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Human: Give me your lit review secrets Hi all, what are your tips and tricks for doing a lit review? I'm especially having issues coming up with a good annotation system for all the papers I read. It's my first time handling such a large chunk of info and the mental mapping is extreme, what are your strategies for keeping track of papers? Assistant: I can warmly recommend Zotero. Free (to a point), easy to use, open-source. I've used it from BA level through Phd to now Postdoc, currently have 2900 papers in my system all categorized and with easy access. Also helps with creating bibliographies, which you'll need for journal submissions.

Human: Give me your lit review secrets Hi all, what are your tips and tricks for doing a lit review? I'm especially having issues coming up with a good annotation system for all the papers I read. It's my first time handling such a large chunk of info and the mental mapping is extreme, what are your strategies for keeping track of papers? Assistant: I use an excel doc with columns to identify the key things that will link the papers. Then can use filters. Eg. geographic area, data source, sample etc.

Human: Reviewer pointed out non-existent grammatical mistakes, the best way to respond? Just got reviewers' comments from a journal submission. Interestingly, one reviewer pointed out "grammatical errors and misuse of language" in the manuscript, and listed a few problematic sentences. However, our PI and two other native English-speaking colleagues don't find any problems in these sentences. In this case, what's your opinion on the best way to politely respond to this comment? Should I rewrite these sentences even though they are grammatically correct? Thank you very much. Assistant: I’m a native speaker and a not-bad writer but once I kept getting reviews back round after round about grammar errors. My co-author said everything was fine but honestly idk if she ever actually read it. So finally, after the 3rd round, I read it out loud to myself and…. found a bunch of errors. Now that’s my last step before submitting a manuscript or abstract. Maybe give that a try and see if you find anything?

Human: Reviewer pointed out non-existent grammatical mistakes, the best way to respond? Just got reviewers' comments from a journal submission. Interestingly, one reviewer pointed out "grammatical errors and misuse of language" in the manuscript, and listed a few problematic sentences. However, our PI and two other native English-speaking colleagues don't find any problems in these sentences. In this case, what's your opinion on the best way to politely respond to this comment? Should I rewrite these sentences even though they are grammatically correct? Thank you very much. Assistant: "We thank the reviewer for their insightful comments and have fixed the sentences that were pointed out. We agree they came across as a little difficult to understand."^^^Now ^^^stop ^^^being ^^^a ^^^twat ^^^and ^^^accept ^^^the ^^^paper

Human: Examples of poorly-written journal articles I am teaching a scientific writing class to our department's graduate students (STEM). I am looking for examples of poorly written journal articles (or other scientific writing). Of particular interest are papers with: * Run-on sentences * Excessively verbose language * Awkward ways of conveying message * Rampant grammar issues To be clear, the quality of the science makes no difference. In fact, it is even better if you can show me a high-impact paper that is poorly written (or has some very poorly written sentences in it)! I just want examples of writing that is confusing, pretentious, and/or way too long. :) Assistant: Me trying to see if any link goes to one of my papers...

Human: Examples of poorly-written journal articles I am teaching a scientific writing class to our department's graduate students (STEM). I am looking for examples of poorly written journal articles (or other scientific writing). Of particular interest are papers with: * Run-on sentences * Excessively verbose language * Awkward ways of conveying message * Rampant grammar issues To be clear, the quality of the science makes no difference. In fact, it is even better if you can show me a high-impact paper that is poorly written (or has some very poorly written sentences in it)! I just want examples of writing that is confusing, pretentious, and/or way too long. :) Assistant: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=9136710 I wouldn't give this paper a passing grade if an undergrad submitted it. I reported this paper to the editor a few months backs, and it looks like they retracted it.

Human: When people says they have published in “Nature” do they usually mean the journal or any other journals by the Nature publisher (e.g. Scientific Report, Lab animal, npj Vaccines, etc.)? Do all Nature journals has the same prestige, despite the different imapact factors? If the paper is published in Scientific Reports or Lab Animal, do people claim they have published in Nature? (But actually imply Nature publisher) or is it pretentious? And how about If the paper is published in Nature communications or Nature Microbiology (but still not just Nature), is it wildly accepted that people claim they have published in Nature or is it still pretentious? Are all journals published by Nature highly regarded? Assistant: No, not all Nature journals are as prestigious as *Nature*. In my opinion, it’s disingenuous and misleading to say, “I’ve published in Nature” when the journal wasn’t *Nature*. I’ve published in *Nature Biotech* and *Nature Materials*, for instance, and know exactly what I’d be doing if I shortened these names in a serious letter or conversation. (Edit: With my buddy who took a class at Harvard Extension School, however, I will happily chat for hours about going to Harvard and publishing in Nature.)

Human: When people says they have published in “Nature” do they usually mean the journal or any other journals by the Nature publisher (e.g. Scientific Report, Lab animal, npj Vaccines, etc.)? Do all Nature journals has the same prestige, despite the different imapact factors? If the paper is published in Scientific Reports or Lab Animal, do people claim they have published in Nature? (But actually imply Nature publisher) or is it pretentious? And how about If the paper is published in Nature communications or Nature Microbiology (but still not just Nature), is it wildly accepted that people claim they have published in Nature or is it still pretentious? Are all journals published by Nature highly regarded? Assistant: I wish this fascination with publishing in Nature would stop …

Human: How do you guys deal with imposter syndrome and writer's block? Im having a pretty hard time wrapping up my thesis and cant seem to tie everything together because of a pretty bad case of writers block. What also doesnt help is that it is making me feel incredibly stupid and that I dont know enough about my material. No matter how much I read I feel like its not enough Assistant: Donald Trump is in the white house dude you can do whatever you want

Human: How do you guys deal with imposter syndrome and writer's block? Im having a pretty hard time wrapping up my thesis and cant seem to tie everything together because of a pretty bad case of writers block. What also doesnt help is that it is making me feel incredibly stupid and that I dont know enough about my material. No matter how much I read I feel like its not enough Assistant: You have to get over the the expectation for perfection. I've learned that your good enough maybe just right. So instead of being bonked down with the big picture. Think of small good enoughs, then expand on them. Keep building layer by layer, facet by facet. Remember that even the most spectacular and beautiful creations we're built one brick at a time, and not all bricks were perfect.

Human: I am having an IBS flare and have been asked to attend a 4 day group retreat. What the hell do I do? This is literally my nightmare. I am coming to the end of my PhD and, as is the tradition in our group, we have a group retreat every spring and people present their research there when they're close to finishing. But right now, I have to shit every 2 hours, loudly. Even if I manage to get a hotel room by myself (which is not a guarantee--I will probably have to room with someone else, and while I like my colleagues, I sort of don't want them to hear me shitting 8+ times a day) it will be a horrible, horrible experience for me. The group retreat is structured so that we have presentations in the morning (deargodno), and outings to the lake or hiking in the afternoon (hellnaw), for 4 days. I cannot do this. I also have severe anxiety and didn't really enjoy the group retreat much as it is. PIs of AskAcademia: what the hell do I do?! The group retreat is sort of "mandatory", but all I want is to be able to do my work in peace in the lab, never far from a toilet... (I honestly enjoy my work and would just be so happy if my PI told me I could stay in the lab with my little cell buddies listening to music.) I have had this health issue before and I'm on meds but they take some time to kick in. I don't have it as bad as some people, my labmates have no idea I have health issues, and I'd like to keep it that way. I can totally function but this retreat would just be a nightmare for me. Please help Assistant: You're sick. Say you're sick.

Human: I am having an IBS flare and have been asked to attend a 4 day group retreat. What the hell do I do? This is literally my nightmare. I am coming to the end of my PhD and, as is the tradition in our group, we have a group retreat every spring and people present their research there when they're close to finishing. But right now, I have to shit every 2 hours, loudly. Even if I manage to get a hotel room by myself (which is not a guarantee--I will probably have to room with someone else, and while I like my colleagues, I sort of don't want them to hear me shitting 8+ times a day) it will be a horrible, horrible experience for me. The group retreat is structured so that we have presentations in the morning (deargodno), and outings to the lake or hiking in the afternoon (hellnaw), for 4 days. I cannot do this. I also have severe anxiety and didn't really enjoy the group retreat much as it is. PIs of AskAcademia: what the hell do I do?! The group retreat is sort of "mandatory", but all I want is to be able to do my work in peace in the lab, never far from a toilet... (I honestly enjoy my work and would just be so happy if my PI told me I could stay in the lab with my little cell buddies listening to music.) I have had this health issue before and I'm on meds but they take some time to kick in. I don't have it as bad as some people, my labmates have no idea I have health issues, and I'd like to keep it that way. I can totally function but this retreat would just be a nightmare for me. Please help Assistant: You are ill, take your time to treat yourself and to hell anyone who says a thing about you prioritizing your health over some group tradition (if one can even call it that) Personally, I would never attend this even if I was perfectly capable, but you do you, and right now you have to focus on your health.

Human: Is it just me or does everything go really slowly in academia ? Assistant: I've worked in government before too and it's just as bad as academia. I think this is a pretty common phenomenon. Things do go a bit quicker in industry just because there is less 'red tape'. Government and academia both rely on funding from the government/are just in general very bureaucratic.

Human: Is it just me or does everything go really slowly in academia ? Assistant: I thought things were slow and bureaucratic in the academic world. Then I started working for a US government research lab, and now I look back with longing at how smooth and stress-free everything was in academia.

Human: How common is it for people not to publish academic research because it didn't come to the wanted conclusion? How common is it for people not to publish academic research because it didn't come to the wanted conclusion? Assistant: If the hypotheses are rejected, that's not a barrier to publication. But I'm afraid it's very hard to publish null effects, because there's a lot of ways you can screw up to get null effects in an experiment when a true effect does exist in nature. "Wanted conclusion" doesn't make sense to me for STEM, so I'm assuming OP meant a hypothesis.

Human: How common is it for people not to publish academic research because it didn't come to the wanted conclusion? How common is it for people not to publish academic research because it didn't come to the wanted conclusion? Assistant: In some areas like theoretical particle physics this is the norm: ideas are relatively easy to have, but ideas that actually work to some extent are rare, and lots of ideas that fail are simply discarded and not published. This is frustrating because sometimes multiple people have the same idea because it seems like a good one but doesn’t work for some nonobvious reason which they all discover only later, which becomes a waste of time.

Human: Ugh... Hello so, I feel like I needed to talk to someone about this, but I also didn't know who would that person be. I am a Ph.D. student, it's my 3rd year now and I haven't achieved much, to be honest. I really don't know why my procrastination skills are so high. right now I just feel lost and confused, I don't feel like I am what a Ph.D. student would be. I lowkey started thinking about quitting. like I wanna do research and everything, but not like this. it should be on my own terms I guess. what do you think I should do? I lack motivation, and I feel blocked. and speaking of blocking, I know I wanna do something big with my life but can't figure out what. dude, I really need some guidance. I am always stressed for whatever unknown reason. Please help. Assistant: This might sound overly simplistic but it's had value within my circles and it's been true of everyone I know that's had similar issues you've described: Find a hobby or interest that's not even remotely associated with your work. Carve out time exclusively for that. Minimum 10 hours/wk. Reassess after a few months. Work life balance is absolutely vital and can destroy the human psyche. We're not machines and our minds rebel when we try to act like something we're not.

Human: Ugh... Hello so, I feel like I needed to talk to someone about this, but I also didn't know who would that person be. I am a Ph.D. student, it's my 3rd year now and I haven't achieved much, to be honest. I really don't know why my procrastination skills are so high. right now I just feel lost and confused, I don't feel like I am what a Ph.D. student would be. I lowkey started thinking about quitting. like I wanna do research and everything, but not like this. it should be on my own terms I guess. what do you think I should do? I lack motivation, and I feel blocked. and speaking of blocking, I know I wanna do something big with my life but can't figure out what. dude, I really need some guidance. I am always stressed for whatever unknown reason. Please help. Assistant: Are you working on projects that you feel passionate about? Or are you simply working on projects assigned to you by your advisor?

Human: Ethical problem in writing papers I have a problem I don't know how to deal with. Is it ethical that my professor takes my draft of my paper and rewrite it when he finds it needs improvements and makes himself the first author? Isn't he supposed to guide me through the writing process? If he is right, please explain why? And if he isn't, please tell me what should I do. Assistant: >And if he isn't, please tell me what should I do. Do you have a good relationship with your advisor? It feels like the first step is to talk to them about it and make sure they know you are committed to completing the paper as the lead. I would also wonder about asking someone else (e.g., a postdoc) to come in to help with writing if writing quality as a legitimate issue-- basically, removing some of the burden on your advisor so it's less of their time and work.

Human: Ethical problem in writing papers I have a problem I don't know how to deal with. Is it ethical that my professor takes my draft of my paper and rewrite it when he finds it needs improvements and makes himself the first author? Isn't he supposed to guide me through the writing process? If he is right, please explain why? And if he isn't, please tell me what should I do. Assistant: If they're first, can you be last author? Could work to your advantage...

Human: Why is the english in scam journals so bad? Each and everyone of them is godawful. "Greetings!" "Rejoice!" "Eminent!" I thought the point of them is that they preyed on either grad students who don't know much better and were desperate to increase their publication count - so why has so godawful language in them? I just got this today: >Dear Professor, >Hope I am not irritating you with my email. If yes sorry for the inconvenience caused by my end. > >I am [NAME] working as a manager of Scholarly Journal of [SUBJECT] (SJ[S]) sends invitation to eminently like you to help me in growth of my Journal. I know that you are getting hundreds of solicited email and got fed up with the invitations that you have got. > >But, please be in my position understand the problem I am facing as nowadays it is becoming very hard to get trust of authors. Trust me in my efforts, I will believe in you that you are the person who illuminate my hope for my journals future. > >Today I am leaving my desk in a small hope that tomorrow will be my turning point for me, and my journal and I get novel article from you. Please help me in rejoicing this day. Dear lords, I'm pretty sure soon they're going to enclose picture of their family that only get fed if I turn in a 2-page opinion piece by Friday. Does this work on anyone? I understand they spam everyone - wouldn't it make sense to get one good version of the spam message and re-use it? How come in the whole universe of scam journals and conferences, not one has managed to write something halfway professional? Hell, can't they just lift it from a legitimate journal and just change the names, if they're that inept at the language? Assistant: scam journals actually mostly target people working in third-world countries who have an inferior command of English. In some cases the academic establishment in their area is so clueless that these scam publications count as real ones.

Human: Why is the english in scam journals so bad? Each and everyone of them is godawful. "Greetings!" "Rejoice!" "Eminent!" I thought the point of them is that they preyed on either grad students who don't know much better and were desperate to increase their publication count - so why has so godawful language in them? I just got this today: >Dear Professor, >Hope I am not irritating you with my email. If yes sorry for the inconvenience caused by my end. > >I am [NAME] working as a manager of Scholarly Journal of [SUBJECT] (SJ[S]) sends invitation to eminently like you to help me in growth of my Journal. I know that you are getting hundreds of solicited email and got fed up with the invitations that you have got. > >But, please be in my position understand the problem I am facing as nowadays it is becoming very hard to get trust of authors. Trust me in my efforts, I will believe in you that you are the person who illuminate my hope for my journals future. > >Today I am leaving my desk in a small hope that tomorrow will be my turning point for me, and my journal and I get novel article from you. Please help me in rejoicing this day. Dear lords, I'm pretty sure soon they're going to enclose picture of their family that only get fed if I turn in a 2-page opinion piece by Friday. Does this work on anyone? I understand they spam everyone - wouldn't it make sense to get one good version of the spam message and re-use it? How come in the whole universe of scam journals and conferences, not one has managed to write something halfway professional? Hell, can't they just lift it from a legitimate journal and just change the names, if they're that inept at the language? Assistant: "It is important that your article has been accepted and publish in January 2020 issue. So, please transfer or deposit the publication fees immediately. If you like transfer the processing fees through western union; please use the following receiver name address..." Got this last month. Can confirm OP's statement!

Human: Should someone with an honorary doctorate be addressed as 'Dr.'? A thought I've had for a while that I'm interested in hearing other opinions about. Not meaning to start an argument over qualifications and contributions to their respective fields, just genuinely curious. Assistant: Not really, no. Being honorary means that the degree was conferred "without the usual requirements or functions," meaning it doesn't entail the status and title of an earned doctorate.

Human: Should someone with an honorary doctorate be addressed as 'Dr.'? A thought I've had for a while that I'm interested in hearing other opinions about. Not meaning to start an argument over qualifications and contributions to their respective fields, just genuinely curious. Assistant: I've fine with it on the day it's awarded since they're usually on campus in regalia to address faculty and students. After that no.

Human: Universities from developing countries are renown abroad? Hey, People in my (developing) country highly praise the University of Buenos Aires, stating it is really important internationally, that we've won some Nobel prizes, as well as most of Argentinian presidents being former students from this institution. Also, it is said that when you are moving abroad it actually makes the difference to hold this name on your CV. I wanted to know if you have heard about the Universidad de Buenos Aires before, or any other in such countries (UNAM in Mexico, USP in Brazil, etc.) Thanks. Assistant: Hola, soy doctorando en la Sorbona y he estudiado en las de Ámsterdam, Lille, Lovaina y Rio de Janeiro. Nadie conoce las universidades latinoamericanas en Europa y todos piensan que son peores pero son prejuicios. En ciencias sociales los europeos no tienen nada de especial. Simplemente el colonialismo domina los imaginarios. Estoy siguiendo un curso en línea con la universidad de Avellaneda y está muy bien.

Human: Universities from developing countries are renown abroad? Hey, People in my (developing) country highly praise the University of Buenos Aires, stating it is really important internationally, that we've won some Nobel prizes, as well as most of Argentinian presidents being former students from this institution. Also, it is said that when you are moving abroad it actually makes the difference to hold this name on your CV. I wanted to know if you have heard about the Universidad de Buenos Aires before, or any other in such countries (UNAM in Mexico, USP in Brazil, etc.) Thanks. Assistant: Not sure if this subreddit is for academics (PhD student myself), but I do "know" UNAM and USP. Have come across a few good papers on my field from there, hence the "know". That's pretty much the only interaction I have with other unis. Haven't seen one from Buenos Aires, might be luck or nobody working/publishing in my search area

Human: How to overcome bullying in academia Without backlash? My thesis advisor verbally threatens me and my work. This has happened with other of his thesis students and the supervisors and committee are aware and won’t do anything about it. I have options for a PhD and I’m worried of not being able to apply without his letter of recommendation. I am trying to keep going but it’s getting bizarre and I don’t know what is the right thing to do. A little context: I’m in the second year of my masters degree and the due date for the defense keeps getting posponed because of him. Assistant: It's difficult to give advice without knowing more about what your advisor is doing. What do you mean by "threatens me and my work"? If you just mean that your advisor tends to be negative and request revisions that push a defense date back, this is common behavior. If you mean his behavior goes into the realm of "bullying," how does he exhibit this behavior?

Human: How to overcome bullying in academia Without backlash? My thesis advisor verbally threatens me and my work. This has happened with other of his thesis students and the supervisors and committee are aware and won’t do anything about it. I have options for a PhD and I’m worried of not being able to apply without his letter of recommendation. I am trying to keep going but it’s getting bizarre and I don’t know what is the right thing to do. A little context: I’m in the second year of my masters degree and the due date for the defense keeps getting posponed because of him. Assistant: Get them damn papers first. You can take the fight from there.

Human: Can an educated patient with a rare disease present and publish self researched interventions? I am not a scientist or healthcare professional. I do have a very rare genetic disease with no therapy or cure. I am university educated ( arts degrees) and self researched and applied lifestyle interventions that were unexpectedly successful. As I track all data regarding my interventions, my medical team and I, as first author, published an article this Spring. As I am acting outside the standard of care for someone with my disease, albeit with proven success, my medical team has now backed away from further research collaboration for ethical and liability reasons. As an informed patient, I am not bound by the same ethical or professional constraints of my medical team. Over the past year, I have progressed the interventions, still outside the standard of care, and I would now like to independently present the results as an N=1 study at a Conference in June. I am uncertain as to the appropriateness of this effort but feel very strongly that the research would be immensely valuable to other patients suffering with the same disease. Currently, there is no cure or therapy for this progressive and debilitating disease and my research might offer some hope for others. Any academic advice on strategies for navigating through the publication process would be very much appreciated. Assistant: I think you should contact a Swedish woman, Sara Riggare. webpage She is what i Sweden is called “spetspatient” and her reasoning is that she is the expert of her own disease, not doctors. She is doing a PhD in this area and is very active in promoting patient centered care as well as actually talking to patients.

Human: Can an educated patient with a rare disease present and publish self researched interventions? I am not a scientist or healthcare professional. I do have a very rare genetic disease with no therapy or cure. I am university educated ( arts degrees) and self researched and applied lifestyle interventions that were unexpectedly successful. As I track all data regarding my interventions, my medical team and I, as first author, published an article this Spring. As I am acting outside the standard of care for someone with my disease, albeit with proven success, my medical team has now backed away from further research collaboration for ethical and liability reasons. As an informed patient, I am not bound by the same ethical or professional constraints of my medical team. Over the past year, I have progressed the interventions, still outside the standard of care, and I would now like to independently present the results as an N=1 study at a Conference in June. I am uncertain as to the appropriateness of this effort but feel very strongly that the research would be immensely valuable to other patients suffering with the same disease. Currently, there is no cure or therapy for this progressive and debilitating disease and my research might offer some hope for others. Any academic advice on strategies for navigating through the publication process would be very much appreciated. Assistant: Well not a academic advice but why don't you make a website and try to reach other people who been suffering from that disease and tell them about your experiences?

Human: Have many academic friends do you have? Or, are your friends mainly non-academics? Hi all, Hope this post is allowed here. I'm curious as to how easy or difficult academics find it to make friends in similar fields or their institution. I know people define 'friendship' differently, but I guess for the purposes of my question, I mean someone you would see socially and with whom you'd discuss your personal lives beyond polite small talk (maybe Level 4 and higher?). Personally, after 8 years as a PhD student and postdoc, I know three people, all of whom I met as MPhil/PhD students, who I might call friends. We've talked about personal stuff but we're very low contact which is partially due to geography. I also initiate most of the conversations. My two proper close friends are non-academic and I have lots of academic colleagues/acquaintances. It seems like lots of other people in my field have circles of academic friends but maybe this is a misperception from social media. I see people thanking loads of friends in their thesis intros and I can't relate haha. I have, unsuccessfully, tried to put myself out there with people but I think it's a combination of incompatibility and some being understandably busy with their own stuff. Thanks for reading and sharing your thoughts. Assistant: Honestly, except for my family I don't know anyone outside of academia anymore

Human: Have many academic friends do you have? Or, are your friends mainly non-academics? Hi all, Hope this post is allowed here. I'm curious as to how easy or difficult academics find it to make friends in similar fields or their institution. I know people define 'friendship' differently, but I guess for the purposes of my question, I mean someone you would see socially and with whom you'd discuss your personal lives beyond polite small talk (maybe Level 4 and higher?). Personally, after 8 years as a PhD student and postdoc, I know three people, all of whom I met as MPhil/PhD students, who I might call friends. We've talked about personal stuff but we're very low contact which is partially due to geography. I also initiate most of the conversations. My two proper close friends are non-academic and I have lots of academic colleagues/acquaintances. It seems like lots of other people in my field have circles of academic friends but maybe this is a misperception from social media. I see people thanking loads of friends in their thesis intros and I can't relate haha. I have, unsuccessfully, tried to put myself out there with people but I think it's a combination of incompatibility and some being understandably busy with their own stuff. Thanks for reading and sharing your thoughts. Assistant: Most of my friends are those I made during my undergrad 20-something years ago. I've picked up a few along the way during work - more from some jobs than others, and from some jobs none at all. I've picked up a few from places I've lived while moving that had nothing to do with academia too.

Human: You know my h-index, not my story. As a disclaimer, I don't know shit about fuck. I've done around a year of research and only starting post-grad this year. Today, I was reading a thread on this subreddit asking how bad it was to publish in a low-impact journal. One of the replies struck me, which was: 'I believe, it is not professional to try to measure a researcher with articles at the beginning of his/her academic life. I would personally consider citations, number of views, etc. more important rather than where the work was published.' To me there's a glaring omission which is the quality of the researcher's work. Assessing their work by reading it, seeing how well they write, etc. On one hand, I can see why this is important. High-quality publications act as proofs of the researchers' ability, production, etc. Maybe this is considered the most non-discriminatory and least subjective. And when deciding whether someone is worth admitting/hiring/sucking up to etc., who cbs to read someone's work when they can peep their h-index. For a noob like me, it isn't intuitive yet to assess a piece of work based on what journals they have published. But with some of my colleagues, it's the first point of reference. I get it's the game, and to win, you gotta play. But who would want to win a rigged game. Is this a common gripe amongst academics? And if so is the space moving away from that? Or am I being dramatic and exaggerating a non-issue? Assistant: As my friend always says, if you win the rat race, then you are a rat.

Human: You know my h-index, not my story. As a disclaimer, I don't know shit about fuck. I've done around a year of research and only starting post-grad this year. Today, I was reading a thread on this subreddit asking how bad it was to publish in a low-impact journal. One of the replies struck me, which was: 'I believe, it is not professional to try to measure a researcher with articles at the beginning of his/her academic life. I would personally consider citations, number of views, etc. more important rather than where the work was published.' To me there's a glaring omission which is the quality of the researcher's work. Assessing their work by reading it, seeing how well they write, etc. On one hand, I can see why this is important. High-quality publications act as proofs of the researchers' ability, production, etc. Maybe this is considered the most non-discriminatory and least subjective. And when deciding whether someone is worth admitting/hiring/sucking up to etc., who cbs to read someone's work when they can peep their h-index. For a noob like me, it isn't intuitive yet to assess a piece of work based on what journals they have published. But with some of my colleagues, it's the first point of reference. I get it's the game, and to win, you gotta play. But who would want to win a rigged game. Is this a common gripe amongst academics? And if so is the space moving away from that? Or am I being dramatic and exaggerating a non-issue? Assistant: Your intuitions are right and I personally would love the system to change. Take a look at the DORA declaration and it’s signatures.

Human: Graduating incompetent PhDs This question is inspired by the story of a professor acquaintance, who is currently line-editing an advisee's dissertation because they are unable to write coherently and don't understand the sources they're citing. They're hoping to sign off on the dissertation at the end of this academic year, meaning the student will graduate with a PhD despite (from what I understand) not having the basic skills that a PhD holder is supposed to have. I've heard a similar story before from people in real life and online. So I'm sitting here a lil rattled and wondering: is graduating incompetent PhDs, like, a thing? Assistant: One of my supervisors once bragged to me that he'd written 4 PhDs. His own, and 3 students. One of them was while I was his student, he disappeared for 3 weeks, turns out he went to the UAE, where the student was the son of very wealthy important people, stayed in their palatial house, and just wrote the whole thing. He told me all this as a way of reassuring me that yes I would finish my thesis, because worst case scenario he would write it for me.

Human: Graduating incompetent PhDs This question is inspired by the story of a professor acquaintance, who is currently line-editing an advisee's dissertation because they are unable to write coherently and don't understand the sources they're citing. They're hoping to sign off on the dissertation at the end of this academic year, meaning the student will graduate with a PhD despite (from what I understand) not having the basic skills that a PhD holder is supposed to have. I've heard a similar story before from people in real life and online. So I'm sitting here a lil rattled and wondering: is graduating incompetent PhDs, like, a thing? Assistant: Yes, we graduated someone after they failed the dissertation defense because the last chapter was practically unreadable. It became a joke for the other graduate students in the department when people were stressed out about their progress: "Well if they'll pass Bob, then they'll pass anyone."

Human: Complicated feelings around leaving academia I'm doing a post-doc in a STEM field that has pretty good industry options. For a while, I entertained the possibility of staying in academia but it's becoming clearer to me that I need better work-life balance and that I enjoy working in teams more than being a PI. I've been slowly applying for industry jobs and I'm generating a decent number of follow up interviews. But the truth is that I feel ... strange ... about this idea of leaving academia. I did have an industry job for 4 years before starting grad school and I also was always lukewarm about the idea of getting in academia as a career (as opposed to getting a Ph.D. for cooler jobs in my area). I feel sad and like I'm grieving, even though I'm sure I don't want to stay in academia any more. I guess I'm also worried about telling my PI that I'm leaving. I have my own grant, and he hasn't been super helpful or supportive either along the way, so I don't know why I'm feeling this guilt. My Ph.D. advisor is quite supportive of whichever direction I choose. But I just feel weird about this. I just don't want to make my entire life about some scientific endeavor that isn't even earth-shattering. Why do I feel guilt for not doing that? Assistant: I felt a little bit that way when I first left, but I was encouraged to go indirectly when, during an interview, an asst prof with small kids said it was good to get them to bed at 8, because then you could stay up and write until 12. Then a few years later, we met with some academics for a collaboration on a Monday. We were like, hey there was great weather this weekend. The academics said, we wouldn't know, we all had to write grant applications all weekend.

Human: Complicated feelings around leaving academia I'm doing a post-doc in a STEM field that has pretty good industry options. For a while, I entertained the possibility of staying in academia but it's becoming clearer to me that I need better work-life balance and that I enjoy working in teams more than being a PI. I've been slowly applying for industry jobs and I'm generating a decent number of follow up interviews. But the truth is that I feel ... strange ... about this idea of leaving academia. I did have an industry job for 4 years before starting grad school and I also was always lukewarm about the idea of getting in academia as a career (as opposed to getting a Ph.D. for cooler jobs in my area). I feel sad and like I'm grieving, even though I'm sure I don't want to stay in academia any more. I guess I'm also worried about telling my PI that I'm leaving. I have my own grant, and he hasn't been super helpful or supportive either along the way, so I don't know why I'm feeling this guilt. My Ph.D. advisor is quite supportive of whichever direction I choose. But I just feel weird about this. I just don't want to make my entire life about some scientific endeavor that isn't even earth-shattering. Why do I feel guilt for not doing that? Assistant: A PhD trains you to lead a group of researchers, in an academic setting by default, so it's natural to feel weird that you're headed to a different destination than the railroad tracks you're currently on. Doing things differently than the group is always going to feel strange for humans. What you describe makes perfect sense to me. Good luck in industry!

Human: Constant PhD rejections. Hey all. I hope you're all doing well. I didnt really know who to turn to so I thought I'd share my experience in the last few months since September. I'm in the UK and I've achieved a first in my undergrad(biomed) and got a merit in my MSc(cancer). I've applied for about 8 PhD positions but I haven't even gotten through the first screening process even once. Because of current circumstances I havent been able to get feedback. I feel really lost and confused and I dont know who to turn to or what to do next, the PhDs out there currently aren't in my field and I just spend my time checking my emails hoping for something that isn't there. How many tries did it take for you guys? Should I be doing something else? I didnt really know how to word this or put this but I hope there's some people out there in my position. A few of my friends got into PhD positions in the first month and its really crushing. Assistant: I don’t have any advice as I’m a rejected applicant myself. But application numbers increased a lot this year so you are facing much greater competition. Idk if that’ll make up feel better but maybe it’ll give you some perspective

Human: Constant PhD rejections. Hey all. I hope you're all doing well. I didnt really know who to turn to so I thought I'd share my experience in the last few months since September. I'm in the UK and I've achieved a first in my undergrad(biomed) and got a merit in my MSc(cancer). I've applied for about 8 PhD positions but I haven't even gotten through the first screening process even once. Because of current circumstances I havent been able to get feedback. I feel really lost and confused and I dont know who to turn to or what to do next, the PhDs out there currently aren't in my field and I just spend my time checking my emails hoping for something that isn't there. How many tries did it take for you guys? Should I be doing something else? I didnt really know how to word this or put this but I hope there's some people out there in my position. A few of my friends got into PhD positions in the first month and its really crushing. Assistant: I’m in the uk and got admitted to my current PhD last September. I started in October. There’s always time and always hope. Try searching at universities that you haven’t looked at before, at the PhD level rankings aren’t as important. It’s not even April yet, there’s plenty of time. Talk to your masters advisers etc. I assure you you have time. I got the equivalent of a merit (went to oxford so 63 was a high pass lol) and was admitted to University of York, which is top five in the uk for my subject.

Human: anyone have traditions for celebrating their academic successes? I’m a PhD student and my first publication is a book chapter coming out in December. I’m proud of my work, but don’t really want to come across as bragging by posting about it or throwing a party or something crazy. I was thinking I’d like to do a little something special just for myself to acknowledge my success, and thought it would be nice to do something I could make into a career-long tradition every time I publish (🤞🏻). Does anyone do anything like that? Or have ideas for what might be a cool thing to do? Assistant: I get myself a more expensive bottle of wine ($15 instead of the normal $10), and a slice of cheesecake, run myself a bubble bath, and switch off all screens for a night. Normally will have a meal with friends/my partner too. Celebrate everything! And congratulations!

Human: anyone have traditions for celebrating their academic successes? I’m a PhD student and my first publication is a book chapter coming out in December. I’m proud of my work, but don’t really want to come across as bragging by posting about it or throwing a party or something crazy. I was thinking I’d like to do a little something special just for myself to acknowledge my success, and thought it would be nice to do something I could make into a career-long tradition every time I publish (🤞🏻). Does anyone do anything like that? Or have ideas for what might be a cool thing to do? Assistant: I get super stoned and take a bubble bath.

Human: What separates a great PhD student from a good one? I want to be the best I can be! Assistant: Haven't seen anyone mention this but I honestly think your supervisor has a large large play in what sort of PhD student you are. What culture they establish, how they run the lab, etc. and from a "success" point of view, really you can work your ass off and not publish anything or be in a "good" lab and do barely anything and get 5 publications. So if you define good student as published or capable it can really come down to supervisor.

Human: What separates a great PhD student from a good one? I want to be the best I can be! Assistant: A "great PhD student" is a great scholar pretending to be a student. A great supervisor is someone who recognizes this and pretends to be a supervisor.

Human: I love this sub for the general advice it provides, but why aren’t there more academics using Reddit to disseminate research findings? Academics of Reddit, I’ve seen lots of professors using Twitter to discuss their & others’ research (at least in my field of biomechanics) and it always seemed odd to me that Twitter was the chosen forum to do that, with its low character count and lack of barrier between academic & non-academic content, or even between different fields of academia. Is there a reason they use Twitter over Reddit? I’d imagine that having field-specific subreddits to facilitate & organize discussion in the field (at least compared to Twitter) in a public forum would be ideal. I know that some of these conversations do happen on ResearchGate, but it would also not be ideal for this because it can’t keep various disciplines organized together like Reddit can, nor does it have the non-academic public attention that Reddit does so that the public can see how science is done. Assistant: Judging from most people's handles, most of us use Reddit as an anonymous place. (I assume your passport doesn't say "PersonOfInterest1969"?) Maybe it's just me, but If I were to create a non-anonymous account, I wouldn't want to put my professional work out there and interact with a bunch of anonymous people.

Human: I love this sub for the general advice it provides, but why aren’t there more academics using Reddit to disseminate research findings? Academics of Reddit, I’ve seen lots of professors using Twitter to discuss their & others’ research (at least in my field of biomechanics) and it always seemed odd to me that Twitter was the chosen forum to do that, with its low character count and lack of barrier between academic & non-academic content, or even between different fields of academia. Is there a reason they use Twitter over Reddit? I’d imagine that having field-specific subreddits to facilitate & organize discussion in the field (at least compared to Twitter) in a public forum would be ideal. I know that some of these conversations do happen on ResearchGate, but it would also not be ideal for this because it can’t keep various disciplines organized together like Reddit can, nor does it have the non-academic public attention that Reddit does so that the public can see how science is done. Assistant: Too many encounters with redditors that think their 10 minutes of googling equates to my three degrees

Human: First faculty job offer. How am I supposed to feel? After ten years of school and four more of postdoc, a year of dozens of applications, I finally got an offer. Still waiting to hear from one more I did a campus interview with. It's less pay than I wanted, isolated location, less startup funds, and they "don't do tenure." Should I be happy? It's almost what I wanted. A lab, an office, teaching, low cost of living and a solid middle class salary. More than many will ever get. Should I feel disinfranchised? I just feel tired. Assistant: Great to have an offer. But be careful as you work there. If it forces you to a narrow path and doesn't provide a lot of support, it can hurt later on. I accepted something similar, had a good time there, grew to enjoy it. 5 year later, with no possibility of tenure, my position is eliminated and it's tough to get into the same field because this job wasn't as broad as necessary.

Human: First faculty job offer. How am I supposed to feel? After ten years of school and four more of postdoc, a year of dozens of applications, I finally got an offer. Still waiting to hear from one more I did a campus interview with. It's less pay than I wanted, isolated location, less startup funds, and they "don't do tenure." Should I be happy? It's almost what I wanted. A lab, an office, teaching, low cost of living and a solid middle class salary. More than many will ever get. Should I feel disinfranchised? I just feel tired. Assistant: Don't count it out yet. Getting your foot in the door is half the battle. It could be a good stepping stone entry job as a full time faculty member.

Human: How do.i go about with dealing with a senile professor? Hello, perhaps you all could help with this problem that I am having. Currently I am a junior in college, and I'm taking a class with a professor who I am sure incompetent. The semester has started in January, and as of March we still have not received a syllabus. I do not know what we're supposed to be doing in this class, other than its is a statistics course. For instance, we have had no tests, no homework assigned, and regularly he mixes us up with his combintorics class before us. Besides that, this semester he thought that it was an extension of last semester, so he gave us other students tests to take home and think about because he thought that it was us. Moreover, sometimes he forgets that we are even in class, and last week he went to get in the couch that is in the class room, but before he did he took his pants off. I think he has alzheimers or something, but I'm afraid that this is going to be like the last time I had him and hes going to just give me a B- without ever giving homework, tests, or a finale.. I dont know what to do. I've been to the head of my department to tell them about this, but they havent done a thing about it. The only advice inwas offered, was this is what graduate school is like and to just get over it. Assistant: Oh dear. All the advice already here is good. I want to add another voice to support that this isn't acceptable behavior--not from a prof or the administration. I'm sorry you've been put in this position. I hope you see traction on this issue soon. I'm sure the professor's family members are also concerned. I'd be concerned about this man getting safely to his own home, driving, cooking a meal and remembering to turn off the burner, etc.

Human: How do.i go about with dealing with a senile professor? Hello, perhaps you all could help with this problem that I am having. Currently I am a junior in college, and I'm taking a class with a professor who I am sure incompetent. The semester has started in January, and as of March we still have not received a syllabus. I do not know what we're supposed to be doing in this class, other than its is a statistics course. For instance, we have had no tests, no homework assigned, and regularly he mixes us up with his combintorics class before us. Besides that, this semester he thought that it was an extension of last semester, so he gave us other students tests to take home and think about because he thought that it was us. Moreover, sometimes he forgets that we are even in class, and last week he went to get in the couch that is in the class room, but before he did he took his pants off. I think he has alzheimers or something, but I'm afraid that this is going to be like the last time I had him and hes going to just give me a B- without ever giving homework, tests, or a finale.. I dont know what to do. I've been to the head of my department to tell them about this, but they havent done a thing about it. The only advice inwas offered, was this is what graduate school is like and to just get over it. Assistant: >...I'm afraid that this is going to be like the last time I had him and hes going to just give me a B-... Wait, you took him for a second course? Or am I misunderstanding?

Human: What's the "soundtrack" of your PhD? Inspired by a post in a different forum for shaving where people described the scent of their aftershave as music, I'm curious: how would your PhD sound if it were a song? In my case it'd be probably along the lines of Swans - The Seer. A 30min progressive rock song, super long, quite confusing and chaotic to listen to. Sounds like something you'd hear in a cult. Some people like this type of music, including me depending on my mood. But if I'd show this to my friends and family, I'd get a lot of weird stares. Alternative choice would be a horribly improvised jazz piece by a bunch of people who never played jazz before. (research is in information systems btw) Assistant: Carry on my wayward son, There'll be peace when you are done. Lay your weary head to rest... Don't you cry no more...

Human: What's the "soundtrack" of your PhD? Inspired by a post in a different forum for shaving where people described the scent of their aftershave as music, I'm curious: how would your PhD sound if it were a song? In my case it'd be probably along the lines of Swans - The Seer. A 30min progressive rock song, super long, quite confusing and chaotic to listen to. Sounds like something you'd hear in a cult. Some people like this type of music, including me depending on my mood. But if I'd show this to my friends and family, I'd get a lot of weird stares. Alternative choice would be a horribly improvised jazz piece by a bunch of people who never played jazz before. (research is in information systems btw) Assistant: Comfortably Numb LOL

Human: Academics: do you get insecure not having industrial experience? I find my supervisor (who doesn't have any industrial experience) a bit insecure when facing some of the industrial folks. He often asks, "is that how it works over there? I got more insecure for him being my supervisor by asking that for some reason. My sister who has been working in the industry for her whole life didn't quite like working with people who have been "stuck" in school - she finds them as people that couldn't really solve real problems - no offence but she said that "these people" are more complaining and using "methods" people don't understand. She says she doesn't care for "the references", "the literature review" or SCOPUS Indexed if it can't solve the business problem - I literally laughed hearing that. Academics - do you get insecure not having industrial experience? Assistant: No.

Human: Academics: do you get insecure not having industrial experience? I find my supervisor (who doesn't have any industrial experience) a bit insecure when facing some of the industrial folks. He often asks, "is that how it works over there? I got more insecure for him being my supervisor by asking that for some reason. My sister who has been working in the industry for her whole life didn't quite like working with people who have been "stuck" in school - she finds them as people that couldn't really solve real problems - no offence but she said that "these people" are more complaining and using "methods" people don't understand. She says she doesn't care for "the references", "the literature review" or SCOPUS Indexed if it can't solve the business problem - I literally laughed hearing that. Academics - do you get insecure not having industrial experience? Assistant: No. This is just my experience, but the kinds of problems people wanted to solve where I worked weren't meaningful to me and there was a lot of value placed on making money vs. making long-term, impactful improvement. Industry doesn't interest me, so I have no FOMO or insecurities about it.

Human: I'm a failure with no publications I am in a bad way. I got my PhD in physics like 6 months ago. I have no first author publications. My main result has been rejected by several journals. They kick it around like a mangy dog. My second paper was to be a small methods paper---nothing too ambitious---but last week I found a 20-year-old paper that seems to work better than my method, and is much simpler. All that work might have been for nought. So here I am. I have produced nothing of value. Fear in a handful of dust. My advisor thinks I'm wonderful, and wrote me a beautiful letter. I’m afraid that he feels responsible for my failures, and wrote it out of guilt. My peers like me, and, I think, respect me. I did very well in my classes, and feel comfortable with my subject matter. I have been offered a good postdoc, and a couple of other promising interviews lined up, one in a very prestigious lab. I’m a great presenter. Now, I know what some of you are thinking: "This guy came in here to brag about how good he is!" No. This is a pile of evidence that I’m nothing but surface and sheen, with nothing underneath it. I got a poster prize for the same research that keeps getting rejected. It made me furious and bitter. Of course I did. I’m a greasy car salesman. I can talk. But deep down, I’m just a common turd that’s cheated his way into it all. I know, I know, impostor's syndrome. I know it's a real thing, but it seems like false flattery, convincing myself that I have some kind of syndrome and that I’m not a real-deal faker. I know in my bones that I'm an impostor. It’s getting worse. I lie awake recounting all the negative reviews and rejections, all the possible problems with my methods and results, all my personal flaws as a scientist. It seems too much. I want to give up. But how? Leaving academia isn't giving up, it's a whole 'nother set of problems. I resent this society where I have to decide---I don't want to decide! I'm a sweaty rat king of anxiety and self-loathing, and in no place to make a rational decision. Why can't there be some divine judge who decides what to do with me? Or some super advanced A.I.? Some bureaucrat or some workers' council? Anything, anyone, no matter how stupid, arbitrary, or venal… Just decide for me where I’ll best serve society, and I’ll accept: Is it doing physics? Cleaning toilets? Would society be better off putting me down for good and letting me fertilize a field? Can I plead *nolo contendere*? Assistant: I have no first author publications, and I start a tenure track position this fall, after being a VAP. Publication isn't the be all and end all of being a good scientist. I've started and heavily intellectually contributed to other's projects. I'm second and middle author on a few, but never first, yet. It will happen, though. Sure, I had to end up at a SLAC instead of an R1, but I love my students, I love the research I can do, and I'm inspiring future scientists. Cool stuff. You'll be ok.

Human: I'm a failure with no publications I am in a bad way. I got my PhD in physics like 6 months ago. I have no first author publications. My main result has been rejected by several journals. They kick it around like a mangy dog. My second paper was to be a small methods paper---nothing too ambitious---but last week I found a 20-year-old paper that seems to work better than my method, and is much simpler. All that work might have been for nought. So here I am. I have produced nothing of value. Fear in a handful of dust. My advisor thinks I'm wonderful, and wrote me a beautiful letter. I’m afraid that he feels responsible for my failures, and wrote it out of guilt. My peers like me, and, I think, respect me. I did very well in my classes, and feel comfortable with my subject matter. I have been offered a good postdoc, and a couple of other promising interviews lined up, one in a very prestigious lab. I’m a great presenter. Now, I know what some of you are thinking: "This guy came in here to brag about how good he is!" No. This is a pile of evidence that I’m nothing but surface and sheen, with nothing underneath it. I got a poster prize for the same research that keeps getting rejected. It made me furious and bitter. Of course I did. I’m a greasy car salesman. I can talk. But deep down, I’m just a common turd that’s cheated his way into it all. I know, I know, impostor's syndrome. I know it's a real thing, but it seems like false flattery, convincing myself that I have some kind of syndrome and that I’m not a real-deal faker. I know in my bones that I'm an impostor. It’s getting worse. I lie awake recounting all the negative reviews and rejections, all the possible problems with my methods and results, all my personal flaws as a scientist. It seems too much. I want to give up. But how? Leaving academia isn't giving up, it's a whole 'nother set of problems. I resent this society where I have to decide---I don't want to decide! I'm a sweaty rat king of anxiety and self-loathing, and in no place to make a rational decision. Why can't there be some divine judge who decides what to do with me? Or some super advanced A.I.? Some bureaucrat or some workers' council? Anything, anyone, no matter how stupid, arbitrary, or venal… Just decide for me where I’ll best serve society, and I’ll accept: Is it doing physics? Cleaning toilets? Would society be better off putting me down for good and letting me fertilize a field? Can I plead *nolo contendere*? Assistant: Bro, sometimes I feel like this too. One thing that sticks in my mind is that our program essentially never kicks someone out, unless it's an egregious violation. What if I'm just skating by and the only reason I'll finish is that no one really gives enough of a crap to kick me out?

Human: Any academic book made you go: ''Wow... This is so underrated and good...''? It can be academic books of any discipline (STEM, non-STEM etc) be it classical (19-20 century) or modern texts (21 century). Any english or foreign (english-translated) texts are welcomed too! Assistant: *Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences* by Geoffrey C. Bowker and Susan Leigh Star "A revealing and surprising look at how classification systems can shape both worldviews and social interactions."

Human: Any academic book made you go: ''Wow... This is so underrated and good...''? It can be academic books of any discipline (STEM, non-STEM etc) be it classical (19-20 century) or modern texts (21 century). Any english or foreign (english-translated) texts are welcomed too! Assistant: Definitely pop sci but I picked up Stuff Matters: Exploring the Marvelous Materials That Shape Our Man-Made World, Book by Mark Miodownik in an airport as an undergrad in chem and it inspired me to become a materials scientist

Human: Is your academic career over if you are let go after not being able to get tenure? Or can you get tenure in another institution sooner without waiting for 5 years again? I am not that familiar with the Academic career ladder. But from what I have read, it seems that when you are in a tenure track position you usually get five years to earn tenure. If you fail to get tenure you are let go. Is your whole academic career destroyed after that? Do you have to wait 5 more years in another institution to get tenure there? Or can you get it earlier? Assistant: It varies a lot between institutions, but denial of tenure doesn’t necessarily mean it’s game over for an academic career. At my school I’d estimate that 75% go on to get tenure elsewhere (sometimes right away) and the other 25% decide to do something different. Many department chairs keep an eye out for terrific mid level faculty who might’ve lost tenure bids due to some political nonsense at their institutions.

Human: Is your academic career over if you are let go after not being able to get tenure? Or can you get tenure in another institution sooner without waiting for 5 years again? I am not that familiar with the Academic career ladder. But from what I have read, it seems that when you are in a tenure track position you usually get five years to earn tenure. If you fail to get tenure you are let go. Is your whole academic career destroyed after that? Do you have to wait 5 more years in another institution to get tenure there? Or can you get it earlier? Assistant: I'm not US based, but I'd say it depends on the reason for being let go. Specifically on how well you, and your reference writers, can sell it as being beyond your control.

Human: For those who take leave from their PhDs, how do you pay the bills? I feel like I've been operating at the edge of burnout for quite a number of years now and could use the break. The only thing that is honestly keeping me from taking it is that I have no idea how I would pay for rent/groceries if I took a temporary leave. How do you do it? How do you find a temporary job that pays the same for a year but simultaneously gives you the break you need to really recharge? What do people do when they need a break but can't financially afford to take one? It feels like taking a leave isn't a real option. Assistant: I've known people that took temporary leaves from their PhD for medical and/or mental reasons. It's uncommon but it does happen. Most of them were at least partly supported by their parents during that year, usually including moving back home. If they stayed at their old apartment instead of moving home, I think they'd take a basic job that required no serious thinking (like in retail).

Human: For those who take leave from their PhDs, how do you pay the bills? I feel like I've been operating at the edge of burnout for quite a number of years now and could use the break. The only thing that is honestly keeping me from taking it is that I have no idea how I would pay for rent/groceries if I took a temporary leave. How do you do it? How do you find a temporary job that pays the same for a year but simultaneously gives you the break you need to really recharge? What do people do when they need a break but can't financially afford to take one? It feels like taking a leave isn't a real option. Assistant: Job

Human: Is anyone willing to be a guest-speaker in my bioethics and medical literature class for 1 hour this spring? In consideration of bringing professionals and industry insight to students I am trying to arrange a guest-speaker for our class discussion. This is for a University in downtown Chicago. Depending on the week our focus will vary from exploring topics like euthanasia to experimentation ethics and the Nuremberg trials after WW2. The meeting would be via zoom and my class is Wednesdays from 6-8 PM CST. If you work in the field of bioethics and or medical ethics and are willing to come online for my class discussion I would be willing to compensate you. I could possibly just record an interview with you instead of a live Q and A from the entire class (24).Thank you in advance. Assistant: Would be happy to chat about my experience at WHO HQ during Ebola as a bioethics fellow and my recent experiences on a human research ethics committee in Japan. I could do it live at that time/timezone. Please message me if interested.

Human: Is anyone willing to be a guest-speaker in my bioethics and medical literature class for 1 hour this spring? In consideration of bringing professionals and industry insight to students I am trying to arrange a guest-speaker for our class discussion. This is for a University in downtown Chicago. Depending on the week our focus will vary from exploring topics like euthanasia to experimentation ethics and the Nuremberg trials after WW2. The meeting would be via zoom and my class is Wednesdays from 6-8 PM CST. If you work in the field of bioethics and or medical ethics and are willing to come online for my class discussion I would be willing to compensate you. I could possibly just record an interview with you instead of a live Q and A from the entire class (24).Thank you in advance. Assistant: You could probably reach out to Emily Jackson at LSE, if you’re interested in law and medical ethics.

Human: Is it possible to be published even as a non-profesional? Hello, some time ago I had met a guy working in university administration, he is without any diploma, without any title, M.A. nor bachelor... but since he is often mistaken for profesor since he is visitting conferences and helping students with everything.... It let me think: is it possible to publish in academic magazines or taking part in conferences if you lack titles or background in some university? Will you paper fail in review if you lack PhD? And did you met some "laic" researchers to be recognized by academia? Assistant: It's quite possible, it just doesn't tend to happen because the skillset you need to publish you only tend to learn...in academia.

Human: Is it possible to be published even as a non-profesional? Hello, some time ago I had met a guy working in university administration, he is without any diploma, without any title, M.A. nor bachelor... but since he is often mistaken for profesor since he is visitting conferences and helping students with everything.... It let me think: is it possible to publish in academic magazines or taking part in conferences if you lack titles or background in some university? Will you paper fail in review if you lack PhD? And did you met some "laic" researchers to be recognized by academia? Assistant: Absolutely they can publish. Scholarly work should not be judged based on a person's background. Our current systems are heavily set to favor those involved in academia. From networking opps to resource support, including available time, the system excludes good researchers and good work that could come from the outside. And I don't see entrenched academics rushing to upset the cart. This is a disservice to people and disservice to science and societies.

Human: Super passionate about teaching and advising, absolutely hate research. For background, I'm in engineering. I'm looking for advice because I really want to be a professor at a smaller teaching university (with less emphasis on research), but I have 2.5 years left in my PhD program and I hate doing research. I have had teaching and advising roles (teaching assistant, recitation instructor, tutor, academic mentor, grader, graduate student instructor) for 5 years and I've enjoyed all of it. Teaching and advising are definitely what I'm passionate about. And I'm pretty good at it, too. It's not that I don't like my research topic, I just don't like being a researcher. I have tried to motivate myself with the mindset of "suffering for 5 years so I can have my dream job for the next 40" but it's been getting harder and harder to motivate myself to do the work and I've gotten to the point that I'm behind where I should be in terms of my progress. Has anyone else experienced this? What did you do? Assistant: Community college is for you my friend

Human: Super passionate about teaching and advising, absolutely hate research. For background, I'm in engineering. I'm looking for advice because I really want to be a professor at a smaller teaching university (with less emphasis on research), but I have 2.5 years left in my PhD program and I hate doing research. I have had teaching and advising roles (teaching assistant, recitation instructor, tutor, academic mentor, grader, graduate student instructor) for 5 years and I've enjoyed all of it. Teaching and advising are definitely what I'm passionate about. And I'm pretty good at it, too. It's not that I don't like my research topic, I just don't like being a researcher. I have tried to motivate myself with the mindset of "suffering for 5 years so I can have my dream job for the next 40" but it's been getting harder and harder to motivate myself to do the work and I've gotten to the point that I'm behind where I should be in terms of my progress. Has anyone else experienced this? What did you do? Assistant: Different field but similar feelings. The PhD process has turned me off research but I love teaching. I'm ABD but Ialready got a job at a small liberal arts university where teaching is #1 and scholarship is a far second. It's a great fit for me. I will finish up the PhD because it will afford me the best opportunities in academia but I don't have to sell my soul to research where I am now.

Human: Every research job I see in academia requires a PhD. I'd like to work in research but think only a Masters is viable for me. Is it possible to work in (academic) research with only a Masters? Assistant: It's unclear why a masters would be viable but not a PhD, especially if you want to stay in academia. You could take on a support role, but you will be paid quite a bit less with a lower ceiling. May as well tought out the extra 3 years while being paid to get a higher pay grade. Secondly, why do you want to be in academia if you don't want a PhD? Why not do research in industry?

Human: Every research job I see in academia requires a PhD. I'd like to work in research but think only a Masters is viable for me. Is it possible to work in (academic) research with only a Masters? Assistant: I have a BS (but am working on my masters) and work at a university- first as an RA in neuropsych, and now as a research coordinator in otolaryngology. It may vary by field, but research jobs definitely exist below PhD.

Human: Can children come to academic conferences with a parent attendee/presenter? Can children (in particular I’m thinking of older children, like in the 8-13 age range) attend scientific conferences if they have a parent attending and/or presenting there? Is it usually only a viable option when there is no other place for the child to go during the event, e.g. for single parents unable or unwilling to leave the kid outside of the event or their presentations? If they can come with, are they limited to certain places and parts of the event, such as specific childcare areas on-site? Or can they be part of the audience at panels and such and essentially accompany their parent as an attendee? In short: what would the experience for a child attending a conference with their researcher parent be like? Assistant: I used to be that kid and hated it so much it’s a miracle I even ended up in academia.

Human: Can children come to academic conferences with a parent attendee/presenter? Can children (in particular I’m thinking of older children, like in the 8-13 age range) attend scientific conferences if they have a parent attending and/or presenting there? Is it usually only a viable option when there is no other place for the child to go during the event, e.g. for single parents unable or unwilling to leave the kid outside of the event or their presentations? If they can come with, are they limited to certain places and parts of the event, such as specific childcare areas on-site? Or can they be part of the audience at panels and such and essentially accompany their parent as an attendee? In short: what would the experience for a child attending a conference with their researcher parent be like? Assistant: I have only ever seen it happen once or twice when the person had child care arranged that completely fell through at the last minute. Given that, I would certainly feel uncomfortable bringing my child.

Human: Addressing Professors In Canada or US, does Professor John Smith mind being addressed as Hi John, in an email. How about in person? In what context is it (in)appropriate to use Hi Prof Smith vs Hi John? How about pre-interview, during and after getting hired and working in the same lab? Assistant: It's Prof. or Dr. until they give you permission, either explicitly or implicitly. If they start signing emails "-John", then you're probably clear to use the first name. Until then, use the honorific.

Human: Addressing Professors In Canada or US, does Professor John Smith mind being addressed as Hi John, in an email. How about in person? In what context is it (in)appropriate to use Hi Prof Smith vs Hi John? How about pre-interview, during and after getting hired and working in the same lab? Assistant: Academic etiquette exists for a reason. You don't call someone by their first name, unless you know them personally (or unless that person lets you know that they prefer to be addressed by their first name). In all other cases, you address a person officially - with their title and last name. Even when you know someone, you still address them officially in front of their or your students (unless those are the students in that professor's lab, but that depends on the individual lab's habits/traditions).

Human: what are the rules for emailing a professor at a university I do not attend? I am currently a politics student who has applied for a history masters at another university. Whilst writing my dissertation I have come across an academic who’s work has helped me massively and I have discovered they’re a professor at the university I want to attend. What is the general consensus if I wanted to email their university email (which is their profile on the university website) and say I appreciate the work you have done and also low-key mention I wanna study at their university? Assistant: Professors get tons of emails. Don't "low-key mention [you] want to study at their University". Reach out, tell them you appreciate their work and why and tell them you are interested in working with them (assuming you're doing a thesis-based master's).

Human: what are the rules for emailing a professor at a university I do not attend? I am currently a politics student who has applied for a history masters at another university. Whilst writing my dissertation I have come across an academic who’s work has helped me massively and I have discovered they’re a professor at the university I want to attend. What is the general consensus if I wanted to email their university email (which is their profile on the university website) and say I appreciate the work you have done and also low-key mention I wanna study at their university? Assistant: It’s reasonable to say you’re interested in their research and to ask if they’re (i.e. the prof) accepting new grad students.

Human: Besides obviously publishing more, what are some things you wished you did during your PhD? (e.g. starting a blog, twitter, youtube channel) Assistant: I’m only in my second year and I can already answer. Look after my mental and physical health. My goal for next semester is to sleep at least 6 hours a night, cook healthy meals *most* of the time, and not live off caffeine and nicotine.

Human: Besides obviously publishing more, what are some things you wished you did during your PhD? (e.g. starting a blog, twitter, youtube channel) Assistant: Applied to more postdoc fellowships and not let imposter syndrome get in the way

Human: My Eyesssss Hey! I was wondering how people take care of their vision/eyes being in a career that involves a lot of staring at books/computers/whiteboards/etc. I've noticed that my eyesight has gone down this year, and wanted to see if any of you had any tips on how you deal with this. Thanks! Assistant: If you're like me generally every 20 or 30 minutes of staring at the computer looking at my unfinished articles I close my eyes and weep for about 3 minutes. The periodic break does wonder for my eyesight.

Human: My Eyesssss Hey! I was wondering how people take care of their vision/eyes being in a career that involves a lot of staring at books/computers/whiteboards/etc. I've noticed that my eyesight has gone down this year, and wanted to see if any of you had any tips on how you deal with this. Thanks! Assistant: Have your eyes tested at an optometrist and get a pair of glasses if you need it. Unfortunately, most peoples' eyesight degrades over time. It's not usually something to worry about. Aside from that, it helps if you look into the distance every 10 minutes or so. Just take a look out of the window every once in a while. It relaxes your eyes for a bit.

Human: Personal web site as PhD Student. What do you use and why / why not ? I'm looking at a simple platform to have a personal site. Something that I can use mainly to take notes actually. I find that I gather so much notes, tutorials, websites for references, etc. and haven't found a good way to do that in a way that works well. I find that a hierarchical tool like a web site makes more sense than a word document. ​ Also, it would be public facing, have my publications and work, and link to researchgate / Orcid / twitter etc. in one place. ​ So, what are your simple to use tool to achieve that ? (I can do programming but prefer not to take my time to do too much of that myself). Thanks ! Assistant: If you are technical enough to run a GitHub pages site, then https://github.com/academicpages/academicpages.github.io looks nice and is really easy.

Human: Personal web site as PhD Student. What do you use and why / why not ? I'm looking at a simple platform to have a personal site. Something that I can use mainly to take notes actually. I find that I gather so much notes, tutorials, websites for references, etc. and haven't found a good way to do that in a way that works well. I find that a hierarchical tool like a web site makes more sense than a word document. ​ Also, it would be public facing, have my publications and work, and link to researchgate / Orcid / twitter etc. in one place. ​ So, what are your simple to use tool to achieve that ? (I can do programming but prefer not to take my time to do too much of that myself). Thanks ! Assistant: Definitely use GitHub pages. It's free and easy to set-up simple webpages with HTML, CSS, and even a bit of Javascript. Here's mine based on a free template: https://tfburns.com/ There are plenty of free website templates these days. I found mine here: https://html5up.net/

Human: What are some of the unexpected tasks you do as an academic? I went into my supervisor's office the other day and he was ordering books for the university's library. He told me that this is just one of the many random jobs he didn't expect he'd have to do as an academic (in the humanities) when he first thought of becoming an academic. I'm curious what other seemingly random tasks academics have found themselves doing that they didn't otherwise expect. Assistant: (Crisis) counseling. We have psych services, but my students are often nervous about going. They'd rather talk to me. I can recommend they go, and I report major issues, but if they just need to chat with a trusted adult, I'll carve out 20 minutes for them. I've done everything from troubleshoot roommate problems to LGTQ+ issues to abusive relationships to math help and so on.

Human: What are some of the unexpected tasks you do as an academic? I went into my supervisor's office the other day and he was ordering books for the university's library. He told me that this is just one of the many random jobs he didn't expect he'd have to do as an academic (in the humanities) when he first thought of becoming an academic. I'm curious what other seemingly random tasks academics have found themselves doing that they didn't otherwise expect. Assistant: Pointless meetings just to say that we've met. 'Consultation'

Human: Academics on twitter, has social media benefited or damaged your writing in any way? I used to read a lot of books, but I seem to spend a lot more time on twitter these days. Consequently, I'm now used to digesting information in small bites. And sometimes without context. So, I'd like to know if social media has impacted your focus or writing in any way. I ask because I feel as though my attention span is suffering, and I'm very concerned it's because of my time spent online. Assistant: Academia has damaged my writing.

Human: Academics on twitter, has social media benefited or damaged your writing in any way? I used to read a lot of books, but I seem to spend a lot more time on twitter these days. Consequently, I'm now used to digesting information in small bites. And sometimes without context. So, I'd like to know if social media has impacted your focus or writing in any way. I ask because I feel as though my attention span is suffering, and I'm very concerned it's because of my time spent online. Assistant: I, like another commenter, think some of my decline in attention is age-related. As for Twitter, I never use it. I honestly cannot read all the shorthand people use. It often looks like gibberish to me and I lose interest. I've tried a number of times and simply cannot successfully engage with Twitter as a medium.

Human: My defence is in just under 4 weeks and I'm very anxious. Any tips? My slides are ready, I'm just practicing and thinking of possible questions. Every minute I'm not working on them or the questions is racked with guilt/anxiety for "not studying". Any tips on how to prepare? Thank you in advance. Assistant: After having seen several poor defenses and people passing anyway I was not very concerned anymore.

Human: My defence is in just under 4 weeks and I'm very anxious. Any tips? My slides are ready, I'm just practicing and thinking of possible questions. Every minute I'm not working on them or the questions is racked with guilt/anxiety for "not studying". Any tips on how to prepare? Thank you in advance. Assistant: Your committee wouldn’t let you advance to this stage if you weren’t ready—you’ve got this! During my defense one of my committee members interrupted and said “I’ve actually got a call, but I’m comfortable passing you” and then we spent the rest of the time gossiping about the dean

Human: Why are online/virtual conferences so expensive? For context, I am not in academia but my work and interests rely heavily on information that comes from the academic community. In other words, I am not eligible for funding or discounted fees for attending conferences. There are several conferences I've been interested in attending this year, especially given that they've been designed for a virtual audience and don't involve travel. What's surprised me is how many have registration fees similar to that of an in-person conference. I find it hard to believe that the running costs of an online event come close to the in-person costs, so is this money just going into the pockets of the organisers? Assistant: To keep the poor people out. Academia likes to pretend economic class doesn't have the effect that it does. I doubt many hiring committees even look at CVs with the notion "affordability" in mind on what's there. But it very very very much is oriented around limiting the ability of impoverished scholars from climbing up.

Human: Why are online/virtual conferences so expensive? For context, I am not in academia but my work and interests rely heavily on information that comes from the academic community. In other words, I am not eligible for funding or discounted fees for attending conferences. There are several conferences I've been interested in attending this year, especially given that they've been designed for a virtual audience and don't involve travel. What's surprised me is how many have registration fees similar to that of an in-person conference. I find it hard to believe that the running costs of an online event come close to the in-person costs, so is this money just going into the pockets of the organisers? Assistant: All my conferences in Computer Science Education have had drastically reduced fees. What field are you in?

Human: Request for Feedback] I built an academic literature search engine/exploration tool. A couple months ago I released my free/open academic literature search engine, [Inciteful.xyz. Long story short I am a computer engineer with wide ranging interests and not an academic and so would love feedback from real academics who think about this day in and day out :)  At its core Inciteful uses citations to enable the user to explore and discover academic literature.  Currently there are two different tools.  The first tool is what I call the "Paper Discovery" tool.  With this tool you begin the search with a seed paper or group of papers (you can upload a bibtex file). Then it builds a network of papers based on citations and runs a series of graph network analysis algorithms against it to recommend similar articles, important articles, prominent authors, institutions, journals etc.  From there you can iteratively add new papers to your search, this makes the search more targeted and your results more interesting.  After you are done, you can export all of the results into a bibtex file for future reference.  The second tool, which I just released yesterday, is what I am calling the "Literature Connector".  With this tool, you enter two papers and it gives you an interactive visualization on how the two papers are connected.  From here you can filter the papers, view common keywords, etc.  What differentiates this tool is its ability to quickly construct the graph, allowing for rapid feedback to the user and a more pleasant interactive experience.  The papers you discover here can be used as the seed for a Paper Discovery search.  When doing research you often stumble across a few different papers that seem interesting but don't seem to directly talk to one another in the literature. Closing these gaps and connecting disparate ideas are often the places where you can make a significant contribution to your field. It's also great for interdisciplinary research! Inciteful was built off the backs of free and open metadata (from Microsoft Academic, Crossref, OpenCitations, and others) and I am paying it forward by doing the same with Inciteful.  So anyone, anywhere can use it whenever they wish.  Also, if you like the tool, please tell your friends as that is the best way your can help! I'm actively working on it so if anyone has any feedback, please just send me a message! Thanks! Assistant: YES please! I can really imagine that thing as an addition to Google scholar — first work your way through the literature regularly, and if you're stuck or need a little bit more OR discover the whole field, then this app comes in perfectly. The next step would be a plugin for Zotero and I'm in heaven. P.S.: Shared this to my institute's Slack, I'm sure they'll love it!

Human: Request for Feedback] I built an academic literature search engine/exploration tool. A couple months ago I released my free/open academic literature search engine, [Inciteful.xyz. Long story short I am a computer engineer with wide ranging interests and not an academic and so would love feedback from real academics who think about this day in and day out :)  At its core Inciteful uses citations to enable the user to explore and discover academic literature.  Currently there are two different tools.  The first tool is what I call the "Paper Discovery" tool.  With this tool you begin the search with a seed paper or group of papers (you can upload a bibtex file). Then it builds a network of papers based on citations and runs a series of graph network analysis algorithms against it to recommend similar articles, important articles, prominent authors, institutions, journals etc.  From there you can iteratively add new papers to your search, this makes the search more targeted and your results more interesting.  After you are done, you can export all of the results into a bibtex file for future reference.  The second tool, which I just released yesterday, is what I am calling the "Literature Connector".  With this tool, you enter two papers and it gives you an interactive visualization on how the two papers are connected.  From here you can filter the papers, view common keywords, etc.  What differentiates this tool is its ability to quickly construct the graph, allowing for rapid feedback to the user and a more pleasant interactive experience.  The papers you discover here can be used as the seed for a Paper Discovery search.  When doing research you often stumble across a few different papers that seem interesting but don't seem to directly talk to one another in the literature. Closing these gaps and connecting disparate ideas are often the places where you can make a significant contribution to your field. It's also great for interdisciplinary research! Inciteful was built off the backs of free and open metadata (from Microsoft Academic, Crossref, OpenCitations, and others) and I am paying it forward by doing the same with Inciteful.  So anyone, anywhere can use it whenever they wish.  Also, if you like the tool, please tell your friends as that is the best way your can help! I'm actively working on it so if anyone has any feedback, please just send me a message! Thanks! Assistant: Found interesting papers that I didn't know about on the first try. Easy and helpful. Thank you!!

Human: To those who mastered out, how did you market yourself efficiently to the industry ? Pretty much the title. Field is health administration as I understand this might depend a lot. Assistant: Don't say you mastered out would be a good start. Explain why you got a four year masters.

Human: To those who mastered out, how did you market yourself efficiently to the industry ? Pretty much the title. Field is health administration as I understand this might depend a lot. Assistant: Find a way to network. For me it was volunteering at local museums and starting at the bottom with our local historical society. Not sure about health administration field but there are always flattering emails, self publishing, and the Twitter verse to build your reputation and raise your visibility. At a certain point you’ll find people who care less about the letters after your name and more about the strength of your knowledge. Don’t be scared to start at the bottom or in a related field.

Human: Weird impostor syndrome... not “passionate” enough? I’m a fourth year PhD student in a neuroscience program. I’ve started feeling this weird impostor syndrome... or maybe it’s real, I don’t know — but I don’t feel “passionate” enough about science to be a scientist. I’m happy to do work when I work, I like attending talks and reading papers, but I don’t like to work weekends unless I have something time sensitive. I don’t seek out science in my free time (I enjoy listening to podcasts but I have never wanted to listen to a science one) and I never grew up liking science fiction. I’m super confused about what I want to do post-PhD — I’m not sure about academia, I’d like to explore positions in industry/data science but I haven’t ruled anything out yet. Thoughts? Can I be a successful scientist if I don’t want to live and breathe science all the time?? Is it normal to be confused?This sounds stupid but it’s genuinely been causing me so much stress of late! Assistant: I really feel the podcast part. “Oh you must listen to...” “Oh x’s new book is brilliant!” No thanks. In my “spare” time, I’ll be watching comedy TV and reading mindless beach novels.

Human: Weird impostor syndrome... not “passionate” enough? I’m a fourth year PhD student in a neuroscience program. I’ve started feeling this weird impostor syndrome... or maybe it’s real, I don’t know — but I don’t feel “passionate” enough about science to be a scientist. I’m happy to do work when I work, I like attending talks and reading papers, but I don’t like to work weekends unless I have something time sensitive. I don’t seek out science in my free time (I enjoy listening to podcasts but I have never wanted to listen to a science one) and I never grew up liking science fiction. I’m super confused about what I want to do post-PhD — I’m not sure about academia, I’d like to explore positions in industry/data science but I haven’t ruled anything out yet. Thoughts? Can I be a successful scientist if I don’t want to live and breathe science all the time?? Is it normal to be confused?This sounds stupid but it’s genuinely been causing me so much stress of late! Assistant: Can you work at mcdonalds if you don't eat hamburgers everyday? your field isn't any different. jobs a job. if you do your job, that's all thats expected.

Human: How did people do literature reviews prior to the internet? Can any 40+ yr old academics share their experiences with the literature review process prior to the internet? I can't even imagine what a cumbersome process that would be. Assistant: I'm in the U.S., and had to request a paper that was only available from a library in Europe. It took 2 months to get to us, and I don't actually think it was relevant once I read it. Was it the dark ages? No, it was 2003.

Human: How did people do literature reviews prior to the internet? Can any 40+ yr old academics share their experiences with the literature review process prior to the internet? I can't even imagine what a cumbersome process that would be. Assistant: Umberto Eco's academic writing book (I think the English name is How to write a thesis) has a great guidance for this. He describes how you navigate the index card cabinets, and I think it even discusses how you get funding to travel to the library that has the books. Everything else in the book is still applicable, so I recommend it to all students.

Human: What are some exceptionally well-written articles? Bonus points if it's in STEM. I'm looking to improve my scientific writing and I already read some style guides. In addition, I'm looking for some really well-written articles for inspiration. Assistant: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/23431001/ Im a big fan of this article. Both for its writing and its snark.

Human: What are some exceptionally well-written articles? Bonus points if it's in STEM. I'm looking to improve my scientific writing and I already read some style guides. In addition, I'm looking for some really well-written articles for inspiration. Assistant: I don't have anything specific coming to mind, but there's nothing I hate more than pretentious writing. If I have to reread something more than once (or maybe twice, depending) to understand what it's saying, then I believe that it's bad writing. Keep things straightforward and to the point. Or maybe I'm just thick.

Human: Weird Academia Twitter As a student (Bachelor’s and Masters) would it be weird to follow professors on Twitter to keep up with research and topics in your field ? Assistant: Not weird at all. It's a very convenient way to find out about their most recent publications.

Human: Weird Academia Twitter As a student (Bachelor’s and Masters) would it be weird to follow professors on Twitter to keep up with research and topics in your field ? Assistant: Not weird. Follow their recent papers, interesting papers they've read and job openings (seen a lot of lab manager, research assistant and post doc openings on Twitter)

Human: Do professors have freedom? Hi everyone. To any professor or anyone that knows one, what’s being a professor like, do you have freedom regarding your schedule/working hours and research topics or do you get told what to do? Assistant: I'm a professor at a community college in Canada. Don't do any research or anything, just do the teaching. I make $86k a year (will max out around $100k), I essentially get 5 months of "work from home", May-August and most of December (2 of those months are actual vacation). When I do work "full time", I have somewhere between 22 and 30 hours of scheduled work a week. There is a lot of class preparation and marking that needs to be done in that time, but this is *by far* the best job I have ever had.

Human: Do professors have freedom? Hi everyone. To any professor or anyone that knows one, what’s being a professor like, do you have freedom regarding your schedule/working hours and research topics or do you get told what to do? Assistant: I can't think if a job with more freedom. Some will disagree here, but this is my life.

Human: Advice for dealing with toxic fellow graduate student(s) *Thanks in advance for any advice. I've been blessed with un-dramatic, secure, and emotionally mature friends (which is great), but it's left me unsure how to handle all of this. At this point, I mostly just want to be rid of the drama. Also, if anyone has any suggestions on making friends in grad school (particularly outside of their grad program), I'd really appreciate it. If you want/need details on my specific situation and why I'm asking, see below.* I started my Ph.D. last year, which wasn't the easiest time to move and begin a new program. Against the odds, I made friends with a few fellow students last February. Everything seemed great. However, a couple of months in, one student in particular (I'll call her A) started displaying some toxic behavior. At first, it was things like subtly putting down others when they did well or did a homework problem correctly when A got it wrong. Then it was talking about other friends in the group (particularly a young woman I'll call B, but everyone) behind their backs. The badmouthing could take a lot of forms. For example, she would say that B's fiance (who proposed to her last semester) was an alcoholic and a drug addict (he's not) and that we would probably need to hold an intervention when the relationship hit rock bottom in a couple years. She spoke horribly about B when they got engaged (what did she see in him, he's awkward, B is settling, B just got lucky finding love, B's fiance won't be happy with her forever, etc.). Other negative comments included others in the group being immature, liking gossip, being bad/unethical about research, being unproductive, naive, stupid, bad with money, etc. Things escalated when she tried to ice B out of the group (B didn't do something A wanted; A never told B she wanted this thing). At this point, I stepped in and continued hanging out with B despite A. A then decided to make up with B (although she is still mad, even enraged, and will talk about it given a chance). However, B thinks that this was just a small fight between the two of them. She doesn't know that A stopped inviting her to things (and attempted to get me to do the same) or that B still continually badmouths her. B thinks they are still good friends. For some, some definitions of friendship, maybe they are. After that, I started to realize that A has a history of turbulent relationships. She is not friends with any of her friends from high school or college (her words). She has already fallen out with at least two members of her cohort (she has been here a year longer than I have). Despite this, A is both charismatic and manipulative, which I think enables her to continually get away with how she treats people. In any case, I realized that it was only a matter of time until she got angry with me -- which is what happened less than a month later. I asked her about it after I realized what was going on. Apparently, it's because I wasn't sure I wanted to watch a particular movie and because I corrected her on homework a couple of times (e.g., "I don't think the answer to X can be Y because X divided by Z is not Y" -- I wasn't mean about it). The last two things made her question our friendship. She also told me that she only became friends with me because she felt sorry for me because of COVID, that we only became friends she had recently fallen out with a different friend, and so forth. Just a whole slew of statements that I'm sure were designed to hurt me. I also tried to talk with her about the badmouthing thing, which only resulted in her gaslighting me - she tried to tell me that she hadn't said any of those things, which is just BS because she said them all the time. At that point, I knew there was no recovering the relationship, and I was no longer interested in interacting with her. It doesn't seem worth it. Here are my questions. However, really any advice or perspective would be great. * How should I handle this situation appropriately? I see graduate school as being a professional environment. How can I minimize damage? I'm worried about my reputation in the department given A's tendency to badmouth everyone. Typically if I didn't want to be friends with someone I would slowly distance myself by becoming busy with other things, but that seems hard given that everything with A generally seems very dramatic (she spread rumors and tried to complain to the department about one of the students she fell out with last year). * Does it make sense for me to distance myself from this friend group as a whole? Can I do that in academia or would that count as shutting the door on potentially useful relationships? * Does B deserve to know? I am inclined not to say anything because I don't think it would do any good, but I've had some friends give me the opposite advice. * Any tips for how I can avoid situations or people like this in the future? *TL;DR - I made a toxic friend in my first year of grad school. Now I'm just exhausted from all of this want to figure out a way of distancing myself gracefully and moving on with my Ph.D. without being totally socially isolated.* Assistant: Set your boundaries, reduce contact with A as much as you feasibly can (outside of necessary course interactions), and start developing friendships with other people (including those who are outside of your program/department/college).

Human: Advice for dealing with toxic fellow graduate student(s) *Thanks in advance for any advice. I've been blessed with un-dramatic, secure, and emotionally mature friends (which is great), but it's left me unsure how to handle all of this. At this point, I mostly just want to be rid of the drama. Also, if anyone has any suggestions on making friends in grad school (particularly outside of their grad program), I'd really appreciate it. If you want/need details on my specific situation and why I'm asking, see below.* I started my Ph.D. last year, which wasn't the easiest time to move and begin a new program. Against the odds, I made friends with a few fellow students last February. Everything seemed great. However, a couple of months in, one student in particular (I'll call her A) started displaying some toxic behavior. At first, it was things like subtly putting down others when they did well or did a homework problem correctly when A got it wrong. Then it was talking about other friends in the group (particularly a young woman I'll call B, but everyone) behind their backs. The badmouthing could take a lot of forms. For example, she would say that B's fiance (who proposed to her last semester) was an alcoholic and a drug addict (he's not) and that we would probably need to hold an intervention when the relationship hit rock bottom in a couple years. She spoke horribly about B when they got engaged (what did she see in him, he's awkward, B is settling, B just got lucky finding love, B's fiance won't be happy with her forever, etc.). Other negative comments included others in the group being immature, liking gossip, being bad/unethical about research, being unproductive, naive, stupid, bad with money, etc. Things escalated when she tried to ice B out of the group (B didn't do something A wanted; A never told B she wanted this thing). At this point, I stepped in and continued hanging out with B despite A. A then decided to make up with B (although she is still mad, even enraged, and will talk about it given a chance). However, B thinks that this was just a small fight between the two of them. She doesn't know that A stopped inviting her to things (and attempted to get me to do the same) or that B still continually badmouths her. B thinks they are still good friends. For some, some definitions of friendship, maybe they are. After that, I started to realize that A has a history of turbulent relationships. She is not friends with any of her friends from high school or college (her words). She has already fallen out with at least two members of her cohort (she has been here a year longer than I have). Despite this, A is both charismatic and manipulative, which I think enables her to continually get away with how she treats people. In any case, I realized that it was only a matter of time until she got angry with me -- which is what happened less than a month later. I asked her about it after I realized what was going on. Apparently, it's because I wasn't sure I wanted to watch a particular movie and because I corrected her on homework a couple of times (e.g., "I don't think the answer to X can be Y because X divided by Z is not Y" -- I wasn't mean about it). The last two things made her question our friendship. She also told me that she only became friends with me because she felt sorry for me because of COVID, that we only became friends she had recently fallen out with a different friend, and so forth. Just a whole slew of statements that I'm sure were designed to hurt me. I also tried to talk with her about the badmouthing thing, which only resulted in her gaslighting me - she tried to tell me that she hadn't said any of those things, which is just BS because she said them all the time. At that point, I knew there was no recovering the relationship, and I was no longer interested in interacting with her. It doesn't seem worth it. Here are my questions. However, really any advice or perspective would be great. * How should I handle this situation appropriately? I see graduate school as being a professional environment. How can I minimize damage? I'm worried about my reputation in the department given A's tendency to badmouth everyone. Typically if I didn't want to be friends with someone I would slowly distance myself by becoming busy with other things, but that seems hard given that everything with A generally seems very dramatic (she spread rumors and tried to complain to the department about one of the students she fell out with last year). * Does it make sense for me to distance myself from this friend group as a whole? Can I do that in academia or would that count as shutting the door on potentially useful relationships? * Does B deserve to know? I am inclined not to say anything because I don't think it would do any good, but I've had some friends give me the opposite advice. * Any tips for how I can avoid situations or people like this in the future? *TL;DR - I made a toxic friend in my first year of grad school. Now I'm just exhausted from all of this want to figure out a way of distancing myself gracefully and moving on with my Ph.D. without being totally socially isolated.* Assistant: Staying away is the best solution unless you want to burn out. I can't imagine I'd want to deal with these people willingly in the graduate school. Many of us are working with toxic or bully co-workers, it is very common in academia and already soul crushing. On top of that I'd not surround myself with some problematic people. PS: She also sounds like a narcissist? Nobody can deal with them, it'd give so much harm. I think the best thing is to be neutral and move on.

Human: Is it just me that 20 something undergrads need a lot more these days? I'm just 33, but I'm beginning to feel like the newest crop of students needs a lot more handholding than I did when I was in school. I'm in a graduate program in counseling at a decent state institution in the midwest. We spend at least 20 minutes a class talking about how to do assignments that have fairly straightforward instructions. ​ I don't want to be "kids these days," but is this a common problem? Assistant: It's very difficult for me to remember what college was like, because it was 20 years ago this year, but I certainly remember being much more afraid to ask for help than most kids these days. I think there was much more of a feeling of if you can't figure this out, you probably shouldn't in here in the first place.

Human: Is it just me that 20 something undergrads need a lot more these days? I'm just 33, but I'm beginning to feel like the newest crop of students needs a lot more handholding than I did when I was in school. I'm in a graduate program in counseling at a decent state institution in the midwest. We spend at least 20 minutes a class talking about how to do assignments that have fairly straightforward instructions. ​ I don't want to be "kids these days," but is this a common problem? Assistant: I imagine that's something that people always feel. Memory is not as reliable as you'd think it is in terms of experience

Human: Professors and PhD supervisors, what do you look for in "cold emails" and supervision enquiries from potential students? Im in the biology field, but I think this question applies to every field. Im currently looking at cold emailing a few professors on some phd grad programs I love the look of or enquiring about supervision on their uni websites, but I suffer bad with imposter syndrome and have absolutely no clue what is expected from me in these "cold emails". im very worried about annoying any potential supervisors and ruining my chances, and also coming across as being full of my self and overconfident of my abilities. But I also dont want to downplay myself. Questions like "what makes you an outstanding applicant" scare me. Im sure a lot of potential grad students feel like this and any advice would be helpful!! I know im overthinking hahaha Assistant: If you can tell that a professor is annoyed by your cold email, you probably wouldn’t want to work with them anyway 😬 Just be yourself, keep the email short, and ask to meet virtually (or in person if you’re in the area). *Also, if you don’t hear back from them in a week or two, just resend the email cause it probably got lost in the shuffle.

Human: Professors and PhD supervisors, what do you look for in "cold emails" and supervision enquiries from potential students? Im in the biology field, but I think this question applies to every field. Im currently looking at cold emailing a few professors on some phd grad programs I love the look of or enquiring about supervision on their uni websites, but I suffer bad with imposter syndrome and have absolutely no clue what is expected from me in these "cold emails". im very worried about annoying any potential supervisors and ruining my chances, and also coming across as being full of my self and overconfident of my abilities. But I also dont want to downplay myself. Questions like "what makes you an outstanding applicant" scare me. Im sure a lot of potential grad students feel like this and any advice would be helpful!! I know im overthinking hahaha Assistant: i usually dont judge people by their first email, and its not that costly to give a polite reply and give everyone a second chance to present themselves....

Human: Is there a place like this sub for people who work in humanities? I came here a few years ago because I wanted to read about people's experiences in academia and talk about my own too, specifically in humanities. But I feel 90% of what gets posted here doesn't concern me at all because it's STEM-related. As a matter of fact that's primarily why I don't even go on /r/gradschool (also because most of people's experiences are clearly unrelatable to what academia is like in Canada). So where else can I go? Is there another discussion board somewhere that is more used by people in humanities? Thanks! Assistant: If you post about the humanities people will probably interact with it! I've always wanted to get to know people in humanities PhD programs and academia. Something about it seems so cool and exciting, as opposed to my life which involves staying in the lab all day gathering data and then sitting at a computer all day doing math. Always been in awe of the "romance" of humanities academia (like history, lit, art, etc.). I think we skew stem but people are not anti-humanities by any means

Human: Is there a place like this sub for people who work in humanities? I came here a few years ago because I wanted to read about people's experiences in academia and talk about my own too, specifically in humanities. But I feel 90% of what gets posted here doesn't concern me at all because it's STEM-related. As a matter of fact that's primarily why I don't even go on /r/gradschool (also because most of people's experiences are clearly unrelatable to what academia is like in Canada). So where else can I go? Is there another discussion board somewhere that is more used by people in humanities? Thanks! Assistant: I'm a (former) Canadian humanities academic. Did my Masters and pulled the ripcord after reading the writing on the wall. I dont know everything, but I know some.

