The Free-Ride offspring are pretty sure what I do for a living is grade papers. But seeing as how they’re both students, I thought I’d ask what the view of things is like on the other side of the red pen.
Dr. Free-Ride: When you come in and find me working on the weekend, what am I usually working on?
Younger offspring: Grading?
Dr. Free-Ride: Yeah. I know that you do a lot of homework and assignments.
Younger offspring: Mmm-hmm.
Dr. Free-Ride: And your teacher grades them.
Younger offspring: No! We correct them together.
Dr. Free-Ride: You correct it all together?
Younger offspring: Yeah. She doesn’t really look at them.
Dr. Free-Ride: What?
Category Archives: Academia
Repent! The end (of the semester) is nigh!
Yeah, still grading here. Yesterday I returned mass quantities of graded papers (with a free paperclip for every student!) and have another assignment to grade today … just in time for two more assignments which come due tomorrow. And then, the final exam!
Ever the optimist, this morning in the shower I wondered how things would turn out if the Rapture were to happen while I’m in the midst of all this grading. It’s the kind of hypothetical that demands a poll:
An open letter
… to the elder Free-Ride offspring’s trumpet teacher.
While I am generally accepting of your choices as far as the pieces you are having my child learn how to play, I have a small bone to pick with you this evening.
Pack your bags: assessing young scientists’ commitment to science.
DrugMonkey has a poll up asking for reader reports of the science career advice they have gotten firsthand. Here’s the framing of the poll:
It boils down to what I see as traditional scientific career counselling to the effect that there is something wrong or inadvisable about staying in the same geographical location or University when a scientist move across the training stages. From undergrad to grad, grad to postdoc or postdoc to faculty.
First, if you’ve gotten advice on your scientific career, go respond to the poll. Then, come back and we’ll chat.
The corresponding question for the science PIs: graduate student work hours.
From the last poll you probably guessed that this one was coming.
I expect my graduate students to be working:Market Research
I’ll be interested to see whether there’s any correspondence between the hours demanded by PIs who read this blog and the hours demanded of graduate students who read this blog.
Once again, feel free to discuss the issue of appropriate student workload and/or humane management of graduate students in the comments.
A quick question for the science graduate students: work hours.
The issue came up in my “Ethics in Science” class today, so I figured it was worth mounting a quick (and obviously unscientific) poll:
My graduate advisor expects or requires me to work:survey software
Feel free to discuss in the comments.
Question for the hivemind: where in the blogosphere do you find mentoring?
Yesterday in my “Ethics in Science” class, we were discussing mentoring. Near the end of the class meeting, I noted that scientists in training have a resource nowadays that just wasn’t available during my misspent scientific youth (back in the last millennium): the blogosphere.
What does the blogosphere have to do with mentoring?
From the annals of plagiarism: with friends like these …
As we creep toward the end of the spring semester, I noticed a story at Inside Higher Ed about a commencement address gone wrong:
Activities compatible with one’s academic job.
I really don’t know what to say about this news item, except that it had better mean that the California State University presumptively* views blogging on one’s own time and bandwidth as fully compatible with a professorial appointment, regardless of the subject matter on which the blog is focused or the views expressed by the academic doing the blogging.
Otherwise, there is a pretty messed up double-standard in place.
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*Obviously, violating FERPA, HIPAA, or other laws or regulations would count against that presumption.
A possibility for those recruiting postdocs and junior faculty to consider.
In recent days, there have been discussions of conditions for postdoctoral fellows, and about the ways that these conditions might make it challenging to tackle the problem of the “leaky pipeline” for women in science.
For example, in comments at DrugMonkey’s blog, bsci opines: