Four simple polls:
I welcome comments on:
(a) how many proposals you submit per year
(b) anecdotes on the highest number of attempts you have ever heard people make, typical practices in your field, etc.
(c) how helpful your program officers are in helping you rework the proposal and eventually get funded
(d) whether you feel that the response to one panel actually improves your odds with the next one
(e) whether you include a response to panel comments when you resubmit (if so, body of proposal or supplementary docs) and whether it the norm in your directorate (anecdotally we know that in some it is, in some not)
Anything else that comes to mind regarding your NSF experiences!
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Unhealthy
It is no secret that most states in the US face a financial crisis, and that state universities everywhere are being asked to tighten their belts. One of the recent belt-tightening news we received at my big state R1 was an impending increase in health insurance premiums. I love our health insurance plan (HMO): the network of doctors is large and excellent, and the premium payments were tiny. Even after the increase, the premiums are not very high, but looking at some of the announcements and delineated percentages of how much we pay versus how much the university pays, I realized that the annual cost of health insurance for my whole family (paid largely by my university) is over $20,000. Holy cow!
This reminded me of my first (and very sobering) encounter with how broken the health care system in the US actually is. I had my first child in grad school, when I was still new to the US (this was in 2000). I had the standard student health insurance plan at the time. I had a normal, uncomplicated vaginal delivery (there was epidural involved though), and was discharged after 2 days. Within a week of coming back home, I called my insurance and added the baby to my plan. Shortly thereafter, I stared receiving monstrous medical bills from the hospital, doctor, anesthesiologist, everyone separately, in the total amount exceeding $10,000. I was completely terrified and spent several months on the phone with doctors' offices, my student health liaison, and the insurance company, trying to straigthen it all out.
What happened was the following: when I called the insurance company to add the baby to the plan, the incompetent moron with whom I spoke did not know how to do it, so he terminated my plan the day prior to baby's birth and opened a new one for me plus baby starting on the day of the baby's birth. Since I started laboring a 8 am one day, was admitted at the hospital at 3 pm the same day, and delivered the next day around 5 am, my old plan was terminated by the idiot's mistake on the day of my labor and the new started on the day the baby was born, so I was treated as uncovered for the day of the labor. It took me months to sort it all out, and I was terrified the entire time: these letters requesting payment get progressively more threatening as time goes by, and my husband and I were really broke and had little idea of how the system worked.
What still baffles me to this day, is that, if you are uninsured, a simple delivery would cost over $10,000 (in 2000). How is that possible? It's not even an illness, it's the most basic of human functions -- shouldn't a woman, any woman, be able to deliver a child safely, in a hospital, without having to sell a kidney afterwards to pay for it all?
Now, when I see that my university and I combined pay over $20,000 per year for my family's health insurance, I still cannot wrap my head around the number. Yes, of course, I know how insurance is supposed to work -- everyone pays, whether they need health care or not, which spreads the risk around so that payments can be made on behalf of those who need care when they do. But still, the sheer amounts of money just astound me. For instance, just the the faculty in my 40-ish people department cost over $800,000 every year to insure! Doesn't that blow your mind?
After more than 10 years in the US, I still cannot understand some things, such as why were insurance companies ever allowed to be for-profits? I wonder how much less the costs would be if they were all non-profits. How much does it cost in places like Canada or most of Europe to pay for the equivalent of one worker's health insurance? Among the aspects I don't understand, or rather -- I understand but don't want to accept that the people can be so uneducated and misguided -- is this voluntary submission of people to the exploitation by companies and stubborn refusal to allow the government to do anything for fear of becoming a socialist country. There are plenty of developed countries in Europe and yes, our northern neighbor, Canada, where it has been shown that health and education, which should be everyone's unalienable rights, are best kept out of the hands of corporations. It is clear where the republicans are coming from (PlS nicely put it yesterday), but what I do not understand the resistance of a number of people to public healthcare -- I don't understand the blue collar workers who think that any corporation would ever look out for the workers' interest better than the federal government. Is it the education system that prevents an average worker from learning about the systems in other countries beyond the politically fueled fear-mongering? Is it the brainwashing via Fox and other red media? Is it the failure of the democrats to connect with the middle and lower class, deliver something tangible, and actually take credit for when they do?
This is such a great country, yet dysfunctional on such surprising levels... It's such a shame.
