Smurfaciousness

Smurf is 5 months old.

We've started daycare a few hours a day. Smurf enjoys it, but I am not as thrilled with their care as I was with my middle son. The baby room is a bit cold and all the kids are constantly crawling/toddling around with green boogers. Smurf is consequently suffering through a cold right now, with oodles of snot to make the Thanksgiving extra festive.

Smurf weighs a little over 20 lbs. He can roll from his back to his tummy like a champ and happily stays on the tummy for a while, playing with toys.

But then he gets really mad because he can't roll the other way, onto his back (at least not every time). He can also sit very well with support, and can even sit unsupported for a few seconds (then topples over on one side). As you can see, he has a bib perpetually attached to him since he drools and slobbers and spits incessantly.


As evidenced by orange stains on the bib, we have started feeding him solids. He eats dinner with us and is very excited about it. We've given him the "usual suspect" vegetables (sweet potatoes, carrots, squash, green beans) and some baby cereal. It's interesting how the recommended wisdom changes, and with each recommendation the pediatricians swear that it's the only way to go. With my first two kids, they said fortified cereal at 4-6 months (primarily to learn how to swallow and for iron and zinc, which the breastmilk is low on), other baby food after 6 months. Now they recommend vegetables and meat at 4 months, because meat has more iron and zinc (duh!) and cereal much later, if at all. When I was a first-time mom, I was too terrified to even consider deviating from the prescribed wisdom. Now I simply give Smurf whatever I see fit, which happens to be jar baby food (bad busy mommy) as well as cereal.

The older brothers adore Smurf beyond expectations -- they are constantly trying to engage him and get him to smile. My oldest handles (holds, carries) the baby pretty well and even watches him for short periods of time. The middle boy is loving but occasionally a bit rough with the little guy, who valiantly endures it all until he can't, so their "playtime" typically ends with some crying of both parties.

Smurf is a people person and very cuddly. He gives wonderful, slobbery, open-mouth kisses that melt my heart. He's made everything better.

Salaried

A friend of mine from another institution and I recently played a game of "Show me yours, I'll show you mine." No, not that kind. ;)
Namely, both my friend and I are at large public research universities, but in different physical science fields. The salaries of everyone at public universities should be publicly available, even though in many cases actually digging these numbers up may be a bit nontrivial (e.g may perhaps be done only on campus etc.)
In the cases of our two universities, there are conveniently accessible websites where you can look up everyone's salaries, so we exchanged the URLs. It was fun and educational to see what my colleagues at a peer institution make. To all of you who are looking at tenure-track positions, looking up salaries at the public universities where you interview is a very good idea, so you would know what to expect, whether you are being low-balled, and how much you can negotiate.

But, in addition to looking up peers, it is interesting to see how much people in different fields make at different institutions. I am giving you the listing of the highest paid university personnel at my friend's institution. The names and other identifying information have been removed to protect the innocent, but there is still plenty of number goodness to ponder; the third column is simply the fraction of a full time appointment. You can click to enlarge.



The athletic department salaries are very high, which I believe surprises no one. Still, it rubs me in a particularly wrong way in the light of the Penn State scandal.

Note how much less a women's basketball coach makes than a men's -- hey, the poor dude/dudette they may well be a professor, that's how little they make! Then see the relative proportion of administration versus faculty among the highest earners. Also, among the highest earning faculty, those from law are the most numerous.

On this list is a person who I know to be a Nobel laureate in physics; there may be others on this list, in disciplines far removed from mine, but no time to look them up. It's interesting to note that one football head coach equals 6 Nobel-prize-winning physicists...

Excuse My Excuse

Yesterday's post brought about the usual accusations that I was Crazy Advisor from Hell, Spawn of Satan, and Meddler Superior into the Lives of Students. But let me put away my pitchfork for a second and step away from the fire on which I am slowly roasting an unsuspecting grad student in order to focus on an interesting question that resurfaced in the comment thread.

There are posts of mine (e.g. here) where a student wants to do something for reasons I may not approve of or understand, or I want to do something for reasons someone else doesn't approve of (e.g. this post). Massimo has commented several times on several of my posts, very consistently, that the problem is always overexplaining. When you offer people a reason why you cannot do something, be ready to have it judged and/or dismissed. So it's best to just say "Sorry, I cannot make/do it" or something to that effect, and leave it at that. There are several other commenters who endorse this approach.

I think Massimo has a valid point, but in my opinion "Sorry, can't do it" is not universally acceptable. Its appropriateness depends strongly on the relationship that the people involved have. Sometimes, "Sorry, can't do it -- period" can do more harm than good as it may seem inappropriately dismissive.

For instance, if a relationship is that of equals, such as between two faculty colleagues, not disclosing details about why you can't meet is fine. But, when the two people have very different positions in a hierarchy and/or one has some power over the other or one is doing the other a favor, then it may not be a good idea for the person lower on the totem pole to appear dismissive, which saying "Sorry, can't do it" without giving a reason does.
Giving a reason indirectly shows that you are considering the proposal seriously and would not really dismiss it without something valid, and as a token of good will you share what it is that you consider important enough to turn down the proposal.

For instance, as in this post, I do not feel it is acceptable to blow off (i.e. stay at a required meeting less than ideal while offering no more than "Sorry, can't do") my program manager, a person I would like to continue to fund my work, without an explanation. I find it less acceptable and more disrespectful than offering an explanation and taking the risk of having its validity judged.

