In the Sunday New York Times Magazine, "The Ethicist" fielded a query from a grad student who wondered about the practice of offering undergraduates extra credit to attend a conference hosted by their department. At the conference, "high-level" talks...
Latest Grievance
In a recent post, I sought recommendations for academic novels that I had not yet read. Someone suggested Elinor Lipman's My Latest Grievance, which I had not read, but now I have read it and I found it very entertaining on a recent trip. Thank you for...
Great Crazies
Most of the novel The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, by David Mitchell, takes place circa 1800. One of the characters, a doctor named Marinus, studied medicine in Uppsala, where he became a "disciple of the celebrated Professor Linnaeus".Jacob de...
Required Suffering?
An offhand comment in an e-mail from a colleague contained the sentiment that it would be uncool to appear to enjoy the tenure-track and that nowadays it would be "suspicious" if someone made it obvious that they were not suffering before getting tenure.Does...
Summer Letters
You would think that summer would be a time when I did not have to pore over anyone's CV or read letters of reference and such, but no; not this summer (or last summer or, apparently, next summer).So, I read 58 letters of reference this summer. For the...
Self-Defense Talks
No, this post is not about the use of illegible fonts, invisible or clashing color schemes, text-filled slides, excessive animations, or even attempts at humor involving anatomical references that some of the men in the audience think are funny but most...
Grad Service
Thanks to Wendy P for bringing up an important issue: How much institutional service should graduate students do? (and who should decide this?)I think it's great if there are graduate students with the maturity, perspective, time, and time-balancing...
Missouri State Fair - growing my own great memories
I've spent the last week at the 108th Annual Missouri State Fair in Sedalia, Missouri. It was a lovely week. I was there doing science outreach, participating in the 4 Days of Hands-on Science Fun which included a Street Science Fair, Show Me Robotics...
Tenure/Snake Dilemma
Last week's post on Tenure and how certain media outlets choose to portray the issues related to tenure reminded me of an incident and made me wonder about the role of tenure in our daily lives.My decision to write about this incident and cast it in...
Selling Short
Not long ago, I was in a dining establishment with a certain colleague. We were not particularly close to campus, but current and former students are everywhere, so it was not surprising when a young man walked over to our table and informed my colleague...
Top Loading
Most novels have unmemorable opening lines. Some, however, are eternally memorable, either because they are very good or very bad.There is one opening line in particular that I have always found very strange:Nuns go by as quiet as lust, and drunken men...
Survey of Impact Criteria in Peer Review
Last week, an e-mail arrived from someone who is"..part of a research team conducting a National Science Foundation-sponsored study that may be of interest to visitors to your website. It concerns the comparative analysis of the grant proposal peer...
Breathing Room
The Sunday Styles section of The New York Times yesterday has an essay by a woman who is part of a 2-career academic couple of English professors. Or, I should say that she was a part of an academic couple until her husband was denied tenure at his college,...
Slate Takes On Tenure
The latest rant against tenure is in Slate.com. I have nothing against such discussions. Tenure, what it means, who gets it, and how it is gotten are important topics to debate and (re)consider from time to time. Any discussion of tenure, however, would...
Run With It
Have you ever voluntarily given away a good idea? I just did. I didn't do it out of altruism, although it's OK with me if the recipient of my idea thinks that.I gave this idea away knowing that the person to whom I mentioned it might take it and run...
Hubble captures bubbles and baby stars
Hubble captures bubbles and baby stars (6/22/10)The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope captures a complex network of gas clouds and star clusters within our neighbouring galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud. This region of energetic star birth is one of the...
Playing Tag
As many of you know, I am not good at labeling/tagging my posts, and this makes searches a bit difficult. I have therefore been slowly organizing some categories and adding a few tags here and there, but progress this summer has been slow. But I want...
No Academic Magic
The novel, That Old Cape Magic, by Richard Russo, has a rather disturbing portrait of an academic couple who spend years wallowing in bitterness because they ended up with faculty positions at a large state university in the Midwest instead of at a more...
CAREEReview
Owing to the apparent youth of much of the academic segment of the blogosphere, it is not difficult to find posts by assistant professors describing their activities and thoughts during various stages of preparation of CAREER proposals, and their elation/dejection...
What does marathon running do to an athlete's cells?
If you've ever taken up running as a form of exercise, or even thought about it, there's a certain paradox that may have occurred to you. The health benefits of aerobic exercise are well-documented. (See here, for example.) In particular such exercise...
Metablogging Interlude
Sorry for the self-absorbed metablogpost today, but I was thinking about Blog Things during my week-long blog break last week and wanted to write about a few of these issues and questions:1. Did I miss blogging during my blog-break?Yes, but not as much...
Man Boy(cott)?
At various times in this blog, I have described professional events such as conference sessions, workshops, and speaker series in which there are no invited women speakers. The audience might consist of 30-50% women, especially if students and postdocs...
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