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How do I judge whether I am drawing primarily from my shoulder with only minimal adjustments from the elbow or if I am over-using the elbow and using less of the shoulder?

If your elbow is resting on something, then you are drawing from the elbow. If your elbow is not resting on something, then you are drawing from the shoulder. When drawing from the shoulder, the whole arm moves as a single unit. Trust yourself; you’ll do fine.

Can i finish the whole course using only ballpoint pen? basically where I came from(a third world country) an artist pen = basic meal. Right now i dont have a stable source of income that can support buying artist pen. if someone can elaborate how it will affect my mindset it will be greatly appreciated because as i see it now artist pen and ballpoint pen will punish my rashness when drawing. to give context im currently on homework 1

If you’re willing to give me your address in a private message, and I’m able to figure it out, I will ship you some of my pens that I don’t use and won’t ever use. Fine liners and maybe some others that I’ve forgotten about. But to answer your question, I don’t think it really matters. As far as I understand, the largest purpose of using a pen was so that you couldn’t erase and could view your mistakes in order to learn.

Fineliners get ruined real fast, need help. I have bought 3 fineliners: an Artliner, a Steadler pigment liner and a Sakura Pigma Micron. Each one of them got to the point that they are unusable by a week of usage. The lines look like garbage and I have to hold them near perpendicular for them to even create a mark. I am applying the same pressure that I apply to a 0.5 mechanical pencil and I am not leaving them with their cap off. Why are the nibs wearing out this fast?

I had a huge problem going through them quickly. I kept trying to reduce my drawing pressure, but it gets impractical at a certain point. Then I realized the problem was that the surface I was drawing on was too hard. Try putting a couple of extra pieces of paper on your table/board, and I bet things will improve.

Can I practice all of lesson 1 if I don't successfully complete 1.1? I've been working on 1.1 for a week for 30min a day and there isn't any improvement. I wanted to try other exercises to see if that would help.

The purpose of the assigned quantity is not for you to necessarily see improvement over that amount. It's to produce a body of work that, once you've completed the lesson, someone else can critique in order to identify whether you understand the purpose/goal of each exercise and whether you're moving in the right direction. As laid out in Lesson 0 (which, if you have not gone through, I strongly recommend you do), you should not be grinding away at one exercise until you feel satisfied—relying on our own arbitrary standards tends to lead to a lot of wasted time and effort.

Questions of a confused beginner Hey guys, pretty much what the title says. I've been starting my drawing journey and I'm a little confused. I like the construction approach from DrawABox a lot. But there are a lot of courses and books (Drawing on the right side of the brain; Keys to Drawing) that stress the value of starting with learning "perceptive skills" first, so you can get really good with observational drawing. I think I know what they mean by that, but I'm confused. How important is it to start with that? I can imagine that these perceptive skills will also be a side product of learning to draw constructively. What's your experience with this? I'm especially interested if there are people here that started with constuction and later found some additional benefit in focusing on observational skills later.

"Honestly, just start. Draw a Box is a free resource that has been iterated over multiple years to maximize student learning. The perspective drawing is part of lesson one; it's not the first lesson in lesson one, but it's at the beginning. Don't get distracted with other resources. If you prefer those resources, the choice is yours, but in whatever you do, just do it wholeheartedly. I think it's easy to get sidetracked with other resources and other rules that people say you should follow. Either way, it's practice that makes you better, and there is no perfect way to start, so just do it."

ImI'm really serious about digital art and would like a course similar to this one that isn’t so religious about forcing practice in non digital space I’m not here to argue about whether it’s a good system or not, but rather ask about anything similar that allows practice digitally instead of in ink. I’d like to be able to submit homework and find it a bit silly that I get chastised for submitting digital goods.

