Astronomy
It's been quiet on the blog here, and my excuse is that I've been busy with travel recently. I'm on an 8-day tour of the Bay Area, giving three seminar-length talks and one 20-minute conference talk while I'm here.
I'm following a piece of advice I picked up in grad school: whenever you get the opportunity to give a talk somewhere, do it. It will increase your exposure, and even if they aren't hiring at the time, it will still help you establish connections and share your science with people. So, while my original purpose in coming here was for this conference at the end of the week, I managed to work my network to score speaking gigs at three different institutions in the area.
The interesting thing is that most of my network is women.
My first talk was arranged mostly through a grad student friend at her university.
For the second talk, I got in touch with people I knew there and basically bugged them until they gave in. In this case, my contacts were mostly men, actually.
At the AAS Meeting in January, I ran into a friend of mine and mentioned that I would be in the area, and she invited me to come by her institution and give a talk there, all of which she handily arranged for me.
My friends largely work in completely different areas than I do, so I'm all the more appreciative that they helped arrange my visits. There might be something in there about those of us in the minority sticking up for one another, but there's more to it than that. There's true friendship and camaraderie that I'm drawing on here, and maybe it's simply the way we women tend to relate to each other.
Anyway, the moral of the story is to never underestimate the value of networking, and that that includes friendships with your peers as well as schmoozing with people in high places.
- Invasion Of Personal Space
Has this ever happened to you? You are attending a professional conference, like the AAS meeting, and presenting a poster on your work. Someone comes to talk to you, but they stand too close. They might even touch your arm or shoulder as they talk. They...
- Guest Post: Deanna Ratnikov On Taking The "work" Out Of Networking
Our guest blogger this week is Deanna Ratnikova. Deanna Ratnikova is the Women and Education Programs Administrator with the American Physical Society. In this role, she works on the Women in Physics program and provides administrative support to the...
- Guest Post: Meredith Hughes On What You Can Do To Promote Gender Equality In Astronomy
This week's guest blogger is Meredith Hughes. Meredith is currently a Miller Fellow at UC Berkeley. Her research involves using millimeter-wavelength interferometry to study the process of planet formation. What YOU can do to promote gender equality...
- 215th Aas: Meg Urry
The AAS Meeting was so big, I've asked a few people to help me summarize their thoughts and impressions of the meeting. I'll be posting them over the next days and weeks. Just to prove that I'm not the only one who felt overwhelmed by the...
- Aas 213th Meeting: Day 0
Well, here I am in Long Beach! I plan to live-blog from the AAS Meeting here this week. Tomorrow should be off to a great start: the CSWA Session meets tomorrow at lunchtime. 12:45pm in Room 104B. Also of note: Monday at 3:40pm: Lisa Kewley -- Pierce...
Astronomy
The new girls' network
It's been quiet on the blog here, and my excuse is that I've been busy with travel recently. I'm on an 8-day tour of the Bay Area, giving three seminar-length talks and one 20-minute conference talk while I'm here.
I'm following a piece of advice I picked up in grad school: whenever you get the opportunity to give a talk somewhere, do it. It will increase your exposure, and even if they aren't hiring at the time, it will still help you establish connections and share your science with people. So, while my original purpose in coming here was for this conference at the end of the week, I managed to work my network to score speaking gigs at three different institutions in the area.
The interesting thing is that most of my network is women.
My first talk was arranged mostly through a grad student friend at her university.
For the second talk, I got in touch with people I knew there and basically bugged them until they gave in. In this case, my contacts were mostly men, actually.
At the AAS Meeting in January, I ran into a friend of mine and mentioned that I would be in the area, and she invited me to come by her institution and give a talk there, all of which she handily arranged for me.
My friends largely work in completely different areas than I do, so I'm all the more appreciative that they helped arrange my visits. There might be something in there about those of us in the minority sticking up for one another, but there's more to it than that. There's true friendship and camaraderie that I'm drawing on here, and maybe it's simply the way we women tend to relate to each other.
Anyway, the moral of the story is to never underestimate the value of networking, and that that includes friendships with your peers as well as schmoozing with people in high places.
- Invasion Of Personal Space
Has this ever happened to you? You are attending a professional conference, like the AAS meeting, and presenting a poster on your work. Someone comes to talk to you, but they stand too close. They might even touch your arm or shoulder as they talk. They...
- Guest Post: Deanna Ratnikov On Taking The "work" Out Of Networking
Our guest blogger this week is Deanna Ratnikova. Deanna Ratnikova is the Women and Education Programs Administrator with the American Physical Society. In this role, she works on the Women in Physics program and provides administrative support to the...
- Guest Post: Meredith Hughes On What You Can Do To Promote Gender Equality In Astronomy
This week's guest blogger is Meredith Hughes. Meredith is currently a Miller Fellow at UC Berkeley. Her research involves using millimeter-wavelength interferometry to study the process of planet formation. What YOU can do to promote gender equality...
- 215th Aas: Meg Urry
The AAS Meeting was so big, I've asked a few people to help me summarize their thoughts and impressions of the meeting. I'll be posting them over the next days and weeks. Just to prove that I'm not the only one who felt overwhelmed by the...
- Aas 213th Meeting: Day 0
Well, here I am in Long Beach! I plan to live-blog from the AAS Meeting here this week. Tomorrow should be off to a great start: the CSWA Session meets tomorrow at lunchtime. 12:45pm in Room 104B. Also of note: Monday at 3:40pm: Lisa Kewley -- Pierce...