I am really concerned about making mistakes in my research. I am really cautious in how I interpret my results and triple check stuff all the time, add in all kinds of caveats in my discussion sections.
For example, I re-ran a huge set of analyses five different times for one paper, which took me months of extra time, on top of the year delay before I was convinced that a somewhat weird part of the dataset was legitimate to analyze in the way that I did (and it was really only "weird" because I lucked into discovering the resource so no one had ever applied a data set like it for that kind of analysis).
I am always amazed, impressed and kind of jealous at my colleagues who publish lots of glitzy papers with big sweeping interpretations. They totally aren't afraid to be wrong.
And, may I also point out, reviewers never seem to call them on it.
I want to be more gutsy.
I am at the point with a project that I have been working on for the last 14 years that it is time for big conclusions, broad sweeping ideas to be made. In fact, I am starting to get worried that someone is going to compile all my papers and do it themselves. Actually, there was a paper just published in a pretty high impact journal last month that sort of started this. And the authors did a sucky job of it.
So it is time for me to grow me some balls.
Any advice on how to do this? Any of you ever have this same problem?
Friday, December 16, 2011
Thursday, December 15, 2011
the next night
Do you ever think that maybe babies and cats have some sort of internal barometer so that they know when they got a little too close to the edge of their caretaker's sanity?
the next night M slept from 6pm-1:30am and then from 1:40am-6:45am. The cat slept at the foot of my bed the entire night.
Yes, you heard that right. For the first time in over a year I slept for 5 contiguous hours... amazing how that changes one's perspective on the world.
That did not happen the next night, but I was feeling so much better from the one decent night's sleep that it was ok.
the next night M slept from 6pm-1:30am and then from 1:40am-6:45am. The cat slept at the foot of my bed the entire night.
Yes, you heard that right. For the first time in over a year I slept for 5 contiguous hours... amazing how that changes one's perspective on the world.
That did not happen the next night, but I was feeling so much better from the one decent night's sleep that it was ok.
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
what was the point of going to bed at 9:30pm?
9:30pm lights out, sleepy
9:32pm cat wants under the covers
9:34pm, I roll over
9:35pm, cat jumps over my head so as to be on theother side of me, he prefers under the covers on my front side
9:36pm, I don't like the cat so close to my face when trying to sleep b/c I am mildly allergic and he makes me cough
9:37pm, I roll over again
9:38pm, cat leaves to get a kitty-crunchy snack
9:42pm, cat starts batting at my face, I pull covers over my head
9:43pm, cat starts attacking my hands just under the covers
9:44pm, I let him back under the covers
9:58pm, I roll over
10pm, cat jumps over my head to be on my front side
10:12pm, baby starts to cry
10:20pm, baby is still crying, harder now
10:25, I call out to baby and beg her to go back to sleep
10:27pm, cat starts bugging me again
10:30pm, I freak out and kick cat off of me and go to baby's room, she is standing in her crib totally freaking out crying
10:31pm, baby is in my arms asleep as I rock in the rocking chair
10:39pm, I lay sleeping baby down in her crib
10:40pm, baby starts crying again as I walk away from crib
10:41-43pm, I take cat outside and leave him there for the night
10:44pm, baby is crying really hard now
10:45pm, I close baby's door and my bedroom door and lay back down in bed, noticing that the sheets stink and wishing I had had time over the weekend to change them, but it was ridiculously hard just to find the time to wash my & baby's laundry and put all my clothes away that I had dropped on the floor in a state of exhaustion over the last 2 weeks
10:50pm, baby is still crying, and I have rolled over about 10 times trying to pretend like I can't hear it
10:55pm, the tension in my neck and back feels like a jack-in-the-box and I wish I could throw something across the room
11pm, I notice the clock and start feeling really mad that there is no way in hell I am going to get even a decent night's sleep at this point. Baby is still yowling in the other room.
11:10pm, baby is still yowling.