I think Ctrl Paint might be the answer. It covers the fundamentals (and a lot more) all in a digital environment. It's all free (which is incredible) and if you wish to really dive deep, there are bundles you can buy. I found myself in a similar situation back then. I moved away from pen and paper because of frustration and focused on digital only. It was not the solution because the same frustration was hitting me, caused by not enough confidence when it comes to perspective, forms, volumes, etc. What brought me back was "ignoring line quality." I just focused on "putting the right line in the right place." Now this is super personal, and I am not suggesting you do the same, but it got me back in the game. To better understand what I mean, look at Scott Robertson's line quality vs. John Park's. Looking at Scott's work was killing me, while imitating the loose lines of John's work made the process more enjoyable to me. It allowed me to grind the mileage and become confident in drawing.

Starting out with drawing I’m about an absolute beginner at drawing (if you don’t count forced art classes in elementary, and some doodling as a kid), and I was wondering if anybody has some tips for getting started? I don’t exactly know where to start

You need to accept that your drawing is not good and never expect yourself to be as good as Picasso, I guess. The hard part isn't the grind, but the consistency of doing it. You need to have a good mindset first so your study stays consistent.

People who have completed Drawabox, how do you all feel when you draw? How has it changed your experience while constructing your drawings, mainly Anatomy, Backgrounds, etc.? Do you feel confident when you start the construction of your sketch? More than the result, I'm interested to know how your journey of drawing the sketch has changed

The boxes are just a foundation to train your mind to see in 3D. Once your mind understands how to make the analogy between an object and a simple form, drawing becomes easier. Drawing all those boxes helps to observe objects and imagine how to translate their spatial relations onto a 2D canvas.

Is drawing 4 hours a week OK to improve? Since I have a busy schedule, I can only draw on the weekends. Sometimes I spend the whole day drawing as it's pretty relaxing. But I made it a habit to draw 2 hours at "least". I used to draw 1-2 hours everyday. So I'm scared if I fall behind.

Challenging yourself is way more important than spending multiple hours per day. If it feels like a struggle, you're doing it right, like fighting a Dark Souls boss. If it's effortless doodling, you're not going to improve nearly as much.

I think I have found some problems with this course after halfway through lesson 2 1. I think u/Uncomfortable recognizes most of the students quit. It's looked down upon to judge this system but wouldnt that weed out anyone who would have any criticism? The only people left will be the ones who are good at it or enjoy it. You can say it's lack of dicipline or they didnt have the will, but thats really easy to say from the inside looking out. 2. Most of the people doing this are extremely well put together and ready for this kind of challenge. I think there needs to be a pre-Buildabox course for regular people. The reason people get frustrated and leave is because this isnt for them, it's for artists, people who already think like an artist. This is most evident when you are drawing textures for the first time. You go from a box challenge to "Okay, now draw a paper ball". To someone who doesnt draw that's impossible without training. I've seen people's homework and the amount of texture they are able to do is breathtaking. So either the people in this course are established artists who are just training or have already had loads of experience or an eye for things. Edit: Also people are WAY too good at confident strokes. I dont understand how people can draw this straight. 3. It's discouraging to hear Uncomfortable tell you how bad you are over and over in the lessons. I know he's trying to sound sympathetic but it just feels.. blah, and when you cant do a lesson you feel like garbage. 4. The videos have WAY too many ads. I mean like 3-4 per video. It's incredibly annoying. 5. I dont believe this course teaches you anything. Its supposed to teach you how to learn how to draw but if you cant learn how to draw the way he does I feel like you are just wasting your time. I dont feel like I can apply perspective in a sense outside of a box. That will probably change in the future, but the point is after lesson 2 It feels pointless. Most of us have school and a job and to dedicate a year to this is a tough order without knowing what we are getting into. This course reminds me a lot of how people treat bad therapy "Oh it wont work if you dont believe it will" Thats called blind faith, if observation has an effect on the outcome then it's not science. 6. I'm not giving up and I dont think this course is bad or wrong. I think its fine for artists who need to learn more perspective. But when im done ill give some full opinions. Please dont downvote this because it's not your thinking, I think its important to take the views of a frustrated individual who is willing to give his opinion on the early bits of the course. Many people probably thought the same thing but never spoke up and if you shut them down then things can't improve or be taken into consideration.

