Catching Up with STS – Meridith Edition

HELLO FRIENDS! It has been a long, tough year since Rachel and I have posted here on Sweet Tea, Science. We’ve tried to keep up with people via Twitter (Mer’s, Rach’s, and the STS accounts) and Instagram (again we all have one!) but we started feeling that blogging itch once more, so we’re back. We wanted to start with updates on our academic and personal lives, because this blog is about the science journeys of two actual living people. We’ve had some highs and lows. Some heart-breaking tragedies and some magical love-filled unions.

Summer 2017

This time last year I was enjoying the perks of summer in Colorado while exploring the in’s and out’s of working in an industry setting. I’ve had many summer adventures/internships/travels, but any work I’ve done has been 100% within the realm of academia. However, via a connection made through my advisor at the big statistics conference (Joint Statistical Meeting or JSM), I landed an internship at an environmental consulting agency. The further along I get in my studies the more certain I am I’d like to explore career options outside of academia; so this was an amazing opportunity.  

I worked with Neptune & Co., a small but growing environmental consulting company focusing on environmental decision making though quality assurance, data science, and risk assessment. As an intern, I helped the other statisticians working on a project modelling the future (millions of years future!) risks and impacts of nuclear waste storage around the US. I loved being able to learn about an important issue from experts in various fields while applying what I’ve been learning over the past few years in my PhD studies.

We focused on the biotic impact portion of the models and worked to use what precious few data are available to create some distributions for variable such as: plant root shape,root depth, burrow depths, etc. All of these factors can potentially bring up buried contaminants if the burrows or roots venture too deep. It’s important to represent these as distributions (e.g. a Normal distribution LINK) rather than a point estimate (e.g. a mean or median) because it allows for more representation of uncertainty in the model.

Also we did lots of hiking and took adorable photos!IMG_7278.jpg Continue reading “Catching Up with STS – Meridith Edition” →

User Guide for Grad Students Worried about the End of the World

Note: I originally published this article in the 4th volume of The Brickyard, the graduate student publication edited and put together by a group of folks in the UC Davis Grad Group in Ecology.  You can find a link to that publication here, and the article below is largely the same.  I’ve made a few minor changes and conjugated the title in a more pleasing way. I hope you like it!

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On the fourth day of the new presidential administration, I got an email from my funding source saying they didn’t know if the money would keep coming.  I knew the attitude toward science would shift with the change in power, but I never expected such concrete impacts to my life within the first week.  When my paycheck did come two weeks later, I knew I had to change my approach.  I wanted to feel I was working to make things better, and if I experienced a near miss, it’s almost certain someone else had taken the hit.  Like any good type A personality, I knew what I really needed was a plan.   

I read a lot of think pieces, I talked to a lot of folks I respect, and, in the end, I developed an approach that felt right for me.  I offer you my own guidelines now, not as prescription, but as an attempt to empower you to make a plan for how you will approach the coming years.  Interrogating my own motivations and priorities was emotionally taxing, time consuming, and frustrating.  Inventorying my special skills required grappling with imposter syndrome for the millionth, and I’m sure not last, time.  I still haven’t gotten over the daunting size of the issues we face, but as Cairns and Crawford once wrote, “It is almost too late to start, but tomorrow is even later.”

——— Continue reading “User Guide for Grad Students Worried about the End of the World” →

Day in the PhD Life: Statistician

I hope everyone checked out Rachel’s last post. It really refueled my own motivation tank, and, when combined with the cool Snapchap time filter photos I love on Insta, I came up with this lovely Day in the Life post. Three years into my Statistics PhD and I’m finally starting to get a feel for what a ‘typical’ day means for me. My life is currently a balancing act between research, class, teaching, and Real Life™. Sound familiar? Not everyday is the same; not every week is the same. I love how my schedule is very flexible in regard to what and where I get to work. Last Friday I photo-documented my day, so I could bring everyone along with me. Check it out


img_5976Wake Up Time: I tell myself every night that I’m going to wake up at 7 am so I can be super productive in the morning. Ideally, 7-9 am would consist of working out, nomming breakfast, then getting supes cute for the day. I did not wake up at 7 am today. Today was a second alarm, one snooze kinda morning. This is pretty typical, and if I’m honest, it’s a little earlier than normal.

Morning Yoga: My partner Benjamin and I are currently emerging from our winter hibernation into some spring activity. I always feel better when I get some exercise in a few days a week, but it’s really difficult to remember that when I’m warm under the covers. STS favorite and fellow blogger, Beth of Finding Delight,  had recommended Adrienne’s 30 Days of Yoga series on Youtube. It’s great for beginners (or out of practicers, like me) and the videos range from 15 to 30 minutes. Adrienne is my girl. I love her goofiness, her wild Tiger leggings,  and how
she totally gets how I feel about ab work.

Continue reading “Day in the PhD Life: Statistician” →