advising

  • Hibernating

    I don’t really like winter. Actually, most of the time I really really hate it; I can’t wait for the spring, and I am grumpy and whiny on account of weather for months on end. If you meet me in real life, and the topic of weather comes up as it invariably does, I am

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  • Bimodal

    I talked with a senior colleague a couple of weeks ago and he mentioned that grade distributions have become increasingly bimodal. There are kids who have high scores and kids with very low scores, and very few students in between. The colleague said it didn’t use to be like that, that the students 20-30 years

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  • On Teaching & Research

    In a comment thread on someone else’s blog, I can’t remember whose, a commenter said that they never understood how or why teaching and research were related. The following is a truth universally acknowledged, but I am going to say it anyway: You have no idea how much you don’t know about something until it’s

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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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