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January 25, 2021January 25, 2021

Anchors Aweigh: Meet the Founders of SWMS

In the spring of 2014, Dr. Alexis Yelton had the idea of organizing a meeting for women in marine science to foster professional connections between junior women in the field and senior women. Alexis had successfully acquired funding to support the event through her NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship. At the time, she was a post-doc in Dr. Penny Chisholm’s lab at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, MA, USA, and labmate and PhD student Katya Moniz joined the effort of planning the meeting. They recruited Bethanie Edwards and Sophie Chu, both PhD students in the MIT-Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI) Joint Program, to help plan the event. The founders each held a variety of individual identities that coalesced around the shared identity of being a woman in marine science. Individual identities represented by the group of founders included multiple aspects of religion, ethnicity, motherhood, immigrant generation, and career stage.

In September 2014, the first full-day SWMS Symposium was held at WHOI in Woods Hole, MA, USA. Attendees included people from the marine science field from the New England region. The keynote speaker of the event was Dr. Penny Chisholm. This first SWMS event was so well-received that the four founding members decided to continue and expand SWMS to create a wider community to support and advance women in marine science. As of December 2020, there have been seven additional SWMS Symposiums held, over 1800 individuals added to the email list, and 27 Chapters formed in the U.S. and internationally. Read on for reflections from the founders on their motivation for starting SWMS and their career updates.

Alexis Yelton

Motivation to start SWMS: As an environmental microbiologist, I wanted to create an organization like SWMS because I wanted to find a way to connect with other women in academia. I was considering whether I wanted to pursue an academic career at the time and was concerned about my ability to have a family while focusing on my work. The lack of role models who had done just that was very clear to me, so I wanted to seek them out as well as introduce myself to a broader community of women in oceanography.

Where you are now: Ultimately, I decided to leave academia, but I was incredibly happy to see that others saw SWMS as a valuable resource. I hope that it provided the support to women in the field that I had imagined. After leaving academia I pursued a career in data science, which has been a great fit for me. I am currently the Head of Data Science at a cybersecurity startup.

Katya Moniz

Motivation to start SWMS: As the mother of a 1-year-old and 3-year-old when I started graduate school, I was acutely aware of the extra challenges many women face in terms of balancing studies with being a primary caregiver at home. The fact that I couldn’t devote as much time to academics and research as other students in the program, and also the fact that I came from a largely non-science background, made it especially difficult to move past what I now know was impostor syndrome, which affects so many women in academia and particularly in science. My hope in creating the SWMS was to offer women in marine science a source of support and mentorship to help them thrive in science, whatever stage of their academic journey they were at.

Where you are now: I’m the Research Lead in Eric Alm’s lab in Biological Engineering at MIT, where I’m involved in the Global Microbiome Conservancy project, and our wastewater-based epidemiology work, which is currently focused on monitoring the COVID-19 pandemic.

Bethanie Edwards

Motivation to start SWMS: When an email went out looking for grad students to help organize a symposium for women in marine science. I jumped at the opportunity to be involved; As an underrepresented minority in STEM, I knew building an inclusive community could really help diversify the field of oceanography and increase the visibility of women in marine science.

Where you are now: I am now an assistant professor in the Earth and Planetary Science Department at UC-Berkeley. Using time-series sites and laboratory experiments, my lab group studies the impacts of various microbial interactions on carbon cycling in the ocean. My hope is to continue bringing scientists together from a wide range of ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds, gender identities and orientations, and academic expertise to ask complex questions in a holistic manner. I currently serve on the inaugural SWMS Board of Directors.

Sophie Chu

Motivation to start SWMS: I was in a bit of a lull at the end of my 3rd year in grad school and was looking for some excitement. I had participated in a few women in science groups during college and had found talking to other women in STEM both validating and inspirational. Upon receiving Alexis’ email asking for help organizing the SWMS Symposium, I was excited at the opportunity to be part of this group to create a network and resource for women in marine science. I have grown both personally and professionally with the help of SWMS and its members and can’t wait to see what the future holds.
Where you are now: I am currently a research scientist at the University of Washington/NOAA Pacific Marine Environmental Lab. My work primarily focuses on evaluating existing sensors and developing new technology to understand carbon cycling and ocean acidification. I am currently on the SWMS Steering Committee as a Chapter Liaison and the Seattle Chapter Steering Committee.