11:15pm, still crying
11:20pm, still crying
11:25pm, I go into baby's room, she is laying down facing the wall, crying. I pick her up and take her to the rocking chair, start to nurse her
11:40pm, try to unlatch myself from her asleep suckle-of-steel, she fusses a little but falls back to sleep
11:43pm, I lay her back down in her crib, she stays asleep as I leave the room
11:45pm, I am back in bed, wide awake
11:50pm, decide to blog about it
I honestly don't get this. Millions of years of evolution have mothers and babies coexisting. Adults have to sleep more than 1 hour at a time, and more like 6-8. While I know that cosleeping is an option, it isn't a viable one for me. Now that M is so mobile, she will crawl off the edge of the bed easily before I would be awake enough to notice. It is way too dangerous. Plus, every time I roll over I was waking her up. Our ancestors slept in nest for criminy sake, and that has all the same complicating factors as my bed. How did this work? Why can't I get a decent amount of sleep? I am honestly feeling like I might lose my mind...
9:32pm cat wants under the covers
9:34pm, I roll over
9:35pm, cat jumps over my head so as to be on theother side of me, he prefers under the covers on my front side
9:36pm, I don't like the cat so close to my face when trying to sleep b/c I am mildly allergic and he makes me cough
9:37pm, I roll over again
9:38pm, cat leaves to get a kitty-crunchy snack
9:42pm, cat starts batting at my face, I pull covers over my head
9:43pm, cat starts attacking my hands just under the covers
9:44pm, I let him back under the covers
9:58pm, I roll over
10pm, cat jumps over my head to be on my front side
10:12pm, baby starts to cry
10:20pm, baby is still crying, harder now
10:25, I call out to baby and beg her to go back to sleep
10:27pm, cat starts bugging me again
10:30pm, I freak out and kick cat off of me and go to baby's room, she is standing in her crib totally freaking out crying
10:31pm, baby is in my arms asleep as I rock in the rocking chair
10:39pm, I lay sleeping baby down in her crib
10:40pm, baby starts crying again as I walk away from crib
10:41-43pm, I take cat outside and leave him there for the night
10:44pm, baby is crying really hard now
10:45pm, I close baby's door and my bedroom door and lay back down in bed, noticing that the sheets stink and wishing I had had time over the weekend to change them, but it was ridiculously hard just to find the time to wash my & baby's laundry and put all my clothes away that I had dropped on the floor in a state of exhaustion over the last 2 weeks
10:50pm, baby is still crying, and I have rolled over about 10 times trying to pretend like I can't hear it
10:55pm, the tension in my neck and back feels like a jack-in-the-box and I wish I could throw something across the room
11pm, I notice the clock and start feeling really mad that there is no way in hell I am going to get even a decent night's sleep at this point. Baby is still yowling in the other room.
11:10pm, baby is still yowling.
11:15pm, still crying
11:20pm, still crying
11:25pm, I go into baby's room, she is laying down facing the wall, crying. I pick her up and take her to the rocking chair, start to nurse her
11:40pm, try to unlatch myself from her asleep suckle-of-steel, she fusses a little but falls back to sleep
11:43pm, I lay her back down in her crib, she stays asleep as I leave the room
11:45pm, I am back in bed, wide awake
11:50pm, decide to blog about it
I honestly don't get this. Millions of years of evolution have mothers and babies coexisting. Adults have to sleep more than 1 hour at a time, and more like 6-8. While I know that cosleeping is an option, it isn't a viable one for me. Now that M is so mobile, she will crawl off the edge of the bed easily before I would be awake enough to notice. It is way too dangerous. Plus, every time I roll over I was waking her up. Our ancestors slept in nest for criminy sake, and that has all the same complicating factors as my bed. How did this work? Why can't I get a decent amount of sleep? I am honestly feeling like I might lose my mind...
behavior modification
While M has definitely figured out how to go to sleep at night well, she still wakes up a lot. I tried to tell myself not to go to her until she'd been in her crib for at least 7 hours, thinking that was a good time-frame for when she might actually be getting hungry. That worked perfectly for one night.
