You have a hundred good ideas that need exploration. But they compete with a thousand perpetually accruing tasks – some key, some trivial. The psychological weight of the latter can dictate your life and grind creativity to a pitiful nub of chewed up pencil waiting in a drawer. The owner of the pencil feels unfulfilled and frustrated because time and effort is increasingly diverted from the passion and intensity that best fuels their work.

Time to systematically plan a creativity escape. Get yourself to the beach, the woods, the dessert, or an Airbnb around the corner to have a monastic experience of solitude and focus. Bill Gates takes annual book binging retreats.  Among his top picks for 2021 are: “Making the Modern World” by Vaclav Smil; “The Better Angels of Our Nature” by Steven Pinker; and “On Immunity” by Eula Biss, in the top 12.  Richard Feynman escaped to Brazil learn samba drumming and to have time to “play with physics,” and productivity gurus sing the praises of renewing escapes.

Retreats are not an exclusive luxury of CEOs, senior faculty, and entrepreneurs. Early in faculty life my partner and I agreed to cover bands of time with kids, pets, and community responsibilities to allow each other singular time to dig deep into topics that needed focus. Over time our reasons for retreats have evolved to include preparing for comprehensive exams, drafting grants and papers, getting quiet to develop proof of a theorem, and engaging in reading and news immersions to inform strategy for a class or event.

In the process we’ve found five phases of the work retreat:

1. Preparation

Time. You’ll need more time than you think (see entry and re-entry below) Remember this is work time to cultivate intellectual capital, not vacation. Try four days for a start; Friday to Monday is a good way to ease in. Travel and getting settled eat part of first day, the second day requires some stewing that feels non-productive but is necessary, third day is often the liberating breakthrough day for new ideas coming together, and the fourth day can be subsumed with winding down and getting home. Work up to a week if you can swing it.

Retreats take discipline to get calendar, teaching/mentoring/clinical duties, and research forces to align. (Share this post to launch discussion of how you and your group could build a tradition for helping cover each other’s day-to-day duties to make individual retreats possible.) Low-hanging fruit may be extending anticipated breaks:  long weekend holidays, fall break, portions of winter break or intersession between semesters.

Location. Pick an escape destination that allows for rambling walks, sitting and reflecting, and few distractions. Or plan to contain yourself in an apartment that offers urban anonymity for walks and parks. Surroundings matter to the extent that the lure of other activities needs to be minimal.

This is not typically the time to splurge (save that for vacations). Aim for affordable and guilt free. Be bold and ask for favors. Our individual escapes have include calling friends to use an unoccupied apartment over their garage, using a colleague’s place while they were on vacation, staying at free/low cost retreat centers, using hotel points from work travel, and house swapping.

Focus. Determine what you want the result of your retreat to be. Avoid being completely product oriented. While getting a manuscript or draft grant ready to share with others can be rewarding, check your gut and be sure that is really what you crave to accomplish. Look around your office and your home. Is there a theme to the books and articles accumulating? What things are on your “when I get time” list? What opportunity or project did you last think, “if only I had time, maybe next year, that would be fun, or I would be good at that?”

Work retreats should be intellectually rewarding and renewing. Feed your brain and your curiosity. Unlike typical work goals (specific, measureable, agreed, realistic, and timed to a completion goal), retreat goals should be more aspirational and vague:

• Catch up with where others outside my field have been going with techniques for [your research methods].
• Infuse more recent conceptual material and new examples into my course curriculum.
• Develop multiple concepts for and privately rehearse an important talk.
• Steep in [new area] to determine if it might connect with [challenge you are working on].
• Get more deeply familiar with the work of X group to understand if they are worth approaching about collaboration and what connections we might share.
• Develop ideas for a panel at the national meeting that is a new alignment of content.
• Core dump everything I know about a career topic into brilliant advice on edgeforscholars.org.
• Be bold and have no goal.

2. Clearing the Decks

Tell only those who need to know about your time away in advance. Supervisors, coworkers, and mentors with whom you have frequent contact or share responsibilities deserve ample notice to anticipate if your absence has consequences for them. With peers it is ideal to figure out a calendar and duty swap in advance to be able to come with a solution in hand. Telling a more distant circle of contacts before you set your away message has a tendency to stir up new requests anticipating your absence.

Block time in the weeks preceding your work retreat to viciously attack your to do list. If you don’t use an approach to break larger projects down to tasks, get started. List every single thing that is hanging fire and every thought that crosses your mind in the form of:  “I need to do X, I need to catch up with her about Y, or I need to close the loop on finding out the details for Z.” No item is too inconsequential. If it is on your mind it has some weight.

Two to three weeks of focused effort to close loops and complete tasks or initial steps of larger activities can radically diminish the “to do” burden. Measurable progress and the intent to clear the decks starts to be its own reward. It’s exciting to see minor nagging items disappear, and the value of getting prepared for time away keeps the fly wheel turning. Even if you don’t get the stack to zero, you’ll be better prepared to grant yourself permission to really escape.

3. Making Your Escape

If you can, be completely indiscriminate about the materials you bring. Throw in everything you think could be helpful to your goal. Agree with yourself in advance that you will not use much of it. The point is to have it there if you want it.

Set your away message and strongly consider being completely off the grid. If you must be in email or online, meter your time and make it sparse. Do the experiment and discover that the world doesn’t end when you are not reachable. Having key folks know your cellphone contact for emergencies can make this feel safe to do.

What you need:

(Pack so you don’t waste time running errands or finding online when you arrive.)

• Loads of interesting, inspiring, and varied materials related to your retreat goal.
• Raid your university and public libraries to assist the above.
• Print resources if possible or download to avoid urge to surf.
• Resolve to bypass television and radio as well.
• Your favorite comfort clothes.
• Supplies that make you feel effective – highlighter, ruler, tabs to mark key passages, a retreat notebook, etc.
• Some downtime distractions for diversions/rewards – DVD of movie that has been on your “to watch” list, recreational reading, puzzle, good bottle of wine or favorite beverage for sitting and celebrating the day’s wins.
• Plan for food that is simple and healthy or strongly associated with reward and celebration.
• Exercise gear, at minimum shoes for walks.
• Music if it’s part of your focus and reward system.
• Whatever you need to sleep well.

4. Entry

No matter how well you clear the decks, remaining ordinary tasks will continue to pop into your head. Create a list to jot them down through the retreat. Resist using these pop-ups to procrastinate. If some feel essential, designate one or two specific times a day to tackle them. For the rest practice cultivating your “it’s not on fire, it can wait” mantra knowing the list will hold the item until you are ready on your return.

Uncouple your time from the clock. Take down clocks and put sticky notes over those on appliances. Sleep when you need to sleep, eat when you need to eat, move when you need to move, and stay in the flow of your thoughts, breaking when you need a break. This approach is why retreats are solitary activities.

If you find yourself stuck consider Pomodoro method or similar time block approach. Commit to the next 25 minutes for a micro goal: find and read a relevant chapter; free associate a list of questions; unload the stream of distractions that are interrupting your thoughts by writing them down. But resist a boot camp approach; if you’re not finding your intellectual groove it may be that you need time to escape the overload we all experience.

Exercise, walk, cry, scream, stand in the shower, play raucous music…but don’t add to the overload by going back to usual patterns (checking email, Twitter, calling friends, etc.) Do what is not normal for you. Buy an actual newspaper, eat out alone, sit in silence, draw. Give yourself time and a lack of structure to let inclinations and thoughts appear. Shelves are filled with books about the nature of scientific and other breakthroughs that endorse the importance of downtime and lateral thinking. Relax into it. Maybe that’s what you need most.

5. Re-entry

Don’t judge the quality of your retreat on immediate results. Many of the benefits will not be apparent for weeks and months to come when ideas or insights connect in new ways. As a group, academics are prone to metrics and evaluation. Do celebrate wins but remember that getting away and feeding your brain is itself the win.