January 25, 2021January 25, 2021

The Origins of SWMS

This is the first part in a series of reflections from the Society for Women in Marine Science (SWMS) 2020 Steering Committee (SC) to increase the transparency of our internal discussions with our members and to interrogate how SWMS can ensure that anti-racist values are core to our newly-formed non-profit organization. We encourage feedback from SWMS members, advisors, and the marine science community on the ideas presented here and topics for future reflections. Feedback can be submitted as named or anonymous using this Google Doc, an email to swms.general.contact@gmail.com, a message on the SWMS Slack (#feedback-and-development channel), or a message to any SC member.

Part I: The HERstory of SWMS and Current Growth

The Society for Women in Marine Science (SWMS) was founded by a diverse group of early-career women from male-dominated and predominantly white institutions (PWIs). Read more about the founders in this blog post. The founders each held a variety of individual identities that coalesced around the shared identity of being a woman in marine science. The creation of SWMS was motivated by the need for a network and formal resource platform for women in marine science. We would like to acknowledge our founders and their roles at the time SWMS was founded: Dr. Alexis Yelton, a postdoc at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); Dr. Katya Moniz, a graduate student at MIT; Dr. Bethanie Edwards, a graduate student in the MIT-Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI) Joint Program; and Dr. Sophie Chu, a graduate student in the MIT-WHOI Joint Program. These four women originally formed SWMS to organize a symposium for women in science, with the possibility of creating a network to help increase retention of women in academia. In 2014, they ran the first SWMS Symposium as a day-long event at WHOI. The event was primarily supported by funding from the broader impacts section of Dr. Alexis Yelton’s NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship. Since then, SWMS Symposia continue to be flagship events for the organization with one (and sometimes two) each year! As of December 2020 with the virtual SWMS Symposium organized by the University of Rhode Island (URI) SWMS Chapter, we will have held eight different SWMS Symposia reaching hundreds of attendees, supported by many university and corporate sponsors.

SWMS continues to grow in ways previously unimagined. In 2018, SWMS leadership was formalized through a Steering Committee of graduate students from MIT-WHOI and URI. The majority of the 2018-2020 SWMS Steering Committee is white-presenting cis women who are based at PWIs, which limits the breadth of perspectives and voices represented in and by SWMS. Additionally, we recognize that not all identities are evident from appearance, so we’ve shared our individual identities and journeys in marine science in some previous SWMS newsletters and blog posts. This Spring 2021, we will hold the first elections for the Steering Committee. We hope that these elections will be an opportunity to diversify and expand the representation of leaders on the Steering Committee.

SWMS has attained legal standing as a non-profit organization with a Board of Directors using donations from a successful GoFundMe campaign. SWMS now runs with a modest budget, with currently a little over US$3,000 in the bank. To date, we have established over 20 SWMS Chapters around the globe, gained over 1800 individuals on our email list, drafted a research manuscript examining symposia surveys, and held events at international ocean conferences. In addition to these quantifiable accomplishments, we are especially encouraged by feedback from members that they found a new and positive sense of community within marine science through SWMS.

We recognize that our values and actions can mobilize our community in many ways, running the risk of upholding elements of the status quo, including white supremacy, anti-blackness, and colonialism. Instead, we commit to strive for justice in ways that center all marginalized groups within marine science. We are actively interrogating who has power, whose voice is being heard, and how we are all using the SWMS platform.

Similar to its start, SWMS has continued to be a grassroots organization that relies on volunteer leaders to run the group through the Steering Committee, Symposium Planning Committees, and Chapter Leads. SWMS leaders are graduate students and early-career professionals within five years of obtaining their last degree, which is central to our goal of providing leadership and career development opportunities to women to improve retention and success in marine science fields. As we become more formalized, we want to maintain the grassroots aspect in a way that advances intersectional feminism in marine science and promotes leadership by a large and diverse network of early-career marine scientists. With the growth of SWMS from 2014 to 2020, our sphere of influence is increasing, with a platform both within the US and internationally. Steering Committee leaders speak several times a year on international panels at scientific conferences and virtually. SWMS Chapters include high school focused groups like the chapter within Black Girls Dive Foundation, university-affiliated groups, regional chapters on the East and West coasts of the U.S., and international chapters in Brazil and Nigeria. SWMS Chapters are increasingly receiving funding and recognition for their community and scientific work with a growing number of SWMS events. SWMS is active on social media through Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram and has a community Slack channel. We recognize that our values and actions can mobilize our community in many ways, running the risk of upholding elements of the status quo, including white supremacy, anti-blackness, and colonialism. Instead, we commit to strive for justice in ways that center all marginalized groups within marine science. We are actively interrogating who has power, whose voice is being heard, and how we are all using the SWMS platform.