I draw a box concurrently with "the art and science of drawing" on Skillshare. I think they cover each other's weaknesses. Drawabox gives tools to study art, while Eviston gives you ways to use them. Drawabox gets you really good at boxes, and art and science shows you how to use a box to draw a coffee cup handle.

50% rule I'm on lesson 0 right now and I just read the 50% rule as I finished the 1 hour of the 2 hours I had planned to spend. It feels like a bit of a waste of time to draw for an hour with 0 direction but if it you guys think it's worth it ill do it.

I will tell you my perspective on this—it helps me remember why I'm doing this. Sure, courses are important, and sure, my art looks bad at this point, but ultimately drawing boxes or studying perspective aren't my goals. Creating and getting my ideas on canvas are. So while it is crucial to study and do your bit of boring practice, it is also important to just draw, without much expectation or self-criticism. Also, I think it can be a fun way of noticing how your abilities get better over time. You do some outside-course drawings and then are like, "Hey, I actually got better, even if just a little; the work was worth it."

Should I restart? I've quit back in 2019, and I'm planning to come back, however, I quit when I reached lesson 2, should I restart from the beginning, since it's been 2 and a half years? Is there a standard answer for this question? Ty

I restart every time I stop, and I always do one exercise a day. When I see that I am having some difficulties with an exercise, I train a little more in it.

Drawabox vs Scott Robertson's 'How To Draw' I've been working through how to draw and saw that drawabox is quite similar to it. I was thinking of maybe using both but what would you recommend?

How to Draw is quite a bit more advanced, but would be the perfect thing to move on to after you've progressed through a good chunk of Draw a Box. They complement each other very nicely.

Brain Fatigue sets in quickly when doing lessons. Is this normal? Something I've noticed when doing Draw-a-box is that I start to feel mentally fatigued pretty quickly when doing lessons. When I do the lessons I do them with a lazer focus and I try my best not to rush and to try my hardest because I want the end result to be an accurate demonstration of my current abilities. Unfortunately, i can only maintain that focus for an hour at a time at most before I need to stop. Some homework excersizes end up taking me a week or longer to complete. Is this normal or do I just have the mental focus of a goldfish?

From what I've read and experienced, you only have 4-6 hours of focus per day. It can only be reset with sleep. DaB is hardcore focus, you are definitely not alone! If you deplete your focus meter before you get to do any DaB stuff, you might be better putting it off for a while instead of getting frustrated. After the focus is gone, I find it impossible to retain information or improve anything.

The amount of stress being put into the importance of fineliner pens and paper is quite discouraging to me. I have a 15'' display tablet that I've been using the past year. I was planning on using that in order to follow along the lessons, but then I reached the final section where it concludes that pen & paper are *required*. I searched around and found this article that explains why, exactly, pen and paper are so important... and well. The arguments don't really convince me. But even if I find the arguments a bit weak, there's always the possibility that I'm being naive. That there truly is a problem, something not obvious to the individual, but something that someone having taught so many students would be able to see. Over and over, it's said again and again. Pen and paper good, tablet bad. And, in that case... what even is the point of trying with a tablet, if I'm obviously going to miss a lot of important stuff? It's seems wasteful to try something when you know that you aren't doing it correctly. I have nothing against traditional media. I started out using pencil/pen and paper. But I don't like having to rely on something that's finite. I don't like having to go and buy something else. That's why I got the tablet in the first place, so that I no longer have to worry about pens, pencils or brushes. Maybe it's a just my silly millennial self talking. But that's how I feel. And then there's the feedback, one of the most important parts of this course. Would I be taken seriously, were I to present digitally made work? Would I get berated for not doing the "correct" thing? And I know this whole thing sounds silly. It's sounds silly to me, reading it again and thinking over the reasoning. I'm obviously overthinking stuff, like always. The solution is obvious, go buy the damn pens, if you don't want to then go do it in the damn tablet. But I don't want to go buy pens nor do I want to do something that's not going to work out as well. It sounds completely petty, I'm talking like a whining child. And then the whole though process goes through a circle and starts again. And the whole thing has really brought my spirits down. I'm not even sure why I'm writing this whole thing. I don't know what I expect to gain out of this... rant, I guess. Other than just letting it out of my head.

