Writing

It's unavoidable.  To be a successful scientist, you must be a good writer.

You don't have to start off being a perfect writer (improvements will come with practice), but you have to LIKE writing.  Enjoy sitting by yourself with the bum in the chair.  Be one with your computer.  Be an expert at picking out the perfect blend of music that is energizing without being distracting (or no music).  This is why scientists are such major coffee drinkers: it's not from all the lab and field work!  Think about the major term papers you wrote in college, and how much you had to focus on them, every day, for weeks at a time.  How you probably said "no" to social events and sleep to get it done.  This is the life of a principal investigator (PI)!

As a busy graduate student, wife, and mom, I find it very difficult to sit and focus on writing.  Field work keeps me busy, but when I choose field days and put them on the calendar, I just get it done (with a lot of help from my labmates).  Labwork is similar: you show up in the lab and just DO it.  Luckily, I have enough different components of my project that I always have a lot of different tasks to do in the lab, and I don't get bored.  Again, I have a lot of helpers and people I can talk to while I work.  At the end of the day, I go home.  But writing.... writing is a solitary enterprise.  It's just you.  Any failings are solely your responsibility.  It's daunting.  And kind of like managing a household, with writing, you're never finished.  There is always something to be tidied up, looked at again, re-organized.

I'm still early on in my writing "career", but my husband gave me an amazing Christmas gift this year: the gift of peace and quiet to write.  He sent me to my parents' house (on a plane!) with all my papers and computer and warm clothes, so that I can get my prospectus DONE.  Away from him, our children, his parents who are visiting, and all the responsibilities of planning activities for the family, cooking dinner, cleaning the house, laundry...  I set up a card table in my parents' living room, and they have been good about leaving me alone.  I haven't left, except to eat and sleep.  And I have been so productive!!  This is great news for the family because it means when I get home, I can relax and have fun with them on New Years' Eve without being grumpy and stressed, and still have a few days before the kids go back to school and I go back to work.  It seemed like an odd Christmas present, to send Mom away the day after Christmas... but Rob knows me so well.  He knows what I needed career-wise, and that it would have a good effect on the family as well (less stressed Mom).

The thing that worries me is that there will be a LOT more writing like this in my future, if I expect to continue in academic science.  I'm not always going to be able to sequester myself from my family and responsibilities in this way.  I'm going to have to find a way to focus on my writing, and somehow have it mesh with the rest of my life.  It's not fair to ask Rob to pick up the family slack every time I need to write a manuscript or proposal.  Somehow, he has found a way to focus on writing while sitting at his desk in our house, and he makes it work!  I am lucky that I have such a great model for scientific work ethic in my own home.

So, if you are considering a career in science, don't just think about those lab classes that you enjoyed, or field trips to the marsh or on the boat where you got to use cool equipment, make observations, and take data in your notebook.  Think about days and days, weeks and weeks, months and months with your bum in the seat, staring at a screen.  Get a reliable computer and a comfortable chair, lots of coffee, and the most willpower you can muster.