So flew'd, so sanded

Lisa C. asked:  So is the doctoral program just completely freaking hard, or just a lot of work?

Sometimes it's really hard.  I was just up in the bathtub reading this article and trying to make sense of this bit: 

Oxytocin enhanced the phosphorylation of CREB to the same degree as did the PKA activator forskolin. In contrast, 11R-PK1 inhibited the forskolin-induced CREB phosphorylation, but did not affect oxytocin-induced CREB phosphorylation.

Dude.  (She said articulately.)

Part of my trouble is maintaining realistic expectations of myself.  I don't have to be a neuroscientist.  I have to wade through that stuff and find what's relevant for my project.*  I have to recognize the limitations of this article (mice brains ≠ human brains) and summarize it accurately and concisely for my lit review.  If I need to learn more about neuroscience, I have to figure out a plan for doing so.  I don't have to understand that paragraph on the first run-through.  Or the fourth, or the eighth.

(*The reason I am reading this article is that part of my lit review looks at breastfeeding and cognition and of course I am writing about that dumb BMJ paper that got so much press last month.  My favorite rapid response was headed:  "Nice stats, too bad about the biology."  The authors controlled for maternal cognition and found that doing so pretty much wiped out the difference between breastfed and bottle-fed children on measures of IQ.  The authors have been criticized far and wide for comparing partially breastfed children with other partially breastfed children, but my first reaction was a little different.  What if you shouldn't control for maternal IQ?  What if those women are smarter in part because they were breastfed?  We know that family support makes a difference in breastfeeding initiation and duration rates, so women who were themselves breastfed may well be overrepresented among the mothers of breastfed children.  And what if the lactational hormonal milieu alters brain structure or function?  Mama rats have more dendritic spines than virgin rats -- how much of that change arises from pregnancy and how much from lactation?

(All this to explain my totally un-PC but statistically plausible T-shirt idea:  SMART WOMEN BREASTFEED.)

In statistics there are layers of understanding.  First you can give intellectual assent to the idea of a t-distribution.  Then you can solve sample problems intended to teach the difference between one-sample, dependent sample, and independent sample t-tests.  And eventually you can look at a research problem or a set of real-life data and decide whether t-tests are the appropriate tool for answering the question at hand.  I understand what my professors expect me to understand at this point.  It's just that there's so much to know.

This semester I keep thinking about two quotes from C.S. Lewis.  One is from The Screwtape Letters, when Screwtape counsels Wormwood to make the most of his patient's struggles as a young Christian.  I'm paraphrasing here, but the idea is that any time you settle in to do something you've dreamed of, whether learning classical Greek or being married to your sweetheart, it's discouraging.  You have to trudge up the learning curve before you can admire the view from the top.  On the tough days, I just keep trudging.

On the good days, I think about Ransom setting out across the Perelandran sea in pursuit of Weston. He is sore and weary, but he has unexpected help in tracking his quarry.  "My hounds are bred out of the Spartan kind, so flew'd, so sanded," he shouts (so technically I guess I'm thinking of a Shakespeare quote, not a Lewis quote).  I don't know exactly why that image keeps coming back to me, because it's not as if I'm out to prevent a second Fall on another planet.  But I am tracking down an answer to a question I have wondered about for years.  I am looking at the intersection of two subjects I am passionate about: the development of speech in children, and the choices families make about infant feeding. 

The last time I met with my project director to go over the draft of my lit review, she said, "This is really interesting to read."  I said, "Isn't it? I think it's fascinating."  I didn't realize until later that she had paid me a compliment, that she must read a lot of boring lit reviews.  I do think it's utterly intriguing.  I feel really blessed to be able to do this right now.  And my teething baby is waking up to nurse again, so I'll wrap it up and say goodnight.