Mama PhD

When family members are afflicted with diseases for which there is no family history — e.g., a younger sister who had enough precancerous breast cells to justify a double mastectomy at age 40 — my siblings and I swallow our anger about our chemical-laden society and go into research mode.

In a recent New Yorker article, Atul Gawande compares medical—especially surgical—care to the service at the Cheesecake Factory chain of restaurants. While the analogy seems somewhat absurd at first—no doubt Gawande's point—we are soon sucked in to his comparison. The cooks and servers at Cheesecake Factory master hundreds of recipes, serving thousands of customers exactly what they ask for, night after night. Why, he asks, can't medical care work the same way? Why can't doctors deliver a measurable standard of care on a routine basis?

If you're female but not a mother, you can't be a truly great writer. On the other hand, if you are a mother, you are by definition selfish and entitled for also wanting to be a human being sometimes. At least, that is the takeaway I got from reading two articles.

I study the workings of organizations whose main purpose is not just to earn money, but to do something else. Just what that “something else” is has not completely been determined, and so the “objective function” of the nonprofit organization remains a “holy grail” for my sub-sub field that many continue to search for. I must admit that I am among those searching for this elusive model.

We recently discovered some old photos of our daughter's first Halloween. At 18 months, covered by a red hooded cape, she walked from house to house in the pitch black night, collecting candy in a wicker basket. She marched away from us as we stood on the sidewalk, confident on stout, stockinged legs. We later learned that on that same day a 25-year old graduate of our university, Teresa Halbach, drove alone to an Auto Salvage yard to photograph cars, where she was taken captive, horribly raped and murdered.

When I was in college I learned a lesson that I seem to have to keep learning, which is that I'm not really happy unless I'm at least somewhat busy. I came to think of it like riding a bicycle -- too slow, and you won't keep your balance and will fall right over; too fast, and the slightest bump in the road becomes a major problem.

Every summer, my undergraduate school offered a ten-week summer theater intensive. Students studied acting, directing, playwriting, stagecraft, movement, and voice all day, five days a week, and in the evenings and on weekends they prepared a play for performance.

There is a classic problem from Algebra that torments many a math student. If one driver leaves New York going 150 miles an hour, and another leaves Chicago going 200 miles an hour, where do they meet? (the answer- jail; they both were arrested for speeding!) Another classic problem haunts Calculus students, in which the volume created by revolving a function around a line is calculated. It is that latter problem that I was reminded of as I watched daughter, who would soon be too big to be riding such a small animal, ride a pony last weekend.