not to mention the female earth scientists?

I read a number of blogs on a regular basis. Many focused on how to navigate through grad school and all the way to the ivory tower. Before the birth of blogging i found similar stories elsewhere. I have read my fair share of books, articles, websites on how to do your Masters Thesis, how to write a dissertation, how to manage your advisor, how to get a job in academia/ outside academia/ anywhere ... and I love them all. Not because they make me a better scholar. Most of them haven't made much of a difference to my academic accomplishments, except as a way of getting even further behind schedule when the time slot for "doing research" went into reading about how-to-do-research rather than actually doing any.

But occassionally one stumbles across real gems - like real people's stories. People who are like me. Who seem to be regular persons, with regular lives. Who have friends and families and make wrong choices and sometimes do something really stupid, AND who still managed to jump through all the hoops, land academic jobs and dare say out loud what it's really like.

As so many others in my generation, I am the first PhD2b in my family. I didn't realize that I would go for a PhD until shortly before applying to the programme and even then I had no imagination of doing research for a living. Not because I didn't like it. I finished a research intensive Masters programme previously and did well, but because I felt like a fish out of the water. The few PhD students I had any sort of interaction with, seemed to be extraordinaryly intelligent, completely caught up in their research, working 24/7 and - mostly men. The only people I knew who had an academic carreer were the faculty at my institution and a few of their collegues, most of whom were twice my age and also men. I "grew up" in the academic culture of never-let-anyone-know-if-you're-not-on-top-of-everything and whatever-happens-be cool. Not exactly my mirror image.

Besides the age and gender differences these people are probably not that different from myself, but the perpetual game face precludes me from knowing. It also precluded me from any ambitions of walking in their footsteps. I do like my subject and I CAN talk passionately about it for hours and days, but I DO also have other interests in life and I DO NOT support the culture, that we should never let anyone know, if we find anything difficult. That's why it has been such a relief for me for to find carreer advice books, chronicles, blogs, online forums etc. where real people tell their real stories. It may sound odd, but I've gotten more carreer inspiration from these sources than from most human beings I have actually met.

That's why I wonder. Where are my earth science peers? Most of the blogs I read on academic matters are written by students/professors in the humanities. While they are certainly good reads and offer plenty of recognition and inspiration on more general matters, I am still on the lookout for role models in my own field. While procrastinating yesterday I googled for a range of combinations of the words "blog", "geology", "geologist" and the like, and I did manage to dig out a few personal blogs - written by men, twice my age and focused on scientific news. I checked it out again today and ended up with a world of blogs about creationism (and that's a whole other story).... doesn't look like my peers are out there really. I don't know. Maybe they have no problems ever, maybe they don't like to write about themselves, maybe I just didn't find them. Too bad because other earth science academics2b, may look for inspiration as well.

As a rare breed this blog is not about geology as much as it is about the interface between the professional and the personal life of a geologist. I wish there were more of these out there. I would read your posts. Until then I will admit failures, fears and joys on these pages free of charge.

.....the following must be done within the next few weeks:

Finish writing textbook about the Danish landscape and how it was formed (check it out on http://www.geografforlaget.dk/landskaber/) . A project from the past initiated long before I got familiar with the strenous path through academia, and even longer before I realized just HOW hard it is to write a book)

Resubmit manuscript from hell (I am getting quite close to the stage where I'd rather jump from a tall building than have another look at this thing). DISCLAIMER: not intending to do anything like that. Not even if I will have to re-submit again. But I may well want to throw the manuscript into a bonfire or some such.

Prepare 45 minutes lecture for PhD defense

Prepare for nasty questions that might come up during PhD defense

House and feed my entire family when they arrive to witness the oldest daughter excel in front of the defense committee.

Prepare food for an unknown amount of people for "compulsory" fancy pants reception after defense and buy drinks for same event with nonexisting money.

Sell apartment (aka meet with strangers who openly express their dislike for the colour on your walls, the homemade cable arrangements, the lack of functioning door knobs and everything else that makes your home just that).

Track down moving company who actually answers their phone and/or calls back when you leave a message. The moving business is clearly not competitive enough. Anyone looking for a business idea?

Sell stove (clearly interferes with house and feed entire family....)

