Holidays mean different things to different people. Some rejoice in the idea of spending several days with their family and some are guilted into the experience. Your PI loves this period because it offers short respite from bureaucratic annoyances of running a lab. Empty labs and hallways mean more room for your PI to think, do science ( the original point of the whole thing) and enjoy general piece and quiet.
Students derive different meaning from the holidays. Weeks leading up to the winter break are filled with feverish work, in an attempt ( one that often fails) to reduce guilt associated with not doing any work for a week or so. Most people are effected by the warmth if the holiday season, those who remain resilient blame commercial side of the season for their grumpiness. Never the less, all embrace this excuse to leave the lab.
Paradoxically taking a week off for winter is another way to maintain productivity. For some it's the cabin fever that drives them back to the lab, for others holidays provide nurturing thought environment. Whiteout the need to constantly produce results, one is free to think for a bit, to read for a bit and to digest a bit. This is why you need to bring work with you to your holiday trip. The important thing is to decide what type of work can be done. The general rule of thumb is not to take anything that "needs" to be done. If you take something with a deadline, you are just going to stress yourself out and ruin the holiday for yourself and your family. Do not bring raw data, any analysis you do, you will just end up questioning. Data analysis is critical, and can not be done in between egg-nog, beer and roasted beast. Instead make your goal to improve in a single area. Grab something small and get slightly better at it. It will likely mean you will have to sequester yourself away from your family and snowy slopes for an hour or two with a notepad, a book, and a mug of coffee. It will also mean that you will succeed in keeping your holiday relaxing and productive. It will also make you a bit more of a badass.
Monday, December 27, 2010
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Work: how does it work?
Your PI will always tell you to do more work. He will always tell you to show more data, give more talks and publish more papers. This is independent of the actual amount of work you can accomplish in a week. His job is to be the voice that pushes you forward. Not his only job though, but this will be explored in greater detail later on. Today I want to talk to you about work in a broader sense of the process, a meta-work if you will.
As slices of the work pie go, setting up experiments and gathering data is a surprisingly small one. This is what makes academia so appealing and at times so stressful. The daily tasks do not just boil down into a few routine moves. Graduate students are craftsmen of information. Your job is to take knowledge and figure out what is missing. You are not just a data-monkey; this makes your job a creative endeavor.
Experimental elegance comes form its mechanics, even though results are often in the spotlight. During the first few years of grad school, we tend to focus on results as well. Before every experiment there is reading, and there is thinking and revising and lots more reading. This process of cultivating questions is the stuff of research. I think all of us eventually find our own paths that take us from information-absorption to idea-testing. I also think there are several general trends.
With reading volume definitely trumps quality, at least at first. The good news is that reading can be done almost anywhere, and in these early stages you do not have to take copious notes. In fact I would discourage note-taking all together. You are after general patterns here, not grizzly details and tedious particulars. Think broad strokes. You must get the general idea, a scent of the problem. In the future you will look back on this process as almost relaxing, a sort of front-loading for the next step.
Once you have some sense of the problem, your work turns to coming up with a question. Much has been said about the importance of a good hypothesis, so I will not repeat it except for this one thing. This quote is something that I recently heard from one of my academic colleagues: " good hypothesis are not forgotten until they are disproved". Writing a good question remains your task forever.
- Good news is: you are always challenged to word your questions better. Every time someone asks " and what do you do?" is another opportunity to refine your question. Sometimes during my morning bus ride I’ll just bounce words around my head, words that describe some science. Some of these are old and overused, most are just rubbish. Now you expect me to say that this process leads to a few descriptors that stick, nope it just highlights the bad ones so later I am not distracted by them.
- Bad news: you are unlikely to be satisfied until the very end, until you put ink to paper. If you come up with something good today, tomorrow you are one day wiser and whatever you wrote yesterday is shit.
Besides reading and coming up with a good question to answer, your work is to talk. Collaborative communication is the fuel that makes the process exciting. Inevitably while grinding away at the details of experimental design, you will lose some enthusiasm. Talking about your science, or listening to that of others will be that mid-afternoon snack that keeps you going. In fact your PI likes nothing more then procrastinated by talking about science with their students and colleagues. It's all the fun with none of the responsibility of trying to ensure success. Often your peers will guide you into a new territory, your PI will ensure rigor and marketability.
- Good news is: people are busy, so it's unlikely that these conversations will eat up loads of your time.
- Bad news is: "chatting about science" is not a good answer when your PI asks for the week's progress.