This reminded me of my first (and very sobering) encounter with how broken the health care system in the US actually is. I had my first child in grad school, when I was still new to the US (this was in 2000). I had the standard student health insurance plan at the time. I had a normal, uncomplicated vaginal delivery (there was epidural involved though), and was discharged after 2 days. Within a week of coming back home, I called my insurance and added the baby to my plan. Shortly thereafter, I stared receiving monstrous medical bills from the hospital, doctor, anesthesiologist, everyone separately, in the total amount exceeding $10,000. I was completely terrified and spent several months on the phone with doctors' offices, my student health liaison, and the insurance company, trying to straigthen it all out.
What happened was the following: when I called the insurance company to add the baby to the plan, the incompetent moron with whom I spoke did not know how to do it, so he terminated my plan the day prior to baby's birth and opened a new one for me plus baby starting on the day of the baby's birth. Since I started laboring a 8 am one day, was admitted at the hospital at 3 pm the same day, and delivered the next day around 5 am, my old plan was terminated by the idiot's mistake on the day of my labor and the new started on the day the baby was born, so I was treated as uncovered for the day of the labor. It took me months to sort it all out, and I was terrified the entire time: these letters requesting payment get progressively more threatening as time goes by, and my husband and I were really broke and had little idea of how the system worked.
What still baffles me to this day, is that, if you are uninsured, a simple delivery would cost over $10,000 (in 2000). How is that possible? It's not even an illness, it's the most basic of human functions -- shouldn't a woman, any woman, be able to deliver a child safely, in a hospital, without having to sell a kidney afterwards to pay for it all?
Now, when I see that my university and I combined pay over $20,000 per year for my family's health insurance, I still cannot wrap my head around the number. Yes, of course, I know how insurance is supposed to work -- everyone pays, whether they need health care or not, which spreads the risk around so that payments can be made on behalf of those who need care when they do. But still, the sheer amounts of money just astound me. For instance, just the the faculty in my 40-ish people department cost over $800,000 every year to insure! Doesn't that blow your mind?
After more than 10 years in the US, I still cannot understand some things, such as why were insurance companies ever allowed to be for-profits? I wonder how much less the costs would be if they were all non-profits. How much does it cost in places like Canada or most of Europe to pay for the equivalent of one worker's health insurance? Among the aspects I don't understand, or rather -- I understand but don't want to accept that the people can be so uneducated and misguided -- is this voluntary submission of people to the exploitation by companies and stubborn refusal to allow the government to do anything for fear of becoming a socialist country. There are plenty of developed countries in Europe and yes, our northern neighbor, Canada, where it has been shown that health and education, which should be everyone's unalienable rights, are best kept out of the hands of corporations. It is clear where the republicans are coming from (PlS nicely put it yesterday), but what I do not understand the resistance of a number of people to public healthcare -- I don't understand the blue collar workers who think that any corporation would ever look out for the workers' interest better than the federal government. Is it the education system that prevents an average worker from learning about the systems in other countries beyond the politically fueled fear-mongering? Is it the brainwashing via Fox and other red media? Is it the failure of the democrats to connect with the middle and lower class, deliver something tangible, and actually take credit for when they do?
This is such a great country, yet dysfunctional on such surprising levels... It's such a shame.
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Who's on Your Proposal?
In the past few months, I have written quite a few proposals. I am in a physical sciences field, and the agencies that can fund my work are the NSF, DOE, and several DOD agencies. These agencies vary greatly in how much (a panel of) external reviewers vs your program manager influence the selection of a proposal for funding.
I currently have 5 pending proposals, of which 4 were submitted in January and February. It occurred to me that, in terms of the proposal structure and PI manpower, my current batch of pending proposals does span pretty much all the different types that I have encountered so far. All of these come with different time commitment for the PI, as well as different levels of frustration and types of challenges in terms of preparation.
1) The single-investigator proposal. Obviously, by far the most work for the PI, but you have all the control over the idea, the timeline for execution, and every word and figure that makes it in. If a single-author proposal gets funded, the money is all yours, and usually there is a fair bit of flexibility in how you distribute it (again, this depends on the agency). If you get bad reviews, it's only you who sucks and there's no other way to go about it.