Pack everything else (likewise)

and fly off! (preferably before I am supposed to show my face at new job institution every day from December 1st)

Needless to say I am overwhelmed! Time will show how it goes. For now my coping strategy will be: 1) shut off internet to hide list, 2) hide self under the sheets accompanied by chick-lit novel with poorly disguised ending and 3) forget everything about this until tomorrow morning, when I have to get up and meet with guy from strangely accessible moving company, who will fill me in on the total dimension (in cubic metres) of my furniture and other belongings. Exactly the kind of thing I never realized I would love to spend a Thursday morning getting to know.

I am back from an incredibly successful meeting at the institution where I will be doing my postdoc. While I am flattered and happy that a position has been created for me, I have also been mildly sceptical with regards to the character of this project and how well I would fit in. The focus of the main project is quite different from the research focus I would like to maintain and I never discussed the level of independence I would be given until now. The entire postdoc concept seems so loosely defined and as it might contain anything from "professor gets grant and hires slave(s) with PhD degree(s) to do the actual work" to "intellectually independent researcher does high-quality work and builds the foundation for his/her future research carreer while employed on temporary contract". Not exactly the same thing, I should say. And while I was pretty sure not to be walking into the first kind of position without knowing what I was doing, I wasn't entirely convinced I would be offered the latter either. Hence my surprise when I found out that I was not only eligible for a higher salary than I had expected and paid moving costs, but also for a significant degree of freedom and green light to put together what has been my dream research programme for the past few years. Looks like all the hard work is going to pay off after all.

I can't believe it! My degree-granting institution is characterized by what can best be described as utter lack of academic carreer goals. Very few students are let into the PhD programme at all, and of those who are, most go into industry or unemployment. I didn't even know until two years into the programme that I wanted an academic carreer, because no one had one and no one expected to get one. I suppose the philosophy behind this training concept was to prepare us for the lack of an academic jobmarket in our tiny homecountry, and any ideas of moving on to greener pastures across the border were apparently too exotic to be thought out loud. I feel a bit like someone who has run away from home and discovered a candyfloss garden, that everyone thought was a fairytale.

Now I have of course found new things to worry about...... as it turns out I have to MOVE to that candyfloss garden. AND that I will have to do original and independent scientific work to be able to stay there. I am already exhausted from the mere thought of amount of papers I should crank out a year. Not to speak of packing my earthly belongings and move to some unknown place in a foreign city. It's still a bumpy road, but I think I'm gonna love it!

I started a new job today. So far it is remarkingly similar to what I have done for the past four years, despite the pending postdoc title attached, as I still work out of the same office. It all looks the same, but I haven't been there very much for the past six months. After the receptionist told someone who tried to reach me on the phone, that I didn't work there anymore, while I was indeed in my office, I quit coming in at all. Why bother? Technically she was right, though. I didn't actually get paid, but was of the perception that even lowly grad students are expected to show up now and then, as long as the institution provides them with office space. Oddly enough, they didn't seem to care at all. Later I found out by accident that they deleted my profile on the institutional homepage, and decided to jump ship and start working from home.

Working from home was not only a welcome change of environment, but also a complete change of pace and schedule. I was hardly any more lonely than in the office environment, where I would meet people for lunch but otherwise not see a single soul for days on end. If you are to go through the hazzle of getting up, getting dressed and go to work, most people like it to make sense. Arriving mid-morning in empty hallways, where lights are yet to be switched on, is not a great motivator. At home I still got up and I still got dressed, but I didn't have to go anywhere and could work whenever it suited me, in as long or as short increments as I could manage that particular day (prone to suspicious correlation with the number of newly updated favorite web pages).

Engaged in my work and stressed out by the demands of the task ahead, the need for genuine conversation with other human beings seemed to be adrift. I connected to the world through my dear online friends at www.phinished.org. We are all in the same boat, struggling to write these's or dissertations or struggling to get a job or tenure or anything that requires serious amounts of academic hardship. All this struggling keeps us together in a tight knit community, which happens to have a strong center on the northamerican continent. Accordingly phinished is not really awake until sometime after lunch european time and everybody will be around talking about the weather, their breakfast, their sorrows and their victories when most europeans call it a day and head out of the office doors. The cool thing about working at home is that nobody decides when you should begin and when you should stop. I usually had breakfast while typing a good morning message around 11 AM, worked for several hours, broke for dinner and continued into the night shift. I am a night owl, and I loved it.

