Category Archives: Work

Leader, Follower, or Collaborator – What am I?

National Blog Posting Month – December 2012 – Work

Prompt – Do you feel most comfortable being a leader, a follower, or a collaborator?

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This is an interesting prompt. Truth is, I’m not comfortable being a leader, though I have done it, successfully, on many occasions. I know this is because I have an anxiety disorder – social anxiety – that makes me kind of flip out when all eyes are on me. Years of therapy and medications have helped me a long ways. Now I know that it’s a disorder and that it’s not just that I’m shy, for example. Turns out, I’m actually very extroverted (which everyone who knows me believes), but that I have this annoying disorder that causes me to freeze in social situations. Luckily, I know this now and can (most of the time) fight past it and get on with what needs to be done. But the end result is that I have a difficult time with leadership. I do it, but I’m happy when it’s over.

But the extroversion makes it really hard to just sit back and be a follower as well. I’ll follow happily enough when something is new to me; my anxiety keeps me quiet. But once I feel competent at something, I lose interest in merely following. The extrovert comes out and sometimes I wind up taking charge. And then the anxiety comes back because I worry that I’ve offended someone or something. It’s a nuisance, really.

I really enjoy collaborating with others. The joy there is that I am treated as equal, but that someone else has to make to phone calls, and get all the permissions that may be needed (say for a grant proposal) and I can just sit back and wait until they ask me to do something. I lend my expertise where it’s needed and am present when needed, and keep out of it otherwise. It’s a nice balance.

The only problem is that when there’s something I really want done, I have a hard time rallying the troops (as it were) to collaborate with me. I’ve submitted a few grant proposals as Principal Investigator and it’s been really, really hard to do it, generally because I can’t get the rest of the team on board adequately and my (stupid) anxiety causes me to not be quite pushy enough to keep everyone motivated.

Thankfully, I’m in a place where people are seeking me out now for potential collaborations (see yesterday’s post). I have a skill that few others have, that is in demand. Not high demand mind you, but in demand enough that I can keep busy and paid.

So does it matter which of these terms (leader, follower, collaborator) are most comfortable to me. I know myself. I’m making it work. I’m happy. That’s all that’s needed.

For 12-4-12

What am I a “pro” at? – Isotopic Analysis of Bioapatites

National Blog Posting Month – December 2012 – Work

Prompt – What do you consider yourself a “pro” at?

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It seems strange to ever consider myself a “pro” at anything. I’m ‘good’ at a lot of things, and feel like I’m pretty well-rounded as a person and a scientist, to say “pro” makes me hesitate.

However, there is one topic (work-related, of course) that about which it appears that I am considered a world expert. I get sufficient requests from entities globally each year to corroborate that conclusion. On that one thing, I will – still reluctantly – call myself a “pro.” That topic is the analysis of light stable isotopes from bioapatites.

In English, this is basically the geochemical analysis of tooth enamel. I work mostly with the teeth of fossil mammals. The data collected from such analyses can be used to interpret ancient environments and habits and dietary preferences of extinct animals. From that, we can study things like climate changes that occurred millions of years ago. That’s my schtick.

There are lots of scientists actually that work with such data. By lots, I mean maybe a few hundred, so still a small number but greater than zero. What makes me unique is that I’m one of the very, very few who actually knows how to operate the instrumentation to do the analyses. It’s one thing to understand how to interpret the data. It’s quite another to know how to get the data. Not only can I run the analyses, I can replicate my results, which is actually much harder than it sounds.

I always giggle a bit when I get an e-mail that says something to the effect of “I’ve heard you’re the best at this, so here’s some samples, can you run them?” My first thought is, Clearly these people haven’t met me. But I get these requests from all over the world, with projects pending and running from Australia, Brazil, Uruguay, and Siberia, not to mention the stuff happening in the United States, so there must be something to it.

So that’s what I’m a “pro” at, I guess. Isotopic analysis of bioapatites. I’ll put that on my resume.

For 12-3-12