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LMSes [Canvas and Blackboard]
Aug. 24th, 2018 02:50 pmBack in the carefree days earlier in the week, I went to a training session hosted by the college on switching over from Blackboard to Canvas. Blackboard and Canvas are "Learning Management Systems," which is kind of a fancy way of saying "file-hosting systems." The fundamental premise behind them is that they're a place where professors can electronically post copies of their lectures, assignments, and supplementary material, where students can go to find everything all in one place.
I think we started using Blackboard at Tufts partway through my undergraduate degree. I remember checking it to download PowerPoint presentations. That was also still fairly early in the era of PowerPoint presentations, where the vast majority of people using the software were using it to display verbose, typed-up versions of their lecture notes, with occasional pictures. For some historic background, the major alternate approach that I observed at Tufts at that time was to have students acquire a "lecture packet," which was a printed and bound book that contained all of the figures that professors were planning on showing us on the overhead projector or slide projector that semester. For those classes, you'd go to lecture (ahem) and take written notes in a notebook, referencing your lecture packet as appropriate for specific figures. In all, I felt like the more traditional method of the time was better for teaching me how to summarize information and take good notes.
From the Wikipedia History Page I see that Blackboard was founded in 1997.
Anyway, educators looove to talk about "kids these days," which is often shorthand for not having a good grasp on what kinds of things contemporary students need from their instructors - those needs may differ from what students required in previous eras, when, for example, they would need to be familiar with things like how card catalogues operate. What I really appreciated about the LMS training session was getting walked through all of the ways in which Canvas is better-structured from the ground up to work for students, in comparison to Blackboard. In a nutshell (help! I'm in a nutshell!), it is structured around course modules, and the general format for Canvas courses is consistent from course to course instead of being slightly TOO flexible. This drastically simplifies navigational headaches for students, which hopefully means they can focus more time and effort on their coursework, and see where they are in terms of overall progress with coursework, and less time and effort on clicking around to figure out where the syllabus is and what they should be focusing their attention on. [I mean, aside from all the other fun distractions that colleges offer outside of the classroom].
So we shall see how this all goes for the fall, as I'll need to create a brand-new Canvas course in addition to generating all of my own materials for first-semester General Biology. Thankfully there's very good overlap with subjects I've covered as a teaching assistant in grad school, so in some ways it won't be quite as new as Animal Physiology was. The main distinction between grad school and here seems to be in how material is presented: my PhD advisor and her colleagues did a wonderful job of structuring all their introductory lectures around the history and nature of science in Biology, whereas most of what I've observed here so far suggests people are either teaching more directly from the textbook or using a more fact-based approach. That can be all right, depending on what people want students to take away from the course. Personally, I find the history and nature approach more fun, and I'm hoping my students come away from the course with improved reasoning skills and with enthusiasm for biology. We shall see, of course.
I think we started using Blackboard at Tufts partway through my undergraduate degree. I remember checking it to download PowerPoint presentations. That was also still fairly early in the era of PowerPoint presentations, where the vast majority of people using the software were using it to display verbose, typed-up versions of their lecture notes, with occasional pictures. For some historic background, the major alternate approach that I observed at Tufts at that time was to have students acquire a "lecture packet," which was a printed and bound book that contained all of the figures that professors were planning on showing us on the overhead projector or slide projector that semester. For those classes, you'd go to lecture (ahem) and take written notes in a notebook, referencing your lecture packet as appropriate for specific figures. In all, I felt like the more traditional method of the time was better for teaching me how to summarize information and take good notes.
From the Wikipedia History Page I see that Blackboard was founded in 1997.
Anyway, educators looove to talk about "kids these days," which is often shorthand for not having a good grasp on what kinds of things contemporary students need from their instructors - those needs may differ from what students required in previous eras, when, for example, they would need to be familiar with things like how card catalogues operate. What I really appreciated about the LMS training session was getting walked through all of the ways in which Canvas is better-structured from the ground up to work for students, in comparison to Blackboard. In a nutshell (help! I'm in a nutshell!), it is structured around course modules, and the general format for Canvas courses is consistent from course to course instead of being slightly TOO flexible. This drastically simplifies navigational headaches for students, which hopefully means they can focus more time and effort on their coursework, and see where they are in terms of overall progress with coursework, and less time and effort on clicking around to figure out where the syllabus is and what they should be focusing their attention on. [I mean, aside from all the other fun distractions that colleges offer outside of the classroom].
So we shall see how this all goes for the fall, as I'll need to create a brand-new Canvas course in addition to generating all of my own materials for first-semester General Biology. Thankfully there's very good overlap with subjects I've covered as a teaching assistant in grad school, so in some ways it won't be quite as new as Animal Physiology was. The main distinction between grad school and here seems to be in how material is presented: my PhD advisor and her colleagues did a wonderful job of structuring all their introductory lectures around the history and nature of science in Biology, whereas most of what I've observed here so far suggests people are either teaching more directly from the textbook or using a more fact-based approach. That can be all right, depending on what people want students to take away from the course. Personally, I find the history and nature approach more fun, and I'm hoping my students come away from the course with improved reasoning skills and with enthusiasm for biology. We shall see, of course.
Data curation
Jul. 10th, 2018 04:08 pmGive me a few more days and I'll be able to match the average programmer for general crabbiness levels.
Working with Other Peoples' Data can be a nightmare.
Specific Examples:
If two iPads are simultaneously logged into an Oogley-Googley web page of typey-boxes, one can very easily and unwittingly over-write the other, with no form of absolute step-by-step version control check. In case you had any doubts about this sort of "shared editing" being a terrible idea.
Are those crucial data files stored on personal computers, backed up to a shared external hard drive, on Brop-Dox, given over to the Oogle-googles, in an e-mail as an attachment, hard copy somewhere? All of the above, but varying according to person and year? Oh, what's that, in some cases the information only exists as frozen samples in frozen-over freezers?
What, exactly, do those 191 distinct letter code combinations mean?
Getting interrupted periodically by Thought-Jammers REALLY doesn't help.
/vaguebooking
/grump
Working with Other Peoples' Data can be a nightmare.
Specific Examples:
If two iPads are simultaneously logged into an Oogley-Googley web page of typey-boxes, one can very easily and unwittingly over-write the other, with no form of absolute step-by-step version control check. In case you had any doubts about this sort of "shared editing" being a terrible idea.
Are those crucial data files stored on personal computers, backed up to a shared external hard drive, on Brop-Dox, given over to the Oogle-googles, in an e-mail as an attachment, hard copy somewhere? All of the above, but varying according to person and year? Oh, what's that, in some cases the information only exists as frozen samples in frozen-over freezers?
What, exactly, do those 191 distinct letter code combinations mean?
Getting interrupted periodically by Thought-Jammers REALLY doesn't help.
/vaguebooking
/grump
Inventory [academic projects]
Jun. 26th, 2018 01:28 pmCurrent writing project statuses:
1. Leafcutter ant Manuscript of Doom: From the most recent reviews (rejected), Reviewer 1 noted that our premise was about simultaneously testing two frameworks used to study nutrient limitation in living systems, but that we fell short of what we'd promised because x, y, and z. This is because I'd felt that it was too much to put in both the nutrient analyses AND the feeding/growth experiments, and in any case I still need to chew over how to present the nutrient analyses. In the meantime, last year, a synthesis paper got published that examines how these two nutrition frameworks intersect. Reviewer 2 recommended we incorporate the paper, and reviewer 2 is right. So my new to-do list: evaluate how to add back in the existing nutrient analyses, do a few more biochemical analyses (cellulose content - aka "fiber"), come up with a new target journal, revise the Introduction and Discussion, and resubmit. Piece of cake, right?
2. Texas project on cricket nutrition/lifespan/reproduction: manuscript is mostly written. I had an intellectual breakthrough several weeks ago, but have mostly been working on other, more time-sensitive stuff in the meantime, so I haven't gotten back to actively working on this one.
3. Nebraska cricket projects: Going back over my notes, I'm supposed to be responsible for writing at least 2 out of 4 manuscripts. I just sent a message to my coauthors to let them know the current status of those manuscripts, which are mostly still stuck in the data analysis phase. I suspect the other 2 have also stagnated because they include some data that are currently in my possession. Hard to write results if you don't have the data.
4. California cricket projects: I need to run a few more statistical analyses for Circadian Project 1, at which point my postdoc mentor is supposed to be doing the majority of the writing. In theory. I need to run a bunch more statistical analyses for Circadian Project 2, now that follow-up data collection is finally finished.
5. Seed-harvester ants: Cleaning up other peoples' data makes me grumpy. However, at least I now finally have ALL the data. This manuscript is supposed to be a sort of synthesis paper, which should be very intellectually satisfying, once it's finished. It's going to be a painful headache to get done, though, because it relies on multiple years of ragged datasets collected by a whole host of people.
6. Non-first author projects: Two seed-harvester papers and a cricket nutrition paper (California). Maybe also another leafcutter paper. The seed-harvester papers have been taking up a lot of time recently.
Yeah, that's a lot of balls to be keeping in the air. I know.
My plan when I get to the new job is to stick to small-scale things initially - low-hanging fruit. The bottleneck for me is still data analysis and writing, so I'm thinking I might see about training undergraduates to work on very specific/discrete pieces of the writing projects (e.g. literature review on a specific topic; maybe development of critique skills?). We shall see.
1. Leafcutter ant Manuscript of Doom: From the most recent reviews (rejected), Reviewer 1 noted that our premise was about simultaneously testing two frameworks used to study nutrient limitation in living systems, but that we fell short of what we'd promised because x, y, and z. This is because I'd felt that it was too much to put in both the nutrient analyses AND the feeding/growth experiments, and in any case I still need to chew over how to present the nutrient analyses. In the meantime, last year, a synthesis paper got published that examines how these two nutrition frameworks intersect. Reviewer 2 recommended we incorporate the paper, and reviewer 2 is right. So my new to-do list: evaluate how to add back in the existing nutrient analyses, do a few more biochemical analyses (cellulose content - aka "fiber"), come up with a new target journal, revise the Introduction and Discussion, and resubmit. Piece of cake, right?
2. Texas project on cricket nutrition/lifespan/reproduction: manuscript is mostly written. I had an intellectual breakthrough several weeks ago, but have mostly been working on other, more time-sensitive stuff in the meantime, so I haven't gotten back to actively working on this one.
3. Nebraska cricket projects: Going back over my notes, I'm supposed to be responsible for writing at least 2 out of 4 manuscripts. I just sent a message to my coauthors to let them know the current status of those manuscripts, which are mostly still stuck in the data analysis phase. I suspect the other 2 have also stagnated because they include some data that are currently in my possession. Hard to write results if you don't have the data.
4. California cricket projects: I need to run a few more statistical analyses for Circadian Project 1, at which point my postdoc mentor is supposed to be doing the majority of the writing. In theory. I need to run a bunch more statistical analyses for Circadian Project 2, now that follow-up data collection is finally finished.
5. Seed-harvester ants: Cleaning up other peoples' data makes me grumpy. However, at least I now finally have ALL the data. This manuscript is supposed to be a sort of synthesis paper, which should be very intellectually satisfying, once it's finished. It's going to be a painful headache to get done, though, because it relies on multiple years of ragged datasets collected by a whole host of people.
6. Non-first author projects: Two seed-harvester papers and a cricket nutrition paper (California). Maybe also another leafcutter paper. The seed-harvester papers have been taking up a lot of time recently.
Yeah, that's a lot of balls to be keeping in the air. I know.
My plan when I get to the new job is to stick to small-scale things initially - low-hanging fruit. The bottleneck for me is still data analysis and writing, so I'm thinking I might see about training undergraduates to work on very specific/discrete pieces of the writing projects (e.g. literature review on a specific topic; maybe development of critique skills?). We shall see.
Gradually coming around
May. 15th, 2018 09:02 amNot letting myself get distracted by the Tweet-machine during the middle of the day is still hard, which means it's definitely a necessary personal policy to stay off it during working hours, as with the Book of Face. What happens to me is I find myself needing a brief mental pause, so I flip over to check things, and get sucked in. A better mental pause would be something like gazing out a window with a nice view, or staring at an ant colony on my desk, or petting a cat (except cats don't always have the best timing).
