Lab Girl

I don't really know what to make of this one. I really liked Jahren's discussion of botany and chemistry when it was happening. Jahren is hard on people: her students, her co-workers, but also herself and she pulled no punches in describing herself, which led to challenging passages where I was cringing at her condescension towards colleagues and students. I liked how she depicted herself learning and growing, and making her way through bipolar disease. It was truly vulnerable and authentic. Nonetheless, I don't think I'd send one of my students to rotate through her lab – it's clear that she embraces the sort of work-to-death environment that academia is struggling to grow out of.

Speaking of generation gaps, I was surprised to find that Jahren has barely more than a decade on me. From the way she described being a woman in science, I would have guessed more like three decades. Indeed, many of her faculty members were women, and my own experience in overlapping years in the life sciences was that there was very little overt sexism.

I loved reading about her relationship with Bill, her lab manager, but I note his conspicuous absence from the press releases, her lab website and many of her publications. It's hard to read about how she sees him as a partner while he's underpaid and underacknowledged for the work he does. Finding grants to pay people is brutal – I know that personally – but now she's a big deal and he could have fancy titles and a nice profile on the lab website but he's not even mentioned. Perhaps that's how he wants it, but it's weird to write a book about your friendship with an employee and then not use any of your employer privileges to support said employee.