Last Tuesday at the Stanford Women’s Community Center, Terry Root, a recent recipient of the Nobel Prize for her work on the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (UN IPCC), came to discus challenges she’s faced in as a woman in the scientific community. Her first experience with sexism in academics came from her own father, who asserted “Girls aren’t supposed to be good at math”, when informed of Terry’s outstanding grade on a middle school math exam. She proceeded to become a math major at the University of New Mexico, later going on to pursue biology at the University of Colorado, and getting her PhD in the subject at Princeton. Historically women have had it rough in academia.
Now the gender gap is skewed in favor of women, with female students continuing to outnumber male students, in the admission process as well as enrollment. It is estimated that 56% of undergraduates in the US are women. While women are adequately represented in the undergraduate population, those numbers diminish as we look at the next steps on the institutional ladder.

It seems like once you’re a graduate student, you no longer get holidays. The last couple of years I have spent my winter and spring breaks working on papers or research projects glad that I no longer had the distraction of classes, RA-ing, or TA-ing. It’s all part of the preparation for a professional life.

So what have I been up to this holiday season –

1. Writing the ol’ dissertation. Nothing makes you hate your topic more than being asked to rewrite a chapter.

2. Working on a paper that needs to get done by January.

3. Preparing my syllabus for next quarter.

4. learning to make refrigerator pickles.

Number 4 has been really fun for me, as I’ve developed an taste for pickled items. I like my pickles a little spicy, which is not always easy to obtain in a store bought version. Slightly pickled carrot sticks make a great snack when writing and even hubby, who is usually Mr Picky, eats them. Refrigerator pickles are easy to make, especially if you're on a budget.

I am married.

Anyone who has read my postings here will know that occasionally I refer to the hubby or the spouse.

I have a partner, and we have been married. In August we will have been married for four years, which is just a blink of the eye compared to my parents, who have been married to each other since they were 18.

I have been married for four years and I am childless.

This is an issue.

Not for me, not for my husband. God knows the middle of a dissertation is not the time that I want to contemplate spawning, and hubby wants a permanent job before I get knocked up (and incidentally, wants me to stop referring to having a child as spawning).

It’s a problem for my parents (specifically my mother) and other members of my family.

I have been staring at the screen this morning, changing a word here and there, but basically blocked.

Things I have done to try to unblock myself:

• used OCLC to see if there were more books I could get on my topic
  
• washed the dishes
  
• made myself a pot of tea
  
• started cleaning the stove top
  
• while I'm at it I might as well start to clean the gap under the stove top and above the oven
  
• clean several of the metal thingies that you put under the burners with baking soda (can't remember what they're called)
  
• consider whether or not I should do some more data analysis (maybe construct another image, graph, or chart)
  
• post here
  

grr