Sometimes it feels like it takes me forever to come around to figuring out how to deal with disappointing outcomes, like the manuscript rejection last week. But finally, I think I am, after multiple nights of waking up at 3 am with my mind going in useless circles. It helped that a new paper came out last week that shifts our understanding of the evolutionary relationship between leafcutter ants and their fungus garden. The main take-home message from this new paper is that more emphasis should be put on thinking about how the behavior of different leaf-cutter species has affected the ecological success of individual species. The paper also reminded me of another paper I reviewed a while ago which I need to think about some more and probably cite in the next revision of the Leafcutter Manuscript of Doom. Somehow it also helped to get the final outcome for a totally unrelated manuscript that I reviewed, in which the editor both respected my input and ensured I don't have to look at the darned thing yet again (fix your terrible writing, people!). I guess it was just helpful reassurance that I'm not a complete idiot (=imposter syndrome).
In the meantime, there are always plenty of other things to work on, of course. Too much time is getting eaten up by other people's ant-related projects at the moment, but later this week I am going to deliberately shift over to cricket stuff for a while. So much juggling.
My evening reading these days is a somewhat historic text on life history evolution (published in 1992). It's slow going, and I'm not clear on whether that's just because I find the content challenging, or whether that has to do with the writing style. Probably both, right? It's academic writing, after all. On the other hand, it feels like the book is putting a lot of different pieces into place for me, as it provides some of the foundational context for thinking about life history trade-offs. Yet another book I wish I'd read early in grad school. Better late than never. I'm not looking forward to reading the other text on life history evolution from 1992, because in my experience the other author's writing tends towards the unintelligible, which is really unfortunate. But on the other hand, it will be very useful to have finished reading both books so I can cite them where appropriate.
Do you have any tricks for getting through reading slogs?
Sometimes it feels like it takes me forever to come around to figuring out how to deal with disappointing outcomes, like the manuscript rejection last week. But finally, I think I am, after multiple nights of waking up at 3 am with my mind going in useless circles. It helped that a new paper came out last week that shifts our understanding of the evolutionary relationship between leafcutter ants and their fungus garden. The main take-home message from this new paper is that more emphasis should be put on thinking about how the behavior of different leaf-cutter species has affected the ecological success of individual species. The paper also reminded me of another paper I reviewed a while ago which I need to think about some more and probably cite in the next revision of the Leafcutter Manuscript of Doom. Somehow it also helped to get the final outcome for a totally unrelated manuscript that I reviewed, in which the editor both respected my input and ensured I don't have to look at the darned thing yet again (fix your terrible writing, people!). I guess it was just helpful reassurance that I'm not a complete idiot (=imposter syndrome).
In the meantime, there are always plenty of other things to work on, of course. Too much time is getting eaten up by other people's ant-related projects at the moment, but later this week I am going to deliberately shift over to cricket stuff for a while. So much juggling.
My evening reading these days is a somewhat historic text on life history evolution (published in 1992). It's slow going, and I'm not clear on whether that's just because I find the content challenging, or whether that has to do with the writing style. Probably both, right? It's academic writing, after all. On the other hand, it feels like the book is putting a lot of different pieces into place for me, as it provides some of the foundational context for thinking about life history trade-offs. Yet another book I wish I'd read early in grad school. Better late than never. I'm not looking forward to reading the other text on life history evolution from 1992, because in my experience the other author's writing tends towards the unintelligible, which is really unfortunate. But on the other hand, it will be very useful to have finished reading both books so I can cite them where appropriate.
Do you have any tricks for getting through reading slogs?
Oh, the e-mails
Jan. 16th, 2018 10:41 amTeaching 280 students means a lot of e-mails. At least I'm on campus, with fast, functional internet.
Also, technology sucks and it never works right. Specifically: content management systems for learning applications, the integration of multiple CMSes, clicker software, Microsoft products in general, and SSO systems.
Also, I am not a fan of the ways that textbook publishers do business. This is linked to my hatred of other businesses that prey on students. There are many, and they all suck.
If we had a large blackboard, I would totally use it to teach. Unfortunately, all that we have is a video projector system. Those are terrible for left-handed people like me, because students can't see what I am writing while I write it (my hand covers the words I have just written).
Also, technology sucks and it never works right. Specifically: content management systems for learning applications, the integration of multiple CMSes, clicker software, Microsoft products in general, and SSO systems.
Also, I am not a fan of the ways that textbook publishers do business. This is linked to my hatred of other businesses that prey on students. There are many, and they all suck.
If we had a large blackboard, I would totally use it to teach. Unfortunately, all that we have is a video projector system. Those are terrible for left-handed people like me, because students can't see what I am writing while I write it (my hand covers the words I have just written).
My postdoc mentor here has lab members create a "Semester Plan" each semester. I've participated sporadically, but I mention them here because of one facet of the plan-creation process.
There's a faculty development podcast that walks through the process for creating a Semester Plan, which involves documenting your personal and professional goals, and then actually mapping them to the space-time continuum. At the end, the person who put the podcast together says, "Now take a minute to assess how you feel about your plan - nervous, worried, excited." That's the facet of interest at the moment.
So here's where I am, today. In the thick of things as far as job applications go. But I just submitted one where, instead of feeling frustrated/sad/dejected/gloomy, I feel pretty darned EXCITED. As in, YES, there are jobs out there that I'm highly qualified for, that sound awesome, and maybe, just maybe, I have a shot at them. I'm also relieved to check this off the to-do list for today, because yes, it's a long, exhausting to-do list. But now I don't have anything pressing that is going to require a lot of complex thought.
I need to remember this feeling of excitement, and use it to sustain myself through this whole job application season. I'll bet you a billion other top-notch people have applied for this particular job, anyway.
And I also need to just delete things from the memory banks, so that I don't get too bogged down in waiting to hear back.
There's a faculty development podcast that walks through the process for creating a Semester Plan, which involves documenting your personal and professional goals, and then actually mapping them to the space-time continuum. At the end, the person who put the podcast together says, "Now take a minute to assess how you feel about your plan - nervous, worried, excited." That's the facet of interest at the moment.
So here's where I am, today. In the thick of things as far as job applications go. But I just submitted one where, instead of feeling frustrated/sad/dejected/gloomy, I feel pretty darned EXCITED. As in, YES, there are jobs out there that I'm highly qualified for, that sound awesome, and maybe, just maybe, I have a shot at them. I'm also relieved to check this off the to-do list for today, because yes, it's a long, exhausting to-do list. But now I don't have anything pressing that is going to require a lot of complex thought.
