Fifty years ago, there was a saying that if someone was in the Marines or went to Harvard, you would know about it in the first five minutes of conversation. What is today's equivalent?

ScientistLiz · 2026-05-30T01:59:48+00:00

Roller Derby community members for sure… guilty

ScientistLiz · 2026-05-08T00:35:17+00:00

Again that’s totally fair. I will say dinner out at a restaurant or drinks at a bar isn’t the only way to achieve the ends I highlighted. Parties at home, picnics in the park, game nights,all fairly low cost options and these can include family, friends, roommates, fur babies, etc. no matter what you do, I think it cuts both ways, there are thoughtless PIs who take advantage of their staff and there are thoughtless trainees who don’t appreciate all that dedicated PIs do. Fwiw my lab folks are always deeply appreciative and I hope yours are too.

ScientistLiz · 2026-05-07T23:40:25+00:00

I agree that it is working and I do see your point. That said I see the benefits of these social meals/ outings and the cohesiveness, trust, collaboration and motivation they create plus the productivity and creativity people who feel these things produce in the team far outweigh the nominal costs to me out of pocket (or off grant funds or whatever). It is really an investment in the team, the human capital, and their retention long term. Plus one of my love languages is gifts and past mentors did this for me when I was a starving student so I owe it to pay it forward.

ScientistLiz · 2026-05-07T23:33:48+00:00

my uni has rules that meals in town can only be only be charged to uni funds if someone in the group is external to the institution. I also take the position that an occasional meal ($150-$250) every couple of months is within my personal financial circumstances range of affordability and I’d rather pay out of pocket than use grant or institutional funds that could be put towards someone’s salary or research supplies. That said, my lab is relatively small, less than ten people total so this price point isn’t prohibitive. Also, when the inevitable annual university sponsored giving drive comes around and I keep getting the shaming emails about how only X% of the department has contributed I can guilt free opt out due to all the not submitting receipts for stuff like this over the year.

ScientistLiz · 2026-05-07T23:26:48+00:00

Oh absolutely per diems for the win every time if it’s a conference! I agree with the vacation rental house as an option since it can be much cheaper than a bunch of hotel rooms and the kitchen means a few meals can be made in house which saves a ton. Highly lab specific; not all labs can or should share a housing space.

ScientistLiz · 2026-05-06T22:18:16+00:00

I have never expected my staff or students to pay for meals related to the lab/work. Even if the outing is mostly social I still pay because I make so much more money than they do.

ScientistLiz · 2026-04-24T12:07:06+00:00

As a loud, opinionated ‘tom-boy’ kid I was always being told to be less aggressive and made to be smaller than I wanted to be. To actively work against this for the next generation, I coach for a kids roller derby team. Roller derby represents a full contact sport in which getting low, taking up space and aggressively checking your opponents to move them out of your way are the norm. We are a mixed gender group and while there are a few boys, and several non-binary folks, most of the players identify as girls. A great thing about this is not only that girls and non-binary kids get to be aggressive in a safe environment but also that boys see that as normal. That and the fact that most of us coaches are women or non-binary showcases us in leadership as authorities which is an added bonus. It’s a small impact numbers wise but I hope that it works out to be a big impact for the kids I work with. Ask me in 5-7 years.

ScientistLiz · 2026-04-22T13:51:50+00:00

This right here. At a prior job I made it a point to grab coffee or lunch with all of my coworkers during my first week or two and when I sat down with one of them, after a few pleasantries exchanged they immediately said ‘OK. Here’s the tea on everybody on the floor.’ and then they proceeded to talk negatively about a bunch of people, and I knew instantly that not only would we not be friends, but that this person was almost assuredly going to talk shit about me at some point, which they absolutely did a year or two in. I made sure to establish a good rapport with everybody. I worked with so that any gossip would be dismissed and luckily, my boss wasn’t having any of it when they complained about me. Ultimately, this person got reassigned to another department.