If following my own time schedule made me feel a bit off from the world around me, my semi-nomadic lifestyle certainly only added to that feeling. My boyfriend lives in Germany and I spend a significant part of my time on the move. We have a home in each country, and generally it doesn't matter a whole lot whether we are currently one place or the other. In my closed-off world of the past six months this mattered even less. I do not speak german particularly well, and we communicate in danish and norwegian. My language of choice for work and online chit chatting is english and I can stay at his place for weeks without using more than the most basic vocabulary in the local tongue. If it wasn't for the travel time and the occassional border police, I probably wouldn't even notice the change of countries.

I'm getting confused. I need to connect with the real world again. I didn't talk to many people today in my quiet-as-usual workplace, but there were actual human beings around. I even talked to some of them.... in my own language. It was not entirely irrelevant whether it was night or day, winter or summer, one country or the other. It was surprisingly nice!

Ok, who in the world is interested in sand anyway? I never intended this blog to be an outlet for serious academic thoughts, but came across a few pictures in my photo album, which captures what I do for a living, and thought I'd post them here. I study sand and mud, and yes, it is as geeky as it sounds. However I study sand and mud to figure out how the climate changed in the past, which is of interest to anyone who might ponder on what might happen if the climate changes in the future. That's the serious explanation, ie. what I tell people when they ask me what I'm doing and usually people lighten up at the recognizable words "climate change" and appears to either think something along the lines of "ok, that makes sense" or feels obliged to share ALL their personal beliefs about the evil nature of mankind. Either way - what I don't tell them is that I don't really care about unveiling the climate history. What really fascinates me is the mere thought that a change in grain size, structures and stratification in an old rock DOES say anything about anything.

However geeky I might be when in the field, I actually never intended to become a geologist. I'm still not entirely comfortable with the concept. I mean...... I should be an explorer, a traveller, driving cool 4WD's through the deserts of central Asia, an authour, a philosopher..... anything but someone who spends most of her time behind a desk reading duller than dull technical articles discussing recent findings about the movement of sand grains in some experimental tank in a far-away city in the midwest. I mean who writes this stuff anyway? Did they really want to be experimental-tank-operating geologists? and please... can I be something else when I grow up? The geology thing kind of just happened to me. I was a lazy brat in high school and went to too many parties and dreamt about too many guys to get the grades needed for my first choice - geography (figured that would be the proper academic background for an explorer). Geology did not sound awfully different and at the drop of a hat ...... I was en route to become an earth scientist. The coolness factor of the geology degree what pretty high due to the number of excursions to remote regions, and awesome social scene. Wanna meet a bunch of fun people and go with them to Greenland where you can sit outside the tent watching the midnight sun drop behind the mountains......and be at school - well, maybe then geology is for you too. The fun people and the exotic (or arctic in my case) travel opportunities just kept rolling in, and there was never really any good reason to leave, and here I am, still. 12 years after the haphazard entry to the subject, not doing too bad, and still waiting for them to figure out that I'm just a wannabe explorer/ author/ philosopher in disguise.

At the tender age of 31 with a graduate degree under my belt and the next one looming, I seems kinda late to think about "what do I wanna be when I grow up?". It's more like... geez, I have grown up, and this is what I'm doing. It's not too bad though. I do a fair bit of travelling to some neat remote places, where very few people ever get the chance to go (I'm not entirely sure they would want to though, but that's another story). I have mustered up a peculiar fascination for sand and mud (never thought about that opportunity back in the days of high scool career advice) and have so far landed an awesome job - just how awesome it will be is subject to investigation over the next few weeks as it is beginning tomorrow morning. It's time to get back to work. If not for anything else - to save up for the cool car for the desert drive.

(based on a true story)

WEEK 1: Do as little as possible I.

Author recommends - 1) shopping (you're broke anyway and probably didn't have time to buy anything new for ages). If lucky this will coincide with change of season or change of economic status and sudden need for winter coat/ bikini/fancy outfits for post-degree real-world job , 2) cheesy daytime television and trashy novels (if reading still requires too much intellectual capacity, stick to the daytime soaps), 3) call/visit family and closest friends to let them know you're still alive.

