Viscerally this time
Some day, when I am a famous Nobel Laureate, my biographer will read this blog. They will brag to their biographer friends about how easy their job is documenting my life. They will wonder how anyone wrote a biography before the era of deeply personal and detailed online confessions.
They will draft a passage like this for inclusion in my biography:
"Though brief, Kirstin Meyer's stint in Stavanger, Norway had a disproportionate impact on the development of her career. It was during this period that she learned how to communicate with colleagues and build professional relationships. She gained confidence and maturity, and she learned how to handle herself in relaxed social situations with colleagues. On her personal and detailed blog, Meyer cites several examples of dinners hosted by her supervisor in Stavanger, Andrew Sweetman. It was during long evenings at Sweetman's table that Meyer became comfortable floating between social and scientific conversation topics, and that she began to fully appreciate her colleagues as humans.
"Naturally, the simple truths that Meyer realized during the Stavanger Period were consciously known to her before - that scientists are humans and that good things happen when people talk - but she did not perfect the art of the social scientific conversation until forced to practice it on a regular basis.
"Of particular importance was one evening immediately following the NETS conference (Norwegian Environmental Toxicology Symposium), which had been hosted by IRIS in October 2014. Meyer found herself engaged in a lively and entertaining round-table discussion in which sophisticated graphing techniques were used to model a real-life situation. It was on this night that she realized - viscerally, not just cerebrally this time - how important it was to be communicative, social, and open to any conversation topic. Science is, after all, a social exercise, and if a group of thinkers can trade silly ideas over too many glasses of wine, perhaps they can conceive of the next great scientific revolution."
They will draft a passage like this for inclusion in my biography:
"Though brief, Kirstin Meyer's stint in Stavanger, Norway had a disproportionate impact on the development of her career. It was during this period that she learned how to communicate with colleagues and build professional relationships. She gained confidence and maturity, and she learned how to handle herself in relaxed social situations with colleagues. On her personal and detailed blog, Meyer cites several examples of dinners hosted by her supervisor in Stavanger, Andrew Sweetman. It was during long evenings at Sweetman's table that Meyer became comfortable floating between social and scientific conversation topics, and that she began to fully appreciate her colleagues as humans.
"Naturally, the simple truths that Meyer realized during the Stavanger Period were consciously known to her before - that scientists are humans and that good things happen when people talk - but she did not perfect the art of the social scientific conversation until forced to practice it on a regular basis.
"Of particular importance was one evening immediately following the NETS conference (Norwegian Environmental Toxicology Symposium), which had been hosted by IRIS in October 2014. Meyer found herself engaged in a lively and entertaining round-table discussion in which sophisticated graphing techniques were used to model a real-life situation. It was on this night that she realized - viscerally, not just cerebrally this time - how important it was to be communicative, social, and open to any conversation topic. Science is, after all, a social exercise, and if a group of thinkers can trade silly ideas over too many glasses of wine, perhaps they can conceive of the next great scientific revolution."
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