get fired a lot for stupid reasons.

D)
I could apply for any and every academic position that looks remotely achievable and uproot my family to move to wherever I landed a position. I'd make some money, but we would probably still struggle to make ends meet either because of the high cost of living in this new location or because my husband can't locate a good job. I'd make a valuable contribution to science and to my students but my relationship and mental health might suffer in the process.

E)
I could take a vow of poverty and put my artistic talents to use by becoming an artist. I could paint monkeys that I could turn into educational greeting cards. I could make and sell beaded jewelry, paper boxes, and soap. I could try to make tables and carved wooden frames for mirrors. The possibilities are as endless as my imagination and skills. I would actually have to sell the stuff, which means, I would have to force myself to market my art by getting it into arts/craft fairs and jurying for shows. I'd have to hunt down galleries and stores that would take my stuff for a large cut of the profit. I'd a be just another starving, manic-depressive artist.

Anyone want to take a stab at predicting my future?
You can leave me your answer in a comment!

Sealing the Deal

Today I pulled the trigger and purchased a bunch of plane tickets now that it looks like it is pretty much a done deal for me to get that elusive three letter degree.

My advisor has given her approval for my statistical analyses, which for me means I have the green light to expect things to go fairly smoothly at my defense. There may be some suprises from my other committee members but I have at least one who is a definite cheerleader and another who prefers to hang in the background. It's the other two who could create trouble, but that's what revisions are for, and I am assured that there is almost no chance that they will not pass me at this point. They want me out of there just as much as I do.

I spent the afternoon hashing out the discussion of some of results. It was actually fun. I made a lot of progress once I realized that I could use the theory that one of my committee members is known for to explain it.

After that, I pulled the triger and got the tickets. Then I started researching the regalia...
$280 bucks to have a cap, gown, and hood to keep. Highway robbery!

Part of me says this is a small price to pay for the only tangible evidence of the degree aside from the paper it will be printed on. And, afterall, they paid me to get the degree. Sure, I had to spend years in indentured servitude in exchange, but I thought teaching was highly rewarding. I have mostly forgotten the first couple of years spent in true serfdom. I recall Freud had something to say about the utility of repression...

Deadline 2: MET! (sort of)

I've been analyzing study 2 data like mad, well, not too obsessively, and given that when I set the deadline I failed to appreciate exactly how many more analyses I'd have to do for this study compared to the first, I wisely made an executive decision to ease up on my deadline for writing up the results.

I had 4 hypotheses to analyze, some with multiple parts, plus post hoc tests to run, and although I am done cranking out the numbers now, the one week turn around time I set for writing it all up wasn't going to be possible, not even with superhuman ability to avoid sleep with no deleterious effects!

The new deadline for the write up is now Monday, which is completely reasonable, and if I bust my butt so speak, I could even be done by the end of business hours on Friday, leaving the weekend open for tom foolery. My deadline for turning in the whole thing to my advisor was Mar 7 but I don't want to bang out the discussion in two days, so the new one is Fri, Mar 9. Four days to write a discussion is reasonable. The last time I wrote that intensely I had a bottle of red wine to help! I am totally prepared to go out and get a bottle of monkey Barrel Thief Red if I need to. Around this valley, the wine possibilities are endless, but I've had my eye on this one for quite a while. It's perfect for a primatologist writing about monkey stuff :=)

Whatever happens, I have all of my data analyzed now and have a pretty decent story to tell. Many of my predictions were born out with the data, including the most important one! I am very excited about that and think that I should be able to get it published somewhere, hopefully in a higher impact journal given the experimental protocol and sound theoretical foundation. Plus, my work is a genuinely novel contribution with relevance to multiple fields. I love it! I really do.

There are things I would do differently the next time around, including one major one, but I am not terribly worried about defending my work nor the future of my "research program." That major thing I would do differently? It's the next study. I should be able to have it up and running, pending IRB approval, this summer.

And, I have a paper under review now with another one co-authored with one of my thesis students sitting around waiting to be tidied up and sent out to reviewers. That paper contains an exciting discovery that I can use to bolster my dissertation discussion. Thank you Mr Sleyed for reminding me about that! He's so smart, it's like having another me around sometimes!

Deadline 1: MET!

That's right, I met the deadline I set for myself for completing the analyses for study one and writing up the results with time to spare! I even sent my draft to my dissertation advisor 12 hours ahead of schedule.

Not only did I meet my deadline, but I did it even though I did other things today. I took breaks. I practiced healthy eating habits. I wasn't a jerk to my family in the process (at least I don't think). I ate lunch with my husband at the dining room table rather than over my laptop. I read blogs. I commented on blogs. I talked to people on the phone. And, I have time to spare! Oh, and I did laundry! And watered the plants! And made a follow up appointment with my surgeon!

