Slaying My Own Dragons

I haven't written in a while.  I've been working and traveling but that isn't why I haven't been writing.  I've stayed away because I have recently been dealing with my own personal demons (which surface for me at least on an annual basis)... 

When I first started this blog, I promised a look into my everyday life as a LIGO scientist.  Almost everything that I have shared has been positive and, truly, that is how the majority of my life passes - I am blessed beyond my dreams and I love my life and my work.  However, there are the other days where I feel like nothing I've done has amounted to anything other than keeping me busy.  Deep down, I know that isn't true but I have a horrible way of marginalizing everything I do.  Basically, if I did it then anyone could have or it wasn't meaningful.  This is a well known phenomenon called the Impostor Syndrome.  I've heard about this is various places; I think most recently it was in regard to women in physics but this is a widespread phenomenon in both genders. 

Honestly, I am hesitant to even write about this here.  Physics is a competitive profession.  I feel like a person's worth is usually judged on what you've done lately.  I am always afraid that I haven't accomplished enough to not be forgotten let alone respected.  And with my job being a temporary (I am a postdoctoral scholar - this is much like when a medical doctor goes through residencies after earning their medical degree) and on a yearly contract, not constantly earning respect means that I could lose my job all together.

It isn't something that I discuss with my co-workers; after all these are the people whose respect I am trying to earn and maintain.  I don't even bring it up to my friends because, since I really don't have much of a life outside of work, my friends are also physicists - sometimes even people I feel are my competition.  On my latest trip (to Santa Barbara, CA for the APS Executive Board retreat), I did bring this up in conversation over dinner (I felt more comfortable around these physicists since they are not in the same research circle as myself and I rarely see them).  As soon and I mentioned I'd been dealing with a bit of Impostor Syndrome the immediate response I got was, "We all feel that way."  At that, I didn't know how to respond since I was surprised at how open this person was with me.

So, how do I go about slaying this dragon?  Well, the first stage is messy and usually involves much anxiety and panic about the difference between what I feel I've accomplished and what I should have accomplished.  This then moves into a planning phase where I decide what I am going to do and is followed by a series of email feelers to people I need to collaborate with to perform the work.  By this time, I have usually exhausted myself (at least emotionally) and I wait for responses from collaborators.  If they are prompt, a new determined calm can begin to take root; otherwise, the anxiety increases again.  I start thinking, "Wow, I was right and everyone thinks so little of me that they don't want to work with me!"  (Note to self: next time check your spam filter before you flip out again.)  With a new plan of action intact, I get to start the cycle of the Impostor Syndrome again: "I have all this great work to do but I don't think that I am talented enough to complete it."  But, I plug away at it, complete tasks and rarely acknowledge what I've done.

The one good thing that comes from these episodes of mine is that it jump starts new projects for me.  It also reminds me of how lucky I am to have my husband since he is the only person with whom I share this insecurity.  The poor guy is my sounding board for all of the anxiety I've built up and there really isn't anything he can do for me.

A double rainbow taken from the LIGO Livingston Observatory parking lot on 30 June 2008.

This is a good article on the Impostor Syndrome: Laursen, Lucas, "No, You're Not an Impostor", Science Careers (15 February 2008).

***

Revised Erdös Number: 4

A friend of mine read my last blog post and showed that both of us (as members of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration) have a lower Erdös Number (4) than I noted in that post.  Here are the references establishing this network:

1: Paul Erdős & Mark Kac
    Erdös, P.; Kac, M. "The Gaussian law of errors in the theory of additive number theoretic functions",  Amer. J. Math.  62,  (1940). 738–742.
2: Mark Kac & Theodore A. Jacobson
    Gaveau B.; Jacobson T. ; Kac M.; Schulman L. S. "Relativistic extension of the analogy between quantum mechanics and Brownian motion", Phys. Rev. Lett. 53 (1984), no. 5, 419–422.
3. Theodore A. Jacobson & Bruce Allen
    Allen, Bruce; Jacobson, Theodore "Vector two-point functions in maximally symmetric spaces", Comm. Math. Phys. 103 (1986), no. 4, 669–692. 
4. Bruce Allen & Amber Stuver
    Abbott, B.; et al. "Detector description and performance for the first coincidence observations between LIGO and GEO," Nucl. Instrum. Methods A 517 (2004), 154 – 179.

More on LISA & Giving Public Tours with My Hubby

Since I've last posted, I've gotten to work with my husband (Derek) on two public tours of LIGO.  That's something that doesn't usually happen since he doesn't work with visitors on a regular basis.

1:  The first tour was on the 9th to the local chapter of the AIAA (to which my husband is a life member) based out of Stennis Space Center in MS.  I took the engineers and their families around the site and answered their science questions while Derek discussed his work at LIGO and his dissertation work (helicopters).

2:  The second tour was the monthly Science Saturday open house this past weekend.  The theme this month was "Rockets" in honor of the 50th anniversary of humans in space and the last shuttle launch later this year.  Since Derek is an aerospace engineer, he was recruited as our local "rocket scientist" to interact with the visitors.  I helped find some interesting footage of rockets for him to discuss during a short presentation which he presented wonderfully (yes, I am a proud wife).  As usual, I took visitors on tours of the site, but you are probably getting tired of listening to me go on about that :).  Below is a super-slow motion video of the Saturn V rocket for Apollo 11.  It was filmed at 500 frames/second over a little more than 30 seconds.  This video is over 8 minutes with commentary on what is going on.  It's awesome (and even better in full screen)!

If you want to see it in real time, it's here (with corny music):

In my last post, I discussed LISA, what it is and how NASA had recently withdrawn its partnership with the ESA (European Space Agency) in this project.  Below is the official statement from the Albert Einstein Institute on the ESA's response.  The original document can be read here, but since it is a PDF, I copied the text below for your easy reading:

NASA withdraws from partnership with Europe. ESA Science team begins to rethink LISA design.

It was just in February this year that ESA kicked off the process of picking the next major mission in its Cosmic Vision program, with presentations at a meeting of Europe's astronomers and planetary scientists in Paris. Among the favorites was the first gravitational wave observatory in space, called LISA, which had already been given a high scientific priority in the USA by NASA's 2007 Beyond Einstein review and by American astronomers' 2010 Decadal Review of Astronomy. But now NASA has admitted that cost overruns on its James Webb Space Telescope mission will remove so much money from its program that it cannot commit to being an equal partner with ESA on any major science mission in the near future.

ESA's management has reacted swiftly to this news because it must still find the best use for the whole of its space science budget for the rest of this decade. The LISA project team, as well as those of the other two missions -- IXO (a proposed space X- ray observatory) and JGO (a proposed mission to explore Jupiter's moons) -- have been asked to rethink their designs and scientific objectives to see if they can fit within a European-only funding envelope and still return good scientific results. Over the next year it is expected that ESA will officially adopt a new strategy in view of the NASA withdrawal, and then decide which of the three missions will best fit that strategy. Meanwhile, ESA scientists and engineers are supporting the science team of LISA as well as the other missions so that they arrive at the best possible redesign in a very short time.

The Albert Einstein Institute, as the world's largest research institute dedicated to exploring all aspects of Einstein's theory of gravitation, general relativity, is a major contributor to the LISA mission. “The European LISA team is working hard on the redesign now. We are optimistic that we can fit the new conditions and still deliver outstanding science by opening the gravitational wave window in space”, says Karsten Danzmann, European Mission Scientist for LISA and director at the Albert Einstein Institute in Hannover, Germany. “We hope that NASA will at least become a minor partner in a redesigned, smaller and less expensive LISA mission, and meanwhile we are benefiting greatly from the input of our US colleagues, who want to see LISA fly and do its unique science even if they do not get full partnership in it."

What I Do When I'm Not Working (and an Anniversary)

Most of the posts I've made to this blog have been almost exclusively about my work even though I want this blog to be about my life, both the scientific and the mundane. 
This passed Thursday, I only worked a half day (I've been working more 6 day weeks than not for a while now) since I had a moderate migraine.  This one wasn't bad as far as all of the headaches I've had in my life, but it was more than enough to make light hurt my eyes and make me want to curl up in bed until it goes away.  So, I took care of the work that had to be done that day (like another conference call) and spent the rest of the day tending to my migraine.  This amounted to the first decent amount of down time I've had in a while.  While I wouldn't wish migraines on anyone, I am sort of glad I have mine since they force me to stop and relax from time to time (they also can hit at times when I simply can't put my life on pause and that is when I curse them).

So, what did I do with my time?  Well, first you have to know a little bit about me...  If I had 3 words to describe myself, they would be 1) physicist, 2) vampires and 3) Halloween.  I adore vampires and have read almost 200 vampire books in the last 4 years.  I also like to get the audiobook versions of books I've already read and liked to go to sleep to; if I have already read them, I won't keep my self awake to find out what happens next.  Since my eyes hurt me too much to read, I rested in bed and listened to my favorite books while I waited for my medication to take effect.  After about 2 hours of this, I felt a little better and proceeded to read a little.

This weekend was Halloween and I ADORE the holiday.  I love all of the dark fun and the idea of getting to be someone else for an evening.  I'm not one to dress up, but since I love vampire books, it is fun to think about what the world would be like if things that went bump in the night were real.

To celebrate, my husband and I went on the haunted trail at the Cajun Country Corn Maze.  (Tip:  If you go around this time of year, just go for the haunted trail since there is no line for this - there was a line almost an 500 feet long just for the maze.  Come back later in November to do the maze.)  Below is me in the pillory at the corn maze.  I think it is just scary how washed out my face looks with a camera flash:

I also love autumn in general!  So much so, that my wedding was autumn themed the day after Halloween.  That's right, today is Derek's and my anniversary!  To celebrate, here is a picture of us just after the ceremony: