mandarin.orange

Anyone know when it's supposed to come out? If it's 2016, this will be close to me graduating. So, two PhD Comics movies will be bookends to my whole long, strange trip here.

No one among my advisor, committee members nor collaborators at the professor level use R. So in my (anecdotal) experience, the "old guard" can't be bothered with it. My advisor, in a moment of magnanimity, gave me a box with SigmaPlot software and told me to install it. I approached our dept's IT person for help with the installation, who just laughed and said it was over 10 years old. My rudimentary hacking away with R has already resulted in an offer to co-author a paper. I like this "Adventures with R" paper that came out last month -- cool figure, at least, of how much R has been/is being used in the last few years of publications, by discipline. It was comforting for me to know that even long-term users Google around for help and code. Point-and-click interfaces (e.g. ArcMap sans Python) were slowly killing me, esp. for things that need to be repeated, automated, and frequently redone. The denizens of our GIS lab (grads who code in Python and use ArcMap extensively for their research) call that method of doing things "the gooey way."

This behavior, I would tell her in no uncertain terms to stop. I think that's totally under your jurisdiction as leader of the TA section, and the course professor can't control that (sounds like s/he wouldn't really care enough to micromanage her behavior to that extent). But I think it's also important for the students in class who may not be her neighbors or participating in this -- they may seem under the radar working quietly, but they're observing what you allow/don't allow, standards, and what they're getting out of their education. You can loose their further engagement / enthusiasm in the course if they perceive that your educational standards are lax. I agree with you. Unfortunately, I've also experienced supervising profs that may not care or just don't want to deal with these issues of un/originality...from our perspective, these are things that really have power to change the dynamic of our sections, and are formative experiences for us a fledging educators. I reported an egregious case of plagiarism to my supervising prof last year (student had copied a blog post verbatim and turned it in as her paper). He had a "scary one-on-one" with her (his words, I personally doubt he was that scary) then decided to let her rewrite it. WHAT WHAT. Essentially there was no consequence, and I had the extra work of regrading it for her during finals week with all the other crap I had to do/grade. Sadly we have to take their cue on this.

Anyone seen the PhD Comics movie they made a few years back? This was screened at my institution like 1 or 2 days after I'd arrived in town, pre-orientation. It was like a premonition of so much that has come to pass... the rabble-rousing activist in my cohort, the lab's "golden boy"... and the "lab meeting" scene where labmates are trying to outdo each other on most-complex graphs and data, while the PI pompously holds court? OMG THAT HAS BECOME MY LIFE.

I've just been learning/using R for the last few months, and I feel like an absolute wizard. I knew there was life beyond clumsy MS Excel, and I keep thinking I have found it at last! Granted, perhaps the functions I've been using are quite basic compared to long-term users, or folks with a background rooted in actual stats and theory (not me!). This is actually quite funny. My sense is ecologists are INSANE for R (and will deride anyone who tosses off an Excel-generated plot in a poster or presentation).

Thanks for this reminder. I went to a SLAC myself and the bonds I formed with professors, as well as short-term research projects, definitely were my #1 takeaway from the four years there. I would have been lost without these formative experiences and relationships. It's a good reminder that SLAC profs can't skate by, or be unavailable, in the way I've seen teaching get short shrift at my current, huge, R1 institution. This was not have this situation in mind, though, when I originally posed the question about consequences re. bad evaluations, but rather some of the earlier examples in this thread. I.e. if a grad student schedules office hours to be structurally inconvenient to the students so as to get a paper done that term (TMP's example), is there really a consequence for that grad, who is part of the more transient labor of the university? I personally have never had a debrief or so much as a peep from my superiors about teaching evals. Is a tenured professor at an R1 going to have consequences for just not being in the office half the time, during regular office hours (which I've seen several examples of)? This is also a good reminder of just how many resources are available to improve pedagogy and teaching schools. I love pedagogy, discussions with other educators, designing curriculum and training seminars, and I get very stuck on "doing things right" -- interesting lessons, PowerPoints, extra office hours, long commentary on paper drafts, rewriting and updating curriculum, rewriting tests to make versions I felt were fair. It can be an absolute rabbit-hole in terms of time, leaving way too few working hours available for effectively progression on research. At this point (4 years of the PhD) I find myself very guarded with my time, and reluctant to "go there" with deep conversations about pedagogy, curriculum overhaul, and additional teacher trainings. I had two meetings this week to talk about student writing and I couldn't help it; resentment welled up that I had to do these things and set aside sample prep in lab, or wrap up data analysis, to go to a building I don't normally visit on campus for a 30 min meet re. discussing student learning in the abstract. I may punch a wall if I hear the term "microteaching" again this term. So, y'all are likely seeing that undercurrent in my posts above of where I'm at right now. This term, I have very small sections, am TAing a course for the second time around, and am reaaallly feeling the pressure of wrapping up research tasks. I find myself 1) scheduling office hours on Monday, in part because there are multiple university holidays where I won't have to do them, 2) letting my sections out early, 3) doing majority of my grading during section while students work on other tasks, 4) not looking at lesson plans until the very last minute, or deciding not to go through the effort to change that thing I know didn't really work last year. I'm not quick on the draw with their (rather basic) questions and have to look things up, or I will Romney them with, "I'll get back to you on that." These are things I would have never done before, but...my research is going well. Same as lifealive, I've also seen peers spend way too much time on teaching...not just prep for the sections they need to do as part of their univ support, but taking on adjuncting, volunteering for classes (despite already having research-only funding) in the name of teaching experience, or take shitty adjunct/summer positions in the name of money, when they may have been better served in the long term by taking out a loan to bang out the dissertation, or a manuscript. I mentioned Karen Kelskey earlier, and I like her point that offering up our labor eagerly and willingly to our department and the university in the name of student care can be a dangerous trap, with potential to derail otherwise promising careers. In the end, I think everyone -- grads, early-career professors and beyond -- must make their own cost-benefit analysis on how to spend their time. This may very well change from term-to-term, perhaps dramatically, due to all sorts of factors...class assigned, demographic of students enrolled in that class, what's going on with research and dissertation at the time, personal life and finances, etc.

