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How do you feel about summer PhD defenses? This spring, it seems I have been inundated with requests to be on mid-summer PhD defense committees, usually for students for whom I was already involved as part of the defense prospectus committee (our committees don’t have ongoing involvement with students, unless there’s an existing technical collaboration). On…
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When you send me a ppt, a doc, or a pdf (!) whose size is in the hundreds of megabytes, know that I curse you loudly, using all the juiciest, most vivid expletives that I know. These files are so gigantic because your images are uncompressed and/or have stupidly, unnecessarily high resolution. Learn how to use…
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I don’t think I have ever had a harder semester than this spring. Part of it is that I had a really large class with basically no help, which required a lot of face time (2.5 hrs of lecture, 1.5 hrs of discussion, 6 hours of office hours on regular weeks — always someone in…
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I thought I had a friend, but I guess not. FF (former friend) is a peer in another department. We were family friends — DH and I would go to FF and spouse’s house, they’d come to ours. However, DH, who is a vastly better judge of character than I am, never particularly liked FF;…
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In the context of university-level service, I came across the record of a superb senior woman scientist. She is in her 80’s and not showing signs of slowing down. A few months ago, a different superb octogenarian scientist died, to everyone’s disbelief. Millie Dresselhaus was 86, larger than life and working as hard as ever. If you…
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Whenever I attend a faculty meeting, it goes something like this: I tell myself I won’t open my mouth at all and will be a quiet, composed, respectable member of the faculty. I open my mouth. Words come out. I keep opening my mouth. More words come out. Some of them are funny and/or snarky. Who…
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Faculty readers: How often do you travel for work? Include all trips (conferences, seminars, review panels, PI meetings, various advisory board meetings…) I seem to travel somewhere for work about once a month, and I feel it’s too much. I am really sick of it and will have to impose stricter limits on what I…
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Recently, I lamented not submitting a polished single-PI proposal and instead going with what I felt wasn’t a particularly strong collaborative proposal as my one and only allowed submission within the annual unsolicited proposal window for a particular NSF program. I have several outstanding proposals to the NSF; of those, this collaborative proposals is the one I…
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A lovely new review of “Academaze” in POSTDOCket, the newsletter of the National Postdoc Association, written by Hanaa Hariri! Thanks, Hanaa! http://www.nationalpostdoc.org/?page=postdocket_04175 The review calls the book “A Candid and Humorous Look at Life on the Tenure Track” “Academaze is insightful, inspiring, and entertaining.” Go read!
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I have a junior colleague (JC) who’s just phoning it in when it comes to teaching. JC’s been very successful in raising funds, writing grants, and advising students. JC travels a lot and is making themselves known. JC’s teaching evaluations are below average, but JC doesn’t really care. JC considers teaching a tax to be paid for the…
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