But, I love single investigator proposals mostly because I don't have to compromise. I compromise all the time, in all aspects of my personal and professional life, and it's nice to sometimes just have 100% my way. Ideally, I come up with an idea that excites me and then write a proposal. Excitement shows in the writing and I think it's important to convey this seductive element, as it helps your proposal find a champion on the panel. I think the best single-investigator proposals are those where you are literally in love with the project. I find they are certainly the most enjoyable ones to write, but it does sting twice as bad if the panel says negative things about your precious.
2) A collaborative proposal with another PI. I recently struck up a new collaboration with an experimental colleague from a nearby institution, and writing this proposal was the first concrete collaborative effort we have had together. I think it went well, despite the fact that we didn't have a lot of time and didn't really know each other before this. I think these can be very enjoyable to write, as you do get to share the workload, there is built-in feedback, but you presumably still have a fair bit of control over the outcome. That is, unless the other person is slightly more egomaniacal than the average academic.
For instance, in this experiment(collaborator)/theory(mois) proposal, I think we will get criticized that the theory is not a second, but more like a sixth fiddle to experiment, whereas this is supposed to be a collaborative proposal, with each institution getting the same amount of money. But, my collaborator really wanted things his way, so, since he's the lead, all I can do is defer. It's funny, I sent the collaborator a fair amount of text and a fair number of comments on what he had written; he said he had taken some of my comments into account, but it took me a long time to find which ones. I honestly thought at some point he had sent me the previous version of the text. It doesn't have to always be my way, especially in a collaboration, but when I tell you something seems unclear or is worded in a cumbersome way, trust me that I am actually saying it out of the best of intentions: I actually want our proposal to get funded. But I guess some people really like themselves and their writing. The proposal did turn our well, I have to say.
3) The small-group proposal (typically 3-6 people): I have had 2 of those in the latest batch of proposals, and these are, in my experience, the most common type of multi-investigator proposals. You end up having 2-3 people who do a lion's share of the writing, and then the rest contribute significantly less. I think the composition of the team is key for the success -- I have had successful previous proposals of this type, and it's always with people whom I know well and whose expertises complement one another. One of my currently pending proposals is a continuing grant to a DOD agency, with long-term collaborators, and I have high hopes for its renewal, as the program manager seems very favorably disposed. The second proposal turned out OK, but I cannot say I have high hopes for its funding; it was submitted to the NSF and I only know one of the co-PI's well. The PI did a very good job tying everything together, but I think the proposal does feel a touch half-baked...
4) The large-center, multi-investigator proposal (more than 10 and typically a few tens of PI's often organized into smaller subgroups of less than 10 people). These are a pain overall and really hard to get funded. The amount of text each PI contributes is fairly small, but it's really hard to make these into a coherent effort. People who are the subgroup leads are really screwed, because, in addition to herding cats, they are the ones befallen by the task of trying to get something coherent out of the hodge-podge of writeups from many various people, most of whom barely know each other.
These proposals are very difficult to put together -- months of meeting, brainstorming, inviting and disinviting PIs, trying to create a team from a group of near strangers (often several off-site people), where the people have complementary expertises, but where also people's preferences for alternative collaborators may have to be accommodated. These massive efforts are usually led by the Big Cheezes. You can actually spot a future Big Cheez (or a Big Cheez wannabe) as a person under the age of 50 who wants to take on such a monstrous task.
I am having high hopes for this batch of proposals, which I guess means I am not an entirely crusty, disillusioned, burned-out PI after all.
Happy proposal-writing trails to all!
I currently have 5 pending proposals, of which 4 were submitted in January and February. It occurred to me that, in terms of the proposal structure and PI manpower, my current batch of pending proposals does span pretty much all the different types that I have encountered so far. All of these come with different time commitment for the PI, as well as different levels of frustration and types of challenges in terms of preparation.
1) The single-investigator proposal. Obviously, by far the most work for the PI, but you have all the control over the idea, the timeline for execution, and every word and figure that makes it in. If a single-author proposal gets funded, the money is all yours, and usually there is a fair bit of flexibility in how you distribute it (again, this depends on the agency). If you get bad reviews, it's only you who sucks and there's no other way to go about it.
But, I love single investigator proposals mostly because I don't have to compromise. I compromise all the time, in all aspects of my personal and professional life, and it's nice to sometimes just have 100% my way. Ideally, I come up with an idea that excites me and then write a proposal. Excitement shows in the writing and I think it's important to convey this seductive element, as it helps your proposal find a champion on the panel. I think the best single-investigator proposals are those where you are literally in love with the project. I find they are certainly the most enjoyable ones to write, but it does sting twice as bad if the panel says negative things about your precious.
2) A collaborative proposal with another PI. I recently struck up a new collaboration with an experimental colleague from a nearby institution, and writing this proposal was the first concrete collaborative effort we have had together. I think it went well, despite the fact that we didn't have a lot of time and didn't really know each other before this. I think these can be very enjoyable to write, as you do get to share the workload, there is built-in feedback, but you presumably still have a fair bit of control over the outcome. That is, unless the other person is slightly more egomaniacal than the average academic.
For instance, in this experiment(collaborator)/theory(mois) proposal, I think we will get criticized that the theory is not a second, but more like a sixth fiddle to experiment, whereas this is supposed to be a collaborative proposal, with each institution getting the same amount of money. But, my collaborator really wanted things his way, so, since he's the lead, all I can do is defer. It's funny, I sent the collaborator a fair amount of text and a fair number of comments on what he had written; he said he had taken some of my comments into account, but it took me a long time to find which ones. I honestly thought at some point he had sent me the previous version of the text. It doesn't have to always be my way, especially in a collaboration, but when I tell you something seems unclear or is worded in a cumbersome way, trust me that I am actually saying it out of the best of intentions: I actually want our proposal to get funded. But I guess some people really like themselves and their writing. The proposal did turn our well, I have to say.
3) The small-group proposal (typically 3-6 people): I have had 2 of those in the latest batch of proposals, and these are, in my experience, the most common type of multi-investigator proposals. You end up having 2-3 people who do a lion's share of the writing, and then the rest contribute significantly less. I think the composition of the team is key for the success -- I have had successful previous proposals of this type, and it's always with people whom I know well and whose expertises complement one another. One of my currently pending proposals is a continuing grant to a DOD agency, with long-term collaborators, and I have high hopes for its renewal, as the program manager seems very favorably disposed. The second proposal turned out OK, but I cannot say I have high hopes for its funding; it was submitted to the NSF and I only know one of the co-PI's well. The PI did a very good job tying everything together, but I think the proposal does feel a touch half-baked...
4) The large-center, multi-investigator proposal (more than 10 and typically a few tens of PI's often organized into smaller subgroups of less than 10 people). These are a pain overall and really hard to get funded. The amount of text each PI contributes is fairly small, but it's really hard to make these into a coherent effort. People who are the subgroup leads are really screwed, because, in addition to herding cats, they are the ones befallen by the task of trying to get something coherent out of the hodge-podge of writeups from many various people, most of whom barely know each other.
These proposals are very difficult to put together -- months of meeting, brainstorming, inviting and disinviting PIs, trying to create a team from a group of near strangers (often several off-site people), where the people have complementary expertises, but where also people's preferences for alternative collaborators may have to be accommodated. These massive efforts are usually led by the Big Cheezes. You can actually spot a future Big Cheez (or a Big Cheez wannabe) as a person under the age of 50 who wants to take on such a monstrous task.
I am having high hopes for this batch of proposals, which I guess means I am not an entirely crusty, disillusioned, burned-out PI after all.
Happy proposal-writing trails to all!
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Pink or Blue? And the answer is...
A couple of days ago, I asked "Do you think Offspring is a boy or a girl?"
And the Internet responded:
We had the 20 week ultrasound, and...
IT'S A BOY!
My older kids wanted a baby girl and were a bit disappointed by the news, especially my older son who doesn't want "another pest" (a.k.a. his younger brother). "The pest" was more zen about mom having a "boy baby," and I think is just happy that he gets to be someone's big brother.
Hub and I are just thrilled that everything looks fine. Most of all, I am relieved that, in spite of my advanced age (I will turn 38 a few days before the due date), the oven seems to be capable of baking healthy buns. Now I just hope the bun comes out when it's well done and not a minute sooner. This whole pregnancy has been much more stressful than previous ones, partly because of the reasons that I cannot bring myself to discuss on the blog.