I need to remember this feeling of excitement, and use it to sustain myself through this whole job application season. I'll bet you a billion other top-notch people have applied for this particular job, anyway.
And I also need to just delete things from the memory banks, so that I don't get too bogged down in waiting to hear back.
Let's do this.
Oct. 10th, 2017 09:54 amToday I am applying to two jobs that I don't expect to get.
Why apply anyway?
One includes two writing prompts. In 200 words or less: (1) "Describe your past research accomplishments, their significance, and why you are excited about them." and (2) "Describe your near future research goals (ca. the next five years) and your fit to our Department."
Meta-thinking. I find this to be one of the more challenging aspects of doing science, but it's an extremely useful exercise regardless. I should have a sense of where I am and where I'm going, eh?
Why apply anyway?
One includes two writing prompts. In 200 words or less: (1) "Describe your past research accomplishments, their significance, and why you are excited about them." and (2) "Describe your near future research goals (ca. the next five years) and your fit to our Department."
Meta-thinking. I find this to be one of the more challenging aspects of doing science, but it's an extremely useful exercise regardless. I should have a sense of where I am and where I'm going, eh?
Rejection Season; Supporting Science
Apr. 25th, 2017 02:46 pmIn the last week or two, I've gotten several of those emails that say, "Oh yeah, by the way, that job you applied for way back in September? Well...in case you couldn't read between the lines by now...we picked someone else."
Someone who had slightly better luck than me wrote an article that just got published about his experience job-hunting. I am hoping the detailed quantitative information that he tracked for his job application process will be helpful for people who haven't yet realized that this is how things now work within the biological sciences.* While the author provides the appropriate caveats (he's presenting his own anecdata), my conversations with other people who have recently been hired or who are currently on the job market suggest his experience is at least reasonably representative of the current norm.
The author applied for 60 jobs last fall, during the time when I struggled just to turn in 11 applications because of a grueling circadian research schedule, conference travel, and some concerns about not overburdening my letter-writers.
I don't mean for this to be a pity party, but my subconscious has other ideas. It keeps seeing fit to remind me that I don't know what I'm going to do next, and keeps suggesting that maybe I should have some sort of massive freakout or massive depressive episode. Meanwhile, I'd like to get data analyzed and manuscripts submitted, thankyouverymuch, and I'd like to carve out more time for working towards future prospects. A freakout won't help, but on the other hand, we don't exactly get to choose our emotions, and at least part of my emotional state has more to do with life circumstances outside of professional prospects anyway.**
-
Anyway, here is another thing to consider, from a very different angle: a detailed article on the sources and uses of US science funding. This is useful for perspective on what it means to support science in a substantive manner (as much fun as it is to march for science...).
In case you aren't immediately enticed to read the article, a couple elements to consider:
-The two main funding sources for basic research are the federal government and industry, which both vastly outpower state and local government spending (Figure 4).
-Industry spending has greatly outpaced government spending (Figure 4). However, if we examine total research spending as a percentage of GDP (Figure 2 in the article), it's apparent that there has actually been a general long-term increase in research spending since 1994.
-There are a lot of interesting shifts between different aspects of research - for example, between money devoted to "defense" versus "nondefense," or in totals devoted to things like medical research (big boost between 1998-2004) vs. space exploration (declining) vs. energy research (intermittent).
-If R&D expenditures are considered as a percentage of GDP, the US spends more than the EU as a whole, but less than Japan, South Korea, and China. The US also spends more based on several other comparison methods.
-The final section comments on the translation from these specific numbers to policy analysis, asking some important questions about social goals with research spending (basic research, applied research, development) and how various different goals should be balanced.
I think this article paints a useful picture that's different from what you might hear from a lot of scientists working in the trenches. As best I understand, competition for funding has gone up in the same manner as competition for academic jobs: more grant proposals submitted, fewer grants funded. I have to wonder if this side of things is partly due to pushes to increase STEM training. Anyway, from the vantage point of this article, for the moment the US is still looking pretty good in terms of its investment in science, which is some comfort. Obviously big changes to the federal budget could quickly alter the picture, but the longer-term view isn't so bad.
* I hope this audience includes at least one of my letter-writers.
** This isn't a super articulate sentence because this point isn't my main focus for this post and I don't want to elaborate right now.
Someone who had slightly better luck than me wrote an article that just got published about his experience job-hunting. I am hoping the detailed quantitative information that he tracked for his job application process will be helpful for people who haven't yet realized that this is how things now work within the biological sciences.* While the author provides the appropriate caveats (he's presenting his own anecdata), my conversations with other people who have recently been hired or who are currently on the job market suggest his experience is at least reasonably representative of the current norm.
The author applied for 60 jobs last fall, during the time when I struggled just to turn in 11 applications because of a grueling circadian research schedule, conference travel, and some concerns about not overburdening my letter-writers.
I don't mean for this to be a pity party, but my subconscious has other ideas. It keeps seeing fit to remind me that I don't know what I'm going to do next, and keeps suggesting that maybe I should have some sort of massive freakout or massive depressive episode. Meanwhile, I'd like to get data analyzed and manuscripts submitted, thankyouverymuch, and I'd like to carve out more time for working towards future prospects. A freakout won't help, but on the other hand, we don't exactly get to choose our emotions, and at least part of my emotional state has more to do with life circumstances outside of professional prospects anyway.**
-
Anyway, here is another thing to consider, from a very different angle: a detailed article on the sources and uses of US science funding. This is useful for perspective on what it means to support science in a substantive manner (as much fun as it is to march for science...).
In case you aren't immediately enticed to read the article, a couple elements to consider:
-The two main funding sources for basic research are the federal government and industry, which both vastly outpower state and local government spending (Figure 4).
-Industry spending has greatly outpaced government spending (Figure 4). However, if we examine total research spending as a percentage of GDP (Figure 2 in the article), it's apparent that there has actually been a general long-term increase in research spending since 1994.
-There are a lot of interesting shifts between different aspects of research - for example, between money devoted to "defense" versus "nondefense," or in totals devoted to things like medical research (big boost between 1998-2004) vs. space exploration (declining) vs. energy research (intermittent).
-If R&D expenditures are considered as a percentage of GDP, the US spends more than the EU as a whole, but less than Japan, South Korea, and China. The US also spends more based on several other comparison methods.
-The final section comments on the translation from these specific numbers to policy analysis, asking some important questions about social goals with research spending (basic research, applied research, development) and how various different goals should be balanced.