Do plan flexible time at work for re-entry. You are very likely to come back with a bushel of things you want to put into motion. Having to subjugate that new energy to a “normal” or, worse, a more crowded than usual day feels like a setback. Plan for your first day back to be intentionally light. If at all possible, don’t use it for starting a demanding set of experiments, completing a substantial goal like manuscript submission, or having back-to-back appointments to catch up. Do designate a schedule for working through your inbox from your absence (consider setting your away message to for an extra day to buy yourself time).

Do wait a week or so and reflect. Write down what your retreat accomplished, what worked, and what you would do differently next time. Then look forward on the calendar and consider how to get several retreats of different intensity into your calendar in the coming year(s).

Your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax and wait for the answers. – William Burroughs

Your ability to generate power is directly related to your ability to relax. – David Allen

…periods of “incubation” or rest can enhance creativity. – Wand and Sanders

It has been about two years since I started my new position as a principal investigator (PI) at Clinical Department in R1 University. Year 2 has been a challenge, but for different reasons than Year 1. While the lessons from Year 1 remain relevant, Year 2 has yielded additional knowledge and insight. As always these days, n=me.

Use your faculty mentoring committee: It is one thing to assemble a faculty mentoring committee and another thing entirely to use it effectively. I have been remiss this year in utilizing the expert panel of mentors I have assembled. Much like graduate school, I am worried they will tell me my progress has been slow (I know) and I need grants and papers (yes, I know). But, much like in graduate school, this is a necessary conversation. Moreover, my committee members are there to support and facilitate my progress through the Promotion and Tenure process. It is unwise to skip these meetings that address every point of my tenure application.

Pay it forward: I have benefited from some stellar mentorship throughout my early career. Part of the reason I started blogging at Edge for Scholars was to pass along my experiences in career development award writing, the academic job market, and the life of a new PI. This is the year I started paying it forward in earnest, actively seeking out opportunities to peer mentor new faculty and postdocs. Be the mentor you had or be the mentor you needed. But be a mentor.

Use that network: This has been the year my network has really started playing a role in my career development.  I spent last year attending new meetings and expanding my network, building up my laboratory website, and investing in my career with both time and money. This year, that investment is starting to pay off with new opportunities for myself and my trainees. Not sure where to start? Here are some easy steps to take towards building a national reputation.

Plan ahead: I thought I was busy in Year 1. I was even busier in Year 2. Work on managing your time and being efficient in the time you allocate to tasks. This continues to be a struggle for me and it was particularly obvious during teaching in the spring semester. Year 2 was the first time I taught an undergraduate level course. It was a lot of work and came at a particularly busy time in the laboratory. I do not think I was prepared for the hours of preparation teaching these lectures would require. Do not underestimate this time or you, like me, will only do lecture preparation for weeks. The same is true for grant writing. Break up grants into smaller pieces and work on them in smaller chunks over a longer time period (excellent tips here). This will keep your productivity up on other tasks.

Protect your time: One of the continuing themes of this new PI journey is protecting your time and filling it with valuable things. Progress on your own projects, managing your research team, and writing grants are all valuable. Service on committees and administrative tasks (like updating the department website), while also important, are less important than successfully launching your career. In the words of my mentors, when it comes to service in the pre-tenure years, do the minimum required. Help others (with their permission) protect their time too. While external requests for manuscript and grant reviews this year were manageable, this was the year of a hundred new funding sources with a thousand new grants. I was very tempted to write many of them, but there is not enough time to write them all, and saying “yes” to these grants meant saying “no” to other grants and opportunities. Protect your time and be picky in which grants you choose to write.

That is a wrap on Year 2! In Year 3, I have my three-year review. Fingers crossed this year will include the laboratory’s first papers, grants, and trainee fellowships. Stay tuned for more tales!

Did I miss an important point? Do you have questions or concerns about the post? Or perhaps an anecdote to contribute! Feel free to send some electrons my way in the comments, via Twitter @PipetteProtag, or through traditional electronic mail pipette.protagonist@gmail.com

We’re living through tough times. The overall grant funding rate has been trending downwards since I was born, and I ain’t that young. Everything’s more competitive now than it was 10 or 20 years ago, from the amount of work needed to get into a high impact journal to the number of publications you need to be competitive for training grants or R01. Not only that, but we’re more circumscribed as well – the regulatory requirements are much more stringent than they used to be, and we live in a world of all soft money.

To add insult to injury, for a lot of young folks, going into science means you stop getting constant praise from everyone for how smart you are, and start being constantly told what an idiot you are, every time you submit a paper or grant. Heck, I’m more successful than most, and my standard grant review is, “It’s amazing, given all the great work he had as preliminary data, that he wrote such a godawful grant.” You probably spend your primary education and undergraduate career being the smartest kid in class, and having everyone telling you how wonderful you are. Now, pretty much the opposite.

So, given both these real and psychological pressures, how do you sleep at night? How do you keep from collapsing into a quivering pile of jelly when you think about it?

Two words:

Massive. Egotism.

Here’s the important part – I first taught large lectures for undergraduates in 1988, 30 years ago, and have been helping train grad students and fellows for roughly 20 years. There is such a thing as talent and intelligence, and people have it in different quantities. But in order to be in this position at all, you’re already in the top few percent. And, in my experience, there ain’t all that much difference at that level. Somebody who’s in the 99th percentile and the 99.5 percentile just isn’t that different.

So – the thing to tell yourself is, “What I am trying to do is possible. And if anybody can do it, I can.”

Your ego needs to be so big, it no longer requires external approval – you’re wonderful no matter what anybody else says. So when reviewers ask me if perhaps I was having a stroke while writing my latest paper, I don’t let it get to me. I know my work is wonderful – I just perhaps need to do a better job of letting them know how wonderful it is.

That’s the trick, though – have the sort of ego that allows you to completely emotionally gloss over complaints from reviewers, while still having the humility to recognize when things need to change. Sometimes your theory is wrong, and you need to adapt it to new data. Sometimes you need to do a better job of explaining why your work is important. Sometimes you just flat out need to bring in somebody else’s expertise. That’s OK, though – you can not possibly be an expert in everything, no matter how smart and hard working you are. Division of labor has been a good idea since the neolithic. Needing someone else’s help isn’t an admission of failure – it’s good resource management. There’s only so much of you to go around, and it’s more efficient to outsource some skills.

So, don’t let the harsh reviews of your grants get to you. You’re good enough, you’re smart enough, and, gosh darn it, people like you. And if you’re not the smartest person in the room, you’re as close as makes no difference.

Alternately, you can just remind yourself, that no matter how bad it gets, nobody is shooting at you yet, so how bad can it really be?

Suicide is the second leading cause of death in the United States for individuals aged 10-34 (accidental injury is the only cause that exceeds it), and the fourth leading cause of death among individuals between the ages of 35 and 54. (National Institute of Mental Health)

“If we were to base our actions on the data rather than on stigma, we would be focusing far more on preventing suicide as a critical public health risk. We ought to be checking in on our students’ and colleagues’ psychological health as much or more than we do regarding their ‘physical’ health.”

Dr. David Sacks, licensed clinical psychologist

With a fuller toolkit of resources, together we can create a suicide-safer community for academics in crisis.

These links provide general guidance with a focus on mental health in university settings. Refer directly to your institution’s health and counseling centers for specific programs to help you or your colleagues and scholars.

Gatekeeper Training 

Gatekeeper training empowers participants to start initial conversations about suicide and mental illness and to refer someone in crisis for help (not to be the primary source of support). These trainings are available online and many universities offer live trainings.

QPR Institute

LivingWorks

Suicide Prevention Resource Center

Kognito is an online interactive program that addresses how to help students, including those at risk for suicide.

Suicide Prevention Lifeline

Provides resources to prevent suicide including a 24/7 Lifeline 988 and crisis counseling via instant messaging.

