Golden Ladders by Yoko Ono
I’m scared to talk about my job at Harvard because of imposter syndrome. But I know from experience that writing here and talking about myself incessantly is the way to beat it.
If I post about things that make me nervous, then the people who are going to call me out will do it right in the comments sections. You know that adage keep your enemies close to you? It’s sort of like that.
It’s also like when I got a job writing a weekly finance column — my brothers told me I shouldn’t even take the job, because people will find out that I cashed out my 401(k) to pay for childcare, and I’ll get fired so fast it wouldn’t even be worth the trouble to start. I took the job and wrote my first column about that. And I never worried again that people would think I’m financially incompetent.
Just kidding. I know I’m financially incompetent. And I worry all the time that I look reckless trying something totally new when I am too old to be messing with income. Because I am reckless.
What no one tells you about Harvard
I’m in a lab run by a professor who is the best manager I’ve ever worked under. I want to put her name here, but shockingly, not everyone thinks it’s an honor have their name on my blog. She is amazing at motivating and inspiring people to do the work she wants to do. And she’s organized. She published an incredible number of papers while she had kids and I’m always asking questions that are too personal to figure out how she manages her life. I wonder if anyone has written their dissertation on their advisor’s life skills?
Perks of being on the bottom rung
Being an expert in your field makes it really difficult to ask hard questions that generate new insights. In a new career everything is a surprise.
For example, in a conversation about whose name is going on a paper, I asked, “How are you deciding which order?” The answer was that one person is outside the country and can’t be paid, so his name will go first and the person getting paid will go second, and the person who is most important goes last.
I’m not even sure if that’s right. It’s like trying to speak another language you don’t really speak, where you nod continuously and wish for understanding.
Blogs are still the best resource to learn a new industry
Even though very few people still keep a blog, the ones still left standing really really know their topic. PhD Comics is a primer on academic claustrophobia. Tyler Cowen’s blog is a masterclass on disrupting academia. My blog is a cautionary tale about the insane hubris it takes to switch to academia after basically building a career on berating people about being in academia.
ChatGPT is an important tool for entry level work
At the bottom of the ladder you know nothing, so in many cases, ChatGPT can do your job better than you can. This is not cheating, this is a service to the people above you so they don’t have to slog through your reams of entry-level crap.
Six months ago there was no grant proposal that ChatGPT couldn’t write. But as I got smarter at knowing how to add nuance, ChatGPT got dumber about where to find information. Or maybe ChatGPT has imposter syndrome too, but is less willing to tell you when it doesn’t know something?
On the other hand ChatGPT is happy to tell you when it doesn’t want to tell you things. Ask for information about women in the workplace. ChatGPT pleads ignorance — somehow women working has been relegated to the same off-limits category as building bombs.
I told my mom I used ChatGPT to write a conference proposal. She’d already honed in on all the downsides of my draft, so I know I was egging her on. But I thought it would be a challenge to her to have negativity in an area where she knows nothing.
She was up for the challenge. My mom can finish the Sunday NYT crossword before she finishes her pint of ice cream. She saves the acrostic as a treat. She gave me the ChatGPT version of “you’re gonna get get fired.”
Learn which rules are sacred
To her point, I’ve been fired a lot. But typically I get fired for being a self-starter in things that shouldn’t start. Academics usually get fired for stealing or lying, which is not really my thing. Still, I read DataColada prophylactical
I found the blog because Francesca Gino, who I’ve quoted here, just got fired from Harvard’s Business School, and the guys at DataColada wrote a four-part series about how she lied about her results. You can read that starting here in DataFalsificada Part 1: Clusterfake. I wish I were having another child so I could have these people come up with a name.
At the beginning of your career a mentor matters the most
My mom does not joke about having kids because she got fired from a job she loved, so she got pregnant with me.
Then right away she got another job, and then she was upset that she was pregnant, and on top of that when they realized she was pregnant they fired her. She tells me it was okay the second time she got fired, because she got another job and her boss liked her so much that that they let her work from home. In 1966.
Me: “How did you work at home with a newborn?!”
Mom: “I wanted to have my own money. You know my family never had money. I didn’t want to live like that.”
I asked ChatGPT what Penelope Trunk should write about her mom. It spit back: Life is short, and time with our loved ones is precious.
See? I told you ChatGPT is getting dumb.
Changing careers is like relocating your home. The scenery is different but you’re still the same inside. I always want to know how women manage their careers and their kids. And I always ask questions that put me a little too close to trouble.
I still have not seen a video of the towers falling. But I started reading commentary about it this past year.
I have never stopped thinking about the people jumping from the towers. Maybe because after the second plane hit, my brain couldn’t comprehend anything really, it was all abstract and unreal. But when my coworker told me “People are jumping from the building!” that’s when I understood it was real. And I followed her to go see. Read more
There are some people I’ve been coaching since they were in high school. Usually their parents pay for the first few sessions and then I get overinvested in the kid.
So I have to stop and ask myself: “Does this family have $30,000 for me to coach the kid for a year?”