WEEK 2: Do as little as possible II.

Author recommends - Go to the beach! Bring lots of trashy novels! If located in a northern/ southern part of the world and it's off-season for the beach, it's time to bring out those last savings (remember, broke anyway) and start searching for cheap getaways in exotic locations. If not at all like this author and palmtrees and exotic breezes don't sound tempting at all. Please do at least get out of the city. It cannot not healthy to watch daytime soaps 24/7 for more than a week.

WEEK 3; Time to think about getting a life I

Author recommends - 1) Get in touch with still neglected family and friends (time to show off the newly acquired tan anyway). 2) Forgot how to cook anything but take-away while finishing? Now is the time to re-familiarize yourself with skills from your forgotten past (it's also cheaper to cook for yourself.... which you will know to appreciate by now). 3) Forgot to excercise while sitting bent over the computer getting finger cramps and piling on the pounds from stashes of emergency chocolate (and the take away)? Well time to do something about that too.

WEEK 4: Time to think about getting a life II

Author recommends - 1) keep up the ambitious plans from week 3. It looks so easy to run for half an hour, but after an average excercise level on the order of "walk from chair to kitchen to get cup of coffee" for months - believe me, it's not! 2) get a social life (chances are some of your friends have gotten tired of waiting around for you are are now calling someone else first if they want to go to the movies), 3) time to quit (OK, cut back on) the daytime soaps and the trashy novels and go to the back of your brain to re-vitalize whatever interests you used to have. This author has visited the local, public library twice in the past six weeks and came home with a loads of great - but completely non-dissertation related - books both times. And they are being read!

WEEK 5: Time to face the real world

Author recommends - .... well, this cannot be recommended at all, but must be done anyway. 1) show up at advisors office/ department/ professional context. Many academic professionals do not grasp the concept of recovery from any kind of hard academic work, and hence do not understand why you didn't continue showing up in the office/ in the lab every day after getting rid of the book - after all that is the meaning of life! well, stop by and appear to be interested in what's going on for a couple of hours, then you can go back home and do whatever you prefer to do with your time right now. 2) face it, that emails regarding various professional commitments are not going to go away just because you don't answer - time to get back in the game and think about what lies ahead.

WEEK 6: Last chance to rest.....

Author recommends- lots of sleep, fresh air, good food, excercise (hmmmm......not too good results on this one), spending lots of time with loved ones, reading fun books, watching movies and get used to the thought that you will have to open your dissertation again sometime soon.

I did it!!!! I really, finally, unbelievably DID it - submitted the dissertation. After an endless row of all-nighters, utter desparation, humiliating phonecalls to the bank regarding icky financial situation, long term sleep-deprivation and poor nutrition and an additional nightmarish venture into the world of print/copy shops (incl. shelling out a significant amount of cash for their non-existent services). There it was!

Long, OK, nice....... and not something I would want to read again anytime soon.

The first day I took my own copy home and placed it on the dining table on a sort of display. Nevermind I was the only person there, just the thrill at looking at it all evening made it all worth the horrific price tag. The following days I lugged it around to Germany and to Jutland for my boyfriend and family to have a look at the printed monster.......and receive the much longed for congratulations. Probably their congratulations disguised a sigh of relief and utter hope that I was on the verge of returning to my pre-dissertation personality (read: less obnoxious and less singleminded). Actually I hoped so too. Back home I put the monster away on a shelf, to avoid having to look at it (just to be reminded that I will have to take this apart over and over again in order to create publishable articles from the OK-for-now-and-actually-not-too-bad manuscripts). Not to speak of the defense, which is still lingering ahead of me.

In the six weeks that have passed sinced the fairytale-like event of submitting I have dug my way out from dissertating slump and back to real life and I guess I close to getting there.

Velkommen til Danske Landskaber - et digitalt projekt

Eurodoc (the European Council of Doctoral Candidates and Junior Researchers)

Check this out fellow european PhD students!!!

Round table on Mobility for PhD´s, 5th Eurodoc conference, Strasbourg

EUROPA - The Researcher's Mobility Portal - European Charter

After days and days of eternal snowstorms it finally seems like spring is coming through. took a break from heavy weekend reading session to go for a walk around the lakes in central Copenhagen to enjoy fabulous spring sun shining on the frozen city.