Most people who die by suicide exhibit warning signs. Knowing the risk factors and signs may help you determine if a colleague is at risk and needs help.

Preventing Medical Trainee Suicide

Excellent information for healthcare professionals including facts about physician depression and suicide, prevention programs, links to additional resources, and toolkits for medical schools and residency/fellowship programs for coping after suicide loss.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9GRxF9qEBA&feature=youtu.be

Responding to Emotionally Distressed Students: A Faculty/Staff Guide

Specific guidelines designed by the Organization of Counseling Center Directors in Higher Education (OCCDHE) to assist faculty and staff in helping distressed students.

Grappling with Graduate Student Mental Health and Suicide

An in-depth look at a graduate student who died by suicide and concrete steps that academic institutions have taken to better support their graduate students’ mental health.

Supporting Graduate Student Health and Wellness

An overview of mental illness and death by suicide in graduate students with resources and strategies to support emotional health, and steps for helping someone in emotional pain.

Suicide Prevention in College

A thorough guide to emergency assistance, warning signs and prevention of suicide in college students. Includes a depression quiz and links to resources for LGBTQ, minority and veteran student populations.

Thanks to Dr. Julia Simmons and Dr. David Sacks for their professional expertise and for providing resources.

MORE RESOURCES

Feeling Powerless in the Age of Covid (Part I)

Feeling Powerless in the Age of Covid (Part II)

Balancing on the Edge

 

Dr. Courtney Peterson, assistant professor in the Department of Nutrition Sciences at University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), is having a very good year.

Her pioneering work on early time-restricted feeding (eTRF) in humans, shown to improve health even in the absence of weight loss, appeared in the highly ranked academic journal Cell Metabolism, making waves in the New York Times, the Washington Post, NBC News, and other media outlets. It also caught the attention of a public looking for effective, sustainable weight loss solutions, spawning a hashtag on Twitter (#eTRF) followed by a growing number of fans.

Additional validation arrived in July 2018, when Peterson received a large ($2.2 million in direct costs) NIH R01 grant to pursue the next phase of her eTRF research. The funding will allow her to establish a new lab at UAB, where she is launching a large-scale clinical trial to study the effect of eTRF and time-restricted feeding later in the day (ITRF) on blood sugar, blood pressure, and cardiovascular risk factors in adults with prediabetes.

As measured by any academic standard, Peterson, whose PhD is in Physics, is incredibly successful for someone who is considered an “early stage investigator” by NIH definition. So, we had to ask, of her many scholarships and fellowships and master’s degrees, was there any particular learning opportunity that provided a special boost to her career?

Her answer, in a nutshell: The Center for Clinical and Translational Science (CCTS) mini-sabbatical.

What is a Mini-sabbatical?

Mini-sabbaticals are immersive training experiences that connect investigators from any career stage with experts outside of their institution to supplement their research repertoire, from mastering a new tool or technique to acquiring new data or knowledge. An advantage of the CCTS program is its intense focus; unlike apprenticeships of yore, or a traditional academic sabbatical, mini-sabbaticals last only 2-120 days.

While an NIH KL2 career development scholar at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Louisiana, Peterson applied to the CCTS mini-sabbatical program so she could spend 10 weeks training with one of the world’s leading clinical researchers in circadian rhythms, sleep, and meal timing, Dr. Frank Scheer, who holds joint appointments at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School.

“The mini-sabbatical experience changed my career, providing me with the translational research skills, domain knowledge, and mentoring I needed to become the first investigator to study the health effects of intermittent fasting in relation to circadian biology in humans,” Peterson said.

“Most training programs are too short to really become an expert in an area and to become a truly multidisciplinary researcher,” Peterson added. “The mini-sabbatical was critical in providing me with an immersion in circadian research, so that I can help bridge the gap between the two fields of intermittent fasting and circadian biology and better understand the impact of meal timing on human health.”

Although the CCTS mini-sabbatical supports travel to another institution, the experience often results in investigators learning to look in their own “academic backyards” for new collaborative learning relationships. After Peterson returned from Boston, she sought out Dr. Karen Gamble at the UAB Nutrition and Obesity Research Center to learn about molecular and animal model techniques for studying circadian rhythms, rounding out her research skill set.

