Why flighttracker was my best friend in grad school

Professor in Training recently posted about how the mice react at the prospect of the cat going away.

I was in the first group of graduates of The Boss. The Boss was very hands-on (which was great at times, annoying at others, and occasionally prevented me from getting ANYTHING productive done).

When other PIs left town, their graduate students breathed a sigh of relief. Work hours were more relaxed. Group meetings weren't held. Kegs appeared in the cold room (that was only a one-time event, I'm told).

In our group, it was a HUUUUUUGE relief when The Boss went out of town.... at least while the plane was in the air. Once electronic devices could go back on, the barrage of email requests began. Is the manuscript draft ready? Make this figure for my talk. What is wrong with you?

Since the only time The Boss unplugged (and therefore left us alone) was when a flight was in progress, we all became fans of flight tracking programs. Other graduate students thought we were total freaks (true) for knowing the flight details of The Boss, let alone would track the actual flight for precise landing times.... but we relished our freedom. Flight delays were celebrated....with impromptu happy hours. We savored our beers all the more with the knowledge that we weren't missing emails or calls from The Boss.

A few months ago I received the saddest email from a former group member who is still in graduate school with The Boss:

Hi Unbalanced,

The Boss has wi-fi on the flight. Our safe time is no more.

~Coworker



On the plus side, now coworker won't need to panic when the flight tracker fails.

Should I stay or should I go?

Historically, my big life decisions have not required me to select from just one of two choices; I have not met many proverbial forks in the road... more like sporks. For example, when I decided to go to graduate school, I knew I had the option of many disciplines. I also knew that I could easily change my mind at any point and leave. If LargeU ended up not being a good fit, I could (with minimal pain), pull up roots and switch to another program or school.

Likewise, when I decided to accept the Visiting Ass faculty position at TempColleg, I knew that I wasn't risking much: visiting positions are becoming more and more common (woohoo! Teaching postdoc, anyone?), so I wasn't worried about the job becoming a black mark on my CV. If I hated it, it was only nine months. If I liked it, bonus points.

So in recent months, I've been exploring new territory. I had to decide whether to go back on the active job market or continue on for another year at TempCollege. I chose to not put out any applications. The Boss was terribly disappointed that I was closing the door on all potential opportunities. The argument was made that I could leverage any tenure-track offers to try to gain a position at N.A.'s institution.

Now, a door has opened at N.A.'s institution. Would I still have this option if I had put out applications in September? No. In November? Maybe, but it would have been very interesting when it came time to do interviews.

So I guess in my case, it appear that by closing the door to other tenure-track possibilities, I have opened a (teeny, tiny) door to a potential position that would put me in the same city as N.A. Stay tuned for updates on my two-body situation!

scientiae-carnival

Group work: good, bad, or just ugly?

I hate hate hated group work when I was a student. I would have rather had a solid hour of chalk-talk than have to clink desks with three of my classmates in order to work through some worksheet. However, in my own teaching, I like to pepper my chalk-talking with powerpoints, group discussion, and group work.

At LargeU, I was encouraged to incorporate group work as part of the four lectures a week. My students were wary of how effective groupwork would be, and a handful were openly hostile about having to give up valuable rote-memorization time in order to engage in thoughtful discussion with their fellow classmates. I was able to incorporate some group work into most class meetings, and I was surprised to see that students (mostly) responded favorably to it. On the end of the semester evaluation, dozens of students cited the in-class group work as the most helpful part of the class-- second to my brilliant lectures, I'm sure.

So starting here at TempCollege, I knew that the students would benefit greatly from my group work activities. I anticipated their hesitation. I called them out on their eye rolls before they even blinked. I passed out the pre-semester surveys (including my standard question: "how do you feel about group work?") with a disclaimer that I fully expected some apprehension about group work.

Imagine my surprise when 60ish surveys were returned to me, their pages brimming with positive statements about the value of working with others, as well as a few cautionary tales about how sometimes one person ends up doing the work for everyone else. Nearly all of my students have not only done (and loved group work) but have done group work in every single class in high school.