I think this article paints a useful picture that's different from what you might hear from a lot of scientists working in the trenches. As best I understand, competition for funding has gone up in the same manner as competition for academic jobs: more grant proposals submitted, fewer grants funded. I have to wonder if this side of things is partly due to pushes to increase STEM training. Anyway, from the vantage point of this article, for the moment the US is still looking pretty good in terms of its investment in science, which is some comfort. Obviously big changes to the federal budget could quickly alter the picture, but the longer-term view isn't so bad.
* I hope this audience includes at least one of my letter-writers.
** This isn't a super articulate sentence because this point isn't my main focus for this post and I don't want to elaborate right now.
The power of encouragement
Jan. 20th, 2017 09:37 amThe Visiting Scholars and Postdoc Association here continues to be a helpful asset for me. Last night, they sponsored a [pep] talk by a guy named Peter Fiske, author of a book titled Put Your Science to Work, about alt-academic careers. Talking to one of the VSPA workers, it sounds like they bring him in about once a year, to which I say, good.
It never ceases to amaze me how much it helps just to hear words of encouragement, especially after feeling beaten-down within the academic system. It's very easy to forget that this little academic universe is its own pernicious sort of bubble, and that in the real world I do, in fact, have a lot of useful and valuable skills and qualities.
It never ceases to amaze me how much it helps just to hear words of encouragement, especially after feeling beaten-down within the academic system. It's very easy to forget that this little academic universe is its own pernicious sort of bubble, and that in the real world I do, in fact, have a lot of useful and valuable skills and qualities.
Braining, slowly
Oct. 25th, 2016 12:07 pmWe're back on deck with the circadian experiment.
One of the most challenging aspects, for me, is when I have these long evenings that I can't really put to effective use. I tried to work on some statistical analyses last night, but I really needed to look stuff up in Zar, which was at home. So I just ate too many biscotti instead.
I have this other massive stats book at work called Applied Linear Statistical Models (which I will call NKNW after its authors), but it's ever-so-slightly more mathematical and less pragmatic than Biostatistical Analysis (aka Zar). So when I need to look up something like how to calculate statistical power, NKNW doesn't actually help.
Nor does the internet, because as we all know the internet isn't a vetted source, and you'll find about 12 different sources with 12 different styles of calculations. In addition, for a lot of stats stuff it's helpful to learn a consistent set of variables and calculations because there's a hell of a lot of sloppy work out there and it's easy to get stuck in a swamp of incomprehension because someone defines things in a slightly different fashion. And that's how "Data Science" got invented.
Today, however, I have Zar again, so maybe I can fwump myself over this hurdle and on to the next thing (job applications again).
One of the most challenging aspects, for me, is when I have these long evenings that I can't really put to effective use. I tried to work on some statistical analyses last night, but I really needed to look stuff up in Zar, which was at home. So I just ate too many biscotti instead.
I have this other massive stats book at work called Applied Linear Statistical Models (which I will call NKNW after its authors), but it's ever-so-slightly more mathematical and less pragmatic than Biostatistical Analysis (aka Zar). So when I need to look up something like how to calculate statistical power, NKNW doesn't actually help.
Nor does the internet, because as we all know the internet isn't a vetted source, and you'll find about 12 different sources with 12 different styles of calculations. In addition, for a lot of stats stuff it's helpful to learn a consistent set of variables and calculations because there's a hell of a lot of sloppy work out there and it's easy to get stuck in a swamp of incomprehension because someone defines things in a slightly different fashion. And that's how "Data Science" got invented.
Today, however, I have Zar again, so maybe I can fwump myself over this hurdle and on to the next thing (job applications again).
Deeper thinking
Oct. 19th, 2016 06:31 pmOne of the questions that I have been practicing asking myself lately is, "What is the broader significance of this finding?"
I find it challenging to draw myself back out to the level of generalities. In the leafcutter literature, it seems to me like there are a lot of cases where people don't bother trying to do this. It's a matter of getting stuck in the specific mechanisms at hand.
TZ is much better-practiced at this art. In some respects, that's just a product of having experience working in the same system for a long time. But to some extent it has probably also been a product of having spent a lot of time thinking about his field of interest (life-history evolution), and only subsequently picking a specific study system within that field.
In that respect, my story has been more convoluted because I got into the study of social insects based on an interest in network systems. My initial argument was simple: social insects are useful because they're easier to manipulate than many other kinds of network systems. Then, of course, I had to learn a tremendous amount about social evolution and nutrition and a bunch of other nonsense.
But think, for example, about trying to manipulate nutrition in a developing brain. I've been sitting in on a seminar led by a researcher who has been interested in how nutrition in the brain intersects with recovery prospects for traumatic brain injury patients. Very challenging to study, but with obvious rewards. It's funny, though, because he's neatly back in the category of "this is useful because direct human benefits," whereas I'm happier working in a more purely theoretical context.
Anyway. I have just sent the current Leafcutter Manuscript of Doom back over to my Ph.D. advisor. I hope she can give it an extremely thorough going-over. One can hope. Otherwise, it's probably time for me to set it down for a while and work on other things where my energy and ideas feel more fresh.
I find it challenging to draw myself back out to the level of generalities. In the leafcutter literature, it seems to me like there are a lot of cases where people don't bother trying to do this. It's a matter of getting stuck in the specific mechanisms at hand.
TZ is much better-practiced at this art. In some respects, that's just a product of having experience working in the same system for a long time. But to some extent it has probably also been a product of having spent a lot of time thinking about his field of interest (life-history evolution), and only subsequently picking a specific study system within that field.
In that respect, my story has been more convoluted because I got into the study of social insects based on an interest in network systems. My initial argument was simple: social insects are useful because they're easier to manipulate than many other kinds of network systems. Then, of course, I had to learn a tremendous amount about social evolution and nutrition and a bunch of other nonsense.
But think, for example, about trying to manipulate nutrition in a developing brain. I've been sitting in on a seminar led by a researcher who has been interested in how nutrition in the brain intersects with recovery prospects for traumatic brain injury patients. Very challenging to study, but with obvious rewards. It's funny, though, because he's neatly back in the category of "this is useful because direct human benefits," whereas I'm happier working in a more purely theoretical context.
