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Presenting work at conferences is an important part of being a scientist. It falls under the broad umbrella of making your research known to the scientific community. Being able to create and deliver a good presentation is an inherent part of graduate and postdoctoral training. Let’s say you are a junior scientist — a graduate…
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Over the past few days, I have reviewed a small mountain of student conference abstracts, as the deadlines for two conferences where we usually have a strong showing are approaching. This exercise has reminded me of some of my favorite technical writing slips. — Don’t start a sentence with an abbreviation, i.e., don’t write “Eq.…
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In the comments to yesterday’s post, Academic Job Search — Know Who Thy Friends Are, reader MidCareerTenured asked a question about upgrading institutions mid-career: xykademiqz and other: What do you think the chances are for a midcareer tenured scientist to move from a very low ranking research institution to a quality R1? Assume a solid…
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Professors are frequently asked to write letters of reference: recommendation letters for undergrads applying to grad school, graduate students and postdocs seeking postdocs or jobs; evaluation letters for tenure-track faculty who are being considered for tenure, as well as for faculty at various career stages who are being nominated for honors or awards. If I…
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The semester started last week. I am again teaching a junior/senior elective for majors and it looks like it might be a rough semester. The course I am teaching follows a basic, required course in the major. I find the students are poorly prepared, more poorly than the class I had last semester. The students are…
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Over the past few weeks, I have read or heard several times that there are some academics who don’t consider those among their colleagues who run large groups and are prolific in experimental research to be worthwhile academic scholars. I am no experimentalist and some experimental collaborators have annoyed the hell out of me on…
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I love my job. It’s awesome even when it’s not. But there are aspects of it that are best not thought about lest you really enjoy feeling helpless. One of them is being able fund research with students, which requires long-term planning and flexibility, through 3-year-grants with small budgets and very low paylines (probability of…
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