Reading, writing, and talking, already your day has been filled up with a verity of tasks. Add to these weekly meetings and lectures along with bureaucratic hustle and you will form an accurate picture of graduate work. In line with these are coffee runs and bathroom breaks, 3-minute yoga by the office windows and beer. Happy hour still remains an unbroken and violently upheld graduate tradition; it is a fitting forum for both science and frivolity.
- Good news is: wine and beer, also boss-man is paying.
- Bad news is: weekends are for lab-work.
As slices of the work pie go, setting up experiments and gathering data is a surprisingly small one. This is what makes academia so appealing and at times so stressful. The daily tasks do not just boil down into a few routine moves. Graduate students are craftsmen of information. Your job is to take knowledge and figure out what is missing. You are not just a data-monkey; this makes your job a creative endeavor.
Experimental elegance comes form its mechanics, even though results are often in the spotlight. During the first few years of grad school, we tend to focus on results as well. Before every experiment there is reading, and there is thinking and revising and lots more reading. This process of cultivating questions is the stuff of research. I think all of us eventually find our own paths that take us from information-absorption to idea-testing. I also think there are several general trends.
With reading volume definitely trumps quality, at least at first. The good news is that reading can be done almost anywhere, and in these early stages you do not have to take copious notes. In fact I would discourage note-taking all together. You are after general patterns here, not grizzly details and tedious particulars. Think broad strokes. You must get the general idea, a scent of the problem. In the future you will look back on this process as almost relaxing, a sort of front-loading for the next step.
Once you have some sense of the problem, your work turns to coming up with a question. Much has been said about the importance of a good hypothesis, so I will not repeat it except for this one thing. This quote is something that I recently heard from one of my academic colleagues: " good hypothesis are not forgotten until they are disproved". Writing a good question remains your task forever.
- Good news is: you are always challenged to word your questions better. Every time someone asks " and what do you do?" is another opportunity to refine your question. Sometimes during my morning bus ride I’ll just bounce words around my head, words that describe some science. Some of these are old and overused, most are just rubbish. Now you expect me to say that this process leads to a few descriptors that stick, nope it just highlights the bad ones so later I am not distracted by them.
- Bad news: you are unlikely to be satisfied until the very end, until you put ink to paper. If you come up with something good today, tomorrow you are one day wiser and whatever you wrote yesterday is shit.
Besides reading and coming up with a good question to answer, your work is to talk. Collaborative communication is the fuel that makes the process exciting. Inevitably while grinding away at the details of experimental design, you will lose some enthusiasm. Talking about your science, or listening to that of others will be that mid-afternoon snack that keeps you going. In fact your PI likes nothing more then procrastinated by talking about science with their students and colleagues. It's all the fun with none of the responsibility of trying to ensure success. Often your peers will guide you into a new territory, your PI will ensure rigor and marketability.
- Good news is: people are busy, so it's unlikely that these conversations will eat up loads of your time.
- Bad news is: "chatting about science" is not a good answer when your PI asks for the week's progress.
Reading, writing, and talking, already your day has been filled up with a verity of tasks. Add to these weekly meetings and lectures along with bureaucratic hustle and you will form an accurate picture of graduate work. In line with these are coffee runs and bathroom breaks, 3-minute yoga by the office windows and beer. Happy hour still remains an unbroken and violently upheld graduate tradition; it is a fitting forum for both science and frivolity.
- Good news is: wine and beer, also boss-man is paying.
- Bad news is: weekends are for lab-work.
Monday, December 13, 2010
T(trade) A(agreement) - I trade my time for them stipends brah'
As lies go, grades are one of the more interesting ones. They claim to reflect our aptitude, but cannot even approach real measures of character. Ability to integrate or balance chemical equations crumbles in the face of courage, strength of heart, or love. Yet an average university inhabitant will bite your head off for those few extra points. Some are more creature-like then others, hoarding points as if it was some treasure, losing sight of what these numbers represent. In a way grades are like credit, or a promise, you can trade it in for future opportunities. My 4.0 GPA says that I can run a business or put together a car, even though I have done neither.
I first taught 26 students. “This is an appropriate number of students” I said, we should not have any more. “I do not think I have room in my heart for more”. Now I teach 64 and the past few hours, totaling their grades, just seem so futile. I want to feel like I gave them something special, but it seems that most would rather trade any real connection for those few extra points.
- There is really no need to stress about teaching as few students as you can. Do not worry about that. Even though many may be attending your lectures, I can bet my salary that you are teaching a small subset only.
- Try to cram all your teaching into one day. It is horrible how effective teaching is at destroying productivity. You are there (grad school) to do research (think) and write, anything else is unproductive (in the eyes of the P.I.) use of your time.
