A few years ago, I made a radical decision: I will no longer lie to people about why I am late or have to cancel plans.

No big lies about debilitating illness, no small lies about my cat throwing up. No bus-was-late, no missed-your-email, no coming-down-with-something. Instead, it's "I just lost track of time while coding" and "I really don't have the energy to come into town today", and, possibly the worst, "I'm so sorry that my poor planning has led to this delay."

So what has this cost me? I feel embarrassed. A lot. I've shattered an illusion of "having it all together", and that's a scary thing. I'm only human (a human recently diagnosed with ADHD!) and now I have to face up to that. But this facing up has led to some unexpected outcomes. For one, it feels BAD to lie. You might not notice it if your life is peppered with white lies, but it truly feels icky, and coming clean feels, well, clean. It's hard to explain but telling the truth assuages at least some of the "I can't believe I did this again" anxiety.

I've also noticed a change in the people around me. Friends have told me that my policy gives them the space to also own up to low-energy days. Students can see that they're not alone in the chaos, despite my fancy degree and position. I'm sure my delays and rescheduling have been hard on colleagues, but they also know that when they need to admit to not having read a draft yet, they'll find grace in my inbox. 

Back in September, I signed up to display some photographs at a local salon. I had until January 5 to order prints and frames. I'm sure you, like September!Maggie, can see what's coming... I did indeed order the photos on December 31, expected 48 hours shipping... and of course they haven't arrived yet. It's the holidays, and these things happen. I should have done this in, I don't know, October? Given myself some buffer time??

It would be so, so easy to email the salon tomorrow morning complaining of the flu. It's going around, oh of course you poor thing, thanks for thinking of our clients, let's reschedule to Wednesday. I almost did it. But, alas. I guess I have principles. And at least I feel clean. Minus the egg on my face.

It's that time of year again where we must confront the truest bias out there -- anti-goldenrod propaganda!

--

Why do plants have showy, beautiful flowers? Why is goldenrod honey so delicious and sought-after this time of year? The answer to both of these questions is simple: Pollinators LOVE nectar. It's full of good sugars that bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds depend on to live.

A beautiful flower is a big advertisement, shouting "HEY, WE'VE GOT NECTAR HERE!", and the shape of that flower can give you clues as to who they're targeting (flowers are the ultimate marketing pros). Long, tube-shaped flowers are probably meant for the long beaks of hummingbirds. Big flowers high in the trees might instead be meant for bats. And goldenrod, with its many small flowers clothed in bees' favorite color---those are meant for the bees.

Not all pollen is created equal. Many plants skip the costly production of showy flowers and nectar, instead producing pollen that is lightweight and meant to be carried far away on the wind. Because they don't rely on direct pollination, wind-pollinated plants have to produce a LOT of pollen to make sure that some of it reaches someone else's flowers or cones. This is the pollen that often causes seasonal allergies.

--

Since goldenrod is insect-pollinated, it would make no sense for goldenrod to create pollen that is blown away in the wind before the bees can do their job. So who is the culprit?

Experts agree, it's likely ragweed*. Ragweed is an unassuming, wind-pollinated plant that blooms at the same time as goldenrod. Ragweed's flowers are all business, no show, and they fly under the radar while letting goldenrod take all the heat.

And, if you're allergic to ragweed, I've got bad news for you: As the climate warms, growing seasons get longer, including the allergy window for ragweed.

So, if you've always blamed goldenrod for your fall allergies -- maybe take a hard look in the mirror and ask yourself: Could it be ragweed?

As dawn yawns and stretches over the African savanna, a line of cars waits impatiently at the wooden gate of Crocodile Bridge Rest Camp. I join the tail end in my tiny white rental car, exhausted from an annual weeklong scientific conference (the Savanna Science Network Meeting in Kruger National Park), but determined to make the most of my trip to South Africa.

​This year, I am on a mission. I'm going to see a rhino.

Read more at the Cornell K. Lisa Yang Center for Wildlife Health Blogs from the Field: 
https://wildlife.cornell.edu/blog/my-rhinoceros-teacher

Every year, as March trips into April, the Ph.D. dissertation defense announcements patter in like spring rains. It is a time of stress, yes, but also joy and celebration as a huge career and life milestone is reached. 

These days, however, my first reaction to a defense announcement is to metaphorically grab the (ex-) student---be they friend, mentee, or stranger---by the shoulders, whispering intently: Do you KNOW yet? Has anyone TOLD you?

No? Well, I will: Get ready for the emptiness. The blues. The "what now?". The "so that's it?" And if you're already feeling these things? You are not alone. 

I've felt this way. Many others have felt (and do feel) this way. We just don't talk about it that much.