So is this just a regional thing, or has group work suddenly become the go-to teaching mechanism at high schools (and colleges)?

growing pains

I have less than two weeks remaining at LargeU. I feel behind on everything. Although N.A. took a lot of my stuff to Tenure Track state, I still have lots of odd 'n' ends, books, and clothes that need to get packed. I haven't touched my desk at work (at which I spend at least 10 hours a day as my wet lab work has been nonexistent for the last nine months or so). And don't even get me started on how much stuff I have to clean in the wet lab, including at least 50 buffer bottles left behind by Undergrad (which is a story in and of itself).

Coworker (actually, all of them) are in total freakout mode due to a combination of several of us leaving as well as The Boss being out of town for several weeks. This means that I had to go in all day Saturday and Sunday (not that uncommon though) in order to get caught up. Forget getting a paper written this summer; I'll be lucky just to get through the data.

And to top it all off, N.A. and I can't seem to get back to Normal Communication. Instead, we both overreact to everything the other says. I can hear myself getting shrill, and it even annoys me, but I can't seem to stop. I know that part of it is due to complete exhaustion from sleep deprivation and the other is reacting to his sudden announcement that he is leaving this weekend (THIS weekend!). I'm freaking out because I don't want him to leave while we're having all these spats.

In reality, I shouldn't be freaking out about packing, my work, or N.A. I should be enjoying my last time as a grad student / post doc. I should be getting ready for my first faculty position. I should be playing around with my new camera (Nikon D80! Woot, woot, as my students would say).

Instead, I feel myself slipping. Sure, The Boss is happy with my results, and N.A. and I will get through this. But come three weeks from now, when I'm at TempCollege all by myself, I know I'm going to regret how we're leaving things.

sense of entitlement?

During my time here at LargeU, I've had the...ummm...opportunity to meet all kinds of graduate students. None irritate me more than those that feel that they are entitled to a Ph.D. And I'm not going to go off on a "a Ph.D. is a privilege" or any crap like that.

I just think that a Ph.D. requires a lot of hard work. For the sciences, this hard work roughly translates into slave labor as you balance 70+ hours a week in the lab and often coursework and often TAing. Grad school is not for the feint of heart. Grad school is not for everyone.

So I get really irritated when I hear / talk to / see Facebook references (yeah, yeah, I know) to fellow graduate students (that openly do NOT spend even 40 hours a week in lab OR have to take classes anymore OR TA) bitching about how they can't wait to get past this horrible thing called graduate school and out into the real world where they have no BS to deal with or hoops to jump through. These types of people are not working hard and merely using up grant money for their RAs (now at least they are conserving money by not spending it on lab supplies!!)

People like that have gotten kicked out of my research group. For a variety of reasons, other PIs in my department have been more tolerant.

To be clear, I don't begrudge those who can come in, do their 8-5 M-F, and get results. I simply can't do that. What I don't like to see are slackers that barely get by their classes, do a crappy job teaching, get virtually no research accomplished and then still get a Ph.D. from LargeU.

You know the type of grad student I'm talking about. I'm sure you can elaborate.

Does size matter?

In my department, the average thesis weighs in somewhere around 150 pages, with acceptable theses anywhere from 120 and up. A thesis that is 100 pages will raise eyebrows. One that tips the scales at 300 makes committees groan. I don't know of anyone in my generation that has graduated from my department with a two-volume thesis (once you go over 500 pages you have to bind it into two volumes). According to the deposit office, the largest in recent years at LargeU checked in at 1200 pages. It was a Communication major's.

The size of the thesis causes many grad students angst. I kept a page count as I went, but I wasn't terribly concerned with length (but that might have been because after I compiled my published first-authors, I was already over 80 pages).


And for the record, mine clocked in just at 200 pages.


I think worrying about thesis length is silly, particularly in the grand scheme of graduate school. But you would be amazed at how often I've been asked, "how long was yours?"

Does size matter in your department?

"We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master." ~Ernest Hemingway

YoungFemaleScientist has a nice post discussing the PI-mentee relationship, describing it in terms of master and apprentice.

During my time at LargeU, several new hires were made. One was a senior hire (and a very, very famous one, at that). Multiple labs, a large conference room, and numerous offices were promised in order to bring in this established research group. Despite being a very Large U indeed, space here at LargeU is quite limited. As a result, other groups down sized lab space, shuffled offices, and, in a few cases, were relocated to entirely different locations on campus.

