Persistence: How much is too much?

Man, is this week kicking my butt. Hence, the silence. But I do have something that's been on my mind all week, that I've been turning over and over in my mind but haven't really come to a good resolution.

So. We all have students in our classes that are maybe not doing as well as we think they could or should. That would benefit from coming in and talking to us during office hours, for instance. Asking questions about the course material, yes, but also discussing strategies for how to study, how to read the text, how to approach the homework assignments, even how to ask for help from the TAs and/or other sources.

Some of these students, left to their own devices, may in fact find their way to office hours, will figure out how to be successful in class, and find enlightenment. Many, though, will not, and will struggle unnecessarily.

For some, laziness may be the main factor. But for others, it may be a fear---of the professor (hey, I was scared to death of my professors, and never went to any office hours until my senior year), of who knows what. And it may even be one of those tricky "cultural capital" things---not coming from an environment where you know how to utilize the available resources, including professors. It's hard to tell, sometimes, what forces are at work.

How, and when, and how much, do you reach out to these students?

I probably do more than most. I keep a careful eye out early on to catch those who are struggling right off the bat. I reach out to them as soon as I sense there's an issue---usually by email, because I figure that's less awkward than confronting them face-to-face. ("Hey, you're failing! Why don't you stop by and see me?" Yeah, awkward.) I do this throughout the course, too, especially after exams and other milestones. And I try to check in periodically with those who have taken the time to come and see me.

Many students, though, never take me up on my request, and continue struggling.

Now, I'm not talking about excessive hand-holding here or dealing with lazy students. But sometimes I wonder if I should be doing more for some of these students who maybe fall into one of those latter camps: the fearful ones, or the ones lacking cultural capital. Should I be more persistent? Where is the line between persistent and annoying? In short, how do I help the ones who want my help (but may be too intimidated to take advantage of it, even if I'm the one who reached out) without annoying those who don't?

Maybe this is one of those questions that doesn't have a nice, pat answer.

Year-in-review meme

As seen over at Adventures in Ethics and Science.

The rule: post the first sentence of the first post for each month. (Note: I'm cheating a little bit, here, because halfway through doing this post, I realized that the majority of my first-of-the-month posts were those announcing that the new Scientiae carnival had been posted. So instead, when that's the case, I'm including the first sentence of the first non-Scientiae post.)

January: I don't remember where I first saw this, but I last saw it at Dr. Crazy's. [New Year's meme]

February: Greetings from Top Secret Location!

March: As a way of getting past the journal article block I mentioned a few posts ago, I'm revisiting some of the papers that I've cited in most of my own papers, sort of as a way of reminding myself what differentiates my current work from others' work in the same space.

April: It's Monday.

May: In my last post in this series, I set out a series of three questions that I've identified as central to deciding whether I should stick things out until tenure or go look for greener pastures.

June: Back in the day, when parenthood was still an abstract concept, I looked forward to the arrival of Hypothetical Future Child as a time where I could take a nice little hiatus from my professional life.

July: So the first big post-baby conference trip/trip with Baby Jane went very well.

August: Subtitle: If you've seen my brain, could you please return it to me?

September: I spent a blissful long weekend sans computer access, hanging with family and friends. [This was actually the third sentence; the first two had to do with the latest Scientiae carnival.]

October: I am at an exciting phase in my work right now. [See note for September.]

November: Sometimes I really need someone to give me a good swift kick in the seat of my pants. [This post was about the importance of mentoring.]

December: OK, so, today was the big day: my first day back at work, and Baby Jane's first day at daycare. [See note for September.]

Strangely, I think this sampling of posts is actually quite representative of what's been on my mind this year. Since I was out of the classroom for the entire year (first on sabbatical, then on maternity leave), I was much more focused on research, and much more introspective about my research work. (The latter is a luxury I often can't afford while I'm teaching!) And of course, having Baby Jane made me much more keenly aware of work-life balance issues, and I think I probably blogged about those more than any other topic in the second half of the year.

It was definitely a full and exciting year, that's for sure.

Transcending the debate: A call to arms

So the topic for this month's Scientiae carnival is "transcending the debate". When the call first came out, I thought "cool! what an interesting topic! I can't wait to come up with a post for this one!"

And in trying to come up with a post, I've struggled mightily. For reasons I didn't understand, until today, when I had an epiphany.

