Graduate training in the sciences: A narrative

January 15, 2014

Gap Junction Staff

What does scientific training do? Does it do the same things to different people? Is scientific training explicit or are there unspoken goals? This classic piece provides a fascinating, accessible, and very readable narrative about “a young girl called Snehalatha Bhrijbhushan” who lives in “a city in the Orient” and one day announces “‘I am going to sail across the blue oceans to become a scientist!'”

To read what happens in the “Department of the Pursuit of Scientific Truth”, click here to open the PDF (Subramaniam Snow Brown). The piece is “Snow Brown and the Seven Detergents: A Metanarrative on Science and the Scientific Method” by Banu Subramaniam. It was published in 2000, in Women’s Studies Quarterly (28, 1/2, 296-304).

What were your experiences in graduate training? What were the undercurrents? What was explicit? What did you wish you learned… or wish you hadn’t?