Research space here (and at most of your schools, I'm sure) is the hot commodity. It's a carrot that has been dangled in front of many a PI for various reasons over the years. If you are not productive as a PI (as judged on high by other faculty members)-- meaning no grants, no graduates, no publications, or some combination of the three, you lose your research space. In my <5 years here, I've seen at least nine faculty lose their lab space to some degree-- in some cases, completely.

In contrast, a few years ago a senior faculty member (and a very, very famous one, at that) semi-unexpected died. Although no plaques were hung or memorials dedicated, the lab and offices were locked and left as they were. Even more unsettling, the research posters are still hanging in the hall, despite the fact that all of the students have since moved to other institutions. I find it very strange that the lab space vultures haven't moved in on this prime real estate.

Could it be that the LargeU PIs have some unspoken rule about moving in on a dead man's space? How is this different then when they swoop in on lab space of a non-funded (i.e. dead financially) group?

Code of Conduct

In my department there is an unwritten code of conduct among graduate students. Basically, it boils down to this: thou shalt not dick over a fellow graduate student.

Still, I was surprised by the reaction of some to the Q&A portion of my thesis defense. Two of my coworkers asked two or three questions apiece. Some were a bit tricky, but I handled them fine (and was kinda glad to be challenged).

Afterward, everyone came up to give their obligatory congratulations. A few of my friends mentioned that they were surprised by the numbers of questions from fellow grad students, but I brushed it off. That is, until N.A. brought it up later. "I couldn't believe the questions that Coworker was asking! Doesn't he know that he isn't supposed to do that!"

I was very taken aback. I thought to what I would have done. I've attended dozens of seminars during my time at LargeU. Of the ones that were student seminars, I've occasionally asked questions. I never felt like I was breaking the code, since I was always genuinely interested in what I was asking.


So where do you weigh in? To ask questions, or not to ask questions? Is there an unwritten code of conduct for grad students at your school? What about amongst postdocs and faculty?

Presentation Pet Peeves

Sigh.

I have so many pet peeves when it comes to seminars. While some might call me a tad neurotic (true) or a little demanding (um...also true), I like to think of my presentation standards as...um....well, standards that I would hope everyone would stick to.

At any rate, here are a few of the things that seminar speakers do that really irk me:

Gross misuse of laser pointers. Please do not play the musical bouncy ball game with the laser pointer and your bullet points. You know, when you bounce the laser spot over each word or draw a laser line underneath each as you talk.

Really tiny figures. The point is to show your freakin data. What is the point if it is so teeny-tiny that I cannot make out the axes labels, or worse, make out the actual data points?

Really going over time limits. Yes, I can always take the next bus. And yes, you won The Most Important Prize Ever for the Most Insignificant, Specialized Science Area ever. But seriously. You are now at minute 75 of your alloted 50 minute seminar slot. There is a reason that no one is asking questions; we've all been worn down by the previous 85 slides.

One-size-fits-all presentations. I hate hate hate it when some famous or pseudo-famous or not-even-close to famous guy (yes, sorry, but I've never gone to a LargeU seminar by a female that fell into this catagory....although I'm sure there are women out there that do this) gives a 50 minute seminar from a 100-slide powerpoint...you know, where they go through 20 slides, skip over 8, stare at one and then move on to the next 10...UGH! It's not that much effort to delete 40 slides and resave, people!




What are some of YOUR pet peeves when it comes to seminars? (maybe I'll come to realize that my "perfect" (HA) seminar techniques are actually bothering some people....

I <3 LargeU

Today I went to Nearby Building to check on the status of my graduation forms.


Sign on the door: We are out of the office until 3/20. Please go to room 213 for assistance.


Sign on the door of 213: We are out of the office until 3/20.



Sigh.

Female Recruits

In the last few years, LargeU has had a great deal of trouble recruiting women into the graduate program. How does this happen? At the application stage, the female to male ratio is representative of nationwide stats. At the offer stage, the same thing. For some reason, once it comes to the decision stage, exceptional women choose to go elsewhere (often to my lower-ranked programs!).

To remedy this, LargeU Admins have decided that renaming a fellowship after a women will help.


Sigh. Seriously?