Human: As a grad student, can I ask a professor (in another department) out? Okay, I need guidance from professors on if this would be very inappropriate. I'm a professional school student, a couple of years out of college. I'm taking a class in the college, in another department. This department has 0 overlap with mine, and will never have any impact on my professional or academic career. I actually really like the professor, and I *think* he may be interested, although we've both been careful to stay on the "plausible deniability" line. Next semester, I will not be in his class, and I intend to keep auditing classes in this department but not taking any more for a grade (it's far, far too much work and too stressful for a grade). Would it be completely out of line for me to ask him out once final grades are in? Is there some angle I'm missing where this would still be really inappropriate? Assistant: I wouldn’t say it’s inappropriate, but there are hassles that go along with it. You may be turned in for an academic review, though if your class work turns out fine, it’s fine. There will be talk. There will be rumors. I know because I was a non-trad student and started dating a professor when his contract was up. He’s sitting across from me now and we’ve been together for 3 years, living together in Germany for 1.

Human: As a grad student, can I ask a professor (in another department) out? Okay, I need guidance from professors on if this would be very inappropriate. I'm a professional school student, a couple of years out of college. I'm taking a class in the college, in another department. This department has 0 overlap with mine, and will never have any impact on my professional or academic career. I actually really like the professor, and I *think* he may be interested, although we've both been careful to stay on the "plausible deniability" line. Next semester, I will not be in his class, and I intend to keep auditing classes in this department but not taking any more for a grade (it's far, far too much work and too stressful for a grade). Would it be completely out of line for me to ask him out once final grades are in? Is there some angle I'm missing where this would still be really inappropriate? Assistant: You can probably refer to your academic conduct, title IX compliance, and code of ethics policies for your university. Some universities don’t address this issue at all, and some universities have a strict zero tolerance. Written policies should be your first reference.

Human: Is it acceptable to email an author asking for the full version of their article for free? Anthropology. Obviously I wouldn't word it exactly like that. I guess I was just wondering if the idea itself is considered taboo or unacceptable in the academic world. I read how in hard science, the authors usually don't get any of the funds from people using money to access their articles so if you email them they'll often send them for free. I was wondering if a similar dynamic exists in lib arts/anthropology world, and also if this works when there's more than one author Assistant: ABSOLUTELY acceptable!

Human: Is it acceptable to email an author asking for the full version of their article for free? Anthropology. Obviously I wouldn't word it exactly like that. I guess I was just wondering if the idea itself is considered taboo or unacceptable in the academic world. I read how in hard science, the authors usually don't get any of the funds from people using money to access their articles so if you email them they'll often send them for free. I was wondering if a similar dynamic exists in lib arts/anthropology world, and also if this works when there's more than one author Assistant: They'll be incredibly flattered. The only entity you'll be upsetting is Elsevier and F them.

Human: WTF. Why are my Engineering students so demanding I work at a large research one institution. I’m an academic advisor in a grad program in engineering. I previously worked in this same position, but in education. Most of my student population are international students (85-90%) whereas previously it was maybe 20-25%. Also the majority of my students are males from cultures where women are traditionally not as valued as men. I’m only saying this because I can’t figure out if they are so demanding because of the cultural differences or because they are engineers. This is way beyond the norm of what I would call millennial entitlement. It’s not uncommon for students to expect me to have their paperwork ready and returned to them within a few hours. I will get multiple email requests in less than a business day asking about it. I have had requests for me to call other offices and have their paperwork moved to the front of the queue for “reasons.” One student asked me about a scholarship and when I referred him to a particular person making the decision he informed me that I could go talked to this person on his behalf. I informed him I have my diplomas and am not currently in need of a scholarship. The immediacy with which these students expect me to act is just insane. So what gives. Help me understand this before I snap and have to hide a body. Assistant: First mistake is hiding the body. Never hide the body. I think it sounds like a cultural thing at least based on my experience with my engineering friends

Human: WTF. Why are my Engineering students so demanding I work at a large research one institution. I’m an academic advisor in a grad program in engineering. I previously worked in this same position, but in education. Most of my student population are international students (85-90%) whereas previously it was maybe 20-25%. Also the majority of my students are males from cultures where women are traditionally not as valued as men. I’m only saying this because I can’t figure out if they are so demanding because of the cultural differences or because they are engineers. This is way beyond the norm of what I would call millennial entitlement. It’s not uncommon for students to expect me to have their paperwork ready and returned to them within a few hours. I will get multiple email requests in less than a business day asking about it. I have had requests for me to call other offices and have their paperwork moved to the front of the queue for “reasons.” One student asked me about a scholarship and when I referred him to a particular person making the decision he informed me that I could go talked to this person on his behalf. I informed him I have my diplomas and am not currently in need of a scholarship. The immediacy with which these students expect me to act is just insane. So what gives. Help me understand this before I snap and have to hide a body. Assistant: International students are generally the children of elites. They grew up with servants, and will treat you like one too if you give off a certain vibe. Also, they're often paying crazy tuition, which doubles up the sense of entitlement to 11. There's a lot of "well, I'm paying $90,000 a year to go here, what do you mean your office hours don't fit with my Rolls Royce mechanic? Fix it."

Human: Academic Mommas Any academic mommas out there? Still in my doc program, but hoping to be hired as a professor down the line. Also crazy baby crazy and hoping to adopt once I finish. Am I insane to try and juggle the tenure track and single-motherhood? Assistant: 🖐“Each part of my life provided respite from the other and gave me a sense of proportion that classmates trained only on law studies lacked.” —Queen RBG

Human: Academic Mommas Any academic mommas out there? Still in my doc program, but hoping to be hired as a professor down the line. Also crazy baby crazy and hoping to adopt once I finish. Am I insane to try and juggle the tenure track and single-motherhood? Assistant: >Also crazy baby crazy and hoping to adopt once I finish Same. Daydreaming about a house and adopted children is what's getting me through this degree. It's nice to see a post about adopting! I usually get flack when I talk about it so it's nice to see a post casually mention adoption and no negative comments!!

Human: Is a PhD / academia not a good path for a generalist? I tried searching for this kind of advice but didn't find anything so helpful, so I'm posting here. In my undergrad, I majored in psychology with a good amount of math, computer science, and humanities courses. After a few years traveling and doing non-academic things, I'm now getting my Masters in religious studies, with a focus in East Asian religions, while working in a computational neuroscience lab on the side. I've loved each of these stages of my life, and think I'm happiest when I have a healthy amount of variety what I get to think about. But I feel like this breadth doesn't lend itself to a career path. On a gut level, academia as a whole still feels like thing that fits my personality and interests the best, but I don't know if my interests are too stubbornly diverse to go into a PhD and potentially academia. In the course of trying these various disciplines out, I have realized a few things: * I seem to get tired of one topic or one discipline very easily and really crave novelty / variety. Even though I'm in a religion studies masters, I can only really tolerate taking two religion courses or else I starting getting a little miserable. But a mix of religion, philosophy, psych, and something math-y has been keeping me pretty content. (In the past when I was a math major and then a psych major, I also was pretty unhappy when I was taking only courses in those departments.) * I do have some underlying driving questions. In particular, my ultimate goal is approximately understanding how humans behave and think and how people's lives can be improved on a psychological level. That's essentially the only reason why I'm doing religious studies right now, in service of that goal. But if I pursued a PhD, it'd almost certainly be something in psychology, probably clinical psychology. I want to be able to think about this question in a rigorous way that it seems like only academics have the freedom to, which makes academia seem like the route I lean toward most. I just wonder if, given my track record of constantly switching from subject to subject, I am a prime candidate to find a PhD project interesting for a year or two and then get really sick of the narrowness and demotivated. I know that this happens to a certain extent to everyone, but it seems like some people are better at pushing through it? And I don't know if I've had that fortitude in the past. I know it's impossible to tell how any individual will find doing a PhD. I guess I would just like some advice if there are signals that I might be more or less likely than average to make it through a PhD. Are there people in academia who successfully are able to be generalists and draw from many different disciplines and to be thinking in a variety of different ways? Or if you really want to succeed in academia, do you really just have to specialize and only very marginally draw inspiration from side reading (which is not necessarily bad either! Just hard to tell what that will feel like in the concrete). Anyway, if anyone has any insights, that'd be greatly appreciated! Thanks for reading :) Assistant: In academia, you cannot really jump from discipline from discipline - that won't work because you need too much specialized background in the particular discipline to do anything useful. But within one or two core disciplines, you can jump from topic to topic (once you've completed your PhD, that is). Both in terms of contents and methodologies. This is still plenty of diversity.

Human: Is a PhD / academia not a good path for a generalist? I tried searching for this kind of advice but didn't find anything so helpful, so I'm posting here. In my undergrad, I majored in psychology with a good amount of math, computer science, and humanities courses. After a few years traveling and doing non-academic things, I'm now getting my Masters in religious studies, with a focus in East Asian religions, while working in a computational neuroscience lab on the side. I've loved each of these stages of my life, and think I'm happiest when I have a healthy amount of variety what I get to think about. But I feel like this breadth doesn't lend itself to a career path. On a gut level, academia as a whole still feels like thing that fits my personality and interests the best, but I don't know if my interests are too stubbornly diverse to go into a PhD and potentially academia. In the course of trying these various disciplines out, I have realized a few things: * I seem to get tired of one topic or one discipline very easily and really crave novelty / variety. Even though I'm in a religion studies masters, I can only really tolerate taking two religion courses or else I starting getting a little miserable. But a mix of religion, philosophy, psych, and something math-y has been keeping me pretty content. (In the past when I was a math major and then a psych major, I also was pretty unhappy when I was taking only courses in those departments.) * I do have some underlying driving questions. In particular, my ultimate goal is approximately understanding how humans behave and think and how people's lives can be improved on a psychological level. That's essentially the only reason why I'm doing religious studies right now, in service of that goal. But if I pursued a PhD, it'd almost certainly be something in psychology, probably clinical psychology. I want to be able to think about this question in a rigorous way that it seems like only academics have the freedom to, which makes academia seem like the route I lean toward most. I just wonder if, given my track record of constantly switching from subject to subject, I am a prime candidate to find a PhD project interesting for a year or two and then get really sick of the narrowness and demotivated. I know that this happens to a certain extent to everyone, but it seems like some people are better at pushing through it? And I don't know if I've had that fortitude in the past. I know it's impossible to tell how any individual will find doing a PhD. I guess I would just like some advice if there are signals that I might be more or less likely than average to make it through a PhD. Are there people in academia who successfully are able to be generalists and draw from many different disciplines and to be thinking in a variety of different ways? Or if you really want to succeed in academia, do you really just have to specialize and only very marginally draw inspiration from side reading (which is not necessarily bad either! Just hard to tell what that will feel like in the concrete). Anyway, if anyone has any insights, that'd be greatly appreciated! Thanks for reading :) Assistant: Look up the discipline "Human Factors". It is a field focused on user interaction with products/systems/environments and includes everything from physical design to cognitive interaction to emotional/social considerations. Psych is typically included as one pillar, but it is hugely interdisciplinary. Sounds like it could be up your alley.

Human: PhD in retrospect What is something you would have wanted to have known before deciding to do a PhD? Or what is something you would have liked to have known/learned earlier? What's the best/worst part? Assistant: Work with as many professors as possible. Your main advisor is important, sure. But, if you get the chance to learn from and work with other people, take advantage of that. Seek out opportunities, don’t just wait for them to come to you.

Human: PhD in retrospect What is something you would have wanted to have known before deciding to do a PhD? Or what is something you would have liked to have known/learned earlier? What's the best/worst part? Assistant: shouldn't have rushed it. shouldn't have gone with the first offer on the proverbial table, should have gone home (I was an international student) to find a job first, get some experience in industry, shouldn't have ignored all the red flags (my group had 4 students leave in a year. mostly by going AWOL, all were angry with the supervisor) but i met my husband on the same university, so it's not all bad.

Human: 2 PhD students, same experiment Hi, I started my PhD in Biology a week ago and I just found out that there is another PhD student (who started in October) working under my supervisor who is already working on the EXACT same experiment as me. What should I do? Assistant: Since you both started recently, this might perhaps be a "training wheels" experiment, and the supervisor might have given you both the same thing to do independently of each other, to double-check the results. If two inexperienced PhD students obtain the same data, that's probably good data. There's no harm in asking nicely your supervisor about this, though, if you feel uncomfortable being in the blind.

Human: 2 PhD students, same experiment Hi, I started my PhD in Biology a week ago and I just found out that there is another PhD student (who started in October) working under my supervisor who is already working on the EXACT same experiment as me. What should I do? Assistant: Challenge them to a duel for rights of the experiment

Human: How much choice do you have in where your job is as a professor? Hello everyone! I'm a current undergraduate student studying physics and math, but planning to continue into grad school by studying atmospheric science. I'm strongly considering a career in academia as I believe I would love the balance between performing research and teaching students. One of my main concerns though is that I wouldn't get much of a choice in where I would end up geographically. For example, I'm from the midwest USA and would love to remain in the area whenever I get a career (to be somewhat close to family, etc.). How much of a choice do you really get in where you ended up geographically? Is the job market competitive enough that you ultimately took the first opportunity that came up no matter the location? Or did you wait for an opportunity in your ideal location/region of the world/country? Or was it somewhere in the middle? I'm aware this is probably entirely different for everyone, but I'm curious what the range has been like for everyone. Being in the field of STEM I'd specifically love to hear from others in this field, but would greatly appreciate help from any areas of study. I'd love to hear about what your experience of getting into the career was like and if you have any suggestions! Any advice and comments would be greatly appreciated! Assistant: Basically none. 100 applications in 2 years. 6 interviews. 1 job offer. I interviewed in locations as disparate as rural Maine and Hawaii. The one job I was offered just happened to be in a very desirable location that works perfectly for my partner’s career. Basically, like winning the lottery in this job market.

Human: How much choice do you have in where your job is as a professor? Hello everyone! I'm a current undergraduate student studying physics and math, but planning to continue into grad school by studying atmospheric science. I'm strongly considering a career in academia as I believe I would love the balance between performing research and teaching students. One of my main concerns though is that I wouldn't get much of a choice in where I would end up geographically. For example, I'm from the midwest USA and would love to remain in the area whenever I get a career (to be somewhat close to family, etc.). How much of a choice do you really get in where you ended up geographically? Is the job market competitive enough that you ultimately took the first opportunity that came up no matter the location? Or did you wait for an opportunity in your ideal location/region of the world/country? Or was it somewhere in the middle? I'm aware this is probably entirely different for everyone, but I'm curious what the range has been like for everyone. Being in the field of STEM I'd specifically love to hear from others in this field, but would greatly appreciate help from any areas of study. I'd love to hear about what your experience of getting into the career was like and if you have any suggestions! Any advice and comments would be greatly appreciated! Assistant: Almost none

Human: Starting a research group after achieving financial independence I have a Ph.D. in Computer Science, graduated in 2012 from a U.S. institution. I've been working in the tech industry in machine learning and doing well, so I expect in the not so far-off future to achieve my "FIRE" goals and be able to live modestly off my investments. I miss the academic world and I'd like to rejoin that community and contribute my ideas to the research world, but I'm not sure the best way to go about it. My primary goal will be to work on my own research projects (i.e., I'm more interested in research than teaching, although I'd enjoy giving special topics seminars to interested students) and to build up a community of like-minded people to work on problems of interest with me. Does anyone have examples of people doing something like this successfully? I don't think it makes sense for me to try to get a tenure-track job since these seem to favor new graduates, and I won't need the salary. But I would like to be associated with a university just to be in the right community to discuss ideas (in my case, I'm interested broadly in human-style AI (AGI) as opposed to mainstream machine learning). In an ideal world, somehow I would raise the funds (e.g. through external grants etc) to run my own research group, but again I don't know how feasible this is unless I'm a tenure-track professor as opposed to a crazy independent scholar on the fringes of some academic institute. Looking forward to suggestions here. Thanks! Assistant: What you're describing is research faculty. There will be many opportunities to do this sort of work (it's less competitive than TT lines and, certainly in CS, industry experience is valued). Schools would be more interested in you working on mainstream machine learning, rather than AGI. You can decide for yourself what compromises you're willing to make.

Human: Starting a research group after achieving financial independence I have a Ph.D. in Computer Science, graduated in 2012 from a U.S. institution. I've been working in the tech industry in machine learning and doing well, so I expect in the not so far-off future to achieve my "FIRE" goals and be able to live modestly off my investments. I miss the academic world and I'd like to rejoin that community and contribute my ideas to the research world, but I'm not sure the best way to go about it. My primary goal will be to work on my own research projects (i.e., I'm more interested in research than teaching, although I'd enjoy giving special topics seminars to interested students) and to build up a community of like-minded people to work on problems of interest with me. Does anyone have examples of people doing something like this successfully? I don't think it makes sense for me to try to get a tenure-track job since these seem to favor new graduates, and I won't need the salary. But I would like to be associated with a university just to be in the right community to discuss ideas (in my case, I'm interested broadly in human-style AI (AGI) as opposed to mainstream machine learning). In an ideal world, somehow I would raise the funds (e.g. through external grants etc) to run my own research group, but again I don't know how feasible this is unless I'm a tenure-track professor as opposed to a crazy independent scholar on the fringes of some academic institute. Looking forward to suggestions here. Thanks! Assistant: How about non tenure track research faculty or even a research scientist position in an established lab during research in an area you like? Nonprofit research institutes have trouble keeping talented ML people because industry is willing to throw money at them.

Human: What are the pros about getting a PhD degree? I’m tired about hearing the cons. Thank you. Assistant: I did mine for the silly hat

Human: What are the pros about getting a PhD degree? I’m tired about hearing the cons. Thank you. Assistant: The super simplified answer I give when excited: you finally get the answer to a question you wanted a legitimate answer to, but nobody knew the answer yet. Or: one day I hope to know a thing, and find out other stuff along the way.

Human: Chance of canceling faculty search? My wife interviewed for a faculty position at R1 university about 4 weeks ago. Last week, the search chair told her that faculty members didn't come to an agreement for the decision yet. All three candidates they interviewed are great, so professors have different opinions. She starts to think that the search will be canceled. Is this common in academia? Why don't they do a majority vote? Isn't it better than hiring nobody? Assistant: It could also be false. They might be negotiating with a top choice candidate and want to keep her as a backup.

Human: Chance of canceling faculty search? My wife interviewed for a faculty position at R1 university about 4 weeks ago. Last week, the search chair told her that faculty members didn't come to an agreement for the decision yet. All three candidates they interviewed are great, so professors have different opinions. She starts to think that the search will be canceled. Is this common in academia? Why don't they do a majority vote? Isn't it better than hiring nobody? Assistant: A while ago, I interviewed for an endowed distinguished professorship, and they ended up not hiring anyone because the department could not reach an agreement. Part of the issue was they had certain resource constraints, so they might have had a hard time coming up with a competitive salary offer, so they end up using the endowment on a professor they already had.

Human: Should I report an undergrad to their summer research supervisor for bullying and harassment? Basically, I don't know the student's name but I do know that they have been bullying and harassing a particular person to an exceptional degree, going so far as to spread some very damaging lies about them, post their private information online, and try to get them fired and expelled. I don't know why they're so adamant on doing this, but they are. A few comments have me suspecting that it's race-based harassment. But I also know who they'll be working with for summer research this year, and I know that I wouldn't want that level of toxicity in my lab. It's a small group and I doubt they're taking more than one undergrad, so even if I can't provide a name, they should know who it is. Should I reach out to the head of this lab to warn them about this individual? I'm only a graduate student so I don't really have much power in anything, plus it isn't behaviour that's tied to their research group or to mine, it'd be more like a character anti-reference. And I'm worried that even though I have the name of the head of the group from this person's own mouth, they could be lying and my anti-reference could get tangled up with a completely innocent student. Assistant: How do you not know the name of the student but yet know who they will be working for in a summer research program? The person being harassed should reach out to the TitleIX coordinator (or whomever deals with this in your school) and to HR. If you are a mandated reporter, and this has been communicated to you, you have an obligation to report it to the appropriate authorities (in this case, HR, Title IX, student affairs etc) and it is for them to investigate.

Human: Should I report an undergrad to their summer research supervisor for bullying and harassment? Basically, I don't know the student's name but I do know that they have been bullying and harassing a particular person to an exceptional degree, going so far as to spread some very damaging lies about them, post their private information online, and try to get them fired and expelled. I don't know why they're so adamant on doing this, but they are. A few comments have me suspecting that it's race-based harassment. But I also know who they'll be working with for summer research this year, and I know that I wouldn't want that level of toxicity in my lab. It's a small group and I doubt they're taking more than one undergrad, so even if I can't provide a name, they should know who it is. Should I reach out to the head of this lab to warn them about this individual? I'm only a graduate student so I don't really have much power in anything, plus it isn't behaviour that's tied to their research group or to mine, it'd be more like a character anti-reference. And I'm worried that even though I have the name of the head of the group from this person's own mouth, they could be lying and my anti-reference could get tangled up with a completely innocent student. Assistant: I’d want to know if I had a student doing this.

Human: If I Get My PhD Am I Stuck to Academia? Started my PhD a year ago in nutrition (very chemistry based though) and everyone at my university has the stigma that you must stay in academia if you get a PhD. I look on LinkedIn and have a hard time finding jobs with requirements of a PhD. Most want industry experience. But masters students who have graduated are coming back for PhDs saying a masters could only take them so far in industry. I feel conflicted. I don’t want to spend the next four years of my life breaking my back over something that won’t benefit me or get me an industry job at the end of the day. Assistant: Regardless, 4 years will pass. IMO just finish the PhD because there will be nothing else to “come back” to earn… Also, you’re already in this situation. Going into industry and trying to come back is difficult. Either your work or studies will suffer. Just stick it out and have all options available. Or, start an onlyfans and never work again 🤷🏻‍♂️

Human: If I Get My PhD Am I Stuck to Academia? Started my PhD a year ago in nutrition (very chemistry based though) and everyone at my university has the stigma that you must stay in academia if you get a PhD. I look on LinkedIn and have a hard time finding jobs with requirements of a PhD. Most want industry experience. But masters students who have graduated are coming back for PhDs saying a masters could only take them so far in industry. I feel conflicted. I don’t want to spend the next four years of my life breaking my back over something that won’t benefit me or get me an industry job at the end of the day. Assistant: PhD holder here who got into corporate because of the skills I’ve picked up from university.