We’re grateful for the trust and continued engagement from the marine science community, and we recognize that the exciting development of SWMS has pointed out unexpected challenges and shortcomings along the way. Particularly, we have aspects of diversity, inclusion, and intersectionality within SWMS which we can improve upon and build up. We want to ensure that the current underlying principles and values of SWMS are clear to our members. Also, we wish to listen to our members about what principles and values are important to them and how SWMS can better support those. We find this particularly important to establish prior to the 2021 Steering Committee elections, and we look forward to new leaders bringing fresh perspectives and voices to SWMS through these leadership positions.

Current areas of SWMS which we are reflecting upon, considering action steps, and seeking feedback include:

Governance and transparency:

We are evaluating the creation of “SWMS Guiding Principles” to clarify SWMS principles for Chapters and members, who are the real-time agents of action and representatives of SWMS. We seek input about conducting the 2021 Steering Committee elections and how to best recruit future SWMS leaders from diverse backgrounds. We likewise believe it is vital to increase the transparency of Steering Committee discussions and decisions.

Membership:

We are working to define what it means to be a SWMS member. We also are focused on how to ensure SWMS members are represented in leadership and decision-making. This requires us to learn how to gather data on membership demographics. As we recruit members, we want to make sure that SWMS is an organization that actively supports leadership by diverse early-career marine scientists and whose members come from diverse backgrounds.

Events:

An important goal is to increase the participation of diverse speakers and attendees at SWMS Symposia Chapter events and within local chapters. We are seeking input on best practices to support Chapter-led SWMS symposia and events.

Organization name and mission statement:

We are reflecting on how the name “Society for Women in Marine Science” relates to inclusion, particularly in regards to who feels comfortable being a member and welcomed within the group. We are also evaluating the SWMS mission statement, and how it relates to the inclusion of historically marginalized groups within marine science.

These areas all are important, and we expect to gather even more topics to interrogate from your feedback. These require lengthy discussion and thought, so they will be covered in-depth in a series of reflections released over the coming months. We hope that anyone from across the marine science community will engage in this conversation with us — that you will comment on how SWMS can better uphold the values of inclusion and support for our members’ intersectional identities.

Signed,

The SWMS Steering Committee

#SWMSteam in pink over a background of water, with a swordfish, Antarctica, and a sediment core

June 9, 2020June 9, 2020

Black Lives Matter

The Society for Women in Marine Science stands in solidarity with protestors and grass-roots organizers across the country who demand an end to police brutality, and that we dismantle white supremacy in order to build a society that is safe and equitable for Black people.

White supremacy and anti-Black violence prevents Black marine scientists from accessing the resources and power needed to fully participate in marine science.

Our mission is to support and uplift women who work in the field of marine science. In order to do this, we need to acknowledge that science is complicit in the culture of white supremacy that resulted in the murder of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery, among countless others. White supremacy and anti-Black violence prevents Black marine scientists from accessing the resources and power needed to fully participate in marine science. Institutionalized racism prevents marine science from doing work in the service of all people. Uplifting Black marine scientists’ important contributions is central to the SWMS mission. We are actively working to build a safe and just environment for present and future Black marine scientists.

Taking Action

We encourage all SWMS members to engage in anti-racism work, to pull down the systems of oppression, racism, and inequality that exist within ourselves, our workplaces, our communities, academia, and the world at large. We urge non-Black members to find ways to donate money, time, and other resources to causes including Black Lives Matter, Movement 4 Black Lives, Color of Change, bail fund networks, voter registration, and more.

We also encourage our members to do the hard work closer to home, to listen and learn. There are so many resources available for this work, including Dr. Ibram X. Kendi’s’ books and his anti-racist reading list, Black feminist thinkers such as Dr. Angela Davis, and hashtags like #BlackinSTEM and #BlackinNature to find new scientists to follow and collaborate with.

ShutdownSTEM: June 10th, 2020

Finally, we support the #ShutdownSTEM and #ShutdownAcademia actions for this Wednesday, June 10. We ask non-Black SWMS members to disrupt business as usual, educate themselves, and make a plan for a lifelong commitment to meaningful anti-racist work. We will have a channel in our Slack workspace (open to all members) devoted to conversations about anti-racism work, which will be actively monitored and facilitated by members of the SWMS Steering Committee.