I think a lot of the struggles I've had, particularly in my current position, especially around my legendarily bad third-year review, come about as a direct result of not transcending the debate. Instead of transcending, I tend to mire myself in the muck, let colleagues and situations drag me down and make me question myself and my instincts and generally deter me from pursuing the things I want to pursue.

I'm not sure why I do this. Is it a misguided attempt at acceptance? Is it a weariness with being outnumbered and (pardon the war analogy) outgunned in departmental situations? Is it self-consciousness, low self-esteem? Or is it because I'm truly passionate about these things and don't understand why others don't share my fiery passion for the same things?

My mom has a great saying/philosophy: Sometimes acting oblivious is your best defense/strategy. And when I've remembered that and really put it to practice, difficult situations have become...not quite so difficult. Sure, it doesn't work all the time, but it works more often than it doesn't.

This year, as I return to work, I pledge to really work on transcending the stuff that normally gets me down, to follow my instincts, and do what I know is right and righteous and good. I will mentor our young women (and other underrepresented folks) with abandon. I will resurrect the lunch/cookies tradition. I will ignore any negative comments or criticisms about such activities. Most importantly, I will work to make my department a place that's welcoming to all, and if my colleagues don't like it, tough nougies.

I'd better start practicing being oblivious.

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Another reminder of the importance of mentoring

Sometimes I really need someone to give me a good swift kick in the seat of my pants. Today, I got that much-needed kick.

Let me back up. I don't know if I've posted about this before (I just did a quick search of the archives and came up empty-handed), but a while back I decided that it was high time that *someone* started doing some community-building among the women majors and potential majors in our department. This is one area where, in my opinion, we do rather poorly, and where we really should be doing more, particularly if we'd like to increase the number of majors (not just women, but across the board, too---if we're welcoming of women, we're probably more welcoming of everyone else who doesn't fit that narrow CS stereotype). Anyway. So I decided to start small: lunch (or cookies and juice) every once in a while, just me and the women majors and other women from my classes and my colleagues' classes. I'd send out an email and see who showed up. Turnout was sometimes good, often small, but I kept doing it. I enjoyed it, the students enjoyed it, I thought I was doing a good thing.

To make a long and not very interesting story short, I got some flak from some of my colleagues about it, the third-year review stuff was coming to a head, and I just got all frustrated with everything and stopped organizing things.

Today I got an email from one of our former majors, one I was particularly close to. And she mentioned those lunches/cookie sessions, and how important they were to her and how important she thought they were to the morale of the women in the department.

Well, dang.

Guess I'll be resurrecting that lunch/cookie tradition when I return. And guess I'll remind myself of this the next time I get demoralized about "just" doing the "little things".

Lessons from mentoring

The other day, I got an email out of the blue from a former mentee of mine. (Can I just say how much I hate the word "mentee"? I always think "manatee" when I hear that word. I wish there was a better word.) I mentored her when she was an undergrad, then we lost touch after she went to grad school. She's just about to finish her PhD and doing fabulously, just as I knew she would.

This mentoring relationship was interesting, in that I felt completely unqualified to mentor this person. When we met, she was already a wildly successful student, confident and super-smart, well-rounded and well-grounded. Frankly, I was in awe of her. I really had no idea what I could possibly offer her as a mentor---in fact, she seemed much more together than I was! (I briefly thought that maybe I should ask *her* to mentor *me*, but thought that it might be too weird.) We met at a point where I was struggling a bit, professionally, too, so I was really unsure as to whether I could really be an effective mentor. But I decided to soldier ahead.

My perception of myself as a mentor was that I wasn't really effective. Sure, she asked me lots of questions about what it was like to be a female academic in CS, what I did, what I thought about various things, etc. And I answered them, honestly, even when the answer didn't paint the best picture of the field or of me as a professional. We chatted a lot about our lives, what we were doing outside of school and the lab. But that was it, really.

I'm guessing her perception was different, though. She always thanked me profusely for my advice and insight. She kept asking hard questions, and trusted my answers. She said that I really and truly helped her. In one of her last emails, she thanked me again, and told me how much of an influence I had been on her and how much she appreciated our relationship. And her latest email repeated that sentiment. I was totally floored.

