1. Somehow allowed my son to smack his head on our vessel sink. A call to the nurse confirms he is OK, but I still feel like an inept mother

2. Almost started a grease fire. Turns out once you are heating up the oil, you shouldn’t allow yourself to get distracted. It was the kiddo fussing and staring at the smoke who alerted me to the danger.

Let’s hear it for tomorrow!

In a few days you will be 5 months old. You have changed so much in the last few weeks. Before I forget all those little wonderful things that make you the boy you are right now, let me put down just a few.

Right now I am listening to you breathe having just given you your bath, wrapped you up, and put you to bed in your room. You went to sleep before I could even gather my things and leave, as you do most nights, and for this I thank you. It is easy to congratulate myself on getting you to be such a good sleeper, but I know that much is to do with you. You are such a good baby. In and out in and out, you breathe as you play: hard, fast, and with vigor. I go to bed every night with your monitor beside me, and I have found that I cannot sleep if the volume is turned too low, so that I cannot hear your rhythmical breath beside me. The monitor we have also features live video, a wonderful invention that allows me to spy on you even in a dark room. Every night just before I snuggle in with your dad, I turn on the picture to get one last look at you, your hair, your head, your nose, your little fingers, before I go to sleep.

The monitor has a green light that at night is the only illumination in your room. Sometimes when you wake up you must stare at that little light because it looks like you are looking right at me through the monitor. Please quit doing that. At 2AM it really creeps me out.

I must tell you that t is difficult for me that I still have not found a job. You may learn when you get older of the economic downturn which has made things difficult for many people in this country. What it has meant for this family is that your Dad is the sole income source and though I am a very qualified, smart young woman, I just cannot find a position in our city. This means that we can pay bills, but all saving and any kind of non-essential spending has stopped, and we are slowly draining our available reserves. I tell you this not to complain, but to let you know then how much I enjoy our days together, that I half-heartedly mentioned just the other day that I wouldn’t really care if I ever went back to work. Now, someday soon, I’d love a job. I love what I have learned to do and the potential of what I have yet to learn. But I had no idea how completely miserable I will be when I don’t get to spend the most part of every day with you. The first day I leave you with someone else, I know I will break down. And as you will learn, I am not a crier.

What do I enjoy about our days together? Recently, most everything. I love watching you explore new things, touching them first with your hands, and then your tongue. I love how fascinated you are with our dogs, and how hard you try to reach out to them, how you smile when they lean over to sniff your head. I love seeing you furrow your brow when you encounter something new, thinking, figuring, learning. I love that you smile at me when I make animal noises and sing off key to you from the shower. I love how you study me in our quiet moments, softly reaching up to touch my face. I love the squeal you make as I kiss the back of your knee, and how you now start to smile in anticipation at the first “little piggie” And though you still pull my hair and it still hurts like hell, your improving motor skills, it seems, allows you to let go a little sooner.

Most mornings I hear you waking on the monitor and after making sure that you won’t go back to sleep I go into your room to say good morning. I have to say that I have yet to find anything more delicious that seeing you look up at me, for an instant with a little frown as your little brain works to compute what it is seeing, and then watching your eyes crinkle and your grin spread all across your face, your toothless gums wide and happy. I know all mothers must feel this way, but there is nothing better than your smile. “Good morning!” I say, and you grin. “It’s your Mommy!” I say, and you grin. “Hi there!” grin.

It’s not just your smiles that have made my days with you recently so enjoyable. Now you are at an age where you love to play. You want to touch, to smell, to hear, to understand everything. For about a week I took you all over the house and held you up to everything I could think of: the printer, the window, the washing machine, the pantry, flowers in a vase, running water in the sink, and you put your hand out again and again, brow furrowed, studying. And then, you got bored. You still like these things, but they seem to hold your interest less and less so these days we go out. You love walks outside in the sling, and so do I, you with a leaf in one hand, and my finger in another; I with you in front of me, pointing out birds, clouds, the names of trees… You also love the mall with its myriad things to see, including the wonderful glass elevator. We are slowly getting to know our neighbors, the proprietors of our local stores, and various workmen who frequent our neighborhood.

I like to eat your fingers and kiss your neck. You like me to stroke your cheek. I like to smell your head. You like me to bark like a dog.

Bath time is great fun for both of us. You seem to love being naked, and regardless of how fussy tired you were just before we plop you in the water, you are all grins as you do your best to splash every bit of moisture out of both our tubs. Usually your dad helps give you a bath, and our routine now requires three washcloths: one for me, one for him, and one for you to hold onto. You still try to steal ours though. Greedy little baby.