The prescription for Draw A Box, along with Peter Han’s course that it is based on, is designed for general art improvement among the most people. You can do whatever you want; there are plenty of artists who have never touched a fineliner pen that are amazing. But you are looking at this the wrong way. The course encourages fineliner use to build confidence in your lines by the lack of Undo, by forcing you to slow down and think before you make a mark, and to not rely on the opacity of pencil, ballpoint pens, digital brushes, etc. This is designed so that the most people don’t develop bad habits and improve at an optimal speed. You can gain these good habits digitally, but you have to consciously be aware of it. There’s a component of muscle memory, but there’s also a portion of drawing that requires you to actively think about what you are doing. So go ahead and do whatever process you want; if you can consciously keep an active mind while drawing, you’ll improve just the same. I would just recommend checking your ego and asking yourself if you’re just trying to avoid difficulty in your learning process, or if you really believe this is the best way for you to improve.

Am I drawing too slow? (250 boxs) I started doing the 250 box challenge a week or two ago, but I feel like I'm not making enough progress. It's not uncommon for a single box to take 10-15 minutes, but I'm trying my best to get all the lines to converge and to put line weight without fraying. For reference, box 19 took me 7.5 seconds while box 18 took 20 because I was confused on how to get the left side right. Should I prioritize speed or accuracy with this exercise, and am I going too slow? https://imgur.com/a/MATXgcx

I think it can be a good idea to draw slowly at times, especially when you are learning how to draw something new. However, there is also enormous value in learning how to draw with speed. There are several reasons for this, but to my mind, there are three in particular that are paramount: 1. Avoiding burnout. 2. Squeezing in more practice. 3. Getting better at gesture and flow; basically, learning how to avoid overthinking and overworking your art. When you attend a life drawing session, they will typically have you practice both fast drawing and slow drawing. They usually start with warm-ups (e.g., 1-minute sketches) and then gradually work up to longer and longer sessions (typically ending with a 15-minute or 30-minute pose). The quick gesture drawings really help you loosen up, so that your final piece is nice and fluid. If you jump right into a longer pose, it tends to come out rather stiff-looking. This may not translate super well to drawing boxes, but it's a good thing to keep in mind; you *do* really want to practice drawing with some speed, because that will help you make more lively drawings later when you're trying to capture more organic forms. But you do also want to practice accuracy, because that will help you learn anatomy/perspective/etc. later on. I'd recommend practicing both and then try to converge on a point where you can draw quickly *and* accurately at the same time.

A few questions about the 50% rule 1. Am I allowed to use online references? Should I use references? Is it okay to (sometimes) just to try and copy them? 2. Am I allowed to erase/undo if I'm not happy with how my lines turned out? 3. Is it okay to experiment with things like trying build figures from basic shapes or drawing various shapes in perspective? 4. Is it really okay to just draw what I want to draw (stylized art) instead of realistic one? I'm extremely afraid of developing bad habits and slowing down my progress (which already had been pretty much non-existent).

“You are deeply afraid of doing the wrong thing, of investing time the wrong way, of wasting your time, and of delaying yourself.” This resonates so strongly. I’m 46, and that fear seems to grow every day; it’s a tough one to overcome and it stops me from making progress, so the sooner you face it head-on, the better. Good luck.