Does your program do a good job recruiting women? If your grad program doesn't traditionally have a high number of women, then how is your school successful recruiting female students?

Open minded?

My department has had its share of problems. Recently, another grad student pointed out that, despite our department's supposed reputation for being open-minded, no current faculty are "out."

A handful of tenure-track professors are rumored to be gay, which doesn't seem to bother graduate students (as I don't think it should). However, my friend pointed out to me that if other faculty knew assistant professors' sexual orientation, then tenure would be a complete bust.

For a department that's supposedly very progressive-thinking and one of the best in the world, I find this extremely out of place. This doesn't seem to be a concern in the humanities divisions here at LargeU.


So is this just an issue with the LargeU science departments, or is this common at other schools, too?

Women hating women

It's a not-so-hidden secret that LargeU has problems with bias against women (both faculty and students). While I myself have never experienced discrimination here at LargeU, some of the stories I have heard are downright shocking (and mostly non-bloggable, and least not until May).

So what to do when the worst offender is a woman? Especially a woman that was recruited to LargeU by herself (as opposed to a "package-deal" with a more famous husband)?

An open letter to LargeU undergrads

Dear LargeU undergrads,

I understand that it is cold. I also understand that you have more hormones coursing through your veins than your 100 lb bodies can handle. And I do understand that the combination of these two conditions make you feel the need to paw your significant other 24-7.

But you should remember that there are good times to touch one another and there are bad times to touch one other.

Some places where you should not be touching (you might notice that there are all in public, which is where the term "public displays of affection" came from):

- the running track at the gym

- the bus, during my 20 minute ride home

- the hallway of my building, while you wait for office hours

- the grass on the main quad

- my classroom



Thank you for your cooperation in this matter.

Sincerely,

Unbalanced Reaction

Hypothetical situation

Here's a hypothetical situation for you. ('cause I would never write about my students. No, never)

Let's say you're an undergrad.

Let's say that you aren't doing so well in a class, and are on thin ice with your TA because of a recent cheating incident.

So you decide to make an appointment with your TA (on a Friday, at 5 pm, no less) in order to go over the last assignment of the semester (wow, you sure are lucky to have such an amazing TA!!!).

Now, do you really think it's going to impress your TA if you decide to skip class the same day of the meeting?




(No more classes this semester! As my students would say, "woot, woot!")

Cheaters never win (against me!)

Recently, my students had to turn in a one-page paper covering a particular topic related to the class. Unfortunately, one of my students decided to blatantly copy from two sources without any citations.

This isn't the first time that plagiarism has been an issue for one of my undergrads. My first year here, four out of 100 of my students failed another general science class because they improperly cited sources. In their case, each had directly taken text out of a source and then cited it, but omitted the quotation marks. All claimed that they were taught that that was okay in high school.

Now freshmen I can sort of understand. But upper level students? The problem with LargeU (and likely many other "R1" type schools) is that the science undergrads often leave their humanities courses (not that they have to take that many) until their last two semesters, and the science classes have very few, if any, written assignments--even some of the laboratory courses don't require written lab reports!

Coming from TinyCollege, which is a little-known liberal arts school, I find this shocking. Even my crappy science courses at TinyCollege required various written reports, summaries of current literature, etc. Hell, the tests often had short answer / essay questions requiring a demonstration of actual thought!

At any rate, I took this recent plagiarism issue as an opportunity to meet with the student and go over proper citations, etc. I could have filed paperwork to get a note in his file, fail him, etc., but I think the tears that welled in his eyes (and came very close to spilling over...UGH!) throughout our 30 minute meeting was punishment enough.


Is plagiarism an issue at your school? Do you think science majors get enough experience writing at these research institutions, that supposedly have stronger science programs than small liberal arts schools?

If you jaywalk, they will build

Yet another puzzling thing about LargeU that I will never understand (but love): if you jaywalk, you will get a ticket. If you and all your friends jaywalk repeatedly in the same location, "they" will simply paint a new crosswalk.

Over the last few months, random crosswalks have appeared all over LargeU campus, at seemingly random, non-intersection locations. While I'm happy to not be at a ticket risk when dashing between buildings, it does pose a bit of a hazard. LargeU is not a closed campus; in fact, most of the campus is criss-crossed by heavily traveled roads, requiring LargeU undergrads to jump in front of traffic to get to their physics lab.