The last few days, your Dad has had to work so much that he has left before you were up in the morning, and returned after you went to sleep. Thankfully he won’t have to do this much longer, but it has driven home even more how much he loves you too. The other morning, around 5AM, I asked him to change your diaper for me. I have never seen anyone so giddy to change a dirty diaper. “He’s so cute!” he exclaimed, and I agreed. Not many people are cute at 5AM, sitting in their own feces.

So son, I hope as they say, that every age is the best age, but I sure am enjoying this one. When, not too long ago, after tearing up at yet another diapers commercial, I said to my husband, “Oh, I want one of those!” and thought about all those incredible, wonderful, not to be missed moments I would have with my very own baby, well, this is exactly what I wanted.

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Issues & Perspectives
Taken for Granted: Joe the Plumber and the Postdocs

By Beryl Lieff Benderly

November 07, 2008

Supervisors have largely abandoned any pretence of promising a career, except to the handful of star students usually designated early by mega-prestigious awards and publications.

Joe the Plumber, John McCain’s favorite working man, might not have turned out to be the perfect symbol of Americans’ struggle to get ahead in hard times that the Republican presidential candidate originally imagined. But McCain was on to something, nonetheless. Even if the real-life Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher is not in fact a licensed plumber , the plumbing trade still has something important to teach us about how opportunity works in America. It’s a lesson, surprisingly enough, that is particularly relevant to a seemingly quite different group of workers who have been facing tough times not just for weeks–but for decades: the nation’s postdocs.

Over the past 35 years or so, the labor market that postdocs work in has undergone drastic, painful, long-term change. Among the high-profile indications of that transformation are the recent decisions by postdocs across the University of California system, and at McMaster University and the University of Western Ontario in Canada, to follow the earlier example of their counterparts at the University of Connecticut Health Center and form labor unions.

Of course, the idea of belonging to a union is nothing new on America’s campuses. Back in the days before the big change happened–say, during the middle Pleistocene when I was in graduate school–people used to jocularly call the Ph.D. a “union card.” No one says that much anymore, even as thousands of scientists who hold such degrees have decided to carry an entirely different kind of union card.

To understand what this means and what it has to do with plumbing, think back to high school American history and recall that historically there have been two quite different types of labor unions, each designed to serve workers in a particular kind of labor market. One type is the so-called trade or craft union still prevalent among skilled workers in the building trades, such as carpenters, electricians, and, of course, those wrench-wielding mavens of drains.
Crafting protections
Beryl Lieff Benderly

The craft union model descends from the medieval craft guilds that once protected the prerogatives and incomes of high-level artisans by controlling who could legally practice particular trades. Like those guildsmen of yore, skilled members of today’s building trades often hire themselves out as contractors on a variety of temporary jobs and thus need protection from competition. Therefore, the major functions of their unions, apart from working to establish the going rate for their labor, are guarding the standards for practicing the craft and maintaining firm boundaries to keep outsiders from competing with union members.

Craft unions do this in part by overseeing the training and credentialing of aspirants to the trade and, through union-run hiring halls open only to members, by controlling who gets the union jobs that, of course, pay the best wages. These privileges, naturally, accrue only to holders of hard-to-get and therefore often highly coveted union cards.

In former times, the Ph.D. functioned in precisely this manner. It admitted newcomers to the privileged ranks of a professorial guild and protected full-fledged faculty members against interlopers trying to snag tenure-worthy posts with lesser degrees. Philosophiae doctor literally means “teacher of philosophy,” and teaching–or, at least, joining a university faculty–was what people who earned the degree overwhelmingly wanted and expected to do.

Of course, the basic goal of any self-respecting craft union (and of similar professional groups such as physicians) is limiting the number of apprentices who can enter the trade and eventually compete with the established members. If a union can enforce those boundaries, it can also provide another truly major benefit: sufficient work at attractive wages. Apprentice plumbers and electricians (and medical residents) agree to accept a trainee’s income while working hard and passing required exams. But once they progress to the status of journeyman or master craftsman (or board-certified specialist), they are pretty much assured a chance at earning a decent (and for master craftsmen and specialist doctors, a good-to-amazingly excellent) living practicing their craft.
A broken agreement

The same used to be true also in academe (except, of course, for the stratospheric earnings, which academics gladly traded for their exceptional lifestyles). In decades gone by, what labor economists Paula Stephan and Sharon Levin have called an “implicit contract” existed between professors and their graduate students (and the tiny handful of postdocs). It was the very same agreement that craft unions still make with their apprentices. A young person works at puny trainee wages for a time while meeting or exceeding the standards for entry into the trade. A mentor or guild then arranges opportunities for the successful novice to launch a career.

In the old days, professors considered finding jobs for their students a moral responsibility. And, as French management professor Vincent Mangematin has pointed out , the arrangement just happened to also help senior academics advance their own careers; the eminence of their students’ positions and accomplishments redounded to the mentors’ reputations. Not coincidentally, the system also encouraged professors to recruit only the number of grad students they could reasonably expect to place in suitable posts, thereby maintaining those reputations.

By the 1970s, however, the old compact was breaking down, and observers of the scientific establishment were beginning to worry aloud about training more Ph.D.s than could find appropriate faculty jobs. But the elders of the professorial trade, unlike the plumbers and the doctors, ultimately let down their side of the bargain. There grew up within the funding research system what Michael Teitelbaum of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation calls “perverse” incentives that instead encourage principal investigators (PIs) to take on as many grad students and postdocs as they possibly can.

Unlike the master artisans who diligently guard the value of their union membership, the professors who run federally funded labs gave up limiting their students and trainees to the number they could successfully launch. Instead, they came to view students not as future guild members but rather mostly as cheap labor useful for doing the work needed to get and keep grants. Instead of the old contract between master and apprentice, graduate training these days, in Stephan’s stinging words, “resembles a pyramid scheme.”

But most professors no longer worry because they know that the majority of those aspirants will never become competitors. Professors’ own reputations among their peers now depend much less on the fate of their students and trainees than on their ability to win grants. The professoriate’s de facto union card is no longer the Ph.D. but the first tenure-track appointment–the launching pad for the grants competition–or perhaps even the first competitive federal grant.
Grave new world

Few among the mass of grad students and postdocs, however, will ever enter that ultra-elite guild no matter how many hours they toil at their PI’s bench, because there simply are too few academic jobs. Supervisors have largely abandoned any pretence of promising a career, except to the handful of star students usually designated early by mega-prestigious awards and publications. Few professors, in fact, even have the contacts or knowledge to steer young people toward the jobs that do exist, in quite substantial numbers, outside the academy.

As Mangematin has shown, the criterion that marks success in academe and that professors urge students to attain–publications in leading journals–carries far less weight on the outside, where most grad students and postdocs ultimately spend their careers. And though a study by Harvard University economist Richard Freeman and colleagues found grad students and postdocs very dissatisfied with the current state of affairs, many of their professors agree with one who stated, “I don’t find a whole lot wrong with the system. … It’s not broken.”

That leaves grad students and postdocs not as promising aspirants to a prestigious trade but rather as employees of large organizations, namely, the research universities that pay their wages out of PI grants. As such, these young scientists are exactly the sort of worker for whom the second type of labor union, the so-called industrial union, was devised. This type serves the interests not of accomplished artisans selling their skills in competitive markets but rather of workers drawing their pay from a given large company or organization. Rather than defending the prerogatives of a particular craft against the threat of interlopers, industrial unions strive to recruit all the workers at a particular workplace and defend them against the power of their employer.

The unmistakable transformation of aspiring scientists from apprentices to hired hands has finally persuaded at least some postdocs to move explicitly from the now-outdated trade union model of academe, with a “union card” that no longer opens the way to a desired career, toward an industrial union model designed for large numbers of employees who need to negotiate job conditions with their single, even larger, employer. The old “union card” no longer provides Joe and Joan the Ph.D. scientist decent employment in academe. Perhaps their new union cards can.

This not having a job lined up is terrifying. I have never not been on a path to somewhere. This uncertainty is crippling.

So I plan to write something of real substance soon. Promise.

Pro: Watching my baby sleep
Con: Middle of the night break down due to sleep deprivation

Pro: “…and they rolled their terrible eyes, and they gnashed their terrible teeth…”
Con: “Just tell me why you’re crying!!”

Pro: Watching and listening to early morning birds.
Con: Picking the long deceased and maggotty bird corpse off of the rug.

Pro: Seeing my son recognize himself in the mirror for the first time.
Con: Poop explosion all over the front of my shirt.

Pro: Sleeping in
Con: Have I brushed my teeth today?