This is anecdotal, I realize, but I have yet to see this play out. I've seen peers farther along in my program that were on the market, and hugely forgiven for long bouts (YEARS) of not teaching, nor progressing beyond TA curriculum (i.e. they have never designed their own course/syllabus) when hired. I've seen the faculty in my dept., during a recent TT search, brush aside detailed and awesome teaching statements from candidates in favor of the all-important question: "will they get tenure? what's their research output?" I went to a "Getting a Job at a Teaching-Based Institution" informational panel at my institution...all the panelists ran their own labs and reiterated the message, "you need research output, even here. Teaching the best classes, teaching awards, will not get you tenure. If a candidate has weak teaching experience but awesome research, we figure they'll learn how to teach." Even Karen Kelskey, guru of how-to-get-TT-job advice, de-emphasizes teaching. It also depends on what you mean by "job." If you mean adjunct positions, teaching high school or prep school, or aiming to be at a S.L.A.C., then yes.

How is this a kiss of death? Are there reallly any consequences? As a grad student, I'd think the dept./university is no way giving up their cheap teaching labor based on a few qualitative evaluation comments. Even if you're a TT prof in a research institution...well, who cares about teaching if your research output is hitting all the marks? I've been in education a long time, and my experience is that it takes really persistent (bad) patterns on the part of the instructor, and tremendous documentation, to dislodge anyone. I had a student absolutely lash out on an eval for my summer class. To read it, you would think I was the worst thing to ever happen to the university, to education, and her life. I mostly felt bad for the person who wrote it, thinking "This is how you cope? This is about the lowest-stakes thing you can possibly do, if you're upset about my teaching."

I don't think there's a magic # hours/week benchmark that guarantees authorship for undergrads. This depends on personalities, your schedule, the lab and their workflow, unanticipated things that come up, what phase the project is in, etc. My lab helpers have all been student volunteers, so I don't push them to work more than what they deem necessary for their schedules, and I tend to plan task lists for just what needs to get done, that day, unless they've expressed to me a long-term interest in the research, going to grad school themselves, deeper implications of the project, etc. I have four (out of maybe 15 total) who've worked with me in the past that I'll eventually list as co-authors on the resultant papers. For authorship, I think at minimum the student needs to be involved in some spreadsheeting and data processing, not just doing rote procedures we do to prep and count samples. Three of these four students got course credit for a self-contained segment of a larger research project over which I gave them some autonomy. They generated a dataset by themselves and wrote a final report or thesis, which requires at least some first-pass interpretation of the results. The fourth didn't do research coursework, but she worked in our lab for the better part of a year, consistently mentioned her interest in learning as many analyses as possible and wanted to know the bigger purpose, and collected much of the baseline data and compiled it into spreadsheets. She saw this project evolve for a longer time than the others. As you work in this lab, ASK the supervising PI or grad student about how all this works. Put it on their radar that you're interested in something more than just procedural/labwork labor, so you're in their mind. If there's course credit you can get for research and a short-term project, find out what that entails, and if this is the lab in which you'd want to do it.

I didn't get a single paper back from any of my grad coursework, so par for the course, at least in my program. I had brief chats or compliments after the term in maybe two cases, but other than that, I felt these things were submitted into a void. Then at some point during my quals, I began to wonder if my committee was even reading anything, ever, or if these were just onerous checkpoints for the degree program. So a labmate / friend and I conspired to put "Easter eggs" in our lit reviews. She copied Angry Bird cartoons onto some charts and figures, I had a 1-paragraph tangent about my search for Bigfoot during fieldwork. Neither were ever mentioned to us.

Labmate overheard this gem in a conversation between two students. One was trying to best describe her film school program to the other, esp. the time commitment: "it's like med school, but for emotion."

I think this is universal -- academia has many ways, shapes, and forms in which it'll deliver this message to you on a daily basis. I mean is anyone ever 100% well-read in their field or even sub-field, in terms of literature review? I personally haven't found that white whale. I see a couple who act and talk like they do, but I know they're play-acting. Most of the academics I see succeeding -- young professors successfully hired in our department (which is highly ranked), post-docs kicking butt and ready to move on to the next level -- are the most honest and upfront with their strong skill sets vs. knowledge gaps. I frequently hear from them, "I'm not a statistician" or "I don't do GIS" or "I didn't know that; it sounds interesting, so tell me more." One of the most profound pieces of advice I've gotten from my advisor is "you never get to that magic point where you know and do everything. You just stop giving a shit." So, I try my best to cultivate that.

This is straight-up highway robbery, unless a substantial portion of room/board is included? (I typically go to science conferences, and have NEVER paid that much for just the registration fee. $90-200 for really big annual meetings, $150-300 for specialty conferences.)

To be fair, y'all DO have one resource available that tends to exclude STEM fields, so perhaps the universe balances out? I'm talking about the amazing resource that is "The Chronicle of Higher Education"...

The Ragu (sorry, Ragú) FB poses rather inane questions daily, like "What's your CRAZIEST dinner story?" or "Fill in the blank: I'd like to spend less time in the kitchen and more time ____ this spring." Cousin would reply with spiels about being a parent of 7 and ridiculous stories, with deliberate misspellings...super funny, but perhaps only in the context of his personality.

I think it depends on what's best for your specialty. My background is more geology/geoscience so I've long been a member of the AGU and GSA; I tried the AAG for a year at my new institution and went to the annual meeting when it was local. I let the membership lapse afterwards...I felt the $55-65/year for student dues was a lot. That's double or more compared to the other societies I belong to. Most of them are better organized to be honest, thus providing better value.

I remember the first time I scrutinized ingredients of jars of tomato sauce at the grocery store and was astounded. I was trying to find one without sugar/corn syrup/sweeteners and couldn't do it. Read somewhere that 80% of all brands and types sold in the U.S. are made at one facility. My cousin used troll the comments section of all the posts on Ragu's FB page. Provided some mild amusement for me (and other friends, family members) for 2+ years. He's now banned from their page.

My undergrad is largely unknown, outside of the small state where I attended (which is 1000s of miles from my native home, which is now where I live). Great experience for academics and programs, but weirdest/most stunted social experience of my life (~80% Greek affiliation among the student body). I think my loyalty must lie most with the school I'm at now, because at the end of it all I will have spent the most time here. Oh my god. As a trained geologist, this is all I have to say...

I'm heading into this holiday season, armed with this specifically for family dinners. Me, dad, bro, boyfriend and I can generally have a decent, interesting conversation and are all well-versed in science. It's mom who gets on rants, loves drama, is oblivious to social cues, and changes the whole dynamic towards something unbearable. We need structure! I just snuck some of the cards under placemats (the TG table is already set). E.g., "What fashion trend did you embrace that's now ridiculous," "if you could own any car, no matter how ridiculous, what would it be," etc. I'm actually looking forward to some of the responses.

For any UCs you are seriously considering, you should feel at liberty to email the English dept's Student Affairs Officer directly. It's their job to help with prospectives / admissions, and to help you navigate your funding and any university policies while you're a student there. The SAO will also have insight on how that department specifically interprets / employs these policies, how many int'l students make up their demographic, etc. If you like everything else about the school, don't decline to apply because of some off-putting and confoundingly-worded policy you found online...ASK!

This -- I would say it's worthwhile for these reasons. Esp. if there are breakout sessions about the health care, etc.

Buckyball, with each post I think I want you as my labmate more and more! Sigh, today it was intervening with basic safety protocol. Wear at LEAST a lab coat if you approach me at the hood -- I'm in full gear, isn't that a visual cue I'm working with something hazardous?

I came here to reiterate my annoyance with some visiting students...esp. when they are not occupied enough in lab, and thus hover over me and ask questions constantly about what I'm doing. I'm glad you're curious, but I've got shit to do! We are, apparently, running a "demonstration lab."

Oh my gosh, Sigaba just told me I had misplaced cynicism... Well, to be fair, a couple of those CHE posters told me I was not cynical enough. I was, apparently, blind to my PI's passive-aggressive methods to squeeze me out of the lab group. What!! Your evaluation is pretty on-point, though -- I was in a very negative place this spring due to how hard I was working, and some nonfinancial things. With some better focus, support, time and availing myself of my uni's counseling services, I am coming out of those weeds. As for the insight on CHE -- you confirmed my hunch. So I had posted at CHE the Fri or Sat of Mem Day Weekend, and I was just surprised at how many replies I got throughout the weekend...so these academics, who self-identify as successful, spend holiday weekends browsing online fora, rather than...enjoying life? That was my initial reaction. GeographyRocks, I would encourage anyone to think hard about their long-term funding. If nothing, this experience is making me more attuned to the job market and related negotiations, esp. as many profs are on 9-month salary plans. NSF, NASA etc. fellowships are awesome...I can't speak personally to that, obviously. But, as mentioned I have a collection of smaller grants, which are also worth seeking. These have been great and provided some freedom from not asking for every dime/expense from PI, as well as bypassing some of the large-university labyrinthian reimbursement procedures.