tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5349025651070168896.post2268823826862199725..comments2024-02-10T02:51:24.273-07:00Comments on Mom, Ph.D.: Is It My Heart That's Broken--or My Career?Mom, Ph.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/06382723864273701137noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5349025651070168896.post-28143293995041298772010-11-03T15:24:41.739-06:002010-11-03T15:24:41.739-06:00I hope so.
I do and will continue to judge indivi...I hope so. <br />I do and will continue to judge individuals as individuals when I agree to take them on as advisees. That's a crucial point to emphasize, so I'm glad you did.<br /><br />I wanted to bring in to the conversation through my post that student choices about whether to continue or not, in a cumulative sense can impact the adviser and the adviser's career. <br /><br />I don't have a specific conclusion for people to draw from this. But knowledge is power, and as a grad student, I was pretty clueless about such things. <br /><br />So, I have a bad track record with grad students finishing relative to my peers. We maintain close relationships--so I'm not driving them out. But they leave nonetheless. And after a point, I needed to vent a little by saying that I really wish some would stay. I had such hopes for them, and for me continuing to work with them, helping them get that first job, seeing them at conferences, putting their book on my shelf, etc.Mom, Ph.D.https://www.blogger.com/profile/06382723864273701137noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5349025651070168896.post-52526038536149168082010-11-03T14:22:40.134-06:002010-11-03T14:22:40.134-06:00In my graduate program, a higher percentage of wom...In my graduate program, a higher percentage of women are still in academic positions than men. (A higher percentage are also still single.) However, the men and women who left left for different reasons. It is very easy to forget the man who left to pursue a 6 figure career on Wall Street but not so the woman who married another student and had a baby and put her career second.<br /><br />A post-doc I applied to specifically wanted men and single women only because women on the program kept having babies. Because a post-doc is a perfect time to have babies. BUT these women are doing better in their fields despite having had the baby than the men who also did the post-doc. But the professors still remember all the pregnant women (and what a waste), and not the fact that their careers recovered.<br /><br />While I was a student at my graduate program, we lost one IT person because she had a baby and decided not to come back, one because he got a better job in industry, and one because he was arrested by the feds. But they don't want to hire another woman because she'll just have a baby and leave.<br /><br />In the labor market in general, the statistics on tenure are such that men and women have the same predicted tenure. But they leave jobs for different reasons. Men leave to work for a competitor, women leave to focus on their families. But if you survey employers, they only remember the women leaving for their families, and not the men leaving for other jobs. Leaving for another job isn't as available in their minds.<br /><br />I think it is still best to judge individuals as individuals. Women may be more likely to care about work-life balance or they may just be the people you remember actually caring about work-life balance. If you write down the numbers for your entire program, I bet you'll see an equal propensity to drop out. Maybe not among your students because maybe you attract a certain sub-segment. But among your program as a whole, unless there's some serious discrimination making it worse for women (like there is at UIUC engineering, I have heard), it'll probably be about equal.Nicolehttp://nicoleandmaggie.wordpress.comnoreply@blogger.com