A trend is growing in the national workforce. Young professionals are no longer content to labor simply for wealth, promotion, and prestige. Workers want to enjoy their jobs. They want to work in pleasant environments with competent people, and they want balance. Corporations are acknowledging this trend and are offering flextime and other benefits in an effort to keep valuable employees who might otherwise leave to work at home or more accommodating offices. Young women are no different. No longer content to toil under several years of apprenticeship to eventually claim tenure and a professorial seat they may not enjoy, educated women are looking elsewhere, to places where they feel their work will be fulfilling and help achieve unique personal goals. Why do we still consider an academic career the best path for doctoral females? Why is any other career considered a drip?

Labeling women who leave academia to pursue careers they have deemed more favorable as “drips” does these pioneering scientists a disservice. These women are not failures. They are leaders. The goal should not be to attract as many women as possible into the academic ranks, but to ensure that all qualified females who want to achieve these positions are able. It is time we changed perspective by acknowledging these women, and distinguishing them from those who would have welcomed a professorial placement, yet were unable to achieve it. Certainly there still is much to accomplish in academia when it comes to attracting and promoting female scientists. We can start with making an effort to eliminate the guilt that academic culture places on women by indiscriminately labeling them “drips,” and acknowledge that the goal should be helping young female scientists find their own best careers, not blindly pumping them through the pipeline.

Yesterday you turned three months old. You cannot realize until you have your own child how much you have changed in these few short weeks. You have become a handsome and engaging little kid, and I have to say that I have more fun with you each day.

First of all, I want to go ahead and say thank you. Thank you for sleeping like a champ every night, and thank you for not having colic. You have no idea how much those two things have positively affected our relationship. We’re still working on naps, but naps are cake compared to some of the horrible times I know my fellow mothers are having at night. I understand your reluctance to take naps. I never wanted to miss out on the day either.

Supposedly babies are at their worst in fussiness at 6 weeks, but yours was the worst instead at 9. Everything that I had learned to soothe you failed. The mom with the confidence that she could quiet your crying within seconds melted away. I thought that perhaps it was due to your immunizations, but a call to the nurse confirmed that in the absence of other symptoms, shots shouldn’t be affecting you one week later. (By the way, you took those shots like a champ.) Finally I wrote an email to my friend A, and she suggested what I had suspected, which was that you were bored. I had thought that surely 2 months was too young to start getting bored, but boy was I wrong. Tired of looking at my sorry mug all day, you wanted something else to do. So, I started holding you so that you could see out, and bought you a play gym, and you have been a happy baby ever since. That thing and those birds on the mobile over your crib are your favorite things in all the world.

You have also had some digestive problems that I had sought help for through my facebook friends. One of them has suggested saving those conversations to embarrass you with much later, so if that happens, let me just apologize now. I am sure that if you are reading this, you have learned to poop at night if you need to, and gas releases just fine from your butt without having anything placed up in there. Most likely, you have learned that last one a little too well.

I finally think I have figured out that you don’t do well when I eat dairy, so I’m saying goodbye to all things made with cow’s milk, including yogurt, ice cream, and worst of all, cheese. When you are a teenager and ask me what have I ever done for you, giving up cheese will be the second thing I say, right after that horrible 9 months without booze. If when you get older, you fall in love and marry a woman, and you two have a child together, do her a favor and do without alcohol the entire pregnancy. If you do this, I know you will call me one day and say, thank you, I had no idea how bad it was until now.

In the last month you have gotten strong enough to begin to hold up your head, which has allowed you to do all kinds of new and wonderful things. One of your Dad’s favorite things to do is to boost you over his head, tummy side down, and pretend you are flying like superman. He’s great at the wooshing noises. I have to say that there is nothing more attractive than seeing your husband run your baby all over the house like a loon. You also enjoy sitting on my lap every morning on the porch looking out at the trees. Today I think you heard rain for the first time, and you seemed enthralled. I hope you always appreciate the wonders of the outdoors.

By far, the best part of these last two months has been your smiles. There is nothing in this world like going in to get you after a nap and seeing you look up, recognize me, and grin your gummy grin all across your face. I love to sing you songs or dance you around, or show you those wonderful ceiling fans, just to get a few grins out of you. And just about the time that you are getting tired of me, your Dad comes home and you seem to think, “DAD! It’s Dad! Oh my god! Dad!” And then you melt him with a grin, just like you have been doing to me all day. It seems to me that adults lose this ability to be so completely happy. Well kiddo, every day you help me remember.

