To travel without money, sailor (or scientist)

There have been few weeks I haven’t upload a map in the blog so this week I thought I will talk about conferences, or “scientific travel”. These are different from project meetings (see post “What oceanographers do”), not all the people work in the same project. Some conferences host a small number of scientist and some are huge (the biggest I have been was this year in Hawaii and we were just under 5600!!). Some are really specific (for example, focus on calculation of a constant the control air-water interchanges) and some are really general (Ocean Science Meeting: http://www.sgmeet.com/osm2014/).

I have to admit that (mostly during my PhD) the decision to go or not to a conference was more dependent upon where the conferences were held than on the scientific content. There is a phrase in Spanish that says “para viajar sin dinero, marinero” that means “to travel without money you should become a sailor” so we have to add scientist to sailor. Well, at least with less money, so what I normally do is stay some days before or after the conference visiting around. I convince myself that it is good for my CO₂ foot-print, it’s not worth travelling to the other end of the word just to be inside a dark room or conference building. The last international conferences I attended, I invited my dad to join me so we could enjoy holidays together, otherwise it would be really difficult to organize. He is my best judge when I do my presentation, even if he has no idea of English.

European Conferences

In total I have been to 15 different cities because of conferences (some cities, like Gran Canaria I have been twice). There are some conferences that you are unable to attend but some colleague can. So, you send your poster with him/her or he/she presents a work you have done together. Even if they are in my CV, I will not put these on the map because I haven’t been there physically.

Non European Conferences

One big part of what we do during a conference is similar to project meetings: room/coffee/room. Another important part of the meeting is poster sessions. When you have a poster, you arrive with your big printed poster; not all the people you see in the airport with poster tubes are architects. Although lately some conferences offer you the opportunity to print on site or you can print in textile so you transport your poster like your t-shirts. Then you located the spot you have been assigned to display your poster and in the time you’ve been allocated, you stand in front of your poster hoping someone will stop by and discuss your work. Most of the time you have really nice discussions with other people, because the clock is not pushing against you like in a presentation and you are normally more relaxed with time to talk one-one than in front of an audience (except if this one is a big fish, then your heart rate also speeds).

Finally, another important thing to do during conference is networking: you try and talk with people in whose work you are interested (and match a face with a famous name you have been reading a lot!). Or because you are interested in working with them or have been reviewing some of their work… If this talking can be with a beer (or two) and as an early career move you manage to impress this person that they remember your face for the next conference, you have been successful (or they remember your name, that will be even more of a success).

Women and Science

One other thing which keeps Oceanographers busy, is meetings. These meetings are not always related to my field of study or projects. This week I want to tell you about one subject I have been involved in for 10 months now “Women in Science”. I choose this theme this week because I was in the Embassy of Spain in a ‘roundtable Women in Science’ organized by the Society of Spanish Researchers in the United Kingdom (http://www.sruk.org.uk/).
It began in this way; during August last year, I received an email from the Professional Development Unit saying that the head of Ocean and Earth Science had nominated me to take part on the programme “Women into Leadership and Management” which the university runs for women in Level 4 (postdoctoral, fellows, junior lectures…). I still have a hard time believing that the head of the school knows who I am or knows which level I am. However, personal assistants do a marvellous job, hahaha.
So, I said to myself “Why not? Let’s see what this is all about”. I communicated my decision to my partner and my dad and the first reaction I had, from both of them, was more or less “Oh no!! You don’t need more teaching about being bossy!!”
So, the programme turned out to be really interesting. We had a two day residential workshop where small groups were formed (I was part of the red team!!) and we explored leadership and team -worker styles (like summer camp activities but under the rain, to prove our resilience!!). We then had regular red team mentoring meetings with a nice female Professor, where we talked about career paths, networking, elevator speech… We networked with other women at the same level from other areas. We had a lot of courses and workshops, like “Face the fear” or “Influence and Persuasion”. We recently had our Belbin test results (http://www.belbin.com/) where it turns out I am seen by my closer colleague and by myself as a team-worker, implementer and specialist but not as a really creative person.
During this process I was amazed to realize that even today, there is still a great difference between the small number of women compared to men in positions of leadership. An unconscious bias exists and works against the women in academia. Women need to be at least 2.5 times better to get the same job. Motherhood is deemed to be a problem, but works the other way for fatherhood and is an extra-point to father’s CV. We have to learn to say “NO” to tasks we don’t want to do. We need to self-promoted themselves more. And, after all, being bossy is not at all a bad thing!!
I want to end by saying that the ‘roundtable’ at the Embassy was really productive with great speakers and interesting questions,only comparable in quality with the Spanish ham which was served in the reception that followed.