Learning DrawBox on a Wacom? Hey everyone :) I’m new to traditional art and I’m also really into Digital Painting.. I bought a first drawing tablet from Wacom and I was wondering if you guys think that doing the drawbox lessons on a Wacom? I think it might help me to feel better on the tablet.. I will really appreciate your guys opinions Thanks a lot!

I have sensory issues with paper and hate touching it, so when I do lessons, I use my iPad. I feel it’s important for you to be comfortable with whatever medium feels good to you.

Any tips for shaky hands? I've been struggling with my hands. They naturally are pretty shaky, and get worse when I think about them and try to keep them steady. This of course makes some of these activities difficult. Has anyone else struggled with this? Any tips or ways to get steadier hands? Thanks!

Man, do I feel you. It's true that beginners tend to be shakier and will get better with practice, but if you're like me and have a disorder like essential tremors, there are times when damn near everything wants to be the wettest, angrily flung hair noodle. Supporting your hand with your pinky out on the page is one thing. I hear some artists grip their drawing hand with the other in a "T" support too. You might find a mahl stick useful. If your hand/arm has nerve damage, definitely do strengthening exercises. Make sure you've gotten enough sugar in your system, and avoid caffeine. Ignore the fact your joints feel like they have bees. I found concentrating on tremors makes me more antsy, and in turn, I wobble more too, ha. Take a step back and breathe from time to time. There's no point in making a fuss over a nerve's whims. When doing digital art, turn on the line correction tool when available, and you may want to invest in programs like Lazy Nezumi Pro. But the absolutely best advice is to find a way to incorporate it into your art if it's something you can't help. I find the shakes can be friends if you treat them right. Though the lines aren't all sturdy, a touch of dreamy vibes can go a long way.

Should I only use pen/pencil and paper for these exsercises? I have read and been told on some subreddits that being adept at using a graphics tablet (like Wacom one) and being adept at using regular pen & paper are two quite different things. My question is, if I plan to mostly do graphics tablet work, is it alright for me to use a graphics tablet for the exercises with some pen & paper moments (as practice) when I'm away from the computer or should I maybe stick to one thing?

The point of buying a graphics tablet is to make drawing on the computer as close to the same experience as drawing on paper. IMO, whatever you learn drawing on paper will very much apply when you switch over to drawing on a graphics tablet, after a little adjustment period. Drawabox recommends also spending time drawing for fun, and for that, you should totally use your graphics tablet, trying to apply what you learn from the lessons.

Advice on drawing confidently but precisely when drawing smaller forms with the arm? I just made it to lesson 5, and I’m noticing that there’s a lot of small details that have to be added in the construction process, especially in the head (eye sockets, muzzle construction, etc). I feel like I can’t be precise enough when I’m drawing these smaller forms with the arm. They either end up being too wobbly from a slow stroke, or too big when I try and draw with force. I’m trying to avoid falling back into the habit of using my wrist. I’ve had this problem in the previous lesson when trying to draw skinny insect legs or antennae, which either ended up being too fat, or too wobbly. Any advice?

Isn't it alright to draw from the wrist for short, precise lines? It seemed like the emphasis on drawing from the shoulder early in the lessons was about building that tool for your kit. If it's not the right tool for this job, though, use a different one, right? If you want to work more on the elbow and shoulder, I'd make my drawing larger, so those small details require longer lines.

Is there a correct posture you should be sitting in while drawing?

To be honest, the best advice I ever got was to not sit for too long without breaks and to not hunch over your tablet or paper. Also, remember to exercise and eat healthy in the long term. It doesn't seem important at first, but after you get some time in, you really start to feel your body degrading (if you don't take good care of yourself). This is really important for anyone, but especially for someone spending most of their day sitting. Good luck and take care of yourself!