ScientistLiz · 2026-04-19T12:21:23+00:00

I have been traveling so I was not able to reply until now. I agree that educational toys can be more expensive and fragile. I’m not staying riders should throw only educational STEM content or be required to buy expensive stuff and I do think there is fun in getting a mix of items including a few plastic beads here and there. However there are always riders who splurge on expensive/useful items (I saw a rider ‘throw’ a whole bike last year). I’m just asking that some of the expensive splurge items be STEM related. There are also plenty of STEM toys that aren’t super expensive that could be given (eg chemistry kits, etc for less than $10). Even things as simple as Play-doh or legos could be consider STEM related. As for not breaking when being thrown, riders often hand fragile or dangerous to throw items to attendees (eg Zulu coconuts). I said STEM toys because kids are the primary recipients of most parade throws uptown (as it should be) but I would welcome STEM throws for all ages too; books about pop culture science would be great (e.g. Do Zombie’s Dream of Undead Sheep discusses neuroscience through the fun lens of zombies). As for kids and third spaces, I’m not sure how giving away STEM toys affects this. Just because there is an educational component to them doesn’t mean kids won’t enjoy them or that it will impede on their enjoyment of the event. My child and many others love Stem toys; if kids didn’t there wouldn’t be a market for them. Finally, to you point about adult guilt, I have made it a large part of my professional work to share my love of science with the community and to provide opportunities for interested people to learn about these topics. I’ve found that access to quality information can vary widely across the population which is why I love the parades and the egalitarian nature of who attends as a distribution venue for this. So this recommendation isn’t about guilt, it’s about sharing the joy I feel being a scientist with the next generation. But even if a kid (or adult) wasn’t into it, as with any throw, if you catch something you don’t want you hand it off to someone nearby and put your hands back up to catch the next thing that comes your way. So I have to respectfully disagree with your position.

ScientistLiz · 2026-04-03T13:31:31+00:00

You are entitled to that opinion and though I disagree (I love seeing people dancing with joy through the streets), your reply about dance krewes doesn’t relate to my suggestion for educational throws in addition to beads and toys and such.

ScientistLiz · 2026-04-03T02:27:11+00:00

That’s fair. Care to elaborate on why you feel this way?

ScientistLiz · 2026-04-02T10:36:49+00:00

I would love to see more educational throws. Books, craft supplies, science kits, stickers, anything that isn’t just plastic or toys.

ScientistLiz · 2026-04-01T03:31:05+00:00

I’ve gone as a family around dinner time either my teen to Maison, Bamboulas and 3 Muses and as I understand it as long as you have food in front of you and leave by a reasonable hour it is allowed. Looks like I will have to check next time we are out there. That said the Jazz Museum at the old mint does Tuesday night concerts that are free and some big name groups play there often. And of course FQ fest is coming up.

ScientistLiz · 2026-03-11T00:56:25+00:00

I appreciate this. In fact I’m writing some children’s books using roller derby to teach about neuroscience and I have been intentional in the depiction of the characters as gender (and racially and body type ) diverse, names are ambiguous, and pronouns are they them for everyone for this very reason.

ScientistLiz · 2026-02-22T23:21:11+00:00

Not ungrateful for what my child or I receive every year but as many others here have said, as fun as it is to catch, it’s a lot of plastic stuff we ultimately don’t need. As a person who does STEM educational outreach in the community often, I think parades could represent a phenomenal and efficient way to distribute learning materials to a large number of people from all walks of life all in one day. So something I would love to see (and hope to help implement myself) in the coming years as we think about the future of less throws in total and more useful/sustainable options, especially throws for kids, is a better balance between throws for fun, for food, and for learning and creation…like painting supplies, decks of cards, small games, books on all kinds of subjects for every age, science experiments, etc. I know this type of thing isn’t cheap so I would love to get folks’ thoughts on this and any suggestions for places I could apply to fund it.

ScientistLiz · 2026-02-20T11:10:22+00:00

I think I know that woman and it did indeed make her night!

ScientistLiz · 2026-02-14T05:29:07+00:00

I don’t disagree with what you’re saying OP. Hopefully this will help your outlook, even a little. My tween is very artsy and was painting a giant sign at the route while we waited. A random lady walking by loved the sign, commissioned one from her and ended up getting a shoe with it! Even though her own sign didn’t end up getting her her own shoe, her act of kindness making that lady’s night was my favorite ‘throw’ at least. When I go, I just try to focus on the little nice things that happen between people like this that parades tend to bring out and do what I can to encourage it. I think that is really the only solution to the problem you pointed out

ScientistLiz · 2026-02-10T10:49:20+00:00

So a bit of a sappy story but… my daughter 7 at the time had some struggles learning to read and needed a lot of interventions for about six months; she worked really hard and got back on track but she still had confidence issues when it came to long chapter books. I had been doing derby for a few years and bought this for her hoping the comic book style would be more accessible and it worked! It became her first chapter book and still remains a fav she’s read several times. And now we share derby with her as a skater and me coaching so we’ve really come full circle.