Decided on july 1st as final date for handing in the dissertation. Scary, frightening and a big relief. Four months of hard work 24/7 ahead of me, but the reward is spelled FREEDOM and I cannot wait. This date should only be transgressed in case of computer explosion combined with robbery of all back up files existing anywhere or similar disastrous event. Will do everything possible to meet this deadline. Must return to regular life within foreseeable time.

So from now on - the count down has begun!

Not sure, but the last days were definitely more than enough...

Board meeting in ph.d-nettet (national PhD association)

Went to the board meeting for the national PhD association from friday-saturday. These meetings are always good fun and very inspiring. It´s a fantastic group of people, all interested in improving the working conditions for young researchers now and in the future. It feels so productive actually to do something about those work related issues we all spend so much time talking about anyway. We had a lot of fruitfull discussions, created work groups and decided some of the goals we are working towards for the following six months. Got so enthusiastic about the whole thing, that I signed up for one of the group leader posts (which I will most likely regret, when it once again occurs to me, that I basically have enough to do already). On the other hand, some things are just important, and I couldn´t let this one go.

Arctic expedition talk (which took much more time to prepare than most serious talks, due to perfectionists very high expectations to photo quality...)

Had to spend most of the night between sunday and monday awake preparing a talk about my job as an expedition cruise guide in the Arctic last summer. I started working on the talk last week, but more serious stuff (like Thesis writing) got in the way, so there I was again finshing up some very important thing in the middle of the night. Apparently years of experience in the last-minute-panic-attack night-owling-business finally paid off. The talk was a success - they even had to carry in extra chairs....

Polar bear with cubs, Svalbard, summer 2004

Rypefjord, Scoresbysund, East Greenland, september 2004

Joined PhinisheD today - discussion forum for all of us in thesis hell. Looking forward to finally getting colleagues in the same situation as me. Who cares if they are on the other side of the earth, if we can keep each other going. Seems to work well for the regulars on the site.

I´ve been working like crazy for the past couple of days. I have absolutely no idea at all where all this energy suddenly came from, but I´m pretty sure that it won´t last forever. Spent the whole day yesterday working from home for the first time in ages, and what a difference the change of location made. Just the idea of being in my own livingroom listening to music and watching the snow fall outside and not having to go anywhere - except to the kitchen on a regular basis to pick up supplies.... (chocolate rolls, coffee.....etc.). Didn´t really matter that I had to work. the scenario was anyway much more tempting than a bike ride on icy roads to small and dusty office where endless piles of papers and data are waiting to be dealt with. Got so inspired by the how-fantastic-relaxing-to-work-from-home mood, that I got into an ambitious planning thing. I´m writing up a manuscript which I have hated for months, since I thought it made no sense and the field data were too few, too insignificant and basically plain boring. Not true, not true, seems to work fine now, and I´ve got into the writing. This should make me quite happy, but no, no. Decided to finish the first draft including solving remaining scientific questions in two weeks..... Tight schedule, especially since I´m also attending a weekend meeting, giving a talk and welcoming boyfriend back from Antarctica within the next two weeks. Hoping for the energy high to last.

Spent today working trying to meet this deadline. Turned out that my one of my cowriters will come and visit in two weeeks anyway, so probably a well chosen deadline after all. Had to visit a book shop on the way home to buy a present. Walked 10 steps into the shop, stumbled across "the windup bird chronicle", read the first page in the shop, wanted to continue, so...had to buy the book. Now a must read before I go to bed. So much for doing nothing but serious research in order to finish ph.d anytime soon.

Fairytale winter landscapes outside, warm and cosy inside. Spent superwoman-like weekend cooking, baking, socializing, cleaning, newpaper reading (still wonder where all this time came from). Hardly worked at all, except organizing some pictures for a talk next week.

The very first message!!! Still considering what exactly to use this blog for and if I should write in danish or english. Danish seems way more normal if friends and family come along, however in english I can post it to the international list of ph.d blogs... still thinking....and getting used to the thought of writing in cyberspace.


Went to a talk today about distance learning/ how to teach using the internet. Very interestering, but takes ages to create the courses. Seems to be a big deal in Sweden. I wonder how it is in Denmark.