I flunked someone for plagiarism. I just discovered they hired a PI to investigate me. Does anyone have experience with this? I’m in a tenure track position in the social sciences at a school in the Midwest. Last semester, I flunked a student for plagiarizing part of a paper (it was a clear case of copy and paste from an obscure source). The student did not take it well. Things are winding their way through the administrative process. It has come to my attention that this disgruntled student has apparently hired a private investigator to follow me and look into my life. I feel extremely violated. However, it has unfortunately also come to my attention that this PI has learned that I am in an open relationship. I suspect this would not be well received by my department and would likely jeopardize my ability to get tenure. It has been strongly implied that details of my personal relationship will be leaked to the department unless I stop pursuing internal discipline against the student. However, it’s not clear to me that I could stop the proceedings even if I wanted to. What exactly am I supposed to do in this situation?

This will sound harsh and unpopular, but grow some backbone and stand for your way of life. If this is frowned upon by a place you spend over eight hours each weekday, you're in the wrong spot and you're supporting a system that undermines something you value a lot. It's difficult to do this, given you might have to provide for a family and risk losing job security, but if the alternative is to live a lie for a third of your life, the choice seems easy to me.

Do you also happen to get sad because you simply will never have enough time to get the knowledge you want to? I was wondering if other people also get kind of sad because it is simply impossible to have enough time to learn everything you actually wanted to learn by a certain age/stage in life. Like idk, completing that list of books with important authors in your field which gets longer and longer while keeping up with the recent findings in your field. Or learning that additional programming language or further practicing the one your familiar with. Or learning one more additional language. And all of that on top of the workload you already have. Sometimes that makes me really sad because there are just so many things I am interested in and curious about but the more I study the things the longer the list of things I want to learn more about gets. Idk if you can relate but I just wanted to share this and I would be really interested to see what you think about this!

I never thought about it, but now that you mentioned it... Yes! It's kind of like when you read a review paper and they cite many other original research papers, and you want to get through all of them, but you don't have the time. When you do attempt to get through them, you find yourself going down a rabbit hole. One paper leads to ten other papers, and each of the ten papers leads you to another ten... It never ends! Then the timer goes off, you've got to run back to the lab to change whatever solution you've got your tissue incubating in. And those papers that you've found will be left as tabs on your browser, never looked at again (but never closed, either). Until one day, your computer freezes up, and you've got to force shutdown.

My prediction for the Fall semester 2020. Might play out like this: https://imgur.com/IVt9EiJ

I currently teach high school. We plan to be open face-to-face, but once a kid gets COVID, we're out for a week, and anyone who was in class with that kid is out an additional week for quarantine. In a school with almost 2,000 students. Yeah, ok.

Why did I pursue a PhD if it has not led to any opportunities? I’m feeling pretty down at the moment. I’ve been applying to TT jobs for a few years and have gotten no luck. I received my PhD from an average state school in 2015 and have had two relatively fruitful postdocs the last 5 years. I’ve published 10 papers in mid-tier journals. Yet it’s all been for nothing. I can’t get a job for the life of me. I’ve applied to probably almost 100 professor jobs with no success whatsoever. 4 year R1 schools, SLACs, and community colleges all have rejected me. I’m willing to relocate anywhere in the country. There’s too few jobs and I just don’t cut. I’m almost 35 now with a salary that an undergrad straight out of college wouldn’t be thrilled with. And I’ve busting my ass for more than a decade for pretty much nothing. No upside, no new or exciting opportunities, nothing. It sucks. I would have been better off teaching high school instead of trying in to break into higher ed. I’ve learned the hard way that the PhD pays in prestige, but you can’t eat prestige. Why did I do this to myself? Any one else feel this way?

Sorry to hear this. As someone who nope-d out of academia pretty much after defending, I have mixed feelings about this, but they're mostly positive. There's a part of me that wishes academia was what I dreamt it was, and a part of me that wishes I had succeeded, despite it not being what I had hoped. But I don't regret anything. I went to grad school because I loved science—not for the money (lol), or the prestige, but because I loved it as a way of acquiring knowledge and learning about the world. That's still true today, and it will probably be true my whole life. For me, that realization helped me overcome what I think a lot of people fear when they think about leaving academia: "Will I ever be able to love something as much as this?" And just like the ending of a bad relationship, despite my feelings to the contrary at the time, the answer is yes. But more importantly, it doesn't matter even if the answer is "no," because from what you describe, it doesn't matter how much you love academia, academia does not love you back.