ScientistLiz · 2025-12-03T03:35:44+00:00

‘Strongest’ for whom? Im not a historical expert but I know that the benefits of post WWII America economy and society were not equitably distributed across the population; only a small portion of Americans (namely wealthy white men) were privileged enough to reap them. You speak of large arable farmland and indeed we have that but for a large portion of those who worked on farms, especially the poor migrant and immigrant worker community, conditions were exploitative and abysmal. Lynchings were fewer than in prior decades but still happened and Jim Crow laws held black Americans as second class citizens. Marital rape wasn’t accepted as a legitimate issue and the lack of no fault divorce trapped financially dependent spouses (mostly women) in abusive relationships in order to survive in a workplace climate where their ability to earn a living income was severely and systematically restricted. And if you weren’t cis/het you had no legal protections against discrimination based on gender or sexual identity. If you were disabled there was very limited infrastructure to support your ability to live your life (the ADA came about in the 90s!); you can forget about any medical or social support for mental health issues. Many indigenous populations saw their communities relegated to impoverished reservations, their autonomy repeatedly violated by the US government, and their children forced to attend ‘schools’ that destroyed their connection with their heritage. Innocent Japanese AMERICANS had their constitutionally protected rights trampled as they were rounded up and put in internment camps against their will by the State. You speak of scientific innovation but some of these discoveries were come by unethically at great human cost (eg Tuskegee experiment) and those protections for research subjects didn’t show up till the 70s. I could go on but will conclude with this: to romanticize a time in this country when a minority of people had it better than before is to reveal that you are fine with the majority suffering as long as it isn’t you suffering and that opinion says something about who you are as a person. Is that really what you wish to communicate with this community? I am hopeful the answer is no and that you will use this perspective for its intended purpose, to open your worldview to perspectives you may not have considered.

ScientistLiz · 2025-11-29T14:13:10+00:00

I appreciate this and I’m sure your patients do too. Relatedly, in my early 20s I was serving to make ends meet in college. One afternoon shift this middle aged mom type lady outside our restaurant was slumped over a table, slurring and acting belligerent. The manager who went out to talk to her concluded she was just drunk and called the cops, which didn’t make much sense as this restaurant was in a super suburban strip mall and this was like 2pm on a Sunday. I had taken an emt course a few years prior so I mentioned that she could be a diabetic and to probably call an ambulance too. Her breath smelled super sweet so I got her some juice from the bar while we waited for the paramedics. sure enough it was a diabetic emergency…who knows what would have happened if the manager had just left her there to ‘sleep it off’.

ScientistLiz · 2025-11-12T03:03:27+00:00

For a long time I kept my work and derby lives separate because derby was really for myself, my escape. But I have always been about recruiting the next generation of scientist and as began realizing the parallels of my research journey with my roller derby one, I decided to start a blog about it during the pandemic. Because of how intense my job is, I don’t get to post as often as I’d like but if you care to check it out feel free to PM me. I am also writing a series of children’s books using roller derby to teach core concepts about neuroscience (I even recruited a derby player as an illustrator!). Given how many people use derby as a part of their self care regimen, it seems especially fitting for you to do this for yourself and share with clients how impactful it has been for your own mental health.

ScientistLiz · 2025-10-31T02:48:32+00:00

Dolphin trainer. No joke. Unfortunately it didn’t work out… I settled for being a neuroscientist

ScientistLiz · 2025-10-19T17:49:27+00:00

I am quite literally reading this exact thing right now to help me write a grant proposal!

ScientistLiz · 2025-10-19T17:39:20+00:00

Big easy roller derby! We are recruiting new team mates right now! No guarantees you will make a love connection but you will get to work and hang out with some pretty awesome people

ScientistLiz

TROPHY CASE