Eigen

I dunno, it might be gendered, but I'm male. The people telling me were male, and the other people they've given the advice to were male. It was a group of old white guys that had all been divorced multiple times, blaming the failed marriages on R1 TT life. At least in my field, there's more support for female graduate students/faculty having families than male. It's gender bias, but there's more of an expectation that having a family shouldn't keep the male student from spending just as much time working in the lab.

I know you're asking when people decided an R1 was the right path for them- I can't exactly help with that, but I can tell you when and how I decided that an R1 wasn't right for me. It comes down to the fact that I see an R1 as often being a "worst of both worlds". In my field, many of the major advances in research happen outside of academia- government labs, industry labs, defense labs. They also happen to some degree at R1s, but increasingly only at the top ~5-10 R1 schools due to funding constraints. On the flip side, an R1 position isn't great for teaching- most R1 faculty do enjoy teaching, but they do so very little of it. One or two courses a year, frequently small and/or graduate student driven. This also leads to an increasing reliance on adjunct labor and cheap graduate students for the primary teaching at those schools, which is something I have ethical issues with. Finally, R1 faculty in my field rarely get a chance to do anything themselves- they end up the consummate layer of middle management. Write grants, edit papers from students, look over projects from students. Many of the faculty I know have largely lost all of their lab skills after a few years! And this is all in addition to the lifestyle issues you mentioned. I'm married, I want to have kinds in a couple of years, and I want to be around to be a large part of their life. I love my work, but I want it to be a part of my life, not all of my life. And generally, R1 jobs in my field require everything you have to give. I've even been told several times that it's impossible to be tenure track and married at the same time- one or the other will give. I do disagree with that sentiment, but I don't really want to go into a job where that is the prevailing view. So I decided a couple of years ago that I would prefer to pick a job with a more discrete focus- either go the research route, and go into government/industry, or go the primarily teaching lab and find an undergraduate focused school. All of that said, deciding I didn't want to push for an R1 (and, like you, I feel I'm fairly qualified for it) was one of the hardest things I've had to do. It feels like I'm shutting a door on a huge portion of possibilities, but I finally reached the point where I couldn't prepare for all possible career outcomes. No matter what people tell you (and faculty at R1 schools say this, a lot) preparing for an R1 doesn't prepare you for a selective LAC. The latter schools want people who can show why they want to be there, and what they've done to prepare- not people that just decided an R1 wasn't for them. You can make the switch, but it's not as easy as it's made out, from what I hear. I have several friends in post-doctoral positions that are still trying to decide, so I really do understand the struggle.For you (and for them) the decision is harder. You don't like teaching, and I'm imagining there's less industry and government work in your field for a heavy research focus. One area you might be interested in, however, is institutional research (or another related admin position). At a smaller school, you could transition after tenure into administration. You'd keep your research work alive, and I'd imagine IR would complement (or potentially complement) your research interests. I have a couple of colleagues that have made the transition, and really enjoy it.

I don't like the idea of "rules" in job applications, personally. And maybe that's something that is hurting me on the job market- I can't tell yet, since this is my first year. But one thing I've noticed from obsessively reading the "notes from search committee" threads on the CHE forums yearly and talking to heads of search committees is that every single thing you can possibly do in your application materials, someone will hate. And someone else will love. Some people hate formal introductions (i.e., a traditional application letter with the snail mail address of the institution). Some people think leaving it off is tacky. Some people think discussing collaborations in a cover letter makes you come across as weak and like you just want to leech off of someone else's work. Some people think that without discussing collaborations, you can't show that you'll be a good fit into a department. In short, I learned that I needed to carefully consider the advice that was out there in my discipline, and then decide how *I* wanted to present myself. I have a writing style, a personality, and an approach to research. And that's what I want to show search committees. I also learned to send them out to a bunch of people, and ask them to do a quick look. I had friends that helped me do in depth revisions, but what was more telling was what people saw or stood out to them in a 2 minute read of something. It actually led me to start a "short perusal" group of people currently on the market to swap materials. Even across disciplines, getting the impressions of 10 or 15 people of your materials is immensely helpful.

The best bang for your buck right now, imo, is a 2nd generation iPad Mini. It's still well supported, and should do everything you want. It was on sale (new) for $179 on Black Friday a number of places, and I've seen it consistently in the $200-$230 range since ($229 is a 16gb refurbished model from Apple).