Then I ran into the problem that she was having total melt downs from the moment I put her in her car seat coming home from day care until she went to bed.
I am sort of slow, but after 3 evenings of this I decided to try pickng her up earlier and putting her to bed at a ridiculously early hour (despite everything and everyone I checked with saying 6:30-7pm is a good bedtime for her age).
THAT worked like a charm. She was her wonderful sweet little M self, and totally zonked out without any tears at all by 5:45pm.
But then she starts waking up at 1am, and maybe every 2.5 hours from then on out...
I do not have enough adrenaline for this schedule.
The answer for my sanity is to go to sleep early. But there is really no way I can go to sleep at 6pm, which would be what it would take to get a solid 5 hours. But I am trying to sleep train myslef to go to bed around 9:30pm.
And I am trying to find a good way to work my schedule so that I can pick M up at 4pm every day, but it is so hard not to have things get scheduled up until 5pm, since I work in the 12-hour-work-day-world. But I am working on it. One really nice thing about the super early bedtime, aside from having a happier baby which is obviously the best part of it, is that my brain still sort of functions at 6pm. So this evening I wrote 2 letters of recommedation and quickly perused a re-review for a journal after M went to sleep. Can you say "productive"? yippee!
Ethical/child torture question for you:
1) grandmother's retirement community is coming to a nighttime Christmas tree thing very close to my house on Thursday. It doesn't start until 6:30pm. I know it would mean the world to her if her grand daughter were there to meet her, esp in front of all her new friends. While M might be ok at the time because of all the excitement, do you think it is ok to torture one's child for something like this?
2) ditto for a volunteer santa thing I have going on on Sunday. It doesn't start until 6pm and is an hour away from where I live... I can likely be home by 8pm.
do you think it is ok to keep a 9 month old up way past her bedtime to accommodate some adult needs from time to time? Or, should I work a little harder on modifying my behavior and just say that I can't keep her out/up that long past her bedtime? so hard to find the line between me being over-protective & freaky and my being selfish and not respecting M's routine enough...
Then I ran into the problem that she was having total melt downs from the moment I put her in her car seat coming home from day care until she went to bed.
I am sort of slow, but after 3 evenings of this I decided to try pickng her up earlier and putting her to bed at a ridiculously early hour (despite everything and everyone I checked with saying 6:30-7pm is a good bedtime for her age).
THAT worked like a charm. She was her wonderful sweet little M self, and totally zonked out without any tears at all by 5:45pm.
But then she starts waking up at 1am, and maybe every 2.5 hours from then on out...
I do not have enough adrenaline for this schedule.
The answer for my sanity is to go to sleep early. But there is really no way I can go to sleep at 6pm, which would be what it would take to get a solid 5 hours. But I am trying to sleep train myslef to go to bed around 9:30pm.
And I am trying to find a good way to work my schedule so that I can pick M up at 4pm every day, but it is so hard not to have things get scheduled up until 5pm, since I work in the 12-hour-work-day-world. But I am working on it. One really nice thing about the super early bedtime, aside from having a happier baby which is obviously the best part of it, is that my brain still sort of functions at 6pm. So this evening I wrote 2 letters of recommedation and quickly perused a re-review for a journal after M went to sleep. Can you say "productive"? yippee!
Ethical/child torture question for you:
1) grandmother's retirement community is coming to a nighttime Christmas tree thing very close to my house on Thursday. It doesn't start until 6:30pm. I know it would mean the world to her if her grand daughter were there to meet her, esp in front of all her new friends. While M might be ok at the time because of all the excitement, do you think it is ok to torture one's child for something like this?
2) ditto for a volunteer santa thing I have going on on Sunday. It doesn't start until 6pm and is an hour away from where I live... I can likely be home by 8pm.
do you think it is ok to keep a 9 month old up way past her bedtime to accommodate some adult needs from time to time? Or, should I work a little harder on modifying my behavior and just say that I can't keep her out/up that long past her bedtime? so hard to find the line between me being over-protective & freaky and my being selfish and not respecting M's routine enough...