But...did you know that the crosswalks are more than just bars of paint on the road? No, they are so much more than paint. LargeU crosswalks are actually magic bubbles that protect one from an approaching vehicle. Well, at least that's what you would think if you drove through campus, what with all the undergrads running through crosswalks without pausing....and don't get me started on the bikes.

So these new crosswalks are actually more of a hazard than a help because drivers aren't aware of them (indeed, there are no "yield to pedestrian" signs or other marks, making the white lines extremely hard to see at night), yet undergrads just assume that cars and buses will stop.

At TinyCollege, there was no pedestrian problem because the campus was closed to through traffic. I know it's impractical to shut down all LargeU roads, but surely there is a better solution than just playing "miss-the-undergrad" every time I drive to campus?

Gimme, gimme....okay, now I wanna drink!

Oh, LargeU undergrads.

They skip classes the Friday before fall break because they NEED to get home.

And then they come back early in order to drink bud light and take Jaeger shots.

So much for quality time with their families. GO HOME! I demand a full week of an undergradless town!

We're having a baby...named Tenure

On a recent weekend, I ran into some fellow grad students heading into the building as I was heading out to watch football. They (semi) jokingly chided me for leaving work so early on a Saturday (in our department at LargeU, the average work week is ~65 h/week, but in my particular area it's usually more like 75, getting in the upper 80s during grant time).

I (semi) jokingly replied, "No one in my group has to work weekends anymore, now that we have tenure."

"'We?' So you all get tenure once The Boss does?" They grinned at what they though was my misspoken pronoun.

"Well, yeah, actually. We all got The Boss tenure. So we are all tenured now!"


And don't you think that's only fair? We all stressed, pushed, and bled for The Boss to get the publications out in time for the tenure packet review (culminating in 12 papers submitted in 3 weeks, thank-you-very-much!). I bribed students in a class of The Boss with pixie stix and put in extra office hours to ensure high teaching marks. We all endured three submission rounds of The Biggest Grant ever, requiring 14+ hour days (for two weeks straight) to get data analyzed and figures made in time.

So yes, just like men often say "we're having a baby," I'm going to proudly proclaim, "WE just got tenure."


Unfortunately, I don't think that's something I can list on my CV, huh?

(Not) making the grade

Grading is becoming a huge pain in my ass. This particular class is full of very bright, (mostly) hardworking upper-level students. Although these particular students are blessed with good math skills, they are not-so-blessed in the handwriting department. To make it worse, many of them do their problem sets in very fine, flowing ink pen (on both sides of the paper!), making it nearly impossible to decipher a 7 from a 9 or "does not agree" from a "consistent with theory." Seriously.

So I usually try to grade homework in the hour or two immediately after class, sort of like ripping the bandaid off quickly. I was several papers into the most recent problem set, when I reached one student's assignment that I couldn't read at all.

Then I realized why.

The pages were full of upper level math proofs, most decidedly NOT what my course covers.

The next problem set in my pile contained much of the same. Apparently, as my class was leaving, the next hour's class had begun filing in. I was so preoccupied with answering one of my student's questions that I failed to notice that two of the incoming students had tossed THEIR homework on MY pile. (Now as to why a student would just place their homework in front of an unknown TA is beyond me, so let's just add that to my list of Things I Will Never Understand About LargeU Undergrads).

Of course, the two wayward problem sets had their owner's names on them. Unfortunately, each student gave a slightly different course number. One listed the class as in the math department, while the other placed it in a division of engineering. After scrolling through the LargeU course catalog, I failed to get a match on either. After calling the math departmental office as well as several other engineering offices, I finally managed to get the professor of the course on the phone.

He had a very pleasant, British accent, so it instantly neutralized my growing annoyance at myself for being so anxious to get these stray homeworks into the proper TA/prof's hands. He thought the whole thing hilarious, and even offered to fax over the key so that I could grade them if I wanted.

I passed.

But seriously, are my expectations of LargeU undergrads too high? Is it too much to expect them to be able to recognize their TA (at least in a classroom setting...it still freaks me out a bit when I run into students at LargeU bars) and get their much-labored over (or perhaps copied) problem sets turned into the proper person?