Job placement sheets are only so useful, to be honest. Take my program- by stats, our placements are pretty bad. But every *good* student that has put in the time has gotten a good placement. Those looking in from the outside can't see the huge diversity in student personalities relative to outcome, but there's a pretty strong correlation between people who barely showed up and ended up scraping by with a PhD with reservations from the committee and advisor, and those who have a hard time getting jobs. Having faculty advocate for you is well and fine, but you also have to (a) give them the material they need to advocate for you, and (b) learn how to advocate for yourself. I just put this out here because I see an increasing focus on placement statistics, and know personally how meaningless those can be.

I completely second buying refurbished things from apple. ATM, you can get an iPad Air/iPad Mini 2 refurbished from apple quite cheaply, and both will do everything you need. I've always been a bit leery of buying "refurbished" from third parties- especially because battery life is so important. Refurbished from Apple includes a new battery & a new warranty.

http://chronicle.com/forums/index.php?topic=190399.0;topicseen Is the CHE thread. Short-ish from this year, but there are some others back in the archives.

Continuing from Rising_Star, my advisor is similar. But great, and I love him, and he's been really helpful. But he's busy, and I have to keep on top of him to get him to do what I need him to. So I wouldn't think any of what you've posted in this thread, specifically, is a problem. I also wouldn't consider having to reschedule calls "flaking", it happens when people are busy. That said, you've said you've gotten a 'vibe' off of him you don't like before. I'm a big believer in trusting your gut on things like this. You're going to be working with this person for a long time, and to some extent, you'll be tied to them for the rest of your career. If they're someone you don't think that you can work with, find someone else! It doesn't mean the person is a bad advisor, objectively, but it might mean they wouldn't be the best match for you, personally. You don't have to justify your reason to anyone- who you pick to work with is completely your decision.

There's a good discussion on the Chronicle of Higher Education issues about this. I'll look it up and post it to here later.

I'm going to lock this thread temporarily. A a lot of people seem to need time to cool off, and I need time to sort through dozens of reports at a time when I'm not on my smartphone and not using the confocal. Take the evening and cool off.

Not in my opinion. I see disruptive posts of that magnitude from multiple people in this thread, the difference just seems to be if they're directed at people who are general liked vs generally disliked. As for keeping this thread clear and free of drama.... I see drama and derailments from multiple people. One person is only as disruptive as the number of people they get to respond to them.

This. Negative rep is there to help other people see how advice is received. Similarly, you can post disagreements. And we've had people with reps in the negative several hundred region before. Theres a a difference between banable behavior (trolling, abusive call outs) and wrong information or things people just don't like.

Enough to succinctly yet fully answer the question. There's no specific target length, because it depends on how much background you have on the area. You don't want to be so long as to be annoying to the committee to read, but you want to be complete. Anywhere between 1-2 paragraphs and 1-2 pages, depending on the rest of the application.

We were married when I applied, and some schools gave that consideration. Had a couple that put in calls to the other department(s) when they were particularly interested in one of us, just like a spousal hire down the road. We had decided we were OK with a long distance thing for shorter periods of time, but not for the 6+ years of a PhD program.

We each came up with a list of schools that had departments we liked. Then we looked into potential fits at the other persons top schools, and filtered it down. Visited places together, and decided on what was the best fit for both of us.

Most of the failures start from issues with technique, not design. And coursework does nothing to teach techniques, only time in the lab can do that. Research is generally something you get better at by actually doing- the techniques, the process of refining and revising, becoming a better writer. Even the intricacies of a particular niche that you're doing research in. Coursework is rarely specific enough to help you learn your niche in the field, you usually need to get into the literature for that. Coursework gives you the broader background you need to understand the literature, but also gives you what you need to teach the material in the future.

Agreed with the above. Check the journal instructions for how to list equal authorship. I have several papers published with "These authors contributed equally to this work" and then detail in my CV/other materials. This really helps if each author worked on defined components of the project, and the paper is just putting them together.

Going off of the "multiple projects" perspective, I kinda try to do different tiers of projects. When I was writing research proposals for faculty positions, I got the advice that out of your projects, at least one should be very "doable" (i.e., you know you have the skill set and can make it work), several should be intermediate (you think they'll work, but there are parts you haven't worked out as much) and at least one should be a "reach"- something that would be really cool if it worked out, but needs significant background work or takes a significant leap past what's already been done. When I'm designing projects/papers personally, I do the same thing. There's a smattering of low hanging fruit- things that might not be world-changing, but are solid work and need to be done- and then there are projects of increasing difficulty, including some which well may be beyond my capacity. As also mentioned, it's something you learn a lot by feel as you progress- you get a better feeling for your abilities and limits the more you test them. One other thing to learn is when to shelve a project. Sometimes you think something is totally achievable, and then as you get further into it you find that it's more and more of a reach, and taking more and more of your time. It can be really hard to take something you've put a lot of time and work into and shelve it, but a lot of times it's necessary. Sometimes you can come back to it fresh and make better progress, or sometimes there are advances in the literature that open up a different approach down the road, and make a previously inaccessible project suddenly plausible. Learning when to stop throwing good time after bad, and how to shelve a project so you can return to it are amazingly valuable skills! I've seen PIs not get tenure because they couldn't shelve a pet project, and ended up going down a bad road because of it.

