Hardball (was: get on with it)

[Karen Allendoerfer]

I'm relieved to read that some people had the same reaction to reading
_Hardball for Women_ that I did.  Reading this book made me rather 
uncomfortable about how I was supposed to act in the workplace; I too 
felt that women were being advised to suppress their strengths and act
in unethical, arrogant, or just plain nasty manners.  

Perhaps it's because I worked for a woman as a grad student and a feminist
man as a postdoc, but I haven't seen the necessity for the extreme types
of "hardball" that Heim describes in order to succeed in science.  

My experience has been that there are good people out there who do good
science and who can be good mentors without behaving this way; and it's
these people you want to work for and with.  Perhaps the others will 
examine their own behavior when they wonder why no one wants to come to
their labs.  

Karen