Anyway. I have just sent the current Leafcutter Manuscript of Doom back over to my Ph.D. advisor. I hope she can give it an extremely thorough going-over. One can hope. Otherwise, it's probably time for me to set it down for a while and work on other things where my energy and ideas feel more fresh.
Step 1: Find ads. Note deadlines. Organize spreadsheet and decide whether or not to apply.
Step 2: Work on individual applications. For each application, look up info about the department so as to re-tailor materials to specifics of job ad description and department interests.
Step 3: Start individual online application process for individual application. Discover, partway through, that some totally random piece of information is needed. Hunt down the random information.
Step 4: Submit application. Send copies of materials in highly-organized format to reference letter writers, thanking them profusely yet again for writing reference letters for you.
Step 5: Wait several months without hearing anything.
The academic job hiring cycle is annual: ads come out in the summer and early fall up through around January for positions that generally start the following fall. Good luck getting other employment options to line up with that timeline!
-
Meanwhile, in the garden.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sytharin has been out of town on vacation, so it has been up to scrottie and me to harvest and cook as much as we can. Here was last week's harvest:
That's a plant pot full of the Black Prince tomatoes. A-plus, would grow again. That bucket got turned mostly into ketchup.
The cucumbers are more challenging to use up. I finally took some time yesterday to turn a bunch of the pickling cucumbers into refrigerator pickles:
Today I picked a two-thirds plant pot of tomatoes and used them plus that giant cucumber (size of my foot!) to make another batch of cucumber pico de gallo. So, only three medium-large slicing cucumbers left to deal with for now.
Tomato production is starting to wind down, for the Black Princes, at least. There are a couple other varieties in the backyard that look like they're just starting to pick up, but the plants aren't as crazily overgrown as the Black Prince plants, so the net haul won't be as large. Oh -scrottie picked about a gallon of cherry tomatoes, too. I think we're doing all right with tomatoes for the year.
Step 2: Work on individual applications. For each application, look up info about the department so as to re-tailor materials to specifics of job ad description and department interests.
Step 3: Start individual online application process for individual application. Discover, partway through, that some totally random piece of information is needed. Hunt down the random information.
Step 4: Submit application. Send copies of materials in highly-organized format to reference letter writers, thanking them profusely yet again for writing reference letters for you.
Step 5: Wait several months without hearing anything.
The academic job hiring cycle is annual: ads come out in the summer and early fall up through around January for positions that generally start the following fall. Good luck getting other employment options to line up with that timeline!
-
Meanwhile, in the garden.
sytharin has been out of town on vacation, so it has been up to scrottie and me to harvest and cook as much as we can. Here was last week's harvest:That's a plant pot full of the Black Prince tomatoes. A-plus, would grow again. That bucket got turned mostly into ketchup.
The cucumbers are more challenging to use up. I finally took some time yesterday to turn a bunch of the pickling cucumbers into refrigerator pickles:
Today I picked a two-thirds plant pot of tomatoes and used them plus that giant cucumber (size of my foot!) to make another batch of cucumber pico de gallo. So, only three medium-large slicing cucumbers left to deal with for now.
Tomato production is starting to wind down, for the Black Princes, at least. There are a couple other varieties in the backyard that look like they're just starting to pick up, but the plants aren't as crazily overgrown as the Black Prince plants, so the net haul won't be as large. Oh -
scrottie picked about a gallon of cherry tomatoes, too. I think we're doing all right with tomatoes for the year.Breathing [work update]
Sep. 15th, 2016 09:52 amFun and rewarding stuff:
I'm attending two conferences in Florida at the end of the month. The main one is the International Congress of Entomology, held every four years. The previous Congress was held in South Korea, and I was lucky to get to attend it thanks to the grant that funded my work in Texas and Nebraska.
Orlando is a slightly less exciting destination. On the flipside, I'll give a talk about some of the cricket work from Nebraska, on amino acid metabolism in the context of nutrition and the cricket life history trade-off between flight and reproduction. Yesterday I finally had a few minutes to revisit the book Protein Turnover, which is mammal-focused but has a great chapter covering amino acid metabolism. I'm looking forward to making progress on the Nebraska work.
The second conference is a day-long satellite meeting of the North American Section of the International Union for the Study of Social Insects (IUSSI-NAS).
Things could get weird at the IUSSI-NAS meeting. There's a researcher from another group who did some fairly slapdash but high-profile studies on nutrition in a primitive fungus-growing species, who will be giving a talk about his findings. Another grad student from my PhD lab and I (=academic siblings) are both going to present on our work with desert leafcutter ants, in which we've come to a different set of conclusions via different means. We're going to keep the emphasis on high-quality science and insights that can apply to systems beyond fungus-growing ants. I also hope to have the associated manuscript finally off my desk by around the time the meeting rolls around. It still needs a couple more days of hiding in the library and intense concentration.
Other than that, there's not a whole lot going on (asscrottie would say, I'm being boring). Rowing has been helpful for taking my mind off of academic concerns, but the academic matters are pressing and are still keeping me busy at the moment. I always hold on to some optimism that things will settle down in a month or so, but I don't know how realistic that optimism is. I may just need to be even more proactive about managing my time and priorities to ensure I leave time and space for life outside of academic work.
I'm attending two conferences in Florida at the end of the month. The main one is the International Congress of Entomology, held every four years. The previous Congress was held in South Korea, and I was lucky to get to attend it thanks to the grant that funded my work in Texas and Nebraska.
Orlando is a slightly less exciting destination. On the flipside, I'll give a talk about some of the cricket work from Nebraska, on amino acid metabolism in the context of nutrition and the cricket life history trade-off between flight and reproduction. Yesterday I finally had a few minutes to revisit the book Protein Turnover, which is mammal-focused but has a great chapter covering amino acid metabolism. I'm looking forward to making progress on the Nebraska work.
The second conference is a day-long satellite meeting of the North American Section of the International Union for the Study of Social Insects (IUSSI-NAS).
Things could get weird at the IUSSI-NAS meeting. There's a researcher from another group who did some fairly slapdash but high-profile studies on nutrition in a primitive fungus-growing species, who will be giving a talk about his findings. Another grad student from my PhD lab and I (=academic siblings) are both going to present on our work with desert leafcutter ants, in which we've come to a different set of conclusions via different means. We're going to keep the emphasis on high-quality science and insights that can apply to systems beyond fungus-growing ants. I also hope to have the associated manuscript finally off my desk by around the time the meeting rolls around. It still needs a couple more days of hiding in the library and intense concentration.