- You never want to grade for correctness, grade for completeness instead. There is no problem you can write that will enlighten students more then a good explanation/example from you. So do not bother, let exams take care of the grades.
- When doing multiple lectures a week, your first one will be the worst (that’s when you will make most of your mistakes), your third or fourth one will be better (that’s when you will fix your mistakes). Teaching between 3pm-4:30pm is rough.
- E-mail is great; it allows all of your 200 students to contact you at any hour of the day or night (apparently students do not sleep). See what I did there. Students have weekly access to you, make them use it.
- You do not need to know everything, do not be afraid to send them to the prof. It is better to tell your ego to take a breather and turn a student or two away, then give them faulty or incomplete information. They will benefit from it, and most importantly you will be in the clear when they mess that question up on an exam.
Above are only a few guidelines that I have collected from my few teaching cycles. As a TA, your goal should be simplicity. You need to make everything as uncomplicated as possible. This will decrease your error numbers dramatically. Plus professors love when things are easy. Last thing; be on the look out for that “AHA” moment from your students (blow their little brains away). You will get a few worth teaching for every dozen or so.
I first taught 26 students. “This is an appropriate number of students” I said, we should not have any more. “I do not think I have room in my heart for more”. Now I teach 64 and the past few hours, totaling their grades, just seem so futile. I want to feel like I gave them something special, but it seems that most would rather trade any real connection for those few extra points.
- There is really no need to stress about teaching as few students as you can. Do not worry about that. Even though many may be attending your lectures, I can bet my salary that you are teaching a small subset only.
- Try to cram all your teaching into one day. It is horrible how effective teaching is at destroying productivity. You are there (grad school) to do research (think) and write, anything else is unproductive (in the eyes of the P.I.) use of your time.
- You never want to grade for correctness, grade for completeness instead. There is no problem you can write that will enlighten students more then a good explanation/example from you. So do not bother, let exams take care of the grades.
- When doing multiple lectures a week, your first one will be the worst (that’s when you will make most of your mistakes), your third or fourth one will be better (that’s when you will fix your mistakes). Teaching between 3pm-4:30pm is rough.
- E-mail is great; it allows all of your 200 students to contact you at any hour of the day or night (apparently students do not sleep). See what I did there. Students have weekly access to you, make them use it.
- You do not need to know everything, do not be afraid to send them to the prof. It is better to tell your ego to take a breather and turn a student or two away, then give them faulty or incomplete information. They will benefit from it, and most importantly you will be in the clear when they mess that question up on an exam.
Above are only a few guidelines that I have collected from my few teaching cycles. As a TA, your goal should be simplicity. You need to make everything as uncomplicated as possible. This will decrease your error numbers dramatically. Plus professors love when things are easy. Last thing; be on the look out for that “AHA” moment from your students (blow their little brains away). You will get a few worth teaching for every dozen or so.
Friday, December 10, 2010
editing games
Editing sucks. You know what does not suck, sharing ideas in a highly animated fashion; that does not suck. Today I was previewed to a masterful reinvigoration of the editing process. Google docs, the amazing device/idea that allows multiple users to edit the same document while chatting about it. Suddenly the tedious task is transformed into an exciting, almost game like event.
I felt the buzz of excitement wash over me as I stepped into our fishbowl-like office earlier today. A group of graduate student was clustering over the shoulder of their comrade, she was editing. Apparently somehow the process of refining her manuscript has become a spectator event. A sentence would be highlighted and then disappear, only to be replaced (in real time) by a cleaner and more precise version of itself. The line between collaborator and opponent is blurred in this arena of ideas. She takes up the challenge and ROCKS IT. If there to be a more corporeal representation of this process it would be two masons wailing at a marble block, its shapeless body taking form with every blow.
If you are not there yet, let me just tell you that what happened is a big deal. It is rare when technology brings the collaborative process so perfectly in synch, but when it does you cannot help but watch and marvel. This unfortunately is the core of a writing paradox. Putting your work and ideas into writing can be a hugely creative and intellectually fulfilling process, when it is done for the first time. Re-reading your work for the fiftieth time, smoothing out all of the minor wrinkles. Asking, if this word is better then that (I do not know, who the he'll cares), is a nightmare. We publish our work when we are sick of looking at it. We publish it to banish it from our minds, to move on, to start something new. It is the only way writing makes sense really.
I felt the buzz of excitement wash over me as I stepped into our fishbowl-like office earlier today. A group of graduate student was clustering over the shoulder of their comrade, she was editing. Apparently somehow the process of refining her manuscript has become a spectator event. A sentence would be highlighted and then disappear, only to be replaced (in real time) by a cleaner and more precise version of itself. The line between collaborator and opponent is blurred in this arena of ideas. She takes up the challenge and ROCKS IT. If there to be a more corporeal representation of this process it would be two masons wailing at a marble block, its shapeless body taking form with every blow.