Sincerely,
The SWMS Steering Committee

January 21, 2020January 21, 2020

Update on our non-profit status

By Chrissy Hernandez, Steering Committee chair

We’re super excited to announce our progress on becoming a non-profit! First of all, we want to reiterate our deepest gratitude to all the folks who donated to our fundraiser, whether it was $2 or $200. Our base of members, family, and friends have made this transition possible. Of course, we have to note that if you’d like to support us further, you can send us funds via PayPal (not yet tax-deductible).

Since June 2019, we’ve been working with a lawyer to draft by-laws and make some decisions about the structure of SWMS, Inc. We’re ready to file the paperwork, and we’ll officially be a non-profit organization very soon!

Our Steering Committee will still be making decisions about the day-to-day management of SWMS. In the coming years, at least 4 of the Steering Committee positions will be Officers elected by a general vote of members: President, Vice President, Secretary, and Treasurer. You can read more about the current structure of our Steering Committee here, and recent Pod Posts introducing many of us!

Introducing our Board of Directors

A wonderful bonus of being a non-profit corporation is that we will have input and oversight from a Board of Directors. We’ve identified the first SWMS Board of Directors! The Board of Directors currently consists of four longtime SWMS supporters who bring a wealth of expertise and passion to SWMS, and the SWMS President. This group will meet one to two times per year to discuss the mission and funding for SWMS. As these initial Directors end their terms in the coming years, new Directors will be elected by a general vote of members.

Without further ado, we are so excited to announce our inaugural Board of Directors (in alphabetical order by last name):

Dr. Bethanie Edwards (UC Berkeley)
Dr. Yuki Honjo (McLane Research Labs, Inc.)
Dr. Rick Murray (WHOI)
Dr. Heidi Sosik (WHOI)

This group spans a range of career stages, but they’ve all been instrumental in supporting SWMS. The board also has a broad range of expertise, including academic research, business development, public and private funding of science, and best practices for broadening participation in science.

We’re so excited to see where the next couple of years take us!

December 18, 2019November 23, 2020

Pod Post: a letter from Alexa Sterling

Hi, I’m Alexa Sterling, the Research Coordinator on the SWMS Steering Committee and PhD student at the University of Rhode Island (URI). I’m an officer on the current Steering Committee, and I’m excited to share how I became involved with SWMS – from attending my first SWMS Symposium alone, to starting the URI SWMS Chapter, and now serving on the SWMS Steering Committee. And most importantly, how this group has provided the support, friendship, and inspiration to “just keep SWMSing” to the PhD finish line.

In the first year of grad school, I was forwarded the 2015 SWMS Symposium event announcement with the message “great group, great event.” New to grad school, I didn’t want to miss out on meeting SWMS and learning more about them. But being new to the area meant I didn’t know many people to join me/carpool/be my lunch buddy. So I worked up the courage, signed up last minute, couldn’t figure out how to pay registration, drove to the meeting alone, and sat down in the auditorium nervous but excited. In these early days of science Twitter, I used #SWMS15 to break the ice (@AquaticSterling, give me a 👋). I left that day excited about new connections and inspired by senior women in the field.

I had to bring this SWMS community to my institution, so I found other graduate students who felt the same way and sent listserv emails to survey interest from students and faculty. I received over 50 responses from individuals interested in SWMS at URI, and the first SWMS Chapter was established with a lot of help from students, post-docs, faculty, and staff at URI. We even held our own SWMS Symposium with over 120 attendees just two years later!

I knew I felt an impact from SWMS – I’m more confident speaking my mind, I go to conferences and see SWMS friends, I actively set work boundaries for balance, and I feel inspired to continue on this path in marine science that I know women before me helped clear. I wanted to quantify these impacts, and critically examine how to improve and increase positive impacts. I thought of advice I received at my first SWMS Symposium: “sometimes make opportunities” and that’s how I joined the Steering Committee as Research Coordinator – through a position I helped create. So, we assembled a great research team to create and assess surveys for before and after SWMS Symposiums. You may have even taken one of these – thank you!! We now have responses from three different SWMS Symposiums in three different states. Stay tuned, we’re excited to share the results of these with you!