INTERVIEW AND LITTLE BOXES

Those of us who have no permanent job in science, when our contract is close to an end (that means more or less a year) it is time to start applying for a new job.

Normally, how it works is as follows: You see an advertisement of a position on offer. Normally they ask for your curriculum vitae, a cover letter, the list of publications and the name of referees. You put them all together (at first, this is a lot of work, but then it is only a matter of adapting them according to the job description), you send the completed application and wait.

Suddenly you receive an email: you don’t need to read it all, you fast scan to find either “unfortunately” or “we’re happy to…” If “unfortunately” appears, I just put a “X” in front of the folder name where I save the rejection documents. If the happiness appears in the response email, I find the folder to remind myself what the job was about; what did I put in my application? (and sometimes, google-map where in the World is this city?) You should by now know that I love maps!! Then I prepare for the interview. Interviews can be in person, by phone or videoconference. This week I had one job interview for a job in Wilhelmshaven (it is your time to google it now, hahahaha).

One advantage of having being in a distance-relationship for a while is that you spend so much time talking in front of the computer that you end up being as natural as in real life (as my mum said: “what a hell are you doing laughing in front of this machine”). The science interviews have standard interview questions: what are your strengths; where do you see yourself in five years… And science questions: what is the most important result in your last publication (yeah! At least one person has read it!!). They finish with the typical: “we will get back to you”

And they come back to me, and offer the job!!

Then starts a storm in my brain, first check: how are flights from the new job to home in Ibiza? I again remember my mum, when I was deciding where to do my PhD, saying “you go where you want but try to keep less than two flights and less than half day of travel” Check one, not too bad, as travel is always better summer than winter. Check two, how is housing there? Check three, how much will I earn? Check four, when should I start? It never coincides with the end our your actual contract. Check five; check six… Oh my gosh!!! Moving again, boxes and more boxes (fortunately, there has not being too long since we last moved and our studio is too small to accumulate a lot of things).

I have yet to decide, I need to think, ask my pillow, ask my family, go to swim, go to run… we’ll see . . .

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CRUISES AND HORSES DRUGS

As I said in the last post, one of the things oceanographers do is going to sea on research cruises. In the maps you can see the ports I have been, either to start, finish or just calling in. In total, there are 16 cities (some of them in different cruises, some of them last several days and some of them only a few hours). Overall, I have been 227 days at sea (that means, almost 8 month of my life!).

Every cruise is different, although they have things in common:

–          They always start after two or three days of complete chaos in the harbour; unpacking and setting up the equipment in the labs on board. If you are fortunate with the equipment and the weather, this chaos will decrease and you will have a pleasant cruise (unfortunately, this does not happen too often, and you normally deal with unimaginable problems of all types).

–          You disconnect from real life: forget about money, about cell phone, about checking email, Facebook, twitter… every two minutes. At the beginning it is hard but then, believe it or not, it’s RELAXING!!

–          You are in a limited space for 24/7, with a completely different routine from normal life. Thus, special relationships are created between people on board. They are not friends (normally) but they become friends with whom you share more than with normal land friends; they are not family but they became part of your family during these days (and in some occasion, for the rest of your life because many oceanography couples begin their relationship during cruises, including mine!)

–          I always get seasick at least once during the cruise. It has improved over the years but I think it will never go away. On my first cruise, I was so bad the crew gave me an anti-seasickness suppository and I used it without thinking anything against it (I think they were military horse drugs because it worked quickly and miraculously. I still have the little box at my dad’s as a souvenir). On the other hand, the last one, in the middle of the Southern Ocean, my day of seasickness was a mixture of hangover and bad mood.

 

On the other hand, each cruise is different, a complete “Big brother season”:

–          There are one week cruises and there are looooooooooong cruises.

–          There are open ocean cruises and there are coastal cruises. In open ocean, you are lucky if you are able to see land in the middle of the cruise. This much-deserved stop comes as you step on land and feel “land-sick”. You see different faces to the ones you’ve been seeing for weeks. Along the coast, (like coastal fisheries) you normally go to harbour every night, although you’ve been working non-stop the whole day.