I didn't think I would have enough time to go over the comments my advisor gave me on my previous draft, but I did and have already made the recommended changes. I also didn't think I'd have enough time to make tables of my data but I made four of them, and they are very pretty and well-organized.

My reward for meeting my goal is to watch Lost tonight and get a pedicure. I love pedicures and haven't had one in a while so this was great incentive. I think I'll splurge and get a French manicure on my toes.

I have more than three hours to go before Lost comes on, which means I can also easily watch the episode of Heroes I missed Monday night. Or, I can use this head of steam to start work on study two.

But - the BEST part?

ALL of my predictions were validated with significance coming out of the wazoooooo! Yahoo. That will make the write up that much easier.

Surveymonkey Insider Knowledge

This morning I tried to download my newest data from surveymonkey and got shutout. It told me I had to be a subscriber to export data. What a shocking development given I have been a "professional" subscriber for more than a year now. My survey looked completely normal otherwise.

Evidently the card I used to automatically pay each month expired. The notification was sent to my junk inbox so I didn't read the message until I found it there after discovering the problem. I have signed up for a professional subsciprtion again but surveymonkey hasn't yet recognized it yet so my new data is still inaccessible.

Originally, I signed up for the professional subscription ($20/month) so that I could 1) export data, and 2) use "logic" to direct people to particular questions based on their responses to previous ones. I kept the professional membership ever since - 17 months so far.

Now, it looks like I could have gotten away with spending A LOT less money. I think I could have signed up for a professional membership to design the survey with the logic, paying $20 once, and then could have canceled it. Then, after getting all of my data 18 months later, I could have signed up again so that I could export the data. I would have saved at least $320!

I hate spreadsheets!

Before I realized that I had a MAJOR flaw in my data I thought I would be able to get both studies imported into SPSS from Excel and cleaned up by yesterday. Ha ha ha. What a nice thought.

It all started when I saw some numbers that didn't jive. I scanned the spreadsheet and compared columns and rows for THREE hours and for all of those three hours I thought my data was so completely screwed up that if I submitted a dissertation based on it would be fraud. I thought I was screwed. Seriously screwed. Tears of utter agony were shed.

Then, my Hero came home for lunch and helped me figure out the solution.

It involves manually correcting the mistake over 2000 participants. So, for that afternoon and all of today I have been writing down what the correct number should be for all 2000 participants. Over the next several days, I'll be entering them into SPSS manually.

What fun.

But, at least now I can have confidence in my data. And, by doing this I found some other errors that I have now corrected. I need to keep the study up and running a little while longer. So, really I now need 2 more females and about 33 men to fill out the cells that contained the error.

It all sounds so manageable now, but I have been staring at a spreadsheet for about 6-7 hours a day and I hate them.

What's more? My Hero Who Saved My Bacon and I really enjoy playing Scrabble. I tried to sit down to finish a game we started a few days ago - before the Spreadsheet Disaster Now Averted - and as I scanned the board looking for my best play I could see nothing but little boxes filled with data. And Sudoku is ruined for the time being. I love solving sudokus but they look like spreadsheets too! No wonder that my first choice of break activities was to look at a Victoria's Secret catalogue instead!

The Data Is In!!

I haven't posted in a while because my nose has been to the grindstone dealing with all of my dissertation data. It has taken about 14 months to get it all, but more than 4,000 people later, I finally have all of my experimental cells filled with the minimum number of respondants I need to have enough power for my analyses.

My Excel files require quite a bit of formatting to get them to the point where I can import them into SPSS for the analyses. My data is spread out over four different Excel files in which most of the cells on the spreadsheet are empty. I have to sift through each one to find the spot where my data actually is located. This happened because I had to direct people to different questions based on their responses to previous ones. This means most people skipped over most of the questions, thus the blank cells. I need to get the actual data into the correct location on the spread sheet. If the four Excel files represent the United States, I have to get the data into WA state when it may actually be located over in Minnesota, Ohio, or even MA. The Excel file sare so large that some of my data is so far away I have to go retrieve it from France or China. As I said before, I have a lot of manual and visual scanning to do to find the data amongst the blank cells and then copy and paste it into the right spot. I have 1,000 of these left to do and get about 500 done in a day.

And - that's just the formatting for one study. At least that's the tricky one. The formatting for the other study can be done by writing some code to make Excel make the changes for me.

Formatting is totally mindless so I find myself listening to music or TV while I do it. There really is some ridiculous stuff on daytime TV. Evidently my body is acidic and I need to buy some pills to cleanse myself of all of the toxic things I ingest. What garbage!