Other than that, there's not a whole lot going on (as
scrottie would say, I'm being boring). Rowing has been helpful for taking my mind off of academic concerns, but the academic matters are pressing and are still keeping me busy at the moment. I always hold on to some optimism that things will settle down in a month or so, but I don't know how realistic that optimism is. I may just need to be even more proactive about managing my time and priorities to ensure I leave time and space for life outside of academic work.I AM GOING TO DO IT
Jun. 15th, 2016 09:25 amI took the year off from applying for academic jobs last year. I just couldn't stomach it, and was way too busy with experiments to have the gumption and energy.
I've also felt like, to some degree, I haven't had a clear picture of my desired trajectory. I've had a couple of discussions about this with my current boss, and the thing is, she is 100% great. Last week she said, "I think you and I should go over your job application materials soon," so we made an appointment to do so and she said to send her copies regardless of their current state. Spending those 9 months working with TZ was also pivotal. I have moved in some very positive directions.
I still struggle with confidence, but at the same time I feel like I am in a much better position now to go for it. I've been able to spend more time thinking here, and reading some key pieces of the scientific literature. Getting to work with stable isotopes is also nicely rounding out my scientific toolbox to the point where I am feeling like I have the skills I need to move forward with the systems I want to study.
I'm going to take it as a good omen that a job ad for an awesome job also just appeared in my e-mail inbox. LET'S DO THIS.
Also, as J said yesterday, "If I waited until I was completely ready before I did anything, I would never get anything done."
I've also felt like, to some degree, I haven't had a clear picture of my desired trajectory. I've had a couple of discussions about this with my current boss, and the thing is, she is 100% great. Last week she said, "I think you and I should go over your job application materials soon," so we made an appointment to do so and she said to send her copies regardless of their current state. Spending those 9 months working with TZ was also pivotal. I have moved in some very positive directions.
I still struggle with confidence, but at the same time I feel like I am in a much better position now to go for it. I've been able to spend more time thinking here, and reading some key pieces of the scientific literature. Getting to work with stable isotopes is also nicely rounding out my scientific toolbox to the point where I am feeling like I have the skills I need to move forward with the systems I want to study.
I'm going to take it as a good omen that a job ad for an awesome job also just appeared in my e-mail inbox. LET'S DO THIS.
Also, as J said yesterday, "If I waited until I was completely ready before I did anything, I would never get anything done."
Doing science in public
May. 20th, 2016 02:42 pmWhile faffing around today in between productive bouts of working on the leafcutter manuscript (!), I came across a link to this article by Kieran Healey on social media and sociology. The excerpt posted on the Dynamic Ecology blog has convinced me to read and consider it further, and actually, it's relevant to the leafcutter manuscript in addition to being relevant to the act of blogging. Here's are some of those tantalizing excerpts:
"Here is also a natural connection here to the world of scholarly research. Although by now thoroughly professionalized, academic life has deep roots in the desire to talk about scholarly preoccupations in public, and in one’s spare time. It is in this sense an aspect of civil society. On a personal level, having the desire to go and tell people about your work is a good a sign that you are substantively absorbed by what you are doing. The point generalizes to disciplines. To the degree that thinking, talking, and arguing about research in one’s spare time and in public is a feature your field, it is a sign that your discipline is confident about what it does. Modern social media brings together these shared features of civil society and academic discourse in a new way. Social media platforms facilitate and accelerate the possibilities for talking about one’s
work in public, assuming we want to take advantage of it."
"In “Science as a Vocation”, Weber remarks that although we do not get our best
ideas while sitting at our desks all day doing regular work, we wouldn’t get any good ideas unless we sat at our desks all day doing regular work. In a similar way, successfully engaging with the public means doing it somewhat unsuccessfully very regularly. This fact is closely connected to the value of doing your everyday work somewhat publicly. You cannot drop a lump of text onto the Internet and expect anyone to pay attention if you have not been engaging with them in some ongoing way. You cannot put your work up on your website, or “do a blog”, or manufacture interest in your research like that. There is a demand side as well as a supply side to “content”, and most of the time the demand side does not care about what you have to say. This is why, in my view, one’s public work ought to be be continuous with the intellectual work you are intrinsically motivated to do. It is a mistake to think that there is a research phase and a publicity phase. Your employer might see it that way, but from a first-personal point of view it
is much better—both intrinsically and in terms of any public engagement you might
want—to think of yourself as routinely doing your work “slightly in public”. You write about it as you go, you are in regular conversation with other like-minded researchers or interested parties, and some of those people may have or be connected to larger audiences with a periodic interest in what you are up to."
...and so on.
"Here is also a natural connection here to the world of scholarly research. Although by now thoroughly professionalized, academic life has deep roots in the desire to talk about scholarly preoccupations in public, and in one’s spare time. It is in this sense an aspect of civil society. On a personal level, having the desire to go and tell people about your work is a good a sign that you are substantively absorbed by what you are doing. The point generalizes to disciplines. To the degree that thinking, talking, and arguing about research in one’s spare time and in public is a feature your field, it is a sign that your discipline is confident about what it does. Modern social media brings together these shared features of civil society and academic discourse in a new way. Social media platforms facilitate and accelerate the possibilities for talking about one’s
work in public, assuming we want to take advantage of it."
"In “Science as a Vocation”, Weber remarks that although we do not get our best
ideas while sitting at our desks all day doing regular work, we wouldn’t get any good ideas unless we sat at our desks all day doing regular work. In a similar way, successfully engaging with the public means doing it somewhat unsuccessfully very regularly. This fact is closely connected to the value of doing your everyday work somewhat publicly. You cannot drop a lump of text onto the Internet and expect anyone to pay attention if you have not been engaging with them in some ongoing way. You cannot put your work up on your website, or “do a blog”, or manufacture interest in your research like that. There is a demand side as well as a supply side to “content”, and most of the time the demand side does not care about what you have to say. This is why, in my view, one’s public work ought to be be continuous with the intellectual work you are intrinsically motivated to do. It is a mistake to think that there is a research phase and a publicity phase. Your employer might see it that way, but from a first-personal point of view it
is much better—both intrinsically and in terms of any public engagement you might
want—to think of yourself as routinely doing your work “slightly in public”. You write about it as you go, you are in regular conversation with other like-minded researchers or interested parties, and some of those people may have or be connected to larger audiences with a periodic interest in what you are up to."