*

I've written before about the sudden pulmonary embolism that threw a wrench in my dissertation plans. I ended up defending and passing a few weeks later, but I haven't yet talked about the blues that followed. Of course, almost dying certainly played a role in my emotional state for the rest of 2023, but this was something separate.

I remember going out to a Mediterranean dinner the evening after my dissertation defense, with my mom and brother and a few local friends. What (I thought) should have been a happy and joyous occasion -- I defended! I lived! -- left me instead feeling a bit ... normal. Numb, even. It was like my brain couldn't grasp that I had actually reached the milestone I had worked four years to achieve. This troubled me, but I put the feeling aside, trying to enjoy the moment. 

A few days later, I sat with my mom in my parents' living room, ruminating. "Melancholy" is the word I landed on: a pensive, lingering sadness that dragged at me, but which I couldn't quite pinpoint. My mom, concerned, asked if I wanted to talk to my doctor about adjusting my antidepressants. "No," I replied, "I think this is... okay. Maybe?" It didn't feel like my usual depression -- that familiar feeling of standing at the edge of a metaphorical cliff, ready for a stiff breeze to knock me off the edge. This feeling was more a complicated emptiness. 

The more I turned the feeling over in my mind like a worn stone, the more I realized how familiar it was. It was the feeling of graduating college, not sure if I'd find another home quite like William & Mary. A distinct homesickness, less for a place than for a state of being, being sure that accomplishment should overshadow the uncertainty of change. 

In the face of incredible achievement, I was feeling unmoored. 

*

There's a term for this feeling: the arrival fallacy. Coined by Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar (but as usual, describing a feeling that has existed for a long time). This reaction happens with many milestones and accomplishments, not restricted to academics. Looking back, this sense of loss is completely expected -- how else should you feel when you've been working towards the same goal for quite a while, one which may have taken over your life, and that goal is suddenly met?

I'm reminded of many a cat-and-mouse cartoon, where Wile E. Coyote or Tom chases their quarry off a cliff or up a mountainside, then scrambles in the air when they realize the ground has left them. Our momentum can carry us to our goal, but sometimes our feet leave the ground and we are left without clear ground to trod. 

(My friend Dave often says he feels "like the dog who caught the car". This is also an apt metaphor for this feeling of "now what?")
​
*

I don't have any solutions for this feeling, but even acknowledging its existence is, I think, a step in the right direction. Emotions are not good or bad, but just signals that need paying attention to. The post-dissertation blues is not something that needs us to question "Shouldn't I feel happier?" This feeling is just a sign that our psyches are reeling from a sudden loss of ground. Let the loss exist. Acknowledge its usefulness, and know that it won't last. You'll feel like celebrating once the shock has worn off, I promise.

And remember: Happiness is something carved out one day at a time, through small choices on who we surround ourselves with, how our living situation makes us feel, what we feed ourselves, and how we exercise, create, and self-express. We can't expect it to come just from big events and milestones. Invest in those small happy things.

*

Further reading: 

• You Accomplished Something Great. So Now What? A.C. Shilton, The New York Times. 2019.
• Mastering the Post-Performance Blues. John C. Buckner, Percussive Notes. 2013. This short article focuses on the depression musicians can often feel after a big performance, but I find his advice particularly resonates with my academic experience.

I haven't always been good at taking criticism. I probably never will be. My first response, usually, is a mix of defensiveness and fear. Why don't you like my idea? Why is my writing not good enough? Why do you think what I said was incorrect, or insensitive, or mean? And, of course, at the root of it all: Does this mean I'm not as good a person as I thought? Does this mean they don't want to be friends or collaborate with me anymore? For years, my responses were governed by this deep fear. My PhD advisor even told me once (I asked him to be honest) that I seemed... fragile. Like I might break when faced with pushback. And honestly? He was right.

Over the past few years, I've been working at shifting that fragility. Not getting rid of it, but rather side-stepping. Instead of getting down on myself for feeling defensive or scared, I take a moment to sit in that reaction, and then reflect on the truth:

They didn't have to say anything. They could have read my writing, looked at my proposal, watched my talk and had nothing to say about it.

I have to believe that friends, family, and collaborators that care about me and my work (and here I'm not talking about random strangers) only want me to be better. They want to save me from embarrassing missteps, they want to improve my science, they want to share their true feelings. And, additionally, they feel safe to do so.  If people are correcting me, telling me their real feelings, sharing hard truths -- that means that I've cultivated a good relationship and sent the message that "I can accept this".

My new mantra for criticism is a simple "thank you." Thank you for taking the time to correct me or offer advice, thank you for showing me that I am an approachable friend or collaborator, thank you for caring enough to want me to do better. This mantra has done wonders to course-correct that fear into a place of gratitude. From a friend who gave me a laundry list of problems with a trip pitch, to a mentor who asked me to reword some of my writing on this site, if you've given me criticism in the last year, know that I've been saying a silent thank you (and have tried to remember to verbalize this to you as well).

I'm not sure who or what this post is for! Gratitude for criticism has just been on my mind lately, and I guess as I'm reflecting on all that went on in 2024, I'm very thankful that I have friends and collaborators that want me to be better. We are all learning and growing, and isn't that just the point of life?

Thanks for reading.

Recently, I've been presented two opportunities to discuss my thoughts on ethics, ecology, and statistics with a wider audience. First, I was invited to give a talk in October to Cornell's Department of Natural Resources and the Environment seminar this coming October, with a specific request that "your research - and your reflexive critique of research ethics (on your webpage) - is of direct interest." This is my first real chance to step out of "self-work" and into a broader discussion with my peers on the things I care deeply about -- ethics in ecology and statistics, how we as scientists can address the history of our field in a productive way, and how to be in relationship with the Earth and other humans.

Second, I have also been nominated as a candidate for Secretary of the ESA Statistical Ecology section*. I thought a lot about how I would answer the question "Why are you interested in this role?", and landed on this as the end of my answer:

As someone from a purely mathematical background, I was late to learn how the growth of statistics came largely from a desire to support the project of eugenics with a logical, rational underpinning. I really want to use my positions and platforms to address this history. Mathematics and statistics are not, and cannot, be divorced from their use to prop up racist, sexist, and classist conclusions convenient to those in power.

This is not relegated to a historical viewpoint, either. I am tired of seeing statistics and biology used as "truth" to push transphobic, queerphobic, and other -phobic agendas. Statistics is not truth, but our best attempt at an approximation. We cannot, as scientists, simply let our research speak for itself. How we present our findings, and how these findings and expression of them might be used for social harm -- these are things that I see mathematicians and statisticians sometimes balk at addressing.

I'm definitely going to spend a long time thinking about how I could use a Secretary role to encourage more discussion of these issues, and how to craft my talk in October to include research ethics and decolonization. A part of me shies away from this work -- I'm just one person, a cis white woman, who has so little experience in things like community science. I haven't set up a research program, most of my work is on the computer, and I am pretty new to ecology as a field. But the key question to be asked is: "Can I do more harm or more good by stepping into these roles?"

I think I can do more good, but this won't be my last time self-reflecting. That's the core piece that separates real work from performative work, I think. Am I checking in, am I reshaping my approach, am I listening to feedback from others? Am I accepting roles (or nominations) because I want to be seen teaching about these topics, or because I want to be part of a conversation, and, well, someone needs to open space for that to happen?

For now, my goal is still to facilitate spaces of discussion and learning, so I'll continue to do so.

***

* If you're here because of that announcement, hello and welcome! You can read more about my viewpoints at this landing page.

It's often said that neuroscience and psychology are the expression of a brain studying itself. I fancy, then, that the field of ecology takes this self-study to fantastic scales -- from community, to landscape, to biosphere, as it were. Every scientist surely thinks of their field as the most intricate and fundamental, and yet I can't help but wonder: How lucky am I, to be engaged in a science that creates, in me, a small mirror for the Earth herself? To be a piece of the whole dedicated to the greatest act of self-reflection?

+ + +

When I was younger, I wanted to be an astronaut. My parents love to tell how, without fail, toddler Maggie would drop everything to stare at the opening credits of Star Trek: The Next Generation. My desire to go to space was aided by a natural proclivity for mathematics, and an eventual degree in the subject.

On applying to graduate schools, I wanted to join a field that used the mathematics I loved, rather than studying it directly. Naturally, I first gravitated towards planetary sciences and astrobiology. I thought to finally approach the skies. I spent workdays meant for programming FDA new drug applicant interfaces instead researching astrobiology programs.

But as I took my lunch breaks out by the honey locusts and lilypad-filled ponds near my office, I began to realize that I didn't want to spend all of my life behind a computer screen--just most of it. I didn't want to go to space; what I wanted was to be in space, to gain the vantage with which so few have been honored: To observe our home, in full. I wanted to experience Earthrise. I wanted to understand how this extraordinarily unlikely place came to be, and how it persists.  The only planet I wanted to study was our own.

And so, ecology.

I struggled to call myself an ecologist for a long time. I spent years feeling like an interposing mathematician who brought her computational skills to the real ecologists. It wasn't until I went to South Africa and engaged with savanna ecology directly that I realized I had always thought like an ecologist. I just needed time to build up a language and literature background to feel a part of ecological conversations.

As I look back on my childhood spent mucking around in the woods, foraging raspberries and spicebush, I wonder how I could have thought I'd be doing anything else.