And one more thing, little baby. Just the last few days, you have started doing this thing where you emit these horrible, loud, high pitched screams or grunts or screeches, and then you look at us. You seem to have figured out that when you make these noises, we immediately run to you, thinking that surely you are about to die. And then after we do this, you give a smile, but not one of your big wide smiles, so help me, it looks like a smirk. I am starting to think you know what you are doing. I think you have already started to test us. And if this is true, then that means that I will really need to be on top of things to be a good mother to you.

When my mom had talked on and on about how smart you looked when you were born, I thought that she was just being a doting grandmother. But more and more people are making these comments, people who don’t tend to make things up just to be nice, and I myself have started thinking that I agree with them. This means, little baby, that you are smart and precocious just like your parents. This is something that your father and I knew could happen, and talked about at length even before I got pregnant. Both of us gave our parents some real challenges as kids, and we could only imagine how if that combined you would test us. Now that it appears to be coming true, let me say this:

Bring it, little baby. Bring it.

Truly, I can’t wait. Happy Birthday.

I have read several times on other blogs mothers asking in earnest what to say to their children about death if they feel uncomfortable with the usual Christian story of heaven. If you don’t truly believe that we all (or all the “good” people, however you define that) go to float amongst the clouds with our other good relatives and friends in a state of bliss, what do you say? Is it better to tell children this, just to alleviate fears?

I have never and will never agree with purposely lying to children. Children of all people are seeking to find their way, seeking for truths, figuring out the world they live in. They are also much smarter than many give them credit for. If any question deserves a careful and truthful answer, this is it.

I can’t presume to know your family, your beliefs, or your child. So let me just put down here what I hope to be able to impart to my child when that day comes.

Death is when living things stop living. They do not come back. Death can be sad because we miss those who die, but the dead feel no pain. It is those left behind who feel pain after death. We must all die, but people usually live a nice long time. Death is not always a bad thing. It reminds us that life is precious and should not be wasted. It allows for new people, plants and animals to have a turn at living. Leaves fall from the trees in winter so that new leaves grow in the spring. These new leaves make the tree stronger. So it goes with people as well. We die to allow space to the living. We should not fear death so much as celebrate life. A life spent fearing death is wasted.

Whatever we do in the world is the way we imprint our lives; it is our immortality. Our children, our deeds good and bad, those we influence, that is how we continue.

On heaven, you are free to come to your own conclusion, but know that I do not think that heaven is a truth. I think that it is a pretty idea that can make people feel better, but a false idea. There are too many problems with heaven. Some people believe that animals cannot get into heaven because they are different from people. Some people believe that if you don’t believe certain things, you don’t get to go to heaven either. No place could be pleasant for me without animals, and without my friends and family, whatever their beliefs. So I cannot conceive of such a heaven. A heaven where animals and those with different beliefs are allowed likewise would not be suitable for other people. There can be no perfect paradise for all.

We must therefore strive to make our lives and those of others as much of a paradise as possible. Life is such an incredible gift. We must make treasure our lives. We must help others to treasure theirs.

We are born into different circumstances. Because we have been given so many things, it is our responsibility to help those who were not so lucky. That is the burden of the gifted. We do this not because we are trying to buy our way into paradise; we do this because it is the only way to make this life as good as it can be for us and those around us. We do this because death is the end for us, but others keep on living. We do this in memory of those we loved, so that their good deeds are not wasted.

Death is sad, but only because life is so wonderful. Death is the payment you make for life. I think that it’s a good deal.

A headhunter is submitting my resume to three different medical education companies looking for medical writers. Hopefully they won’t find me to be under qualified. This job could be awesome, but I’m wary that it might require huge amounts of travel or long long hours. Of course if they paid me enough my husband could quit his job. Then again, they’d have to pay me quite a bit. If I was offered the job I’d most likely take it if only to get some real science communications experience. Also, I could save the extra money to float me later should I decide that I am not happy.

On that note, I’m considering going into business for myself. I have SO MANY ideas. Maybe too many.

There’s an ad for a prof position near where I live. I think I’ll apply for this one. Same reasoning here as the other position. I’d make good money that I could bank and use as capital to support other goals should I decide that I don’t like the position.

The problem is that I’ve had very little experience outside of my university. I wish they had “job days” for new graduates like they used to have when I was a kid. You got to spend a week following people will all different kinds of professions. Ooh, now that’s a business idea right there.

If you are reading this, leave a comment with what exactly it is you do, what you like and what you don’t like. I would say to send me an email, but my password is giving me problems.