Alexa

December 18, 2019November 23, 2020

Pod Post: a letter from Jessica Dabrowski

Note: as of Fall 2020, Jessica has transitioned off the Steering Committee – we’re grateful for her service to SWMS!

Hey there! I’m Jessica Dabrowski (she/her), the Mentorship Chair on the SWMS Steering Committee.

I first got involved with SWMS when I attended the URI Symposium in the spring of 2018. At this meeting, I attended a breakout session on mentorship, which led to the idea of building a mentorship network because many women saw a lack of appropriate mentors in their professional settings. I then dove into making this a reality with the rest of the Steering Committee and rolled out the program at the 2018 Fall Symposium at WHOI. Less than one year later, I could not be prouder of how far the Mentorship Program has come. I would truly appreciate more feedback to continue to develop the program. My dream is to give every person in marine science access to mentors they need to flourish in their careers, relationships, emotional and mental health, and into their best selves.

My position as Mentorship Chair started around the same time that I began addressing my own mental health. In my teenage years, I faced many challenges including growing up with an alcoholic parent and my best friend passing away. During college, my grandmother, godmother, and father passed away in the span of 3 years. I denied that I was struggling, taking only enough days off to attend the funerals, and returned to funneling my energy into my classes and research, distracting myself from grief. My grades were up, so I must have been fine. I jumped right into graduate school, deciding against a gap year since I thought that going for my PhD was the best way to put myself first, not realizing that I continued to let my mental health suffer.

In February 2018, I heard my wake-up call. Although I was making good progress in my research and classes, I was having weekly panic attacks, anxious days, sleepless nights, and saw my familial and romantic relationships fall apart. I felt utterly alone. I sought out a therapist, who I still see regularly, and am grateful to say that I am now the happiest I have ever been. On our first day, she recommended trying meditation, but I thought, “How could I have time to pause for 10 minutes a day when I am so busy?”

After giving it a try, I could already feel the cracks beginning to heal, and after 18 months, I’m far from where I started and things are only looking up. I like to think of my new mental health habits as my brain’s daily cup of coffee, energizing it for the rest of the day. Meditation is now one of my favorite parts of my routine, along with writing down to-do lists (on paper instead of continuously thinking about them), journaling about things I’m grateful for, acknowledging the tiniest of successes, and rewarding myself for keeping up with good habits. I better manage my stress, have amazing relationships with my loved ones, and feel more joy on a daily basis. I am truly experiencing life with a happy, clear mind instead of fumbling around in the fog, wondering what is on the other side.

With gratitude,

Jessica

November 5, 2019November 15, 2019

Protected: Application Assistance

June 27, 2019

An update from our URI Chapter

By Diana, Karla, and Cassie, URI SWMS Chairs

Greetings from the University of Rhode Island! We’ve had an exciting year here in the Ocean State. After electing three new chairs in December (and getting lots of help from the previous chairs!), we had a spring semester packed with great events. We thought it would be fun to share them with all of you! Hearing about the different activities happening in SWMS chapters around the country (and around the world!) is one of our favorite things about behind a part of this community.

None of our events would have been possible without all of our wonderful members! We also had help and support from other groups at URI, such as the Marine Biology Department, the URI Marine Science Society, the Graduate Student Association, and the Graduate School of Oceanography, for which we are eternally grateful. Here’s a brief recap of our events:

– Beyond the Reef Post-Grad Panel: stories and discussions about life after undergrad, from people who’ve been there and survived (and snacks, of course)

– Undergraduate Opportunities Panel: great ideas from professors, alumni, and current students on how to get involved in research as an undergrad

– Just Keep Swimming Mental Health Day: awesome crafting and talking about stress management with Dr. Penny Rosenthal of the URI Women’s Center

– URI SMILE: local elementary school students got to visit campus and do hands-on activities about marine science

– URI Welcome Days: we got to tell prospective students all about SWMS!

– Racing Extinction Screening: the URI Marine Science Society showed this fascinating documentary, and afterward hosted a discussion with experts in the field

As we move into summer, we have more ideas on the horizon. We’re already thinking about hosting some informal networking and community building events, and we want to highlight all the cool summer research, jobs, and internships that our members are doing. In the fall, we’re hoping to host an informative panel aimed at graduate students, and maybe bring back Just Keep Swimming Day. We’re setting our sights on hosting a SWMS Symposium at URI in Spring 2020, so stay tuned!

Huge thank you to all of URI SWMS for their hard work, enthusiasm, and for just plain showing up. We couldn’t do anything without all of you!