Human: To become a scientist often takes more than 6 years of education how do they maintain sanity balancing both work and schoolwork? All the pressure I can see why scientists are joked to be mad. But serious I have a super obsessed interest in science. If I wanted to go in curious how many manage. Assistant: After undergrad and maybe the first year or so of grad school, it's just another job. Sure, you have classes, but it's more like a meeting chatting about research than an undergrad class. Scientists are crazy because they have to research AND teach AND get grants on fairly low salaries and ofte frequently have to move in their career paths

Human: To become a scientist often takes more than 6 years of education how do they maintain sanity balancing both work and schoolwork? All the pressure I can see why scientists are joked to be mad. But serious I have a super obsessed interest in science. If I wanted to go in curious how many manage. Assistant: Being a doctoral student *is* a job.

Human: Conflicted about a case of plagiarism that I spotted TL;DR: I think I was plagiarised. But not sure if I should make a big deal of it. I recently agreed to review a paper whose topic resembled a paper I published during my PhD. At first glance of the title and abstract, the work didn't seem original enough. They basically replicated on Y what I did in my paper on X. But the superficial lack of originality is not ground for quick dismissal in my book. And I was certainly in a position to have a closer look and review it, since it fit within my area of expertise a lot more than the average review request I receive. I started reading it today, and right way found out a couple of things that might be relevant to the story later: * My paper is cited, which is reasonable considering its relevance, and it's cited where appropriate. * It's not a double blind journal, and I noticed one of the middle authors (possibly with a senior role) is an old academic acquaintance. As I continued reading, I was surprised to spot a sentence that resembled one of my own. I open the pdf of my paper, and there it was - almost the exact. I'm going to use a substituted example to demonstrate the degree of plagiarism I'm talking about - because I know these things can be vague and difficult to judge. Take the following 2 papers: 1. "The economic impact of AIDS on Thailand" (Viravaidya et al., 1996) 2. "Impact of HIV/AIDS on the national economy of India" (Anand et al., 1999) Paper (2) cites paper (1), which is reasonable. But now consider this real sentence from paper (1): "It is too early to know what the leading cause of death of infected people in Thailand will be, but the pattern will have important consequences for health care services and costs". Now imagine paper (2) had this sentence - which I just made up: "It is premature to know what the primary cause of mortality in infected people in Thailand will be, but the pattern will have impactful effects on health care services and costs". Note the use of synonyms of terms from the original sentence. And note also that it's still Thailand, and not India.. and this is on purpose. Because that's pretty much what the manuscript I'm reviewing did; mutatis mutandis. They copied my sentence, thesaurus'ed the terms, and forgot to replace X with Y! Just to be clear, the sentence in question was unique and long enough, that had they remembered to switch X for Y, I would have still noticed, and would still have had enough grounds to claim plagiarism. But their mishap made it all the more obvious and silly. Now here are my options and why I'm conflicted - I could: 1. Reject the paper with generic comments to authors and editor (not novel enough, etc). 2. Reject with no comments to authors, but with a letter to the editor telling them about the plagiarism. 3. Refuse to review - claim conflict of interest that I hadn't noticed when I first accepted to review. Something I wish I could consider doing, but obviously won't, due to the ethics and anonymity of peer-review: 4. Contact my acquaintance who is co-author, and alert them about what I assume the first author did. They'd probably set things straight somehow. I am not bothered that much about being plagiarised. It's just a sentence after all, and I don't want to seem petty. Also, the first author is probably a junior scientist. At one hand, I think they should learn that this is unacceptable. On the other hand, I don't want to be haste to go with option (2), because I don't know what the consequences of that might be (I wouldn't want to be the reason they're blacklisted or ruin their reputation for example). They may have simply not learned properly that this is not how one writes a paper. It might be a remnant of undergraduate writing habits. It's wrong in undergrad as well, but I guess it happens a lot more often and goes unnoticed/unpunished. Assistant: I would go for option 2 and report them for plagiarism. If they did this with at least one sentence of your work, they likely did this with other works. As a reviewer, it is your responsibility to report this to the editor and let them make any larger decisions about what action must be taken.

Human: Conflicted about a case of plagiarism that I spotted TL;DR: I think I was plagiarised. But not sure if I should make a big deal of it. I recently agreed to review a paper whose topic resembled a paper I published during my PhD. At first glance of the title and abstract, the work didn't seem original enough. They basically replicated on Y what I did in my paper on X. But the superficial lack of originality is not ground for quick dismissal in my book. And I was certainly in a position to have a closer look and review it, since it fit within my area of expertise a lot more than the average review request I receive. I started reading it today, and right way found out a couple of things that might be relevant to the story later: * My paper is cited, which is reasonable considering its relevance, and it's cited where appropriate. * It's not a double blind journal, and I noticed one of the middle authors (possibly with a senior role) is an old academic acquaintance. As I continued reading, I was surprised to spot a sentence that resembled one of my own. I open the pdf of my paper, and there it was - almost the exact. I'm going to use a substituted example to demonstrate the degree of plagiarism I'm talking about - because I know these things can be vague and difficult to judge. Take the following 2 papers: 1. "The economic impact of AIDS on Thailand" (Viravaidya et al., 1996) 2. "Impact of HIV/AIDS on the national economy of India" (Anand et al., 1999) Paper (2) cites paper (1), which is reasonable. But now consider this real sentence from paper (1): "It is too early to know what the leading cause of death of infected people in Thailand will be, but the pattern will have important consequences for health care services and costs". Now imagine paper (2) had this sentence - which I just made up: "It is premature to know what the primary cause of mortality in infected people in Thailand will be, but the pattern will have impactful effects on health care services and costs". Note the use of synonyms of terms from the original sentence. And note also that it's still Thailand, and not India.. and this is on purpose. Because that's pretty much what the manuscript I'm reviewing did; mutatis mutandis. They copied my sentence, thesaurus'ed the terms, and forgot to replace X with Y! Just to be clear, the sentence in question was unique and long enough, that had they remembered to switch X for Y, I would have still noticed, and would still have had enough grounds to claim plagiarism. But their mishap made it all the more obvious and silly. Now here are my options and why I'm conflicted - I could: 1. Reject the paper with generic comments to authors and editor (not novel enough, etc). 2. Reject with no comments to authors, but with a letter to the editor telling them about the plagiarism. 3. Refuse to review - claim conflict of interest that I hadn't noticed when I first accepted to review. Something I wish I could consider doing, but obviously won't, due to the ethics and anonymity of peer-review: 4. Contact my acquaintance who is co-author, and alert them about what I assume the first author did. They'd probably set things straight somehow. I am not bothered that much about being plagiarised. It's just a sentence after all, and I don't want to seem petty. Also, the first author is probably a junior scientist. At one hand, I think they should learn that this is unacceptable. On the other hand, I don't want to be haste to go with option (2), because I don't know what the consequences of that might be (I wouldn't want to be the reason they're blacklisted or ruin their reputation for example). They may have simply not learned properly that this is not how one writes a paper. It might be a remnant of undergraduate writing habits. It's wrong in undergrad as well, but I guess it happens a lot more often and goes unnoticed/unpunished. Assistant: We're talking about a sentence of the lenght you reported? 20 words out of a 4'000 words paper? Especially if it's introduction or discussion, why would you even care? I'd just take extra care in the review to check if they haven't been lousy somewhere else (especially given that they didn't switch X for Y)

Human: At what point did you decide to leave academia? What was the breaking point for you? I've been on the job market for 4 years since getting my PhD (humanities/social sciences). As the years go on, I'm realizing there might not be a (secure salaried) job for me in the field. When did you decide to call it quits? Assistant: The second I realised just how much I could get paid in the corporate world thanks to my PhD.

Human: At what point did you decide to leave academia? What was the breaking point for you? I've been on the job market for 4 years since getting my PhD (humanities/social sciences). As the years go on, I'm realizing there might not be a (secure salaried) job for me in the field. When did you decide to call it quits? Assistant: Two reasons: People expect you to "live for the Job" and are often married to the Workbench. Also useless animal cruelty, what most people consider as scientific, but is at all just a way to publish Something... Looking at someone having a casual conversation and laughs while beheading Baby mice left a mark.

Human: Did you leave academia? What was it like realising it wasn’t for you? Disclaimer, I’m having a little bit of a breakdown right now so that probably biases me a bit. I wanted to be a research scientist in a lab for a long time. I overcame a lot of obstacles and now I’m part of a cancer research lab at an amazing institute, it’s a real privilege to be there. My thesis is due in January. About a year ago I realised maybe research isn’t for me after all, and I have been really struggling with it. I feel like a failure, I feel unfaithful to everyone who has helped me or mentored me, for thinking that after all this time and effort I’ve discovered that maybe I don’t actually want to be a scientist after all. I am not afraid of hard work, when it is my passion. But I don’t think cancer/research is my true passion. And I feel horrible for wishing my degree was over so I could leave this all behind… when I know it’s a huge privilege to be able to get an education and work in such an important field. Like did I just waste my and everyone else’s time and money? After all the effort to learn how to be a cancer researcher, my heart tells me it’s not happy and I wish I was doing something else. I feel horrible about it. Any advice is welcome… thank you and I’m so sorry for the negativity. Assistant: Moved across the US for a quiche tech job to partner a PhD student under our PI. PhD student is already buddy buddy with PI, brilliant & more practically knowledgeable than myself, but riddled with personal issues. Drops her PhD and PI fires me to give her my job offering a reference and a sorry. Never again.

Human: Did you leave academia? What was it like realising it wasn’t for you? Disclaimer, I’m having a little bit of a breakdown right now so that probably biases me a bit. I wanted to be a research scientist in a lab for a long time. I overcame a lot of obstacles and now I’m part of a cancer research lab at an amazing institute, it’s a real privilege to be there. My thesis is due in January. About a year ago I realised maybe research isn’t for me after all, and I have been really struggling with it. I feel like a failure, I feel unfaithful to everyone who has helped me or mentored me, for thinking that after all this time and effort I’ve discovered that maybe I don’t actually want to be a scientist after all. I am not afraid of hard work, when it is my passion. But I don’t think cancer/research is my true passion. And I feel horrible for wishing my degree was over so I could leave this all behind… when I know it’s a huge privilege to be able to get an education and work in such an important field. Like did I just waste my and everyone else’s time and money? After all the effort to learn how to be a cancer researcher, my heart tells me it’s not happy and I wish I was doing something else. I feel horrible about it. Any advice is welcome… thank you and I’m so sorry for the negativity. Assistant: Hey, I'm in a similar situation at the moment and just wante to tell you you're not alone. I'm planning on taking a break in industry, as I've rolled from undergrad to PhD without ever experiencing anything else. It would be good to at least try something else so then I won't always be wondering. I could always returned to academia - very few decisions at this point in our careers are truly permanent :) Best of luck to you with thesis writing!

Human: Leaving academia. Old boss is pissed and despondent. Should I really feel responsible for screwing him over? I'm feeling a little bit gaslit so I'd like to write up a summary of my situation and hear some external opinions from other academics (for what they're worth...). Here is my perspective: I am currently a staff scientist (>PhD-level) in an academic research group. My boss was usually very nice, and often went out of his way to be helpful on a professional and personal level. But he was also a little bit abusive, lied to my face more than once, gaslit me, and didn't really trust me to get work done during the pandemic. I was actually working more than I did pre-pandemic, but my boss didn't believe me. This is partly because my work differs from his, and partly because it is absolutely critical for his research and he needs as much out of me as possible in order for him to make progress. Several months ago I asked him if it was ok to make a minor change in my pandemic work situation, and he said yes. A week or two later he sent me an email asking me for details, I replied with what we agreed to, he forwarded my email to HR, and used that opportunity to crack down and place very strict requirements on my subsequent work situation. So I decided to leave. It took many months, and I did my job diligently (as always) during that time, but eventually I found a company that was excited for me to work there, and I'm excited to start working there as well. The company wants me working there ASAP. I asked if I could have a break between my current job, they said a short break would be ok, but one month was too long. So I told my boss I was leaving, gave the minimum notice my contract requires (more than a week, less than a month), and now my boss is absolutely pissed. He tells me it will take him many months to find a replacement, and asks if I could wait a few months before leaving. That I should have told him I was leaving to let him plan for this. That I was ruining his career. Other things of that nature. I get that it would have been nice to have given him some warning. I wish I felt I could have. But I didn't trust him. I don't think there are many industry jobs out there that will want to hire me and then be ok with waiting several months before I start. And I had no idea if I could even find an industry job in my field that I would have wanted to take. And if I HAD told my boss I wanted to leave, what would have happened? My boss says, ok, I need you to stay here six more months. Then he would have started interviewing candidates, and maybe hired one. Then the clock is really ticking because my boss can't afford to pay for two of me. During the first of those six months I would not have been able to interview anywhere, because no company would be willing to hire me six months out. Maybe 2-3 months from the deadline I could start interviewing. Knowing what I know now, I would have been unemployed for several months. Why should I have taken all the risk? So what do you all think, was I out of line? I know I burned a bridge, and I can never use my current boss as a reference, but I already thought I could never use him as a reference so I don't think this has changed very much except the level of hostility. Assistant: You come first and have the right to take your considerable skills elsewhere. Who cares if you've inconvenienced some guy who was a dick to you. You and your own wellbeing are the priority!

Human: Leaving academia. Old boss is pissed and despondent. Should I really feel responsible for screwing him over? I'm feeling a little bit gaslit so I'd like to write up a summary of my situation and hear some external opinions from other academics (for what they're worth...). Here is my perspective: I am currently a staff scientist (>PhD-level) in an academic research group. My boss was usually very nice, and often went out of his way to be helpful on a professional and personal level. But he was also a little bit abusive, lied to my face more than once, gaslit me, and didn't really trust me to get work done during the pandemic. I was actually working more than I did pre-pandemic, but my boss didn't believe me. This is partly because my work differs from his, and partly because it is absolutely critical for his research and he needs as much out of me as possible in order for him to make progress. Several months ago I asked him if it was ok to make a minor change in my pandemic work situation, and he said yes. A week or two later he sent me an email asking me for details, I replied with what we agreed to, he forwarded my email to HR, and used that opportunity to crack down and place very strict requirements on my subsequent work situation. So I decided to leave. It took many months, and I did my job diligently (as always) during that time, but eventually I found a company that was excited for me to work there, and I'm excited to start working there as well. The company wants me working there ASAP. I asked if I could have a break between my current job, they said a short break would be ok, but one month was too long. So I told my boss I was leaving, gave the minimum notice my contract requires (more than a week, less than a month), and now my boss is absolutely pissed. He tells me it will take him many months to find a replacement, and asks if I could wait a few months before leaving. That I should have told him I was leaving to let him plan for this. That I was ruining his career. Other things of that nature. I get that it would have been nice to have given him some warning. I wish I felt I could have. But I didn't trust him. I don't think there are many industry jobs out there that will want to hire me and then be ok with waiting several months before I start. And I had no idea if I could even find an industry job in my field that I would have wanted to take. And if I HAD told my boss I wanted to leave, what would have happened? My boss says, ok, I need you to stay here six more months. Then he would have started interviewing candidates, and maybe hired one. Then the clock is really ticking because my boss can't afford to pay for two of me. During the first of those six months I would not have been able to interview anywhere, because no company would be willing to hire me six months out. Maybe 2-3 months from the deadline I could start interviewing. Knowing what I know now, I would have been unemployed for several months. Why should I have taken all the risk? So what do you all think, was I out of line? I know I burned a bridge, and I can never use my current boss as a reference, but I already thought I could never use him as a reference so I don't think this has changed very much except the level of hostility. Assistant: My PhD advisor was like this, except I had graduated, she knew I had done some interviews (they called her for a reference), it was expected that I leave. It is her own fault that I trained no one before I left; I offered to multiple people multiple times and they all turned me down. Her poor management put her in a bad position. People are expected to leave all the time in academic labs. You need to do what is best for you, not what is best for your boss.

Human: For those of you who have sent guest speaker invitations by email, how quickly do they typically get back to you? I’m just curious to learn this as I’m working on an event for the first time. Assistant: Highly variable!. Anywhere from 5 min to 3 weeks to never.

Human: For those of you who have sent guest speaker invitations by email, how quickly do they typically get back to you? I’m just curious to learn this as I’m working on an event for the first time. Assistant: who are you? does your email look spammy? does your conference/department have *direct* relevance to me or enough *genuine* status or worth that it doesn't matter? if the answer to these questions is wrong, the answer to your question is NEVER.

Human: What do you think the "outcome" of trying to prevent cheating via AI will look like? I was just glancing at this post and it's gotten me thinking about what happens when AI is well-developed enough to be virtually "uncatchable." Right now AI can make up legit-looking but not real sources so they're easy to check by just looking up the citations. Additionally, IME many AI-generated pieces are fairly stilted in their language use. But some day that won't be the case. In fact, some day it may be possible that AI can essentially create an otherwise legitimate, well-done paper (as in, pull real sources together and create a novel document from them) with little student input. How do you think higher ed will adapt? (I'm thinking mostly about teaching/testing students, but if you want to talk about research and scientific writing, feel free!) I feel like if we can somehow get away from this "college is to get a job" so that many/most students don't actually care about the learning but are just there to check a box we might be able to just generally reduce the impetus to cheat in general, but that will require some significant societal change. I was thinking that in many fields that might ask you to write a paper (as opposed to sit an exam during class time where you couldn't access an AI bot) we may benefit from giving up the "arms race" and returning to a model of oral examinations. Each student meets with the instructor (small classes) or 1-2 TAs in a team of several (larger classes) and basically take an oral examination. Examinations can be recorded for review if there are complains/questions afterward. But then I thought about how many students these days have anxiety-related or similar concerns if not full out accommodations and how much that would probably increase if students knew they'd regularly have to do oral examinations. Additionally, it may be hard to have every student receive fair, equal-difficulty tests without giving them the same questions to answer, yet if you give them all the same questions it would be difficult to prevent early test takers from telling others what they will be asked. So I am curious, what do y'all see as the way forward in a world of AI bots doing homework? Assistant: Flip the classroom. It solves everything. Have the students learn the material as "homework" and work problems (write essays, explain what they've learned, defend their ideas, etc.) in class.

Human: What do you think the "outcome" of trying to prevent cheating via AI will look like? I was just glancing at this post and it's gotten me thinking about what happens when AI is well-developed enough to be virtually "uncatchable." Right now AI can make up legit-looking but not real sources so they're easy to check by just looking up the citations. Additionally, IME many AI-generated pieces are fairly stilted in their language use. But some day that won't be the case. In fact, some day it may be possible that AI can essentially create an otherwise legitimate, well-done paper (as in, pull real sources together and create a novel document from them) with little student input. How do you think higher ed will adapt? (I'm thinking mostly about teaching/testing students, but if you want to talk about research and scientific writing, feel free!) I feel like if we can somehow get away from this "college is to get a job" so that many/most students don't actually care about the learning but are just there to check a box we might be able to just generally reduce the impetus to cheat in general, but that will require some significant societal change. I was thinking that in many fields that might ask you to write a paper (as opposed to sit an exam during class time where you couldn't access an AI bot) we may benefit from giving up the "arms race" and returning to a model of oral examinations. Each student meets with the instructor (small classes) or 1-2 TAs in a team of several (larger classes) and basically take an oral examination. Examinations can be recorded for review if there are complains/questions afterward. But then I thought about how many students these days have anxiety-related or similar concerns if not full out accommodations and how much that would probably increase if students knew they'd regularly have to do oral examinations. Additionally, it may be hard to have every student receive fair, equal-difficulty tests without giving them the same questions to answer, yet if you give them all the same questions it would be difficult to prevent early test takers from telling others what they will be asked. So I am curious, what do y'all see as the way forward in a world of AI bots doing homework? Assistant: Homework will be done purely for learning/practice. All graded work will be done in person or proctored remotely in a way monitors their production of the work (e.g., multiple cameras will monitor their face, body, and fingers typing).

Human: Do You Expect PhD Stipends to Increase in the Near Future? I am a first-year Masters student (social sciences), interested in pursuing a PhD after a few years in the field. Every time I research stipends, I am ... scared. At my university (R1, U.S. Northeast), the Grad Student Union is working hard to rally around increased stipends. Given current inflation and workers' rights entering the public discourse (?), do you expect stipends to raise in the coming years? (Asking both for selfish reasons, and genuine curiosity.) For clarity: Not just increasing to meet inflation, but a general increase which surpasses that. Interested in any thoughts!! Assistant: Because Academia is international, I thought that I should share some info from Norway. Here a PhD-student is regarded as an employee and current yearly salary is 49k in Usd, minimum, regardless off field. An academic career is not usually in demand, and particular in the field of engineering we have very many international phds. However, the public finance is under increasing pressure so the next 5 years will be a bit harder, but the salary will not drop, it will only be fewer posistions.

Human: Do You Expect PhD Stipends to Increase in the Near Future? I am a first-year Masters student (social sciences), interested in pursuing a PhD after a few years in the field. Every time I research stipends, I am ... scared. At my university (R1, U.S. Northeast), the Grad Student Union is working hard to rally around increased stipends. Given current inflation and workers' rights entering the public discourse (?), do you expect stipends to raise in the coming years? (Asking both for selfish reasons, and genuine curiosity.) For clarity: Not just increasing to meet inflation, but a general increase which surpasses that. Interested in any thoughts!! Assistant: It's unclear, but if they do increase past inflation, what will likely happen is that there will be far fewer paid TA-ships or TA-ships.