–          There are dry cruises and there are cruises with different bars on board. When you disembark from a dry cruise, you feel completely detoxed but the first instinct you have is to look for a beer!

–          Normally in cruises you work in shift: some are 4 hours on- 8 hours off (so you can have a “baby” shift from 8 to 12 (am and pm) or you can have the “dog” shift from 4 to 8 (am and pm); some are 12 hours on- 12 hours out. So, at the end of a cruise, a part of you has to adapt to normal life again, taking care about purse and calls, sometimes you feel a kind of rare jetlag.

Cities I visited during cruises

What oceanographers do on a day-to-day basis?

One thing I most like of my job is that it has a lot of different task for example:

• Conferences
• Meetings (with the boss, with students, with colleagues, with people in the same project…)
• Cruises
• Courses
• Lab work
• Data analysis and treatment
• Writing
• Revise (your own work and other works)
• Apply for new jobs, new fellowships, new grants…

The problem is that this variety doesn’t happen every week. When I am on a cruise, I am on the cruise for several weeks, 24/7 (and towards the end of the cruise I dream of being at my office desk and my sofa). When I am finished with the cruise, I have a more normal office life (although occasionally, a lot longer hours), and after several months of being in front of the computer I dream on going to sea again!!

In my blog I would like to tell what I do during my days in England. Today I will start with an end of project meeting which happened this week.

My contract is associated to the Sea Surface Consortium (http://www.surfaceoa.org.uk/) of the UK Ocean Acidification Research Programme (http://www.oceanacidification.org.uk/). That means, among other things, that one works and interacts with a lot of people from different institutes. Even in the internet era, all these people have to come together to present their results, discuss what to do with them, split tasks…

So for that reason, during the two years and almost a half that I have been working in this project, I have been to Exeter, St Andrews, Plymouth, London and Southampton. It’s a pity that because most of us are based in Southampton, we have repeated it for at least three meetings and I miss the opportunity to visit Cambridge or Obam.

So we meet together and after the “hello, how have you been?” “Not too bad, thank you! And you?” we spend some hours in a room doing presentation (most of them prepared the night before in a rush and “saying oh my gosh where is this graph??!!”). Each of us talk around 10-15 minutes and then there is time for questions, comments, feedbacks. Then we break for coffee, tea and biscuits. And the chit-chat continuous: “how long is your contract for?” although some other conversations are more in detail. We reconvene and continue presenting and talking. After a couple of more hours, we stop for lunch. Then again inside the room/coffee/room and at the end, your head it’s so full of new information and new ideas of, try this, try that… that all you want it is a nice break. We have normally a group dinner in a pleasant restaurant. I believe science advance more with a beer in hand. These types of meetings are normally one day and a half or two. So the second day is where, having shown what we have done, we sit down and decide what is left to do and who (and when!) will do what. It is also the time to decide where and when to meet next.

Ribas Ribas

My name is Mariana Ribas Ribas. Hold on, wait a minute… is that your name, double it? Yes, it is. It’s not a spelling mistake with my name, it is my brand! My first and second surnames are the same. In Spain and Mexico we don’t change surnames when we marry (and sure other countries but I only speak for what I directly know), so you always have the same surname, normally the first one from your father and the second one from your mother. So, here it comes the second question that I normally get: so are your parents related? No, they are not. We are from Ibiza and Ribas is a very frequent name. Furthermore, we spell it different from the rest of the peninsular Spain, with “B” instead of “V”. So, since I left home and lived in the main peninsula (for 11 years!), I had to say everytime, “Ribas Ribas with a B”. “And the other”, they ask? “Ribas, also with B!” So then, I moved to the UK and again I have to answer for the spelling; why I have two and why they are the same.

One of the funniest moment about the double surnames was when the Technical superintendent of the School of Ocean and Earth Science, University of Southampton, where I now work, triple checked with IT that that was my correct name and he was still afraid when we put my name on the door that it was a mistake (as my office mates also thought J)

Then it’s my signature, it is Mr2. It´s not mister 2, it’s not that I’m an Einstein´s equation (not even close), or I love math (although I do). It’s m r squared. It is just an easy way to sign. And then it turns out really convenient for my logo because I work on CO2 in the ocean so I can use the 2 for both.

I’m sure I lose you when I said where I come from. It’s always happened to me. This will come in another post…