Beyond Anecdotes: Measuring Mini-sabbatical Effectiveness

SEQUIN, which stands for multi-CTSA mini-Sabbatical Evaluation and QUality ImprovemeNt, aims to evaluate and expand the use of mini-sabbaticals. It is a joint project of four CTSA Hubs: UAB, the University of Massachusetts Medical School, New York University School of Medicine, and the University of Rochester Medical Center (in its capacity as the Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA) program coordinating center).

“Mini-sabbaticals offer a tailored training experience to meet the unique needs of an individual investigator,” says CCTS Director Dr. Robert P. Kimberly. “As the paradigm shifts toward team science in academic medicine, mini-sabbaticals offer a pathway toward greater scientific synergy among institutions with shared research goals.”

How Do I Find a Mini-sabbatical Opportunity?

The Center for Leading Innovation & Collaboration (CLIC) recently launched a mini-sabbatical opportunities web page to help promote the CCTS mini-sabbatical program. Translational investigators looking for an immersive experience to grow their research skills and knowledge should start there.

As of this posting, there are 33 mini-sabbaticals available, representing a broad array of biomedical and behavioral disciplines (e.g., informatics, genetics, genomics, imaging; public health, economics, health policy) and complementary fields (e.g., drug and device development, pharmacotherapy, bioethics, and biomedical innovation/ commercialization). Opportunities for learning to work with special populations (defined not only by race, but also age and geographic location) are also available.

CCTS offers $1000 in support to investigators in our Partner Network who apply for a mini-sabbatical and encourages investigators to propose a mini-sabbatical if they do not see one that meets their career development needs. To learn more about the requirements for applying to the CCTS mini-sabbatical program, visit http://www.uab.edu/ccts/training-academy/trainings/mini-sabbaticals.

Questions? Email CCTS (ccts@uab.edu).

What every breastfeeding and pumping mom needs to know BEFORE attending a conference.

Travel Tip #1: If it’s a small conference or training, let work colleagues or training administrators know you are a nursing mother and will need to take breaks to pump during the conference or training. That way, they know that you aren’t just ducking out.

What to bring:

• Breast pump with extra pump parts
  • Be sure the pump is fully charged and extra parts are clean and stored safely
  • Consider also bringing a manual hand pump (and make sure you know how to use it) in case the electric pump stops working, AND a cover-up in case you need to pump in a more public space (like a plane)
• Extension cord
• Microwavable sanitizing bag
• Extra bottles with caps or breast milk storage bags
• Insulated freezer bag
• Reusable freezer packets
• Nursing pads
• Sanitizing wipes
• Large ziploc storage bags

Travel Tip #2: Taking a large (non-rechargeable) pump can seem like a great idea, but in practice can present challenges aside from lugging another heavy bag around. Many travelling moms buy a smaller, rechargeable pump, enabling them to pump anywhere without needing an outlet–including on the plane itself.

What to ask for from the hotel:

• A room close to the conference area if you plan to go to your room to pump
• On-site lactation rooms
• Extended checkout if needing to pump at end of conference before heading to airport
• Small bottle of dish soap for washing pump parts
• Freezer in room for milk storage
• Shipping services
  • FedEx and MilkStork offer special options for shipping breast milk
  • Check shipping hours and allow enough time to get the shipment processed before heading to the airport

Travel Tip #3: Pumping in your hotel room can impair your ability to participate in the conference. If your room is too far, ask the conference coordinators to reserve a room on the conference floor, just steps away from the action. They’ve done this without any issue for guests at previous Translational Science meetings and even went above and beyond and provided a refrigerator, hand sanitizer, pens, and a key for security.

Travel Tip #4: Ask the hotel to store your milk in their restaurant freezer. They do this on a regular basis and usually have the process down. Write your name and room number on the Ziploc and try to pre-freeze the milk enough to where it lays flat, then put several frozen-ish bags in a large Ziploc to give to the hotel clerk helping you. If bags are not yet frozen, tell the attendant that the bags need to lay flat in the freezer. Be sure to include your liquid ice packs to re-freeze as well.