Congratulations to all graduating seniors, and happy summer, everyone!

June 25, 2019June 27, 2019

An introduction to SWMS Brazil

By SWMS Brazil

English (scroll down for Portuguese)

The Brazilian chapter came out of our numerous conversations about science and its challenges. Since our first years of undergrad in Oceanography at the Center of Marine Studies (CEM) at the Federal University of Paraná, Brazil, we worked in research laboratories and dreamed about being scientists. However, we knew that it wouldn’t be an easy task. Science and technology are not generally valued in Brazil, much less marine science. The pressure to develop creative, innovative and reliable research considering financial instability and uncertainties have been present throughout our academic life.

Building with a white sign — Center of Marine Studies (CEM) – Federal University of Paraná, Brazil

Currently, most of us are working toward an academic career. Some of us are masters students and others pursue a PhD. We have noticed that the same challenges we used to discuss during our first year in college are still present. When one of us discovered SWMS, we saw it as an opportunity to help us improve marine science visibility in Brazil. Our aim is to highlight the high quality research produced by Brazilian women in science and technology. We also strive to share experiences and difficulties in academic life, promote inclusion, and strengthen ties between society and marine science. We shared our idea with two professors from CEM and one from the Federal University of Santa Catarina who helped us to create the SWMS Brazil Chapter.

In contrast to other chapters which fall under one university, we choose to be a national chapter. Although we are now separated into three different universities and states, we never stopped having those conversations about science, and we support one another whenever we face similar problems. Now we are able to maintain our dialogue and finally spread our ideas. As this is a national chapter, we hope to integrate more voices and gather a representative group of women in marine sciences throughout Brazil to inspire young students to become scientists.

Portuguese

A SWMS Brasil nasceu em uma de nossas inúmeras conversas sobre ciência e seus desafios. Desde nossos primeiros anos de graduação em Oceanografia no Centro de Estudos do Mar (CEM), Universidade Federal do Paraná, sempre estivemos inseridas em laboratórios de pesquisa e já sonhávamos em ser cientistas. No entanto, sabíamos que não seria uma tarefa fácil. No Brasil, a ciência e o desenvolvimento tecnológico são pouco valorizados e as ciências marinhas sofrem muito com a falta de investimento. A pressão para desenvolver pesquisa científicos inovadoras e relevantes, a instabilidade financeira e as incertezas sobre o futuro sempre estiveram presentes em nossa vida acadêmica.

Atualmente a maioria de nós continua na carreira acadêmica, algumas estão no mestrado, outras são recém mestres e buscam um doutorado, e notamos que os desafios que discutíamos nos nossos primeiros anos de graduação ainda são os mesmos. Quando uma de nós descobriu a SWMS, vimos uma oportunidade que poderia nos ajudar a melhorar a visibilidade da ciência marinha no Brasil. Nosso objetivo é evidenciar a pesquisa de alta qualidade produzida por brasileiras, compartilhar experiências e dificuldades da vida acadêmica, promover a inclusão e fortalecer os laços entre a sociedade e as ciências marinhas. Essa ideia foi compartilhada com duas professoras do Centro de Estudos do Mar da Universidade Federal do Paraná e uma professora da Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina que nos incentivaram e nos ajudaram a criar o SWMS Brasil.

Diferente dos outros capítulos que levam o nome de apenas uma universidade, escolhemos ser um capítulo nacional, pois aquelas amigas que um dia estudaram juntas agora estão separados em três universidades e estados diferentes, mas não poderiam deixar de discutir sobre ciência e apoiar umas às outras. A ciência sempre foi o nosso assunto favorito e a distância foi uma das razões que nos motivou a criar o SWMS Brasil. Agora somos capazes de manter nosso diálogo e finalmente espalhar nossas ideias. Como este é um capítulo nacional, esperamos integrar mais vozes e reunir um grupo representativo de mulheres nas ciências marinhas de todo o Brasil e inspirar jovens estudantes a se tornarem cientistas.

June 12, 2019June 12, 2019

How modern women can learn to deal with modern stress

By Chrissy Hernandez

In their book, Burnout: the Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle, twin sisters Emily and Amelia Nagoski offer us a plethora of useful strategies for dealing with stress. I heard them speak about this book during the 2019 Explore More Summit, a very cool online conference about joy and pleasure. I promptly pre-ordered it, and also bought the ebook version of Emily Nagoski’s previous book, Come as You Are: The Surprising New Science that will Transform your Sex Life. As a result of reading Come As You Are, I knew that I wanted to review Burnout before it even arrived.