...and so on.
Dear draft
May. 19th, 2016 04:53 pmDear draft,
I will set you down for now. I know you'll try to keep speaking to me, as I ride my bike home, as I try to sleep. I know you say something, in between saying nothing and saying everything. Nothing says nothing, and nothing says everything. There is no perfect experiment.
I have laid down a thousand tiny threads to try and tell your story, and I can never get it quite right because no story is ever perfect. I have tried to weave you together over the shouting of so many voices and interests and doubts, tried to figure out how you fit in, where you stand out. I am tired and frustrated but I will keep coming back. It is hard to know that the impact isn't proportional to the struggle after all. ["No one will ask how long it took. They will only ask, 'Who built it?']. I wish you did not cause me such feelings of sorrow and regret for your imperfections, but I hope I have the will to keep going.
I will set you down for now. I know you'll try to keep speaking to me, as I ride my bike home, as I try to sleep. I know you say something, in between saying nothing and saying everything. Nothing says nothing, and nothing says everything. There is no perfect experiment.
I have laid down a thousand tiny threads to try and tell your story, and I can never get it quite right because no story is ever perfect. I have tried to weave you together over the shouting of so many voices and interests and doubts, tried to figure out how you fit in, where you stand out. I am tired and frustrated but I will keep coming back. It is hard to know that the impact isn't proportional to the struggle after all. ["No one will ask how long it took. They will only ask, 'Who built it?']. I wish you did not cause me such feelings of sorrow and regret for your imperfections, but I hope I have the will to keep going.
Manuscripts of doom
Feb. 3rd, 2016 11:09 amWouldn't it be nice if demanding a revised draft of a manuscript NOW resulted in such a thing?
Sigh.
Instead it seems to just push me over the edge of the stress-performance inverted U-function.
To some degree, this has to do with how I process feedback from other people. It's an instinct to drag my heels and fight because I *know* that I know the literature way better than coauthors and am trying to think it through on a deeper level than they are. I refuse to turn in embarrassing and shoddy work. And I know this is to my detriment at a certain point, but I've also observed firsthand that turning in stuff that's half-baked is seriously embarrassing and an even larger waste of everyone's time.
Sigh.
Instead it seems to just push me over the edge of the stress-performance inverted U-function.
To some degree, this has to do with how I process feedback from other people. It's an instinct to drag my heels and fight because I *know* that I know the literature way better than coauthors and am trying to think it through on a deeper level than they are. I refuse to turn in embarrassing and shoddy work. And I know this is to my detriment at a certain point, but I've also observed firsthand that turning in stuff that's half-baked is seriously embarrassing and an even larger waste of everyone's time.
Moments of brilliant stupidity
Feb. 1st, 2016 04:06 pmOn Friday and today, I've been working on that leafcutter manuscript I mentioned. I've gotten all the way to the Discussion, but have been feeling stuck on the Discussion. What to talk about, at what length? How to structure the damn thing? My PhD advisor offered one clue, in the form of "talk about your results first, THEN the other literature," based on the material that's currently there under the label of Discussion, but I have still been hung up on something. How to structure it so it all hangs together as a coherent story? What's the most efficient way to bang out a Discussion for an academic paper? In writing about the subject, I tend to wander off into the forest, admiring all the different trees and flowers, reading all the papers that are only remotely related to what I'm working on, and then reading all the interesting papers that are cited in those remote papers. Basically.
Just now, I had a flash of insight, based on something clever I learned from my first postdoc advisor. His strategy is to sketch out the main talking points based around the figures. Bring it back to the data, the heart of the story.
Duh.
I think I can do this now.
Just now, I had a flash of insight, based on something clever I learned from my first postdoc advisor. His strategy is to sketch out the main talking points based around the figures. Bring it back to the data, the heart of the story.
Duh.
I think I can do this now.
Miscellaneous academic links (mostly)
Jan. 26th, 2016 05:14 pmAnts that don't appear to age: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/these-unusual-american-ants-never-get-old-180957887/?no-ist
I have been reading about ageing recently, because I am working on a manuscript on the nature of connections between nutrition, reproduction, and lifespan in crickets. I should probably read the primary article in this case, at least to get an idea of ways to characterize senescence.
Comments on reviewing the statistics in that manuscript you're reviewing: https://methodsblog.wordpress.com/2015/06/03/reviewing_statistics/
This diagram on why dishes pile up in the kitchen sink makes me think about what we call the "Dishwasher Model" for the division of labor in social insect colonies. Essentially, it is based on the idea that different individuals have different stimulus thresholds for the various tasks that need to be done in a colony (or apartment). Once the level of stimulus (amount of dishes in the sink) reaches the threshold for the person most sensitive to the task, he or she will do it, and so the stimulus won't ever reach the threshold of the others and the sensitive person will become a task specialist for that task.
Okay, this one isn't quite so academic, but it's sorta related? Apparently, a Liverpool student has created insect haggis. S bought a can of vegetarian haggis once, when we were in Boston. I think it was made of lentils. It was all right.
Tips for responding to illegal questions asked during job interviews. Or, related ideas in comic book form.
I have been reading about ageing recently, because I am working on a manuscript on the nature of connections between nutrition, reproduction, and lifespan in crickets. I should probably read the primary article in this case, at least to get an idea of ways to characterize senescence.
Comments on reviewing the statistics in that manuscript you're reviewing: https://methodsblog.wordpress.com/2015/06/03/reviewing_statistics/
This diagram on why dishes pile up in the kitchen sink makes me think about what we call the "Dishwasher Model" for the division of labor in social insect colonies. Essentially, it is based on the idea that different individuals have different stimulus thresholds for the various tasks that need to be done in a colony (or apartment). Once the level of stimulus (amount of dishes in the sink) reaches the threshold for the person most sensitive to the task, he or she will do it, and so the stimulus won't ever reach the threshold of the others and the sensitive person will become a task specialist for that task.
Okay, this one isn't quite so academic, but it's sorta related? Apparently, a Liverpool student has created insect haggis. S bought a can of vegetarian haggis once, when we were in Boston. I think it was made of lentils. It was all right.
Tips for responding to illegal questions asked during job interviews. Or, related ideas in comic book form.