This was one of my first true mentoring experiences, and it really shaped how I approach mentoring now, as someone more established in the field (and confident about her place in the field). (In fact, I sometimes wonder if this mentoring relationship helped me develop more confidence in myself professionally, and in my sense of belonging in the field. I suspect it did.) I try not to second-guess my qualifications to be a mentor. I try to be as honest as possible (and appropriate) as a mentor. I try to be freer as a mentor and to not be afraid to be a mentor (although sometimes I regress on this). This mentoring experience, above all else, taught me that there is no right or wrong time to be a mentor---that being a role model can happen even if we don't feel ready or adequate to be one.

Thank you, old mentee.

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A snapshot of what's on my mind lately

(Longer than random bullets, but not long enough to warrant separate posts.)

* * * * *
Item #1: CS conferences are too expensive. It's only August and I've already burned through my entire travel budget for this year. Why? Because CS conferences are out-of-control expensive. I'm talking just the registration fees (although the two conferences I went to this summer were in pricey locales, which certainly didn't help the budget). Now, I'm really grateful that my institution does give me travel money each year; that's not the issue. The problem is that if I want to get my work out there, I have to submit conference papers; if I submit conference papers, I have to go present them; but the price structure of CS conferences makes it difficult to attend more than one conference a year. So it's a catch-22. I am now in the position where (a) I have to figure out if there's a way to finagle travel money out of some dean or my department chair so that I can go to GHC this year and (b) I'm screwed if I get another conference paper accepted this fiscal year. Not exactly what I want to spend my time and energy stressing over.

* * * * *
Item #2: Perception is everything. Mr. Jane is one of the most enlightened men I know. However, last week I had to read him the riot act, over time spent on child care. Or, should I say, the lack thereof on his part. His perception was that he was doing a fine job; the reality was that I was basically doing child care 24/7, even on weekends. Lessons learned: him---he's gotta step up to the plate and not wait for me to ask for help (duh); me---be more assertive in letting Mr. Jane know what I need, in terms of time and assistance, and in taking time for myself.

* * * * *
Item #3: Why peer mentoring is important. I get together regularly with a few friend/colleagues to talk about life and work. Ok, mostly life, but the goal is to keep each other on track with our research. These women are currently kicking my butt to get me to submit the journal article that I *still* haven't submitted. Which is just what I need right now. If not for them, I'd probably continue to ignore it and let it languish. Because of their pestering, though, I have recommitted myself to submitting this article ASAP. Hopefully it's in as good shape as I remember before the baby arrived, and I won't need to do too much to it before I can send it off.

Actually, to be honest, if it weren't for this group I would really be tempted to blow off work altogether until I return to work. It's amazing what accountability to others can do for your productivity.

* * * * *
Item #4: The next Scientiae. So the theme for the next Scientiae carnival is "Unleash". I've been thinking about what I want to write about for this carnival. Unfortunately, I'm feeling very "leashed" lately. In particular, I'm sort of feeling trapped by my current situation, that even if I wanted to leave, it would be difficult to do so. My concern? Letters of recommendation. I feel like I'd need at least one from my current institution if I wanted to go elsewhere, but I don't know if I can fully trust those who could write me a letter to write me a letter that could get me another job, if that makes sense. Maybe I'm wrong about this (I hope I am), but it is something I'm thinking about, particularly as the next hiring season starts.

* * * * *
Item #5: Where the hell did the summer go?! Self-explanatory, I hope.

Mentoring on the sly

As the only woman in my department, I often find myself in bizarre situations, where the answer is not immediately obvious and it's not like I can run down the hall and ask one of my male colleagues how I should handle the situation. Particularly when my male colleagues are, shall we say, part of the problem---sometimes inadvertently or unknowingly, but still, part of the problem.

One of these bizarre situations is this: I feel like I have to *hide* most of the mentoring that I do when the mentoring is specific to women. I feel like I have to mentor women on the sly.

You may be thinking that this is silly, given that my department apparently considers me to be the resident expert on mentoring. But the truth is there are some members of my department who make me feel paranoid about showing any sort of special treatment to anyone, but particularly women. It's a bit easier to deal with the ones that come right out and say that what I'm doing is wrong-headed and---my favorite---"unfair". But most of them will express their displeasure---perhaps unknowingly, I really don't know what their motives are---in a more subtle way. For instance, saying things like "I was talking to [female major] the other day, and she was saying that she is really uncomfortable about applying to such-and-such a program, because she doesn't want to feel like she's getting an edge because she's a woman." Or comments on how it's so much easier for our women majors to get into grad school, and isn't that a shame for some of our talented male majors. (I can hear Zuska throwing up on someone's shoes right now in response!) These comments seem to crop up with increasing frequency when the subject of mentoring/recruiting women comes up, or when it becomes obvious that I'm doing some sort of mentoring or nice thing for our women majors.

