A roundabout excuse for not posting more often.

I love multidisciplinary studies. Specialization limits the accessibility of whatever topic you study-- sure, you might be an expert in the environmental theory of praying mantis egg-hatching dynamics, but if you can't communicate what you know to someone who studies the neurobiochemical interactions of crawfish mating rituals, what good does it do? We do need experts, though... it's just that, we need a few experts, and we need them to mentor people in a broader context than their own expertise. Multiple mentors-- that's the idea behind a thesis committee, I think.

I am writing about this today, not to change the face of science (I'll save that for another day, a greater blog), but to express my frustration with grad school lately. I work in a fantastic interdisciplinary lab that combines chemistry and neurobiology, and yet I find myself constantly tripping on the crack between the two. Imagine you have a study where you use a chemical technique to study a neurobiological phenomenon. Now you have a problem: write for a chemistry journal, and the chemists think you're doing chemistry wrong. Write for a biology journal, and the neurobiologists think you're doing neurobiology wrong. You're wrong from every angle, even if you're right. (My lab is really well established, luckily for us, but the problem still arises, especially when you're trying to do something new. Cough, cough.)

Now back to that age-old (beginning of this blog-old) notion that as a woman, I feel that I experience extra frustration. Most of the men I know are happy to step back and say "Yes, I'm a chemist-- who cares about the neurobiology?" or "The neurobiology is solid, so I am going to let it speak for itself." I feel this is easier for someone with a Y chromosome because society expects them to be great at one thing-- and everything else be damned. Women are supposed to be multi-talented: can you cook? do you keep a clean house? does your hair have bounce and shine? can you wiggle your hips attractively when Lady Gaga comes on at a club? please theorize about the themes in the Bronte sisters' literature as compared to Jane Austen's. how does NMDA antagonism in the hippocampus impact task-acquisition in various behavioral paradigms? etc. Maybe that's not true-- maybe that's just some neurotic pressure I feel because I can barely cook, clean, control my hair, and wiggle seductively, and I haven't read early 19th century women's lit since high school.

But my obvious neuroticism aside... my point is, taking a multidisciplinary approach to science is, in my opinion, the best approach-- and the most open for criticism. And unlike a lot of people, I don't let criticism roll off my back. I take it as a challenge to get better. Guess what? Being a first year grad student presents a lot of challenges (mostly because I don't know anything), and I'm EXHAUSTED. And that, my dear reader(s?), is why my posting has been lackluster lately. I'm just too tired to store up my vitriol. It leaks out of me all day like a car with a bad transmission. And your diaphragm (again, not the contraceptive) is the one that suffers. I apologize to diaphragms everywhere.