If you are not there yet, let me just tell you that what happened is a big deal. It is rare when technology brings the collaborative process so perfectly in synch, but when it does you cannot help but watch and marvel. This unfortunately is the core of a writing paradox. Putting your work and ideas into writing can be a hugely creative and intellectually fulfilling process, when it is done for the first time. Re-reading your work for the fiftieth time, smoothing out all of the minor wrinkles. Asking, if this word is better then that (I do not know, who the he'll cares), is a nightmare. We publish our work when we are sick of looking at it. We publish it to banish it from our minds, to move on, to start something new. It is the only way writing makes sense really.
Monday, December 6, 2010
post 1
I find first posts extremely annoying. There is this need to explain the purpose of the blog, and the way things are going to go. Initially I always envision a highly structured narrative that never actually comes into being. I am just not that good. In fact the reason I blog is to practice writing. To be honest, and I feel that I can be honest with you, I have started and abandoned a number of blogs. This time will be different, this time I will blog about what is important to someone in my position. If you read this far you may ask what position is that, well, I am a graduate student (natural science) in a large research university. I have been there for a few years now and have created a base of knowledge that I think may interest you. There is so much that people can say about graduate school, these well-wishers always want to cover the large important topics. This means that they miss the small bits. Let me tell you, small bits are important, it’s the small bits that make you say “oooh, now you tell me”. Since I am hardly qualified to give grand advice, I will concentrate on these small bits, the things that no one bothers to tell you.
I think it is important to structure my posts. I will try my best to adhere to a relatively simple and consistent framework. Every post will start with a short story or a blurb about various goings on, and then include a single point I want to make about graduate work. I will try to post every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, deadlines sharpen the mind. I do not promise that posts will always be short, since sometimes events take un unexpected turn and may require lengthy explanations, even so, I will try my best to provide value with every bit of writing done.
- On the subject of writing (I think it is fitting to start with). Many people will tell you that graduate work demands clear, concise, and precise formulation of your thoughts in written form. Its true, and there will be many people who will give you advice about how to get your writing to that point. Mine is still pretty far from the desired state, in fact some have compared my prose to dentistry. What is mentioned less often, simply because most of us are such poor writers that the mechanics take precedent, is that your writing must be convincing. The point of writing is to convince the reader that what you have is of merit. That is extremely difficult and cannot be taught. So after spending months polishing, shrinking, and cutting your work, you may still fail to get the desired outcome. Your writing may simply be unconvincing. So know your audience, read what they write, read works of those you admire, read old writing (those guys labor every argument) and become a salesman. When you write, you are packaging your thoughts (the product) and no one wants to open an ugly package.
- Quick notes:
o If you can replace two long words with a short one, do so.
o Use active voice in your writing.
o Be direct.
o Writing that something is “important” will not necessarily convince the reader that it is.
o Spelling counts (I can’t spell and have suffered the consequences. Well-proofread work inspires thoroughness.)
~ 1
I think it is important to structure my posts. I will try my best to adhere to a relatively simple and consistent framework. Every post will start with a short story or a blurb about various goings on, and then include a single point I want to make about graduate work. I will try to post every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, deadlines sharpen the mind. I do not promise that posts will always be short, since sometimes events take un unexpected turn and may require lengthy explanations, even so, I will try my best to provide value with every bit of writing done.
- On the subject of writing (I think it is fitting to start with). Many people will tell you that graduate work demands clear, concise, and precise formulation of your thoughts in written form. Its true, and there will be many people who will give you advice about how to get your writing to that point. Mine is still pretty far from the desired state, in fact some have compared my prose to dentistry. What is mentioned less often, simply because most of us are such poor writers that the mechanics take precedent, is that your writing must be convincing. The point of writing is to convince the reader that what you have is of merit. That is extremely difficult and cannot be taught. So after spending months polishing, shrinking, and cutting your work, you may still fail to get the desired outcome. Your writing may simply be unconvincing. So know your audience, read what they write, read works of those you admire, read old writing (those guys labor every argument) and become a salesman. When you write, you are packaging your thoughts (the product) and no one wants to open an ugly package.
- Quick notes:
o If you can replace two long words with a short one, do so.
o Use active voice in your writing.
o Be direct.
o Writing that something is “important” will not necessarily convince the reader that it is.
o Spelling counts (I can’t spell and have suffered the consequences. Well-proofread work inspires thoroughness.)
~ 1
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)