As someone who had kids in mid/late 20's, early 30's, and now late 30's, I must say that everything is easier when you are younger. Of course, no one should plan their life around anybody else's advice, but I generally think that, if you have a person with whom you want to share your life and have kids, just have kids sooner rather than later. Kids are more likely to be born healthy when you are young; pregnancy is easier when you are young; you have more energy when you are young, and everything else does fall into place when you are young and have lots of time in front of you to explore different paths... Kids do cost money and time, but they don't require a perfect monetary and housing situation. And, of course, I don't think anyone is ever really ready for kids -- the only way to be ready for a kid is to have had kids already -- so just go for it.
As for career, I don't think that having already had a kid when I was looking for a TT position hurt me. Actually, during one interview, when I mentioned to my host that I had a then toddler, he said "Whoa! That makes your CV even more impressive!" When I had my second while on TT, I already knew how much time I needed to take off and was simply nowhere as bewildered about the whole ordeal (and its impact on my tenure) as I would have certainly been if it had been my first kid.
In my experience, having kids "early" (20's in often considered early for a career woman) most definitely didn't ruin my life or my career. I think I am fairly accomplished right now; maybe I would have been more accomplished without the kids (worked longer hours, traveled/schmoozed more, written more grants and papers), but giving up personal life for work would not be worth it in the long run, at least not for me. Plus there is no better way to de-stress from the academic rat race than by hugging and kissing giggly little creatures to your heart's content.
And the Internet responded:
We had the 20 week ultrasound, and...
IT'S A BOY!
My older kids wanted a baby girl and were a bit disappointed by the news, especially my older son who doesn't want "another pest" (a.k.a. his younger brother). "The pest" was more zen about mom having a "boy baby," and I think is just happy that he gets to be someone's big brother.
Hub and I are just thrilled that everything looks fine. Most of all, I am relieved that, in spite of my advanced age (I will turn 38 a few days before the due date), the oven seems to be capable of baking healthy buns. Now I just hope the bun comes out when it's well done and not a minute sooner. This whole pregnancy has been much more stressful than previous ones, partly because of the reasons that I cannot bring myself to discuss on the blog.
As someone who had kids in mid/late 20's, early 30's, and now late 30's, I must say that everything is easier when you are younger. Of course, no one should plan their life around anybody else's advice, but I generally think that, if you have a person with whom you want to share your life and have kids, just have kids sooner rather than later. Kids are more likely to be born healthy when you are young; pregnancy is easier when you are young; you have more energy when you are young, and everything else does fall into place when you are young and have lots of time in front of you to explore different paths... Kids do cost money and time, but they don't require a perfect monetary and housing situation. And, of course, I don't think anyone is ever really ready for kids -- the only way to be ready for a kid is to have had kids already -- so just go for it.
As for career, I don't think that having already had a kid when I was looking for a TT position hurt me. Actually, during one interview, when I mentioned to my host that I had a then toddler, he said "Whoa! That makes your CV even more impressive!" When I had my second while on TT, I already knew how much time I needed to take off and was simply nowhere as bewildered about the whole ordeal (and its impact on my tenure) as I would have certainly been if it had been my first kid.
In my experience, having kids "early" (20's in often considered early for a career woman) most definitely didn't ruin my life or my career. I think I am fairly accomplished right now; maybe I would have been more accomplished without the kids (worked longer hours, traveled/schmoozed more, written more grants and papers), but giving up personal life for work would not be worth it in the long run, at least not for me. Plus there is no better way to de-stress from the academic rat race than by hugging and kissing giggly little creatures to your heart's content.
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Guest post: A Steelers Fan rant about colleagues who back out when there’s work to be done
I'm an untenured professor who was assigned to chair a committee.* A tenured colleague (who shall be called Dr. L) brought a bunch of work to the committee but feels that it isn’t his/her place to do any of it. Dr. L was released from teaching to develop a proposal for significant changes to our programs. To her credit, Dr. L developed a proposal that won department-level support despite complicated politics. My committee is formally responsible for changes to our program, so I'm responsible for sending it to the next level. At the next level, you need more than just the proposal made to the department (which is nuts-and-bolts stuff about how it will work). You need a detailed justification, with statistics, comparisons to other programs, and so forth. We've all reviewed the evidence and agree that there’s a very strong case for this change to the program, but we need to synthesize it into a document that hits all the things that the administration is looking for.