Your name was mentioned in a paper recently found by Academia! Dear Academia.edu, no one is mentioning my name in any papers. Please stop.

I get frequent notices for some paleontologist with whom I share a name, despite my being a humanist and two decades older. Finally, I turned it all off last summer, as I've found Academia.edu to be mostly worthless anyway.

What to do about a situation where my professor wrote a negative letter of rec for grad school? I am in the US, and applying to graduate school. I was a research assistant for this particular professor and ran a club that she was the advisor to. I did not struggle in her class or other class revolving the program I am going into. I asked her well beforehand to write me a letter and she claimed "it would be an honor". She submitted it, I had my interview and it came up that she said in the letter that I would not be a suitable candidate for the program. Her points in the letter claimed "that the club struggled under my leadership" and my research "was not adequate and not helpful". She never gave any inclination that this was the case, so I am stunned that she is saying these things. What can I do about this? She lied to me, and could impact my future. What course of action do I take? I'm at a loss of words here.

I serve on an admissions committee. I can tell you that whenever we see a negative letter in an application, the first judgment is on the advisor. As others have said, any competent letter writer in the US academic system understands that a letter should be positive, or not written at all. That's why it's called a letter of recommendation. Do not use this person as a reference in the future. Do let other people know that this person wrote you a bad letter rather than declining. This likely will not harm your application as much as you think. If anything, it will hurt the writer's career when their peers see the kind of letter they write for people they should be supporting. It's, of course, a shitty thing to happen, and I'm sorry you're dealing with this, but it's not as serious as it probably feels right now.

Have you been getting these emails from your ever-supportive senior administrators? Dear loyal workers of Flailing University, First off, let me start by making a distracting comment about how odd the situation feels and sharing what I think are some uncanny observations about “these times.” Next, I want to write something that sounds very empathic here. I want to put a lot of emphasis on saying how much I understand all your stresses now, ALL of them, every single one. I understand. Of course, I need to place some blanket praise here about how much we appreciate all that hard work and perseverance everyone has shown. Because this email is going to every single person employed at the school, these statements will feel as personal and uplifting as a sign stating: "Thank You for Not Smoking." Now, I will start to discuss the *hard truths*. I will discuss how enormous our budget shortfall is and how all the previous efforts, which I enumerate in detail, have not been enough to come even close to closing the gap. As a result, surely now you will see that we have no other option than to do the following: (1) Terminate all contract workers, non-tenure track faculty, and 65% of lower-level administrative staff. Fortunately, you will all qualify now for a special Coronavirus inspired extra unemployment bonus that, surely, will make this feel more like a glorious paid vacation if not winning the lottery. You can thank us later. (2) As for fortunate few staff allowed to remain (I bet you'd like to know if you're in this category, but let's keep the mystery), their [paid] hours will be reduced to a minimum. However, we all know their actually working hours will remain the same, maybe increase because now that they are working at home every waking hour is a potential working hour - and someone has to do the work of the 65% we’re letting go. (3) Thanks to all the tenure track faculty who are part of the Flailing University family. That’s why I know they will be more than glad to take on all the extra teaching needed (since we have purged all the teaching faculty, adjuncts, university-funded postdocs, researchers, assistants, and technicians) all while revising their curriculums to be entirely online, including lab sciences. A 25% pay cut will no doubt serve as a terrific incentive to work harder and maybe be able to get back to the barely living wage we were paying before. We all know it really doesn’t work like that, but you’ll try, won’t you! (4) All senior administration will be taking a 4.387% pay-cut. I want to close here but talking about how incredibly stressful, painful, even traumatizing it was for us - the senior administration - to make these decisions. We have screamed, we have cried, we rent our garments, we have gone up to as much as three times a week with our $300/hour shrinks. You see us being on a high perch here, but we're the ones suffering the most - always ready to take one on the chin for FU. I wish you all the best in this difficult time for everybody! We are all in this together! Sincerely, Senior Administrator

