How do we know what we are bad at, and what do we do about it (if anything)? Tupperware containers, face recognition, mental math, and grantwriting make the list. One of us may or may not have been a childhood chess prodigy. Sometimes just jumping in and doing something (like writing a grant or learning a programming language) is helpful at reducing anxiety. Deciding what kind of bad we are seems worthwhile. Some things are important to just try. Of all the things we are bad at, how do we decide what (if anything) to work on improving?

Theme music courtesy of The Bobby Dazzlers

Links:

• Prosopagnosia - Wikipedia
• Orphan Black (TV Series 2013–2017) - IMDb
• Hyde and Mertz (2009) on gender differences in math ability
• Girls outperform boys in science, but not in the US — Researchers say these cultural forces are strong in the United States, Britain and Canada but far less pervasive in Russia, Asia and the Middle East, which have a much higher proportion of women in science and engineering. In Jordan, for example, girls score more than 8 percent better in science than boys do.
• OmniFocus for Mac - The Omni Group
• Nate Kornell Article
• myIDP (individual development plan) at Science Careers
• The juice and the squeeze - Contact — Please send email related to the show through this form (rather than emailing us directly)—it helps us organize our email in the same place! Although we read all email we do not have time to respond to all of it individually. If you email us a topic or question you'd like discussed on the podcast we may read your email. We may use your first name; please feel free to provide a pseudonym if you'd like to remain anonymous.