Dr. L isn't on the committee, but when we got the task of preparing the document I asked Dr. L if she would take the lead, outline what needs to go in it, and delegate to us as she sees necessary. I did this for 3 reasons:
1) Dr. L spoke very passionately about being personally committed to these changes to our program. In fact, Dr. L views this as being integral to her future career plans, and wants to be the lead on steering this program when it is approved. Dr. L even went so far as to wrestle control of this from another colleague who has far more experience than Dr. L in these matters.
So I thought that Dr. L would be upset if I didn't involve her.
2) The rules governing this addition to our program are complicated, and Dr. L did a lot of work to master the intricacies. I specifically said to Dr. L that I was approaching her out of respect for the work she had put into understanding what needs to be done, and her networking with the relevant people.
3) I've seen other colleagues work on proposals for various changes. Even if they weren’t on the relevant committees they would attend open meetings of the committees and volunteer to help throughout the process, because they were invested in the success of the proposal.
Dr. L resents being asked to do this, even though when I first approached her I volunteered for a significant task and told her to delegate the rest of it as she sees necessary. I offered a longer time frame after she expressed displeasure, but she still feels that this is not her job. Perhaps I made n00b mistakes in how I discussed things, but an experienced (and tenured) colleague who is on the committee and involved in the process says I handled it fine.
What I'm here to vent about is not the report itself (serving on this committee is part of my job, so I'll do my job and make sure the report gets done without her), but the fact that this person can get control of a project outside her expertise, get time to work on it, and then bail on it in a later stage. However, the rewards structure at our school is screwed up, so I'll work much harder than this person and get exactly the same deal. And this person will remain popular and will probably get more release time for similar tasks in the future because she is on the right side of the right people. So, actually, I'll get fewer rewards. It's very, very discouraging to work with people like this in a system where the incentives for hard work are almost entirely personal. Yes, I'm a professional who wants to do a good job even if my superiors don’t reward me, but a reward now and then certainly wouldn’t hurt, you know? Especially when other people are shirking work and making my work harder but getting at least the same rewards as me. Can I get some overtime pay for cleaning up her mess?
A Steelers Fan
*Before you ask why an untenured professor is chairing a committee rather than focusing 100% on research, that's just the way it is at my institution
Dr. L isn't on the committee, but when we got the task of preparing the document I asked Dr. L if she would take the lead, outline what needs to go in it, and delegate to us as she sees necessary. I did this for 3 reasons:
1) Dr. L spoke very passionately about being personally committed to these changes to our program. In fact, Dr. L views this as being integral to her future career plans, and wants to be the lead on steering this program when it is approved. Dr. L even went so far as to wrestle control of this from another colleague who has far more experience than Dr. L in these matters.
So I thought that Dr. L would be upset if I didn't involve her.
2) The rules governing this addition to our program are complicated, and Dr. L did a lot of work to master the intricacies. I specifically said to Dr. L that I was approaching her out of respect for the work she had put into understanding what needs to be done, and her networking with the relevant people.
3) I've seen other colleagues work on proposals for various changes. Even if they weren’t on the relevant committees they would attend open meetings of the committees and volunteer to help throughout the process, because they were invested in the success of the proposal.
Dr. L resents being asked to do this, even though when I first approached her I volunteered for a significant task and told her to delegate the rest of it as she sees necessary. I offered a longer time frame after she expressed displeasure, but she still feels that this is not her job. Perhaps I made n00b mistakes in how I discussed things, but an experienced (and tenured) colleague who is on the committee and involved in the process says I handled it fine.
What I'm here to vent about is not the report itself (serving on this committee is part of my job, so I'll do my job and make sure the report gets done without her), but the fact that this person can get control of a project outside her expertise, get time to work on it, and then bail on it in a later stage. However, the rewards structure at our school is screwed up, so I'll work much harder than this person and get exactly the same deal. And this person will remain popular and will probably get more release time for similar tasks in the future because she is on the right side of the right people. So, actually, I'll get fewer rewards. It's very, very discouraging to work with people like this in a system where the incentives for hard work are almost entirely personal. Yes, I'm a professional who wants to do a good job even if my superiors don’t reward me, but a reward now and then certainly wouldn’t hurt, you know? Especially when other people are shirking work and making my work harder but getting at least the same rewards as me. Can I get some overtime pay for cleaning up her mess?