Audits cost tuition, sitting in on a class doesn't. An audit shows up on your transcript, sitting in on a class doesn't.

You still haven't answered the question about why they won't write a letter saying the courses are non-essential. I'd also encourage you to not refer to the rule as "hidden", since having it written in the graduate handbook is about as far from "hidden" as I can think of. That's like saying something is "hidden" in your employment contract. You'll come across better when arguing your case to the school if you avoid such language.

I'm not sure what a lawyer can do about this issue- moreover, involving one can usually create a lot more trouble (and expense). I'd imagine it will be far more time consuming than waiting until Dec 2016 to graduate. I feel for you, but I'm not sure what you mean by "buried in the graduate student handbook". The registrar page gives school-wide policies, the handbook gives those additional policies for graduate students. Did you discuss taking these classes P/NP with your advisors before taking them? What did they say? Additionally, why did they say they would not write the letter saying the courses were non-essential? Basically, a NP is the same as failing a class. I don't know why it would be surprising that you can't graduate with failed courses on your records- it's common for graduate programs have policies that grades lower than Cs result in expulsion from the program.

I'm not exactly sure what was defensive about what I said. You asked what was normal for the first semester. An average TA load is ~20 hours per week, every week. In my field, that's either grading for 2-3 classes with 125-200 students each, or teaching two sections of lab (3 hours each in class per week, plus all the prep, homework and grading). It seems to me like you're having communication issues with your advisor. They told you what they expected of you, and are communicating that they don't feel you are following through with what they expect. Unlike undergrad, grad school in the sciences is more like a job than school. You're being paid, by someone, to do work and make progress- you're paid for your work as a TA, you're paid to make progress on research. The person who is paying you (the department or the professor) has expectations of what they want out of you in turn for that money. If you feel the expectations are unreasonable, or you aren't willing to do them, there's no moral judgement, it just means you need to find another employer (either another school or another advisor) that has expectations more in line with what you want. It can be stressful to be compared to other students, but it does indeed happen. Academia, and the world at large, are competitive places, and you're competing with funding and spots for other students. Being told you're behind, or you're not matching up to the performance of other students (past or present) means you need to do more. It's not uncommon to come in at a deficit due to a deficient background or swapping fields, but there are rarely allowances made for that- catching up is usually expected to be on your own time. That said, I agree with Telkanuru- what exactly are you looking for here? It seems like you just want to rant, and (as mentioned) there's a thread for that.

Did your advisor ask you to come up with a research idea, or a research paper? To start off with, you say they asked you to come up with a research idea that you weren't able to come up with. I think it's perfectly reasonable to ask a new PhD student to come up with a project idea at the start of their first semester, that's what you're there for. Papers usually don't come that quickly, however. 9 hours sounds like medium load, not too heavy and not too light, and TAing (grading) two courses is about the norm in my field- maybe a bit on the light side depending on the size and number of homework assignments. The expectation in my program is that you're generally in lab when you're not TAing or in class during the week (it's mostly lab TAs) and that grading/class work is evening time. For a non-lab field, I'd sub research in in place of "in the lab". How publishable your work is is different from how productive you're being. We want all our first year students to be spending the time in the lab, because even if the projects they come up with don't work out (and most of them don't), they learn a ton about the field and developing research from those failures. If they wait until they're done with courses, or have a light TA load to get into the lab and dive into research, they don't fail all that much less and then are a few semesters behind in becoming productive.

Yes. I've seen people write things on feet. And inside hat brims.

I find this really interesting, because I really don't think I couple my identity, personally or professionally, to my schooling almost at all. My professional identity is as a researcher in my field, with a body of work and collaborators and connections, and while I'm sure my school name helps to some degree, I've never been in professional circles that talk about *where* they went to school- everyone talks about who they worked with, or else was working somewhere they same time they were. And since a lot of well known researchers have also moved, no one is really interested if you worked with them at school A or school B, but rather that you worked with *them*. Maybe I'm just odd, but I've never really been able to get into the school spirit either as an undergrad or grad.