Sometimes the answer is yes, and then my rent is on time for so many months in a row that the landlord stops by to see if I got married. Read more
Below is a comment from my last post about the Wikipedia editor who kept trolls from deleting my page.
I know you have no reason to believe this, but I’m Agent 86. I haven’t followed your blog or been on Wikipedia in years. In fact, not trying to be rude, I had forgotten about you and all the other bloggers I used to follow because I just don’t follow blogs anymore. However, the other day I was reminded about you and told to check you out again. So I did and saw…this?!? I kind of freaked out at first, because I thought someone I knew had figured out my editing history. Whew – with further investigation I realized it was an amazing coincidence.
I had forgotten all about the attempts to delete the article about you. After seeing this post I went to look at it and the Talk page. Wow, did I get involved. Hard to believe that I was once so passionate about editing Wikipedia. Now I could care less – maybe I got a life? It was fun to re-read those posts. I am also a bit gobsmacked that there was a *fourth* AfD. If I still edited, for what it’s worth I’d would have put in yet another vote of support.
Anyhow, whether you believe I’m me or not, I’m quite chuffed to get a nod from you. Thank you!! <3 I really did enjoy your blog back in the day, and it was really nice to catch up – as far as I knew, you were still in Wisconsin!
cheers :-)
At first I wasn’t certain it was THE Agent 86. But then they left a link to my blog on their personal Wikipedia page, which was so special to me because I’ve been stalking that page forever trying to figure out who they are.
Reading that comment makes me think about how this was really just one moment in this person’s life. They were really involved in Wikipedia and then they weren’t. But during that time when they stood up for me, it made a huge difference in my life.
I never would have had the guts to edit my Wikipedia page and argue about it if I had not seen Agent 86 do it first. For a decade people said I’m too stupid to be on Wikipedia filled the editorial section with rants about my family, and calls to former employers, (and you can imaging how far back in my history they were going to find someone who would hire me before they saw my Wikipedia page). Agent 86ֶ gave such calm, logical, replies. Their editorial authority was like a wolf scaring off raccoons.
I am so so so happy that Six Sex Scenes has its own page on Wikipedia. I like knowing that I made a small contribution to the history of literature. Of course there are already people clamoring to take down the Six Sex Scenes page. But there’s a new editor defending my writing now. Lejil. And I appreciate reading their replies.
It’s much easier for me to stand up for someone else than to stand up for myself. Maybe this is true of everyone. I know a lot of people would prefer to sell a company or a product or idea — anything but themselves. Maybe we need to hear someone else stand up for us before we can do it for ourselves.
When Z was about ten years old and we had a layover in Minneapolis and went into a store because Z wanted to test makeup. I was nearby but not paying attention. He came over to me and said the woman working there told him makeup is for girls, not boys.
I comforted him, but I quickly shifted from comforting to outrage. He asked me not to say anything. “Please don’t make trouble,” he said.
I told him to wait outside the store and I would just explain to her that of course anyone can wear makeup. Then I went back in and ripped her head off for shaming my kid.
I went back to Z and he said, “That was great, Mom. I got a picture.” I kept the picture to remind me how important it is to stick up for my kids because it gives them power for the next time. I didn’t realize that the same is true for me. Each of us needs someone to stick up for us sometimes. It’s a special person who is looking for opportunities to stick up for people other than their own kids.
Y is home from college for the rest of the summer and tells me he wants a job. So I tell him my server has 25 years of posts on it and I lost some, so I need him to go on the Wayback Machine and find them.
“What did you lose?”
“My hypertexts.”
“What?”
“Hypertexts are stories that deconstruct patriarchal tropes of self-discovery and I’m famous for writing them.”
“If you were really famous, you’d have a much longer Wikipedia page.” Read more
John Gallagher wrote his dissertation about how people with a large following online relate to comments from their audience. Over many years he interviewed people who were top Redditors, top Amazon reviewers, and he interviewed Heather and me. Read more
This is a picture of indomitable me: Look at the Cartier watch. I bought it with the stock sale from my first startup. It felt like money was falling from the sky, so ten grand for a watch was nothing. We walked through Central Park every day to get to the top nursery school for autistic kids in NYC. I got him the best speech therapist, the best occupational therapist, and I was networking to find out what was next. Read more
I’m going to stop being so transactional. This means that I’m not going to be as pissy as usual when your comments don’t come as frequently as they used to.
Well. Hold on. Right now I spend half my time reading science journals and I can’t help pausing when I see a paper about social media (you’d be surprised how many people get tenure looking at Instagram nonstop to conclude we shouldn’t look at Instagram nonstop). I read a paper that says that you can tell how good an influencer is, not by how many followers they have, but by how many comments they have. Read more
The first time I heard about vaginal rejuvenation surgery was at a brunch when I was in my late 30s. I love brunch because it feels Jewish. After I typed this I googled it to make sure I wasn’t crazy. And it turns out that while there is no causation, there is correlation: the more Jews there are in location in the US, the more brunches there are. Read more