I really wanted to read this book because, as someone staring down my last year before defending my thesis, burnout is a very real risk in my life. Like many other graduate students and academics, I struggle with anxiety and depression. While these issues are partly determined by my genetic makeup and my life experiences thus far, they also ebb and flow with the tides of immediate external stressors in my life (#sorrynotsorry for the ocean imagery). I was hoping that Burnout would give me strategies to decrease my anxiety and be less susceptible to burnout, and I wasn’t disappointed.

Burnout is absolutely fantastic. It reads similarly to Come as You Are, with an abundance of pop culture references and tl;dr (internet speak for “too long; didn’t read”) lists at the ends of chapters to highlight the main points. It also employs a fantastic device that Emily Nagoski debuted in Come as You Are: stories from real women combined into composite characters that help the reader to connect emotionally with the science. These passages show us how the series of stressors we experience can combine to create a life that leads to burnout, and how the strategies in the book might actually be implemented, speed bumps and all. These composite characters are presented as friends of Emily and Amelia, and the narrative passages about them are complete with dialogue, jokes, and the very real way that friends tease one another. In a book about complex neuroscience, this composite character device goes a long way towards making the book easy to digest.

The series of stressors we experience can combine to create a life that leads to burnout

The book also contains plenty of worksheets to help you implement the strategies of the book in your own life. The first helps you decide if you should quit something (their examples include a job, a relationship, a diet, and substance use), there is another for identifying what is within your own control in your life, and the final one encourages you to take stock of how you spend your time—in order to find the time to get sufficient rest.

I have to admit that I didn’t take the time to stop and write out my answers to all these worksheets, but there was one activity that grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me. In the chapter on “Meaning,” the Nagoski twins ask the reader to remember times in their life that they have faced hardships, and identify the inner characteristics and the external support systems that allowed them to overcome those hardships. They ask us, as readers, to tell ourselves our origin story, and to frame the narrative around our strength and resilience. In my own life, I’ve faced a number of upheavals in my living situation and my close relationships. In nearly all of these periods, I’ve turned to reading. This prompt to write my story to myself inspired me to journal about how important reading has been to me throughout my life. It was an emotional and cathartic experience.

The authors’ approach to reframing failure is an extremely useful tool for early career scientists. They introduce the concept of a “little monitor” in our brain that has expectations about how long something should take or how rapidly we should move towards a goal. This brain system keeps us chomping at the bit to reach our goals, but can also derail us into a bottomless pit of frustration and despair when our progress isn’t fast enough. Their approach to overcoming this is to deal with the uncontrollable things in your life with “positive reappraisal.” They explain that “Positive reappraisal…means deciding that the effort, the discomfort, the frustration, the unanticipated obstacles, and even the repeated failure have value—not because they are steps toward a worthwhile goal, but because you reframe difficulties as opportunities for growth and learning.” So when you don’t get the fellowship/grant/job, or all your experimental creatures die, or your paper needs major revisions, you can see those challenges as roadblocks, or you can see them as difficult circumstances that simultaneously provide opportunities for deeper learning. To revise an old adage, many things worth doing are really, really hard.

Many things worth doing are really, really hard.

I was excited to read this book and wanted to write a book review of it for the SWMS blog, but somehow along the way, reading the book and writing the review became one more thing on my extremely long to-do list. As the seasons started to turn in Massachusetts in late March, my stress about the passage of time and how much I was getting done for my science was ticking up. My mental health was declining, so I wondered how I could even be qualified to write this book review. Well, lucky for me, I caught a nasty spring cold and was bedridden for two days. This little local maximum of burnout helped me to see the places I needed to scale back, or to simply give myself permission not to be perfect.

I stayed in bed for two days with that cold. During the first, I slept a lot and took a lot of cold medicine. During the second day, I worked from home and napped—I was completely amazed that I could get just as much done while sick as I would on a normal day at the office. And then I realized that I hadn’t gone to any meetings, and I hadn’t spent hours on email, and I felt somehow both productive and rested. Since then, I’ve struggled to find ways to preserve my energy, but I’m starting to see how important it is to take care of myself so that I can stay in this game for a long time. And now I’ve got a trusty guidebook that I can turn to for advice.