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Non-Stop: Thoughts on Hard Work from two Alexanders

Alexander Hamilton (*see “Hamilton poses” from Hanny and me…yes, I know this is a little kooky) The spectacular success of the Broadway musical Hamilton provides insight into our societal values. It’s impressive that a story about the Revolutionary War and subsequent establishment of American democracy has been made accessible and relevant to a modern audience. To…

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Dusting off the data

Dusting off the Data

We recently published a pretty cool little paper (if I do say so myself), but it was a really long time in coming. Scientists have a responsibility to share our data and communicate our findings . But pretty much every scientist I know has data coming out of his or her ears. The time and mental power…

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Adventures in “Spontaneous Generation”

A childhood friend told me that when she was a little girl, she heard her mother say “don’t drop crumbs, we’ll get ants!” After hearing that, she thought that crumbs turned into ants. My friend and I laughed about this, but later we learned in our grade-school science class that people have shared similar beliefs…

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Tired of Caring?

Snoopy

A beautiful aspect of my job is the opportunity to help others. I have opportunities to mentor, train and advise students, to assist colleagues and co-workers, to collaborate on a variety of projects, and to reach out beyond the scientific community. This adds diversity to my day and enriches my scientific experience. Some of these…

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Sometimes I get in my own way

Courage is like a muscle. We strengthen it with use – Ruth Gordon I think a lot of us feel insecure or intimidated from time to time. That may be completely normal, and can be helpful in a way. When I first came here to WHOI as a postdoc, I was (rightfully) worried that I…

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A little reminder to keep perspective

Lab Notebook

I’ve been slowly going through some old things, tidying up, getting rid of clutter and “baggage”. Today I flipped through a lab notebook from my high school physics class. I kept it all these years (26 now!) because the teacher had written a really complimentary and inspiring note in the back. I was thinking maybe…

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¡En Español! (sort of*)

Conference

This post was co-written by A. Tarrant and H. Rivera. (* Giving an 8-minute presentation exhausted the limits of Ann’s Spanish proficiency. Someday we might write some posts in Spanish, but not quite yet). On September 16, 2017, WHOI hosted a special symposium titled “Oceanos: WHOI en Español e Português” in which twelve scientists gave…

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Stella song

Since ‘Stella (the sea anemone Nematostella) is one of our favorite animals, we’ve adopted this onto our lab play list.

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I didn’t always want to be a scientist

I have a weird little masochistic hobby – I often ask my friends how these decided to become scientists. The answer is almost without exception some combination of:  I always loved science…I loved the science fair…as a kid I wanted to know how things work…I was always fiddling with engines/chemicals/ant farms (or whatever). That wasn’t…

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