+ + +

Is the production of conservationists and environmentalists, then, an act of planetary self-preservation? What of the myriad Indigenous ways of relating to our biotic and abiotic siblings, of connecting to the Earth with mutual respect? These ways of knowing go beyond study; they are action, intention. I like the term caretaker. Or perhaps, caregiver. Something in between the two -- someone who knows and sees, but also takes action to protect and nurture.

I don't know what exactly I'm getting at here. I suppose, in my life, I hope to be a caretaker/giver, a co-conspirator and conservationist. A piece of the Earth taking care of herself.

It's been a year. 

About a year since, on the front steps of an autumnal New Haven porch, my dad called. Your mother has cancer, she has cancer, and I need you here. Come home. Six hours into a ten hour drive, I turned around and headed back, fielding tearful calls from my younger siblings. I only made it to the Bronx. My sweet cousin Elizabeth wrapped me in her arms as I sobbed all night, and the next day she drove me all the way to Virginia. Staring blankly into the unknown of a cancer diagnosis, I couldn't stop thinking, How many weeks do we have left?

It's been over a year, and she's still here. 

It's also been about a year since I made one of the scariest decisions of my professional life. In the winter of my fourth year in graduate school, I was awarded my dream postdoctoral fellowship to study elephants up at Cornell. How could I refuse? But I was nowhere near ready to defend my dissertation, and I knew that saying yes would mean nine grueling months of work that should have spanned the next eighteen. I hadn't planned for my mom to have stage 4 lung cancer, and I hadn't planned to actually get the fellowship, but here we were. I talked it over with friends and family, then decided I couldn't say no. Despite the extreme difficulty to get where I am today, I'm so glad I accepted.

2023 has been quite a year: A year of stress, heartache, and tears -- but also extreme love, community, friendship, and hope. My mother might have died. I almost did as well. But we haven't yet. We are thriving. Blood thinners and targeted immunotherapy are wonderful things. I know this won't last forever, but I often think about where I was last year. We've had about sixty weeks, and I'm hoping for at least sixty more.

I've had a year to be thankful to all the friends and family, professionals and admin, kind strangers and mentors who helped me get through the most emotionally strained 12 months of my life. My perspective on life has changed drastically. I know now how precious time is, and I don't intend to waste any that remains. Friends, family, nature--these are the things I want to surround myself with, to pour my energy into. Everything else is just stealing time.

Life is short, you only live once, carpe diem.

2023, you've taught me a lot, but you've also been an absolute bitch. Here's hoping 2024 is a little gentler. 

- 

Update 19 Dec: Two hours after posting this, I tested positive for covid. 2023 just won't let up, will it?

Wow. Just, wow. I can't believe I'm finally (almost) finished with grad school. I really thought that the universe was out to get me for a bit there. What with my mom's lung cancer diagnosis last year, my own near-death experience in the E.R. last month, a family friend passing away suddenly, and the entire city of Durham being without power for two days before my defense, it's kind of a miracle I passed this milestone. I'm so incredibly grateful for everyone who attended my defense talk either in person or online, and especially grateful for my committee for moving their schedules around last minute to accommodate my illness.

The private defense went a lot more smoothly than I thought it would. I had anticipated a lot of nervousness and floundering on my part, but it truly was just a great discussion about my research, where it's strong, and where it needs a little more work during the revisions.

Three of my committee members went out of their way to say how impressed they were at the state of my dissertation. Given that I got most of my data only five months ago, and that I spent a lot of time recovering from, well, almost dying, they were shocked that my dissertation was in such a prepared and succinct state. I know that I've worked hard on this, but it was great to hear that validation from my committee that the amount I accomplished is something to be proud of.

My advisors did make a point to chat with me about personal ways to continue growth. One big one is my tendency to rely on external deadlines for my motivation. Science is a very self-motivated field, and I have to find a way to push myself without external forcing. That's definitely something I will be working hard on during my postdoc.

I'll end with some really inspiring words from one of my advisors, Susan Alberts: “You owe it to yourself to finish these chapters and get them published, but you also owe it to the world. As scientists, we have the privilege to study how the world works and decide our own schedules and time, but with that comes the responsibility of sharing that work with the world. If you haven’t published it, it’s not out there.”

Phew. After taking a deep breath and grounding myself in family and rest this past weekend, it's time to get back to work. Onwards!

Well, here we are again. Three days 'til my dissertation is due (for real this time), and I think I'm gonna make it.

It won't be the best piece of work I could have put together, but at least it will be DONE! And I'll continue to improve and polish these three chapters over the next few months, with submissions to journals likely in 2024.

Meanwhile, I've moved to upstate New York on a peaceful little property that hugs a nature preserve. In between writing sessions, I've been going on walks around the pond, mucked about the marsh, and made friends with some goldfinches. I'm looking forward to having the time to enjoy the summer before the cold winds of fall blow through.

I already love it here.

​M.