A Steelers Fan
*Before you ask why an untenured professor is chairing a committee rather than focusing 100% on research, that's just the way it is at my institution
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Procrastination Medley
In honor of procrastination while writing my fourth grant since the end of December, here's a piecewise coherent post:
1) I consider myself a pretty decent teacher; my evaluations are uniformly above the department average. This semester, however, I have achieved the unthinkable: my fall student evaluations for a large sophomore/junior class are higher (not by much, but still) than those for my beloved advanced graduate class! Evaluation inversion?
2) A student of mine, who graduated a little while ago, has been with me on a short-term part-time postdoc while looking for jobs in industry. He's interviewed at several places, without much luck. Part of it is his personality (he can come across as a bit of a jerk at times) but part is that really, at these industry interviews, all sorts of questions come up. For instance, he's an excellent simulation person and knows the physics behind what he does very well. He's interviewing with this company over the phone, for supposedly a simulation position, and in one layer of the interview he talks to this person about all these these experimental techniques "How would you measure this or that?" Some of these questions he could answer based on our close work with experimental colleagues, but some he couldn't. This makes me wonder how successful any of us faculty would be in landing these real-world jobs, if you getting a job can really depend on you answering questions about just about anything. What we are used to praising above all else -- excellence in our chosen subfield -- means squat.
Another former student of mine reported that most places where he had interviewed seemed to look for someone with experience in a company, and it's obviously hard to gain experience when you are inexperienced if everyone already wants experienced!
3) PlS has a post on how he's becoming a workaholic through no intent of his own. It's easy, really easy. And very dangerous. Turns you into this and this -- a whiny, burnt-out, even if tenured, mess. Advice: drop all that can be dropped, and then some. Do whatever you need to do to protect your passion for your work. Protect it before you lose it; because once you lose it, it's really hard to get it back...
4) To wrap this up on a postive note: my three-year old, who currently has a cold, is really into putting saline nose drops into his nose all by himself. All the time. Yesterday, he went to his room, found the nose drops on a shelf some 5.5 ft away from the floor, and, unable to reach them, decided to use his blanket to knock the drops over. My husband and I were downstairs and were floored to see him come down proudly squirting the drops into his nose, and even more so by his matter-of-fact account of how he managed to get them down. That is one cool little kid.
1) I consider myself a pretty decent teacher; my evaluations are uniformly above the department average. This semester, however, I have achieved the unthinkable: my fall student evaluations for a large sophomore/junior class are higher (not by much, but still) than those for my beloved advanced graduate class! Evaluation inversion?
2) A student of mine, who graduated a little while ago, has been with me on a short-term part-time postdoc while looking for jobs in industry. He's interviewed at several places, without much luck. Part of it is his personality (he can come across as a bit of a jerk at times) but part is that really, at these industry interviews, all sorts of questions come up. For instance, he's an excellent simulation person and knows the physics behind what he does very well. He's interviewing with this company over the phone, for supposedly a simulation position, and in one layer of the interview he talks to this person about all these these experimental techniques "How would you measure this or that?" Some of these questions he could answer based on our close work with experimental colleagues, but some he couldn't. This makes me wonder how successful any of us faculty would be in landing these real-world jobs, if you getting a job can really depend on you answering questions about just about anything. What we are used to praising above all else -- excellence in our chosen subfield -- means squat.
Another former student of mine reported that most places where he had interviewed seemed to look for someone with experience in a company, and it's obviously hard to gain experience when you are inexperienced if everyone already wants experienced!
3) PlS has a post on how he's becoming a workaholic through no intent of his own. It's easy, really easy. And very dangerous. Turns you into this and this -- a whiny, burnt-out, even if tenured, mess. Advice: drop all that can be dropped, and then some. Do whatever you need to do to protect your passion for your work. Protect it before you lose it; because once you lose it, it's really hard to get it back...
4) To wrap this up on a postive note: my three-year old, who currently has a cold, is really into putting saline nose drops into his nose all by himself. All the time. Yesterday, he went to his room, found the nose drops on a shelf some 5.5 ft away from the floor, and, unable to reach them, decided to use his blanket to knock the drops over. My husband and I were downstairs and were floored to see him come down proudly squirting the drops into his nose, and even more so by his matter-of-fact account of how he managed to get them down. That is one cool little kid.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)