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
dumb question
how do you tell if an 8.5 month old is hungry in the middle of the night? this parenting stuff was easier when M was a few weeks old and would gnaw on her fist when she was hungry...
Monday, December 5, 2011
baby sleep, part 2
The most amazing thing happened after the night I fell asleep to M's crying...
The next night she was up in the middle of the night again, getting more and more wound up wanting to play. After 1.5 hours of this, around 2am, I sat her down in her crib, kissed her forehead and told her that it was time to go to sleep, She fussed, but not very sincerely, for 3 minutes. She then laid down and cooed at her stuffed froggy for about an hour and then fell asleep.
The next night she was getting all hyper as I was trying to put her to bed, so I tried the same thing. Literally sat her in her crib upright (she was too awake to lay down), kissed her forehead and wished her a good night. You know what? she fussed for about 10 seconds as I walked out the room but then went to sleep. It has been like that every night since. This weekend I tried it with naps. It worked! She was still awake, I kissed her forehead and said "sweet dreams" and walked out of the room. After a few seconds of half-hearted protest she quietly coos at her toys or goes right to sleep. And then when she wakes up she just hangs out cooing at her toys. I have gone in to "wake" her up every time...
Crazy. Seriously weirds me out. But man, oh, man, is this wonderful!
I feel so incredibly fortunate that we seem to have gotten here with very very minimal crying-it-out pain.
Now, anyone have tips on how to get her to not wake up at 1am, 3am, and 5am? me is so, so, so, tired.
BTW, that letter of rec is done and I am now starting to read one of those dissertations...
The next night she was up in the middle of the night again, getting more and more wound up wanting to play. After 1.5 hours of this, around 2am, I sat her down in her crib, kissed her forehead and told her that it was time to go to sleep, She fussed, but not very sincerely, for 3 minutes. She then laid down and cooed at her stuffed froggy for about an hour and then fell asleep.
The next night she was getting all hyper as I was trying to put her to bed, so I tried the same thing. Literally sat her in her crib upright (she was too awake to lay down), kissed her forehead and wished her a good night. You know what? she fussed for about 10 seconds as I walked out the room but then went to sleep. It has been like that every night since. This weekend I tried it with naps. It worked! She was still awake, I kissed her forehead and said "sweet dreams" and walked out of the room. After a few seconds of half-hearted protest she quietly coos at her toys or goes right to sleep. And then when she wakes up she just hangs out cooing at her toys. I have gone in to "wake" her up every time...
Crazy. Seriously weirds me out. But man, oh, man, is this wonderful!
I feel so incredibly fortunate that we seem to have gotten here with very very minimal crying-it-out pain.
Now, anyone have tips on how to get her to not wake up at 1am, 3am, and 5am? me is so, so, so, tired.
BTW, that letter of rec is done and I am now starting to read one of those dissertations...
Sunday, December 4, 2011
and yes, I should be doing something else
like preparing for the talk I have to give at noon tomorrow, or writing the letter of recommedation for a colleague's big award nomination that is due on Tuesday (and has to be cowritten with a jerk colleague who insisted that he is busier than I am), or reading at least one of the two dissertations that got dropped on my lap by students who are late and absolutely have to have my comments back by wednsday, or reviewing that article that was due on Nov 29th.
but you know what? I am finding it very difficult to care. I had such a nice day playing with M, putting up a christmas tree and then doing a photo shoot of M in her santa dress in front of it, and then in her grinch t-shirt... and now I am catching up on blog posts.
life is good. M has taught me to really step away. It will all work out somehow...
but you know what? I am finding it very difficult to care. I had such a nice day playing with M, putting up a christmas tree and then doing a photo shoot of M in her santa dress in front of it, and then in her grinch t-shirt... and now I am catching up on blog posts.
life is good. M has taught me to really step away. It will all work out somehow...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)