The Dynamic Duo December 6, 2013
Posted by mareserinitatis in career, engineering, family, papers, research.Tags: acknowledgements, collaboration, engineering research, Mike, papers, research, spouse
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When I was doing my MS, I ended up getting a research assistantship working in the same place as Mike (which is, of course, where I now am working). There was one person higher up in the ranks who would occasionally see us having lunch together and would exclaim, “There’s the Dynamic Duo!” This person was rather tickled that Mike and were interested in the same field of engineering.
At the time, it kind of peeved me. I was already getting a bit of a feeling that people viewed me as his shadow, and this comment didn’t help to alleviate that concern. Now I think about it, however, and it actually was much better than I thought because there was no implication that either one of us was better than the other: we were peers.
We both take this view when we’re doing research, and we really enjoy collaborating on things. We’ve found that our strengths are complimentary, so it’s very easy to talk to each other about a topic and get good feedback. We also have several projects that we’re doing separately, but we almost always (especially on our drives home) talk about what we’re doing and asking for feedback. (Well, admittedly, it’s volunteered whether we want it or not.)
Those conversations have, more often than not, been incredibly helpful in moving projects forward. However, this leaves us in a bit of a bind because, as I said, some of these projects really aren’t involving the other person. When this happens, especially if the project results in publication, we always have to make a decision: do we add the other person as co-author or mention them in the acknowledgements. When it’s been nothing more than conversational input, particularly when we proofread each other’s papers, we choose the latter. This does lead to some interesting possibilities for entertaining acknowledgements.
I would like to thank my spouse for suggesting such a nifty title.
or
I would like to thank my spouse for catching that diagram that was completely bass ackwards when proofreading the paper for me.
and maybe even
I would like to thank my spouse for the helpful input in developing the concept of this project, despite the fact that they laughed at my hokey acronym.
I know. It’s totally unprofessional. But it’s a lot of fun to imagine doing such a thing.
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Married to my work April 13, 2014
Posted by mareserinitatis in career, engineering, family, personal, societal commentary.Tags: marriage, Mike, professionalism, spouse
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In the past two weeks, I have been introduced as Mike’s spouse twice in professional settings.
I usually view this as something akin to the Kiss of Death: the person receiving this news is likely to consider me an appendage to my spouse and therefore rather useless. It’s not that I mind people know I am married to Mike. He’s very competent and he’s a nice person, so I’m certainly not ashamed of it. It’s often the reaction I get that bothers me. We have both noticed that some people will make a point of talking to him and ignoring me entirely, even when the project is mine and has nothing to do with him. (Of course, people do this even when they don’t know we’re married…)
In the first case, I found this rather interesting because it had a couple oddities relative to other introductions of this nature. First, the person I was being introduced to had no idea who Mike was, and in fact, never did meet him. I’m not sure why my marital arrangement was the first thing that came up, but I just sort of sigh and roll with it. Second, I think one of the people we were with was more annoyed about the way I was introduced than I was. While I just sort of shrugged and carried on as though nothing happened, shaking hands with the visitor, one of the other people who knew me repeated my name to the person two or three times. As much as I’m resigned to this sort of thing, apparently other people are not, and my inner voice yelled, “Huzzah!”
The second situation was very unnerving. Mike and I coauthored a paper which was accepted at a fairly selective conference. The introduction to our presentation explained that we were a husband and wife team, and I inwardly cringed. I was expecting the fallout to be very awkward for me. What was odd is that, for the most part, this didn’t seem to make a difference to anyone. Or maybe they already knew so it didn’t matter. Mike has had a paper accepted there before, and I was invited to give a presentation last year, so we’re not complete strangers to this group of people. With perhaps one exception, there wasn’t any noticeable difference in the way anyone treated him versus me.
While the “being married to my coworker” thing has it’s problems, it seems like some people aren’t letting it be as big an issue as it used to be. It’s kind of nice to be considered a colleague and not an appendage.
It’ll make my day when people regularly introduce him as my spouse, though. (It has happened once or twice, but not nearly as often as the reverse.)