Airport:

• Get to the airport at least two hours prior to boarding, no exceptions. This allows you to get through TSA, find your gate, and pump in a nursing room prior to take-off.
• Look for nursing rooms or free-standing nursing pods like Mamava, and download the app so you can easily look for locations near you when at airports, universities, and arenas/convention centers/stadiums nationwide.
• Know your rights. TSA allows breast milk to be stored in carry-ons (with or without your child) and breast milk is exempt from the 3-1-1 liquid rule. All American airlines allow expressed milk on board, but not all flight personnel are aware, so consider printing out the TSA and airline guidelines on traveling with breast milk.  Breast pumps and related equipment are considered medical devices and do not count toward your carry-on limit (meaning you can have your standard large and small carry-on plus a bag for your pump).

Travel Tip #5: Keep in mind: pumping AFTER you go through security will be easier than trying to bring your expressed milk through the checkpoint. Related, traveling through TSA with frozen milk is beneficial, as TSA will not have to test frozen items. If milk or frozen packs are not fully frozen when going through TSA, they will need to test the milk and will potentially remove your frozen packs altogether if the liquid inside cannot be easily tested.

Special thanks to Natalie Chichetto, PhD, MSW for contributing to this post. Natalie is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the University of Florida.

Additional resources:

Best Breast Pumps of 2022

Got Milk? When Packing for a Conference Requires Remembering the Breast Pump

How to Accommodate a Breastpumping Mom at Your Event

On the Interview Trail While Pregnant or Pumping

Inspire your young scientists with some amazing STEM-centered videos on YouTube.  (You can enjoy them too, because really, who DOESN’T want to see the world’s largest lemon battery, or learn how oxygen almost destroyed the world?)

Great channels to follow:

PBS Eons. This series, hosted by a paleontologist, a science writer, and some guy named Hank Green, provides bite-sized looks at momentous events and cool creatures from natural history.  From the “cat-sized deer thing” that evolved into whales to fungi as tall as trees, they shine a spotlight on the fossil record and explain how we know what we know about creatures of the past.

Mark Rober. Mark is really into winning, from science fairs to pinewood derbies to carnival games. He’s into winning through SCIENCE, though, and offers fun and older kid-friendly explanations for why certain wooden cars go faster than others, how some games are rigged, and more.

SciShow. Another Hank Green project, this one’s been around a while and has thousands of videos on everything from biology to climatology, physics to psychology, and a whole lot more.  (Seriously, I haven’t actually managed to scroll to the end of their list of videos yet.) Learn which organs you can live without, whether animals like music (featuring fMRI of crocodiles!), and the six longest scientific experiments ever, among a whole lot more.

Brusspup. This channel focuses on illusions, and for extra parent points, they’re often ones you can recreate at home using simple objects like water, food coloring, and corn syrup (for example, these 10 tricks that all use liquid).

Minute Physics. If you have a short time to watch (or just a short attention span), this is a great channel for quick, to the point answers to questions that vex the grade school set, such as whether walking or running through the rain will keep you dryer, why is it dark at night, and what if Earth were hollow?

It’s Okay to Be Smart. Another PBS series, this ranges widely from topics like why humans are upside-down lobsters and why nature loves hexagons more than squares or triangles, to why February only has 28 days and how come salt and pepper are the two spices on every table.

Veritasium. A motherlode of videos on every possible science and science-adjacent topic, from misconceptions about the universe to the most radioactive places on Earth to what the world looks like in ultraviolet.

Wendover Productions. Okay, it’s less STEM than “Huh. I never would have thought to ask that, but the answer’s cool,” but it’s still got some hilarious animation and a great narrator.  Learn how geography influences a country’s success, how airports make money, and why the northernmost town in America exists.

And don’t forget to watch videos curated especially for your career in our Video Vault!