Anyway, whatever the motive or intent, these statements don't exactly make me want to go shout from the rooftops that I'm doing something nice or positive for our women majors. And they do tend to make me sort of paranoid about mentoring in the first place---I second- and third-guess myself before going ahead and doing something. But what this has really done is drove my mentoring almost totally underground. And I think this is a shame, because I think our women students, majors or not, *should* know that there is someone here who can be a resource and ally to them. Even if they decide not to take advantage of that resource, or decide that they don't need to use that resource, I think they should know that there is such a resource out there in case one day they do need it.

The latest example of this came when I decided to give copies of She's Such A Geek to some of our women majors. A nice guesture, right? Well, I thought this thing out to death. To whom should I send the books? Will the students think it's weird? How can I get the books to the students without my colleagues finding out? What sort of flak will I get from my colleagues for this if they do find out? So what started off as a "random act of kindness" turned into something very unnecessarily stressful for me. (In case you're interested, I ended up sending them to the women I took to Grace Hopper and to one of my advisees who's had a rough time of it lately.)

This is not to say that the actions of my colleagues will deter me from mentoring or from doing these things---far from it! I just think it's a shame that I have to feel so guilty about doing things like this and that I can't really have honest and substantive discussions with my colleagues about mentoring women. Because I think all of us---faculty and students---could benefit from open and honest discussions and actions like this.

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Random acts of kindness

Recently, a senior woman colleague of mine, someone who I know but don't know well, stepped up and went out of her way to protect my time by getting me out of a time-consuming service task. Even though it put her in somewhat of a bind and left her scrambling somewhat.

I am so very grateful to this colleague. For protecting the time of a junior faculty person. For helping out someone who's not even in her department. For seeing potentially problematic things in this situation that I was not able to see. And for just doing something really, really nice.

Thank you, Senior Colleague.

The resident expert on....mentoring?

This year, I have sometimes felt as though I am not listened to, or taken seriously, during department meetings and other related meetings. It is a frustrating experience, to say the least. Oddly, I don't think it's completely intentional---I think a lot of it is just the same old stupid phenomenon of women's voices just aren't heard in meetings, in general. But it happens, and it stinks when it does.

In our most recent meeting, though, I found that I had the rapt attention of everyone else in the room. For once, everyone stopped and actually listened to what I was saying, without interrupting. For once, everyone took what I said seriously and treated it as important.

The topic? Mentoring and recruiting of students. Particularly women students. Apparently I have become the resident expert on such matters. (Maybe this is finally an acknowledgement that all those "crazy" ideas I have for getting students to seriously consider taking our classes and majoring in our discipline seem to be working, as evidenced by the number of students who go on from my classes to take other classes and eventually become majors? Which I've known for a while, but which everyone else seems to be in a bit of denial about. Or taking credit for themselves.)

I find this really interesting. I have worked hard to be an effective mentor to all of my students, but particularly to those students who don't exactly fit the mold of the "typical" computer nerd. I work hard at convincing students to take the next CS course, to think seriously about CS as a major. And most importantly, I work very hard at making it all personal, particularly when recruiting students into any of our courses. This is all somewhat of a no-brainer to me: treat others as you wish to be treated, etc. And it works. But apparently it's not as much of a no-brainer to others as I would have thought. And that's good, because apparently that makes me look like a genius. And when all is said and done, it's nice to be recognized for something that I do that is so important to me.

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Scattered thoughts on mentoring

Although I can't find the post now (I really need to start tagging these things), you may remember that last year I was contemplating "firing" one of my mentors---for lack of interest and for generally not being very helpful at a time when I really needed his input and advice. I decided at the time to wait and see what happened, to give him another chance, and to maybe start exploring other mentoring relationships. (Jeez, this sounds a lot like dating talk, doesn't it?)

A couple of weeks ago, I had another meeting with this mentor, and it went extremely well. I had two potentially thorny areas to discuss with him, one of which was the dreaded Departmental Culture Issue, and the discussion could not have gone any better. He was sympathetic, and helpful, and encouraging. He identified things that he could do (and is now doing, to his credit). He also, on a third topic I brought up (as a pie-in-the-sky idea I'd been thinking about for a while), gave me a list of people to go talk to and encouraged me to "take this idea, run with it, and make yourself visible on this! you should be the driving force behind this!" It was an excellent meeting, and left me feeling all warm and fuzzy afterwards.

So that was good, obviously.

This of course was tempered by a not-quite-as-positive mentoring experience (same person). I was going through notes I had written to myself at the beginning of the year, and found a set of notes from a meeting with the same mentor. On this list were a set of specific things that this mentor said he would do this year to help get me on the right track towards tenure. This mentor has done a grand total of one of those things. Now, granted, the majority of the blame should fall on me here for not reminding him of what he promised to do, and I take full responsibility. But there is a part of me that's annoyed that if I hadn't noticed this, it would have just fallen by the wayside. So I guess what I'm struggling with is how much responsibility should you take for your own mentoring, and also how much "checking in" should you expect from your mentors? Clearly there's an appropriate middle ground between "mentee takes all the responsibility" and "mentor takes all the responsibility", and this middle ground should skew way more towards the mentee's end than the mentor's end. But I kind of feel like with this particular relationship, it's too far skewed in my direction, and I don't know if that's normal or not.

Finally, on a partially-related note, I've decided that I need a research mentor. Or a research buddy. I have not found an appropriate research mentor within my department, unfortunately, and so I need to look elsewhere. Partly to help keep me on track with my research (no more setbacks!!), and partly with more practical stuff (is this conference appropriate, why does this paper keep getting rejected, how do I get on this program committee). I think I need to recultivate some of my former contacts---I was good for a while keeping in touch with my research network, but to be honest the stress of last year made me want to hole up and not talk to anyone. So that's my new task for the month.

Working with undergraduate researchers: Giving difficult feedback

This afternoon, I had to give some constructive, yet difficult, feedback to my undergrad research students. They are presenting their work in a few weeks and wanted me to read over what they had so far. What they had so far was not so good.

It's tricky to figure out how to give this kind of feedback to students. On the one hand, I want this presentation to represent their own work in their own words. This is their presentation, after all, and part of the learning experience of "how to do research" is "how to present your results to various audiences". On the other hand, my name is on this work too, and because of that part of me feels this need for "quality control" over the final product. If the presentation of the work is not good, this reflects poorly on me, too.

Where do you draw the line between feedback and control in these situations?

I've had students present work like this before, and maybe I've been lucky, but they did a pretty decent job on their own with minimal input from me. (Sure, there were things I would have done differently, but nothing truly cringe-worthy made it into the final presentation.) But those students also needed less hand-holding in general throughout their projects. These students are different---they required quite a bit of hand-holding during their project. I think on some level they do understand what they did, but maybe not as deeply as the other students did, and they are doing a really poor job of presenting that information. But it's hard to tell students, essentially, "nice try, but you've completely missed the point." And figuring out how to give them the feedback I feel is necessary for them to do a good job on this, in a way that is not soul-crushing, is really, really tough.

What I did was point out the strengths of the presentation so far---there were just a few, but there were some, and that's a good start. And then I gave them a somewhat detailed description of what was missing, with concrete suggestions for how to fix some of the more glaring flaws. I tried to phrase this in terms of "you're pitching this to the wrong audience", and gave them some specific questions to answer among themselves that will hopefully get them thinking about the research in a broader context and get them thinking critically about the details they should and should not include in their presentation. It was longer than I intended---I acknowledged that, and put all the important stuff into bullet points at the end labeled "Concrete Stuff to Do".

I tried to use encouraging and positive language as much as possible, but the fact still remains that there was a lot of criticism of their work in there. So I worry a bit about how the students will take this. Ideally, they take it to heart and come up with a much better next version of this. Worst case, they become demoralized.

This is just another reminder, I guess, of how difficult it is sometimes to teach students how to "do" research, in any field. And more importantly, how difficult it is to both give criticism and teach students how to deal with criticism. It's a valuable lesson for them to learn, but one that I did not enjoy teaching them at all.