Similarly, I find it more disrespectful/ less acceptable if the student just says "Sorry, can't do" without an explanation to an advisor he'd pestered for months when said extremely-pressed-for-time advisor attempts to schedule a meeting, than it is to offer even a strange excuse.

So what do you say, blogosphere? Is "Sorry, can't do it - period" always acceptable, and, if not, when is it not?

Must Have Lunch

There is this student who has been emailing me for months, wanting to meet with me and asking to join my research group. He has been very pushy and persistent, which are not necessarily bad qualities. But, I told him time and time again that I didn't plan on taking new students this year and that I was on leave. Never mind, he kept saying, he just wanted a chance to work with me, I didn't even have to pay him right away, his parents would do it the first year. I told him I could not guarantee him funding even next year, but he just repeated that he just wanted a chance to prove himself.

It has been months of back-and-forth via email. This student has been extremely insistent to meet and I have been blowing him off. But then he came up in a conversation with a close, trusted colleague, and the colleague said the student was in his class and seemed to be very interested, asking good questions, and overall to have a good background in our field. So I decided to give the student a shot and we met. I told him I could give him a desk and a computer but that I guaranteed no funding and we'd see how it went from there. This was on Monday. We got him a desk and a key to the lab and discussed briefly his course load, and he seemed most eager to get going on a research project. I had another meeting so we only had about 20 min to talk and I had to leave.

Now, these days I spend very few hours in the office because I am on leave and much more efficient working from home. (I am insanely busy on the grant and paper writing front, it's not like I am eating chocolates on my sofa all day, although that's really all I want to do some days. And sleep). Tomorrow I am supposed to have three meetings so I decided to make the whole day a meeting day. I told the student that I needed to meet with him tomorrow and gave him a 4-hour window between my early-day and late-day meetings to pick a time so we can get him started with a small research project. He responded that he had classes at the beginning and the end of the interval, and that he must go and have lunch between his classes (nearly hour and a half), so he will not be able to meet with me.

Huh? This is from a student who had been pestering me for some of my time for months.
He is not a baby. He will not starve if for once he has to actually postpone his lunch till after the second class. The horror! Not eating exactly at noon! During the work day I eat when I get a chance to eat, it's no big deal. I was under the impression that most busy adults are the same.

This is the second most ridiculous excuse I have ever received from a student for not being able to meet. The most ridiculous one, bar none, is still held by a former student (who eventually left after a MS) telling me he couldn't make the 1-on-1 meeting because he had made a date with some friends to go shop for vegetables! This was in the middle of a work day, e.g. 1 or 2 pm, and was not even an impromptu meeting but rather a scheduled weekly meeting.

Apparently, food acquisition and scheduled consumption are considered to be of top importance by some students. These two students happen to both be international students and from the same country, so perhaps there is a cultural component to all this, who knows... I find these excuses weird and unacceptable. None of my other students from different parts on the globe (including the country these two are from) needed to be told that meeting to discuss research is high priority, so unless they have a class, are sick, or out of town, they should make the time to meet.

The "vegetable shopper" ended up being an extreme disappointment all over, and among other things was caught cheating on one of my exams. We had to redo everything he did for research in the two years with me because I could no longer trust him. I just hope this new student doesn't turn out to be similar. Sometimes a stupid excuse is just that, a stupid excuse... But, if you are a grad student, it's probably not ideal if on day 3 of being with a new advisor you remind said advisor of the worst student they ever had.

Video Silliness

I have been extremely busy, so no time to post serious stuff. Will be back soon.

In the meantime, here are two goofy videos, recommended by my 11-year-old son.

Manuscript Submission Adventures

Since this summer, five manuscripts where I am the lead senior author and my different group members are first author were finally wrapped up and submitted. Most of these papers were supposed to go in before the arrival of Smurf, but I felt really ill for a long time, so they didn't. Now I am just happy for my very patient students and postdocs, who were really great sports about the delay. Among these manuscripts, the earliest submission has been accepted and is about to appear online any day now, and four are still in review. These are all comprehensive manuscripts (i.e. quite long) and on considerably different topics from one another.

One of them has been in active review (as in -- with different referees) for several months now and no report has been produced yet. Overall, the paper has been sent to N referees (N is approximately three times the number of needed reports), of whom N-1 have so far declined to review, having sat on the paper between a few days and several weeks before eventually deciding they couldn't do it. I am quite surprised by this development, because the paper is not very complicated; I have had manuscripts that were considerably more technically difficult, with lots of math to go through and therefore not the most scintillating read, and all such manuscripts reviewed just fine. This manuscript is not excessively long or difficult (mathematically), it's well-written (of course I am biased), it is on a topic in a very active area of research, and it has a solid connection to experiment. This is a reputable society journal, and they do ask that you provide a list of potential reviewers, which we did. Why it would be so hard to find some people willing and able to review it is really puzzling. I have to think that this is a failure on the editorial end, which would be uncharacteristic of this journal, probably combined with a very busy time of year for everyone (October submission window at the NSF). Other theories?

On another submission, we received the first report only 3 days after the review was solicited (the online system enables you to track when individual reviews come in). This is the fastest review I have ever received, and its speed is even more remarkable because the paper is long. Now, it's going to be another 3-4 weeks (if the other reviewers are conscientious) before all the reports are in, but in the meantime we can play the guessing game: is the super-speedy review positive or negative?

Is a referee report received after only 3 days likely positive or negative?
	Positive
	Negative
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I invite you to share your own adventures from the manuscript submission and review process.