Human: Doing peer reviews -- what does it take for you to stop reading and simply give the paper a Reject? **TL;DR** where do you set the line and simply stop reading to give the manuscript a Reject when you're doing a peer review of a manuscript for a relatively high IF journal? **What makes you go "fuck it, I'm not wasting any more of my time in this shitty manuscript"?**. I'm gonna vent here. I'm a predoc in an engineering field and I consider myself lucky when journals contact me to do peer reviews of manuscripts submitted to them. I gladly accept, since I think it is an opportunity to improve my own scientific skills and insight in the peer reviewing process as an author myself. I would like to talk about the whole peer reviewing process from the point of view of a reviewer. Recently I got a request do a peer review for a relatively high IF journal in my field. I got excited because I always gain a lot of knowledge from these. However, the manuscript was a complete wreck. Just to point-out some issues I had with it: - Some latex math expressions were not even compiled right, instead the PDF showed garbage. - Some figures had no captions. (No Figure 1: bla bla) - Some references in the text to Figures where obviously wrong, pointing to figures that made no sense. - The basic english spelling and grammar errors. I'm not a native english-speaker myself, so I normally check the "I'm not able to judge", but man, it was bad. Seriously bad. - The figures were rasterized to the point that I could not even read some stuff even zooming-in the PDF. And thats just formatting... Moving into conceptual issues, the paper clearly stated that they surpassed a previous work by other authors. That raised some eyebrows. I though "bold", whatever, let's see. What bothered me was the *tone*. It was super assertive, demeaning the efforts of the other authors. Well shit, their manuscript was utter shit to begin with. **We are at page 3 of 10...**. At this point, I thought "enough". I logged-in, commented a little bit about the severe lack of care put into the manuscript and gave it a Reject grade. So, what makes you stop midway of peer reviewing a paper to simply grade it with a Reject? Assistant: All of the issues you mentioned could be addressed in the camera ready version. To me they are not by themselves reasons to reject a paper. I try to evaluate the results and/or ideas. Some authors can be from a different country. If in addition to the above the results or ideas raise eyebrows (e.g. incomplete methodology, hiding details, non-reproducable, no publicly available code, dataset etc) I would reject it on the prior that it is also badly written.

Human: Doing peer reviews -- what does it take for you to stop reading and simply give the paper a Reject? **TL;DR** where do you set the line and simply stop reading to give the manuscript a Reject when you're doing a peer review of a manuscript for a relatively high IF journal? **What makes you go "fuck it, I'm not wasting any more of my time in this shitty manuscript"?**. I'm gonna vent here. I'm a predoc in an engineering field and I consider myself lucky when journals contact me to do peer reviews of manuscripts submitted to them. I gladly accept, since I think it is an opportunity to improve my own scientific skills and insight in the peer reviewing process as an author myself. I would like to talk about the whole peer reviewing process from the point of view of a reviewer. Recently I got a request do a peer review for a relatively high IF journal in my field. I got excited because I always gain a lot of knowledge from these. However, the manuscript was a complete wreck. Just to point-out some issues I had with it: - Some latex math expressions were not even compiled right, instead the PDF showed garbage. - Some figures had no captions. (No Figure 1: bla bla) - Some references in the text to Figures where obviously wrong, pointing to figures that made no sense. - The basic english spelling and grammar errors. I'm not a native english-speaker myself, so I normally check the "I'm not able to judge", but man, it was bad. Seriously bad. - The figures were rasterized to the point that I could not even read some stuff even zooming-in the PDF. And thats just formatting... Moving into conceptual issues, the paper clearly stated that they surpassed a previous work by other authors. That raised some eyebrows. I though "bold", whatever, let's see. What bothered me was the *tone*. It was super assertive, demeaning the efforts of the other authors. Well shit, their manuscript was utter shit to begin with. **We are at page 3 of 10...**. At this point, I thought "enough". I logged-in, commented a little bit about the severe lack of care put into the manuscript and gave it a Reject grade. So, what makes you stop midway of peer reviewing a paper to simply grade it with a Reject? Assistant: What in the world is a “predoc”?

Human: Examples of email signatures relaying you do not expect others to reply to your email send after hours For better or worse, it is easier for me to send emails on weekends and evenings to collaborators and students than during business hours. I do a lot of my writing during evenings/weekends - this is just going to be the reality until I become more efficient or get more grant funding If I wait until Monday AM, I spend half the day sending emails from the work I've done over the weekend I do not want others to think I expect a response immediately, especially students Any examples of email signatures about not expecting an immediate response? Most I find online are related to "I work flexible work hours, I do not expect an immediate response." I may be splitting hairs but I don't work flexible hours - I'm just always working Assistant: Here's one from an email I recently received: "Although I may have sent this message at a convenient time, it is not my expectation that you read, respond, or follow up on this email outside your working hours."

Human: Examples of email signatures relaying you do not expect others to reply to your email send after hours For better or worse, it is easier for me to send emails on weekends and evenings to collaborators and students than during business hours. I do a lot of my writing during evenings/weekends - this is just going to be the reality until I become more efficient or get more grant funding If I wait until Monday AM, I spend half the day sending emails from the work I've done over the weekend I do not want others to think I expect a response immediately, especially students Any examples of email signatures about not expecting an immediate response? Most I find online are related to "I work flexible work hours, I do not expect an immediate response." I may be splitting hairs but I don't work flexible hours - I'm just always working Assistant: I work in a different time zone than all of my colleagues. My signature has "My working hours are #-#(time zone). I do not expect you to read or take action on my emails outside of your normal working hours." Some people have told me they really appreciate it. Others answer my emails at what are clearly not working hours for them. I figure that's not really my business.

Human: Is it best to use "we" or "I" in the PhD thesis? I am close to being finished with my PhD thesis, but i have been struggling with this issue lately. My thesis is based on 4 manuscript of which there are multiple co-authors (with me being first author). In those, we use "we" to describe all our actions and thoughts. No problem. In my PhD thesis, my supervisor is encouraging me to use "I" instead of "we" in the discussion/conclusion. This feels very unnatural to me as all the findings are based on the results that "we" found in the manuscripts. This has led me to balance the use of we/I, where I use "I" whenever i describe something only I did (e.g. experiments). And "we" when referring to conclusions. However, i am a bit at loss about what to do. Any seasoned academics that can offer some advice? (My supervisor is out of office, hence why i post the question here and not to my supervisor directly) Assistant: 1. You are considered the sole author on your thesis. Use 'I'. 2. Later papers based on this work can use 'we' since obviously the work is collaborative. 3. For the love of all that is holy, don't use passive voice.

Human: Is it best to use "we" or "I" in the PhD thesis? I am close to being finished with my PhD thesis, but i have been struggling with this issue lately. My thesis is based on 4 manuscript of which there are multiple co-authors (with me being first author). In those, we use "we" to describe all our actions and thoughts. No problem. In my PhD thesis, my supervisor is encouraging me to use "I" instead of "we" in the discussion/conclusion. This feels very unnatural to me as all the findings are based on the results that "we" found in the manuscripts. This has led me to balance the use of we/I, where I use "I" whenever i describe something only I did (e.g. experiments). And "we" when referring to conclusions. However, i am a bit at loss about what to do. Any seasoned academics that can offer some advice? (My supervisor is out of office, hence why i post the question here and not to my supervisor directly) Assistant: Follow your advisor’s guidance.

Human: Have I made a big mistake by not applying to a PhD at 26 (it keeps me up at night)? **Abstract**: *I am 26, finishing a master's degree, and I have no plans now and have never considered a phd. My professors and colleagues say i'm ideal, my parents are against it, all deadlines have passed, and I have an existential crisis now.* I am about to finish my 2 year master's in International Relations at the age of 26 (in my country we graduate at 19 and I did a year of travel). It was such a big deal to me to even get into this program, because I originally have a B.Sc. in psychology and I'm the first one in my direct family line to even see a college from the inside anyhow. The hybris I accused myself of to even attempt a master's! I was so nervous whether I'd even survive the IR program that I spent exactly no time thinking about any further degrees afterwards. Now that the end approaches, professors and my friends at grad school keep asking me why I don't do a PhD. One senior professor even approached me in a pub and said I was an ideal candidate, as I love academic discussions and research. My GPA is good and my supervisor really liked my master's thesis. But I was so focused to even survive the past two years, driven by constant impostor syndrome, that I never spent a second thinking I'd do anything else but "a job" afterwards, however vaguely defined. I made no plans for later at all. My professors' and colleagues' comments have seriously thrown me in doubt whether I didn't do a huge mistake. My parents (both worked themselves up from poor backgrounds, without a college degree) painted an image of PhD studies as a dead-end into poverty and unemployability with short-term contracts only, so I never really considered it. Obviously all deadlines have passed now by a long shot, and as all my friends move on to jobs (mostly non-related office jobs). I wonder if I didn't make a huge mistake by not applying, and whether that window of opportunity isn't closed now for good... or whether I made the right call. Assistant: Doing a PhD will also keep you up at night

Human: Have I made a big mistake by not applying to a PhD at 26 (it keeps me up at night)? **Abstract**: *I am 26, finishing a master's degree, and I have no plans now and have never considered a phd. My professors and colleagues say i'm ideal, my parents are against it, all deadlines have passed, and I have an existential crisis now.* I am about to finish my 2 year master's in International Relations at the age of 26 (in my country we graduate at 19 and I did a year of travel). It was such a big deal to me to even get into this program, because I originally have a B.Sc. in psychology and I'm the first one in my direct family line to even see a college from the inside anyhow. The hybris I accused myself of to even attempt a master's! I was so nervous whether I'd even survive the IR program that I spent exactly no time thinking about any further degrees afterwards. Now that the end approaches, professors and my friends at grad school keep asking me why I don't do a PhD. One senior professor even approached me in a pub and said I was an ideal candidate, as I love academic discussions and research. My GPA is good and my supervisor really liked my master's thesis. But I was so focused to even survive the past two years, driven by constant impostor syndrome, that I never spent a second thinking I'd do anything else but "a job" afterwards, however vaguely defined. I made no plans for later at all. My professors' and colleagues' comments have seriously thrown me in doubt whether I didn't do a huge mistake. My parents (both worked themselves up from poor backgrounds, without a college degree) painted an image of PhD studies as a dead-end into poverty and unemployability with short-term contracts only, so I never really considered it. Obviously all deadlines have passed now by a long shot, and as all my friends move on to jobs (mostly non-related office jobs). I wonder if I didn't make a huge mistake by not applying, and whether that window of opportunity isn't closed now for good... or whether I made the right call. Assistant: A bit cynical, but let me translate what your professors mean when they say you're ideal for a Ph.D.: *I'm running this machine that takes human labor and turns it into publications and grant money, and you would be an ideal cogwheel for that machine.*

Human: Leaving a PhD Program Hi everyone! I’m currently a first semester PhD student and I am feeling unhappy with my current program. I have been feeling mentally drained from having a difficult transition to a new city, feeling like I don’t fit into the environment and feeling academically inadequate. I’ve experienced some red flags and am considering applying to other schools for Fall 2023. Im not sure how to approach this since all the signs point me to leave, but I am afraid of telling my current program. Advice is greatly appreciated and happy thanksgiving!! Assistant: I haven’t experienced this, but I watched my mother go through it. Her first doctoral program turned out to be a terrible fit. She agonized over it, but ultimately left and found a different program that was so much better for her. It added a year to her timeline, but now, ten years and tenure later, she has no regrets.

Human: Leaving a PhD Program Hi everyone! I’m currently a first semester PhD student and I am feeling unhappy with my current program. I have been feeling mentally drained from having a difficult transition to a new city, feeling like I don’t fit into the environment and feeling academically inadequate. I’ve experienced some red flags and am considering applying to other schools for Fall 2023. Im not sure how to approach this since all the signs point me to leave, but I am afraid of telling my current program. Advice is greatly appreciated and happy thanksgiving!! Assistant: The first semester is rough for almost everyone. Almost any situation will have its ups and downs. Switching programs will delay you and can look bad, but if the environment is really bad then moving may be best. However, if it is a situation you can overcome then it might be good to push through and learn from it. Because when you get a job you may have a similar situation and changing jobs may not be as easy.

Human: Do you live comfortably as a professor in a big city? Hi all! As in the title, I am curious if it is possible to live comfortably as a professor in a big city, i.e. say one with a 500k+ population. By 'comfortably', I roughly mean being able to buy a (small) house, not be frugal on groceries, eat out 1-2 times a week, and travel 1-2 times a year (domestically). I know an Econ Phd student who has just accepted an assistant professor position with 110K a year in Boston and he said he is really worried about living there with such a salary (maybe this is a 9-month salary). From my search, I also know a few math/stats professors from the Bay area earning around 90-95K, which I believe is not very high given the crazy cost of living there. I know this is a very complicated question since it depends a lot on the specific city, field, institution type (private/public, R1/R2, teaching, etc.), and also the spouse, so I guess I just want to know some perspectives. I am in math/stats if you are curious. In general, I want to see if one can live comfortably as a professor or not, so even if you are not living in a big city, you can also share your stories (I guess expensive college towns like Santa Barbara can be interesting case studies). Thank you so much. Assistant: In Australian cities (East coast), on an academic salary you can do all of the above fairly comfortably *except* buy a small house near campus. Property prices are ridiculous here, which has put home ownership out of reach of many people, including well-paid professionals.

Human: Do you live comfortably as a professor in a big city? Hi all! As in the title, I am curious if it is possible to live comfortably as a professor in a big city, i.e. say one with a 500k+ population. By 'comfortably', I roughly mean being able to buy a (small) house, not be frugal on groceries, eat out 1-2 times a week, and travel 1-2 times a year (domestically). I know an Econ Phd student who has just accepted an assistant professor position with 110K a year in Boston and he said he is really worried about living there with such a salary (maybe this is a 9-month salary). From my search, I also know a few math/stats professors from the Bay area earning around 90-95K, which I believe is not very high given the crazy cost of living there. I know this is a very complicated question since it depends a lot on the specific city, field, institution type (private/public, R1/R2, teaching, etc.), and also the spouse, so I guess I just want to know some perspectives. I am in math/stats if you are curious. In general, I want to see if one can live comfortably as a professor or not, so even if you are not living in a big city, you can also share your stories (I guess expensive college towns like Santa Barbara can be interesting case studies). Thank you so much. Assistant: I work at a public in Chicago. Make 77k base, usually another 12k from grants and summer teaching, and another 20k consulting. Wife makes about 80k. Have nice three bedroom house in a pleasant suburb and generally living an upper middle class life. Housing cheaper here than any other large American city for sure.

Human: In support of a PhD application would it be OK to list a conference publication even though I will have to wait 2 months for the accompanying journal to be published? The paper was accepted, the conference is over and I presented the paper. This annual conference is in its 20th year, it is reputable and the publication usually gets released 2 months after the conference. Should I list it in an application form and/or CV even though it will not be online for another 2 months? Thanks for reading. Assistant: Yes. Def add the paper in your CV and make a note that it's accepted and in-press

Human: In support of a PhD application would it be OK to list a conference publication even though I will have to wait 2 months for the accompanying journal to be published? The paper was accepted, the conference is over and I presented the paper. This annual conference is in its 20th year, it is reputable and the publication usually gets released 2 months after the conference. Should I list it in an application form and/or CV even though it will not be online for another 2 months? Thanks for reading. Assistant: Pretty simple in my field. You list everything and put “forthcoming” for things that are not out yet but have been accepted.

Human: Hello guys. I have seen a lot of people in this sub mention that phd graduates have a very low probability to get a permanent job on academia. Is this an accurate fact, about both on humanities and natural sciences? If it is true, then isn't it a problem of academia? Isn't it better for academia to have 'new blood' - young smart people instead of saying to them 'hey, you have worked incredibly hard but go find a job somewhere outside of academia'? Assistant: There *are* exceptions to overall placement statistics. In some disciplines, going to a top 5-ish school or working with a very famous advisor can give you a 50%+ shot at academic positions, plus there are some fields which either have a strong pull into industry (CS, nursing) or are seeing a lot of growth for political reasons (ethnic studies in California, sustainability + energy sciences re:the climate crisis) which have better chances.

Human: Hello guys. I have seen a lot of people in this sub mention that phd graduates have a very low probability to get a permanent job on academia. Is this an accurate fact, about both on humanities and natural sciences? If it is true, then isn't it a problem of academia? Isn't it better for academia to have 'new blood' - young smart people instead of saying to them 'hey, you have worked incredibly hard but go find a job somewhere outside of academia'? Assistant: Here’s an article in the Atlantic from 2013 with some data. I’m sure it’s only gotten worse since then. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/02/how-many-phds-actually-get-to-become-college-professors/273434/

Human: Is it okay to contact authors and politely ask them to forward the source for a citation mentioned in their paper? I have a citation that I am looking to read. However, I have tried various approaches to look up the source but they only show up on the authors' papers (and their PhD dissertation). I cannot find the person (whose work I want to read) anywhere. Its just a last name and listing their school has not pointed me to their work. I don't know what else I can do. For anyone curious, it's this: S. Geurts, “Peripheral Play,” Utrecht School of the Arts, Hilversum, 2012. Assistant: That could be a dissertation. Ask your university librarian for help accessing it.

Human: Is it okay to contact authors and politely ask them to forward the source for a citation mentioned in their paper? I have a citation that I am looking to read. However, I have tried various approaches to look up the source but they only show up on the authors' papers (and their PhD dissertation). I cannot find the person (whose work I want to read) anywhere. Its just a last name and listing their school has not pointed me to their work. I don't know what else I can do. For anyone curious, it's this: S. Geurts, “Peripheral Play,” Utrecht School of the Arts, Hilversum, 2012. Assistant: ~~Try contacting Utrecht's library. They say on their website that they've changed their publication system and so student theses might be difficult to find, and on the linked page they give an email address to contact.~~ As u/Sassy_Pumpkin points out, I selected the wrong institution in Utrecht. Unfortunately the publication in question does not exist in the HKU online publications listings, nor do they seem to invite queries quite as openly as UU.

Human: If a reputable conference extends the deadline for abstract submission the day they were due, does that mean the submission rate was low and there's a higher likelihood of mine getting accepted? Title says it all. Please tell me it means mine is likely to be accepted. Assistant: DO conferences reject papers? I was able a couple of times to get official stats from some of the major conferences in my field (either medical or technical ones) and the acceptance rate was >98%, (including posters obviously... for orals it's very low)

Human: If a reputable conference extends the deadline for abstract submission the day they were due, does that mean the submission rate was low and there's a higher likelihood of mine getting accepted? Title says it all. Please tell me it means mine is likely to be accepted. Assistant: Society for neuroscience have extended their deadline every year I remember, I also have never heard of an abstract being rejected...

Human: Is it true that if you can't network and don't have social skills than it is unlikely you will get a postdoc or a job even if you are a genius in your field? So I have heard from people in Academia that networking is vital to getting a job or postdoc in Academia or even a PhD. If you do not know well-renowned scientists then you are out of luck. Therefore, advanced social skills and some oiling/charisma is important. If you don't have those then even if you are the next Einstein you would probably not even get a PhD or postdoc let alone a job. Can someone confirm whether this is true and to what extent? Assistant: No. I just emailed a bunch of people and I got a good postdoc. The email has to be targeted and good enogh to grab their attention. The CV has to be competitive. Your reccomendation has to be good. But none of these must be out of the world, just good and competitive. Then you get interviewed. Social skills help of course because everyone wants to hire someone more likable, but that's all. My postdoctoral advisor had never heard of my phd advisor. I did not network well.

Human: Is it true that if you can't network and don't have social skills than it is unlikely you will get a postdoc or a job even if you are a genius in your field? So I have heard from people in Academia that networking is vital to getting a job or postdoc in Academia or even a PhD. If you do not know well-renowned scientists then you are out of luck. Therefore, advanced social skills and some oiling/charisma is important. If you don't have those then even if you are the next Einstein you would probably not even get a PhD or postdoc let alone a job. Can someone confirm whether this is true and to what extent? Assistant: I think it depends. I know someone who looks great on paper: publications and conference stuff. But in person he is just a jackass. He has gotten a number of campus interviews but no offers yet because he is actively not nice.

Human: What does the salary at each rung of the academic career ladder look like in your country? Non-native English speaker here. I was wondering, how the salary structure looks like in your country. That is, what is the typical/median/average salary for a Post Doc, Lecturer, Assistant Professor, Associate Professor etc. I am not sure what are all the titles/rungs in the academic ladder of your country. So please provide the title of the rung, the salary in each and the amount of time needed to get yourself to the next rung. Assistant: United States, and my figures are based on big research state universities (because their salaries are searchable on the web), not small liberal arts colleges. Postdoc: ~$45k Assistant professor: ~$65-80k Associate professor: ~$80-110k Professor: ~$100-150k Grant-winning master: ~$150-300k Grant-winning superstar: ~$300k-1000k Nobel laureate: ~$600k-? (Steven Weinberg's salary at UT Austin)

Human: What does the salary at each rung of the academic career ladder look like in your country? Non-native English speaker here. I was wondering, how the salary structure looks like in your country. That is, what is the typical/median/average salary for a Post Doc, Lecturer, Assistant Professor, Associate Professor etc. I am not sure what are all the titles/rungs in the academic ladder of your country. So please provide the title of the rung, the salary in each and the amount of time needed to get yourself to the next rung. Assistant: Salary totally depends on type of school.

Human: What is the reason for outright hostility and ad hominem attacks on Twitter between academics and does this behavior disappoint you? I am an undergraduate student that is seriously looking at the potential of going into academia. It isn't affecting my decision one way or the other, but when I look at Twitter it is honestly disappointing to see how much outright negativity, personal attacks, and bad-faith arguments exist between academics. I understand that these individuals are human too like the rest of us, but I would have thought that this would be the one environment where an individual is judged on the merit of the argument rather than the individual themself. Is it just an inevitability of how social media makes individuals act? ​ I can give specific examples if necessary, but I would say it's become a widespread enough phenomena that it's most likely not. ​ To the academics here, what is the reason for outright hostility and ad hominem attacks on Twitter between Professors and others involved in Academia and does this behavior disappoint you? ​ If you disagree with the premise feel free to let me know as well. Assistant: I've never used academic twitter (or twitter in general) and I'm super confused why people use it at all? The only thing I hear about it is that it is super toxic. Why do people voluntarily participate if it's such a cesspool?

Human: What is the reason for outright hostility and ad hominem attacks on Twitter between academics and does this behavior disappoint you? I am an undergraduate student that is seriously looking at the potential of going into academia. It isn't affecting my decision one way or the other, but when I look at Twitter it is honestly disappointing to see how much outright negativity, personal attacks, and bad-faith arguments exist between academics. I understand that these individuals are human too like the rest of us, but I would have thought that this would be the one environment where an individual is judged on the merit of the argument rather than the individual themself. Is it just an inevitability of how social media makes individuals act? ​ I can give specific examples if necessary, but I would say it's become a widespread enough phenomena that it's most likely not. ​ To the academics here, what is the reason for outright hostility and ad hominem attacks on Twitter between Professors and others involved in Academia and does this behavior disappoint you? ​ If you disagree with the premise feel free to let me know as well. Assistant: Academia is just a power play. Micropolitics reign there. Nope out ot if ASAP.

Human: Article is stuck at the 'With editor' stage. What to do? We submitted a manuscript to a PolSci journal about 2.5 months ago. It is still 'with editor'. What would you do at this stage? Does it make sense to drop a message through EditorialManager system to the editor asking about the status or it's better to wait? The article is short (it's kind of a research note) and a bit 'time sensitive': I believe it would make more sense to publish it sooner while the phenomenon that it describes is still in the stage of active development. I would rather prefer an immediate desk rejection rather than just to sit and wait for a response for almost three months, knowing that it even hasn't reached reviewers yet. Assistant: This happened to me very recently. I wrote an email to the editor asking if everything is ok and if I can be of further assistance, and they then sent it for review immediately after. I would recommend asking respectfully, showing that you understand they are busy. Also, you can do it sooner next time, after a month or so; 2.5 months is quite a long time. I suppose sometimes they just need a nudge.

Human: Article is stuck at the 'With editor' stage. What to do? We submitted a manuscript to a PolSci journal about 2.5 months ago. It is still 'with editor'. What would you do at this stage? Does it make sense to drop a message through EditorialManager system to the editor asking about the status or it's better to wait? The article is short (it's kind of a research note) and a bit 'time sensitive': I believe it would make more sense to publish it sooner while the phenomenon that it describes is still in the stage of active development. I would rather prefer an immediate desk rejection rather than just to sit and wait for a response for almost three months, knowing that it even hasn't reached reviewers yet. Assistant: After a month or two, I basically universally contact the editor (email or using their built-in messenger if they have one) to "inquire about the status of our manuscript." Contact them but don't make it longer than necessary.

Human: Would it be possible for a person with an IQ of 85, one SD below average but within the normal range, through hard work, to earn a legitimate PhD in *any* field, from a legitimate institution? Is anyone *known* to have achieved this? I would expect that they’d have probably never had reason or opportunity to take an IQ test until after earning the PhD. Assistant: I have a PhD from a top-5 in the world institution and scored an IQ of 89 in an official supervised IQ test based around non-verbal reasoning when I was about 16. How useful was this test as a measure of intelligence? I sat two different IQ tests in one day and scored 132 in the other one testing verbal reasoning. Less than two years later my school grades put me in the top 1% of the country. So I'd take the whole IQ thing with a grain of salt.

Human: Would it be possible for a person with an IQ of 85, one SD below average but within the normal range, through hard work, to earn a legitimate PhD in *any* field, from a legitimate institution? Is anyone *known* to have achieved this? I would expect that they’d have probably never had reason or opportunity to take an IQ test until after earning the PhD. Assistant: You shouldn't be too hard on yourself if you have a bad iq score as there's plenty of evidence that shows those are bunk in terms of showing innate intelligence like they claim to, given you can take it multiple times and get varying results. If you have the drive to do it and see it to completion you should be fine

Human: My father passed away during the last year of my PhD abroad, how to keep my motivation up and make it through to the end? The title says it all, really. I admittedly came here to vent a little bit, but mainly to look for some advice, either from anyone who has gone through something similar or from those with general advice for getting through really rough times during a PhD. A little bit more about me and my situation: I am doing a PhD abroad, several thousands of kilometers from home, and my deadline to defend my thesis is in less than six months from now. My father passed away a few months ago and, though he had been ill for some time, it was rather unexpected. I quickly flew home and stayed for a few weeks before coming back to work. Since I've been back at work, I've been a complete mess and my motivation has just been hanging by a thread. I am constantly homesick and still grieving a lot. I can become very emotional at unpredictable times. It's very hard to concentrate. Additionally, I'm feeling more isolated than ever, as many friends have moved away recently and I don't speak my host country's language very well. While I would like to take a break (technically possible for up to one year, I believe), it would be complicated. For one, it would involve a visa extension, which would be tricky and expensive. I'm on a tight budget, especially after flying home on a moment's notice those few months ago, so I can't really spend a lot in general, let alone visa fees or extra airfare right now. Lastly, my mum is strongly encouraging me to stay and finish since I am so close to the end. She wants to see me finish my dream and she's worried that something could get in the way of me finishing if I were to take a break. I agree with her and finishing on time is probably my best option. Overall I've been very content with how my PhD has gone and I'm not behind schedule, even after taking almost a whole month away from work. Before my father passed away, I was already feeling a bit of the normal stress and pressure of a PhD student in their final year, but I was extremely motivated and I could handle virtually anything that came at me. But now I just feel so different... like I am suffocating. Dreading the next day, the next task, the next meeting, etc. Each day I feel the motivation draining away more and more and the growing feeling that an inevitable burnout is coming. How can I survive or maybe even try to thrive during these last months? How can I find my motivation again? What are some ways to handle the grief and intense homesickness at the same time as the PhD? For anyone who has faced similar circumstances to any of the above, what helped you the most? Thanks for any and all advice :) Assistant: See a counselor. If they suck, see another counselor. If they suck. See another counselor. Reddit is great, but you know what’s really great? Someone who spent their whole career learning exactly how to help you through this. From a fellow PhD student who has ridden the ups and downs: I believe in you. Best of luck.

Human: My father passed away during the last year of my PhD abroad, how to keep my motivation up and make it through to the end? The title says it all, really. I admittedly came here to vent a little bit, but mainly to look for some advice, either from anyone who has gone through something similar or from those with general advice for getting through really rough times during a PhD. A little bit more about me and my situation: I am doing a PhD abroad, several thousands of kilometers from home, and my deadline to defend my thesis is in less than six months from now. My father passed away a few months ago and, though he had been ill for some time, it was rather unexpected. I quickly flew home and stayed for a few weeks before coming back to work. Since I've been back at work, I've been a complete mess and my motivation has just been hanging by a thread. I am constantly homesick and still grieving a lot. I can become very emotional at unpredictable times. It's very hard to concentrate. Additionally, I'm feeling more isolated than ever, as many friends have moved away recently and I don't speak my host country's language very well. While I would like to take a break (technically possible for up to one year, I believe), it would be complicated. For one, it would involve a visa extension, which would be tricky and expensive. I'm on a tight budget, especially after flying home on a moment's notice those few months ago, so I can't really spend a lot in general, let alone visa fees or extra airfare right now. Lastly, my mum is strongly encouraging me to stay and finish since I am so close to the end. She wants to see me finish my dream and she's worried that something could get in the way of me finishing if I were to take a break. I agree with her and finishing on time is probably my best option. Overall I've been very content with how my PhD has gone and I'm not behind schedule, even after taking almost a whole month away from work. Before my father passed away, I was already feeling a bit of the normal stress and pressure of a PhD student in their final year, but I was extremely motivated and I could handle virtually anything that came at me. But now I just feel so different... like I am suffocating. Dreading the next day, the next task, the next meeting, etc. Each day I feel the motivation draining away more and more and the growing feeling that an inevitable burnout is coming. How can I survive or maybe even try to thrive during these last months? How can I find my motivation again? What are some ways to handle the grief and intense homesickness at the same time as the PhD? For anyone who has faced similar circumstances to any of the above, what helped you the most? Thanks for any and all advice :) Assistant: I went through something kind of similar. I went back to school to finish my undergraduate degree and my father passed away. I had just started at a new school and didn't know anyone there. Honestly it was really hard to not quit. I just graduated a few weeks ago, and I'm so glad I finished and I know that he would he so proud of me. When he passed, I found a therapist and that was really helpful for me. I'm so sorry for your loss, if you want to talk feel free to DM me.

Human: What major changes would you make to an academic's job if you had carte blanche? I have worked in UK universities for several years but always on the professional services side (i.e. not an academic) but so many of the academics seem so downtrodden and disheartened by it all. I'm just curious as to what is it that academics see as the main problems for them day-to-day. Assistant: Long-term contracts: give ecrs 5 yer contracts so they have time to stabilize and have funding gaps covered. If they get a permanent position somewhere else, they 'lose' the 5 year contract.

Human: What major changes would you make to an academic's job if you had carte blanche? I have worked in UK universities for several years but always on the professional services side (i.e. not an academic) but so many of the academics seem so downtrodden and disheartened by it all. I'm just curious as to what is it that academics see as the main problems for them day-to-day. Assistant: Make postdocs more stable. The professor pay issue seems to be a US an UK centric thing. I can't comment on that. Every professor that I've interacted with up here in Canada make 100k+ even as an assistant professor. That doesn't sound like too shabby pay for me.

Human: Would wearing a hijab negatively effect your prospects to get an academic job? Will it negatively effect student's perception of you? I'm a masters student in Islamic and Middle Eastern studies. Assistant: Hopefully it wouldn't impact getting a job in Islamic Studies! I can't say for sure it wouldn't, because bigots crop up everywhere. But do not compromise who you are for a job. As for students... some will mind. You can't do anything about that. I teach Psychology of Sex and Gender and have had students take my class who immediately hate me... for researching sex and gender. You can't win 'em all.

Human: Would wearing a hijab negatively effect your prospects to get an academic job? Will it negatively effect student's perception of you? I'm a masters student in Islamic and Middle Eastern studies. Assistant: I actually feel like with your area it might give you an air of legitimacy! But it shouldn't affect you - but as always the people hiring you might be massive bigots

Human: I got rejected from all of my PhD programs. My parents and professors are giving me conflicting advice. Who should I listen to? I applied to grad schools for physics this past year and failed spectacularly: I was rejected from every single PhD program I applied to. There is a silver lining however: I got accepted into a master's program at a great school, and I have a good job offer in the city of my current school, so things certainly could have gone worse. Here's the issue: my parents really want me to go to the master's program, while all my professors are telling me not to go. As far as I can tell, my parents are looking at the name and prestige of the school, and think the master's program will greatly improve my application to PhD programs. They also think that my current department has screwed me with bad advice leading up to my PhD applications, and that I'm not likely to do much better next year if I stay where I am. On the other hand, my professors think that the master's program is not likely to help my applications unless I do significant research, and it will be harder to find research as a master's student than a PhD student. If I stay here, I have enough connections within the department to work with almost any professor here. They think that if I can get something published and get a better physics GRE score, then I should have no problem at all with grad schools next year. From my perspective, I think the master's program would be an enjoyable experience, and would give me the opportunity to see first-hand if I really want to pursue a physics PhD, or if I'd rather pursue a math PhD or something else entirely. I'm also fairly confident that I would do well in the master's program, and could even potentially use the program as a gateway to the PhD program at the same school. On the other hand, I could easily end up in a new city with no friends, no connections within the department, and no time between grad courses and potential research to study for and do better on the physics GRE, which I think was the biggest thing holding my applications back. Not to mention, the master's program would cost an entire year's tuition. While paying for the program isn't an issue, I have serious ethical concerns with spending so much money on graduate school, when I would be paid to do the same thing in a PhD program. If I stay here, I think I would also enjoy the job I've been offered, and if I can get some research done on the side and do better on the physics GRE, then I agree that my application would be fairly iron-clad. But there's always the possibility that I can't get anything published, or that I don't do much better on the physics GRE, or maybe even that I get a publication and better physics GRE score but no better results. In addition, funding for the job offer won't go through until May, and while I've been assured that it almost certainly won't happen, there's always the chance that the job doesn't get funded (I have to decide on the master's program within a week, so I'd be crossing my fingers that the job works out). There's even the chance that I get the job, but it doesn't leave me with adequate time to also do research, at which point I'm not sure how much better my application would be. I know this has been a super long post, but if anyone's made it to this part, any advice on what I might do? My first instinct is that my parents don't know what they're talking about and that my professors do, but I do think there's more than a kernel of truth that they've already given me bad advice with regards to my PhD applications, and I'm scared to take their advice and find that I've made the same mistake several times in a row. Assistant: I would trust the experts in the field who actually went to school for physics. They know much more than you parents, who I assume are not physics PhDs...

Human: I got rejected from all of my PhD programs. My parents and professors are giving me conflicting advice. Who should I listen to? I applied to grad schools for physics this past year and failed spectacularly: I was rejected from every single PhD program I applied to. There is a silver lining however: I got accepted into a master's program at a great school, and I have a good job offer in the city of my current school, so things certainly could have gone worse. Here's the issue: my parents really want me to go to the master's program, while all my professors are telling me not to go. As far as I can tell, my parents are looking at the name and prestige of the school, and think the master's program will greatly improve my application to PhD programs. They also think that my current department has screwed me with bad advice leading up to my PhD applications, and that I'm not likely to do much better next year if I stay where I am. On the other hand, my professors think that the master's program is not likely to help my applications unless I do significant research, and it will be harder to find research as a master's student than a PhD student. If I stay here, I have enough connections within the department to work with almost any professor here. They think that if I can get something published and get a better physics GRE score, then I should have no problem at all with grad schools next year. From my perspective, I think the master's program would be an enjoyable experience, and would give me the opportunity to see first-hand if I really want to pursue a physics PhD, or if I'd rather pursue a math PhD or something else entirely. I'm also fairly confident that I would do well in the master's program, and could even potentially use the program as a gateway to the PhD program at the same school. On the other hand, I could easily end up in a new city with no friends, no connections within the department, and no time between grad courses and potential research to study for and do better on the physics GRE, which I think was the biggest thing holding my applications back. Not to mention, the master's program would cost an entire year's tuition. While paying for the program isn't an issue, I have serious ethical concerns with spending so much money on graduate school, when I would be paid to do the same thing in a PhD program. If I stay here, I think I would also enjoy the job I've been offered, and if I can get some research done on the side and do better on the physics GRE, then I agree that my application would be fairly iron-clad. But there's always the possibility that I can't get anything published, or that I don't do much better on the physics GRE, or maybe even that I get a publication and better physics GRE score but no better results. In addition, funding for the job offer won't go through until May, and while I've been assured that it almost certainly won't happen, there's always the chance that the job doesn't get funded (I have to decide on the master's program within a week, so I'd be crossing my fingers that the job works out). There's even the chance that I get the job, but it doesn't leave me with adequate time to also do research, at which point I'm not sure how much better my application would be. I know this has been a super long post, but if anyone's made it to this part, any advice on what I might do? My first instinct is that my parents don't know what they're talking about and that my professors do, but I do think there's more than a kernel of truth that they've already given me bad advice with regards to my PhD applications, and I'm scared to take their advice and find that I've made the same mistake several times in a row. Assistant: Masters is waste if Time if you eventually want to do a PhD. Do the job for the year and reapply for PhD programs. Your parents are trying to help but unless they are tenured professors or work in academia they won't really know the best options.

Human: Questions about the financial feasibility of a PhD program with two kids in NYC. ​ Hello everyone. I'm finishing up a second MA in educational leadership and would like to continue my research. I am currently a certified high school teacher of students with disabilities and I thought that I wanted to go into administration. This degree taught me that is probably not the best path for me. I live in NYC and have looked at both EdD programs online (my favorites were Johns Hopkins and Vanderbilt) and in person EdD and PhD programs in the city. It's pretty clear that the EdD programs are not going to give me the research opportunities that I want and the programs that are still interesting enough to pursue are all self funded. I'm currently considering applying to PhD programs that fit my area of interest but I don't have an idea how I'm going to live. Even if the research gets fully funded. What does the stipend look like? Would I be able to work full time as a teacher (not likely)? I have two kids and a supportive partner, my only (current) concern is money. Any insight is appreciated. Assistant: - your concern is money - NYC - education field I think you should also be concerned about how realistic you are not all teachers are as smart as they think they are

Human: Questions about the financial feasibility of a PhD program with two kids in NYC. ​ Hello everyone. I'm finishing up a second MA in educational leadership and would like to continue my research. I am currently a certified high school teacher of students with disabilities and I thought that I wanted to go into administration. This degree taught me that is probably not the best path for me. I live in NYC and have looked at both EdD programs online (my favorites were Johns Hopkins and Vanderbilt) and in person EdD and PhD programs in the city. It's pretty clear that the EdD programs are not going to give me the research opportunities that I want and the programs that are still interesting enough to pursue are all self funded. I'm currently considering applying to PhD programs that fit my area of interest but I don't have an idea how I'm going to live. Even if the research gets fully funded. What does the stipend look like? Would I be able to work full time as a teacher (not likely)? I have two kids and a supportive partner, my only (current) concern is money. Any insight is appreciated. Assistant: Just had another thought-- what kind of research do you want to do? I was assuming education but is that correct? There's a huge field of educational research and consulting. Feels like a bit of a hiring boom right now, so if you have classroom teaching experience and any training in methods at all (interviews, basic survey), you might be able to get a research job right now. I know folks who got degrees while working for companies like ETS. Their schedules are way more flexible than teaching.

Human: How many times can I ask the same professor for a recommendation letter, and how to overcome intense discomfort of asking for these letters? Rec letters are always my least favorite part of any application, simply because I feel like an annoyance to my professors/recommenders every time I ask. I have one particular recommender who has written me letters on two different occasions. I have another program coming up that I would love for her to recommend me for, but I'm worried she will be annoyed with my 3rd request. I'd consider asking someone else, but I don't exactly have a huge pool of names to draw from, as I'm very early on in my college career and the opportunity already requires recommendations from multiple people. Is a third request too many? Additionally, how do I overcome my dread of asking for letters, especially when asking the same person multiple different times? Assistant: Once a professor has written one letter for you, it’s far easier to write additional letters since we don’t start from scratch. So if it makes sense, continue to ask the same person - it will be more work for a new person. However, if you’re a junior or senior, having a person who simply had you in class as a freshmen write a letter doesn’t make sense.

Human: How many times can I ask the same professor for a recommendation letter, and how to overcome intense discomfort of asking for these letters? Rec letters are always my least favorite part of any application, simply because I feel like an annoyance to my professors/recommenders every time I ask. I have one particular recommender who has written me letters on two different occasions. I have another program coming up that I would love for her to recommend me for, but I'm worried she will be annoyed with my 3rd request. I'd consider asking someone else, but I don't exactly have a huge pool of names to draw from, as I'm very early on in my college career and the opportunity already requires recommendations from multiple people. Is a third request too many? Additionally, how do I overcome my dread of asking for letters, especially when asking the same person multiple different times? Assistant: To give context, as a PhD I applied to 120 jobs in two years and my letter writers didn’t bat an eye. Once they have their letter written, more is extremely easy. It’s part of our job. Don’t feel guilty, ask away.

Human: A question to STEM PIs and Professors: Would you hire a postdoc who has published a lot in Frontiers journals? Considering that a lot of people view Frontiers as "predatory" (I myself do not fall into this category), would you be skeptical about hiring someone who has published a lot in these journals? Assistant: People in this sub can be very elitist about where others publish. There are very well respected researchers in my field that publish in medium impact (~4.0) Frontiers and MDPI journals, which this sub regularly turns their nose up at. Having said that I have tried to spread out the journals I publish in as much as possible, it can look weird if all of your publications are in the same exact journal. People might think you have an in at the journal and are getting preferential treatment or something.

Human: A question to STEM PIs and Professors: Would you hire a postdoc who has published a lot in Frontiers journals? Considering that a lot of people view Frontiers as "predatory" (I myself do not fall into this category), would you be skeptical about hiring someone who has published a lot in these journals? Assistant: Might vary by field but neuroscientists love Frontiers.

Human: Getting an Assistant Professor position at R1 university Hi, I am nearing the end of my PhD and am looking for Tenure-track Assistant Professor positions at R1 universities. I have a good profile publication-wise (journal and conference) but I don't really have any experience writing proposals or securing grants. However, over the past few months, I have taken courses and workshops covering proposal writing. Are universities usually flexible in their criteria to give a chance to individuals like me with a weak profile in just the aspect of proposal writing? Also, what would you recommend me to do to improve this domain in the last semester of my PhD? Assistant: Imo, given the state of the academic job market right now, it's unlikely that you would get a position without having ever received a research grant. In my Master's program we were advised that this would even reflect poorly on us in applications to a PhD program. Apply for postdocs and try to secure funding that way. As someone else said, postdocs are more or less standard these days even for otherwise exceptional candidates.

Human: Getting an Assistant Professor position at R1 university Hi, I am nearing the end of my PhD and am looking for Tenure-track Assistant Professor positions at R1 universities. I have a good profile publication-wise (journal and conference) but I don't really have any experience writing proposals or securing grants. However, over the past few months, I have taken courses and workshops covering proposal writing. Are universities usually flexible in their criteria to give a chance to individuals like me with a weak profile in just the aspect of proposal writing? Also, what would you recommend me to do to improve this domain in the last semester of my PhD? Assistant: You show that you understand the grant landscape. In your application materials you say what projects you will be targetting what grant. Be specific, not just NIH/NSF, but "with this I will submit a NSF career grant" or "I will apply for X foundation grant which will support collecting the prelimary data necessary to apply for \[specific grant mechanism\]. You application materials themselves are much like a proposal, so that will show you have some chops.