As for the fortunate few staff allowed to remain (I bet you'd like to know if you're in this category, but let's keep the mystery), their paid hours will be reduced to a minimum. LOL. Sincerely, A staff member whose mandatory unpaid furlough days will result in $3,000 less this year

So much effort about encouraging young people to do science, what about creating more jobs in academia? I am watching this increasing trend of scientists encouraging youngsters to become scientists for the last couple of years. However, whenever I visit the r/AskAcademia subreddit, I find some posts about the poor condition of the academic job market. Now, what's the point of telling young people to become scientists, when there's not much scope to really do so. Now, my question do academics reach out to the authorities to fund/ create more academic jobs or not? If yes, do you know about the details of this effort? If no, why don't academics do more to really promote science?

I think you will find that a lot of industry is really resting on an academic foundation. The erosion of that academic foundation is a huge problem. Every paper and technique we used in the drug company and in many biotech companies was academic. Maybe you took those 100 papers, that federally funded training, and those first pilots and papers, and ran with it to start your own company, but you weren’t going to get that in the company. All the drug companies, including the ones that made the vaccines, are relying on years of federally funded basic and clinical research. So as more people flee the system and funding to basic science is eroded, you will lose that also.

My fiancée passed away on the 1st and she was going to come to my PhD program with me. Is deferment bad? I'm at a loss and I don't know what I should do anymore. I got into my dream PhD program in January and my fiancée and I were making our plans to move there soon. However, my fiancée passed away unexpectedly on the 1st of this month and I've been a total wreck. I can't concentrate on my last semester of undergrad and a huge reason I chose this school was because she would love the area/things to do there. I want to still get my PhD but now I'm feeling lost and scared about moving forward. I contacted the school and they said I can defer up to a year and keep my RA-ship offer and everything and my current university is offering me incompletes to finish over the summer, but I don't know what I should do. My parents have taken me back to my childhood home and they are trying to "get me over" the death of the love of my life. They want me to finish my undergrad on time (by May 1st) and start grad school on time (June 1st), but I'm having trouble just typing this let alone thinking about math. My end goal is to become a professor at a PUI. Would deferment be looked at negatively? Does anyone know how I can transition back into my life/school? Is it okay to not be able to do any work right now? I'm also feeling guilty to move on with my life without her. Does anyone have any advice? I'm only 22 and my lover has already passed away. Thank you for any advice.

Take your time and grieve your loss. You've done the right thing by reaching out to your undergraduate and graduate programs and getting extensions and deferments. This is why these options exist—when the unexpected happens. Don't listen to your parents and take your time to get to a point where you are okay. Mental health is already tough in grad school, and going in when you are already vulnerable is not a wise decision. Having a gap year shouldn't be a problem. Plus, grant, fellowship, and job applications all have a personal statement where you can explain gaps like this. You have a very good reason if questioned. But also, having a gap year at this stage isn't usually an issue. This won't ruin your chance to be a professor. Focus on grieving and dealing with your loss. Think about what she would want—would she want you to put your life on hold? Taking the deferment to grieve is okay. But also, moving on to grad school (be it this one or applying again this fall for another school) is okay as well.

Show support for UC academic worker strike Fellow academic community- Please take a moment to show solidarity with the academic student workers on strike at UC right now. We are in the second week of the strike by 48,000 academic workers in the University of California (UC) system. The action is the largest strike of academic workers in United States history. The strikers are demanding a salary increase—from an impossibly low $24,000 a year to $54,000—to address California’s skyrocketing rents and other living expenses. Sign the letter to President Drake https://act.aflcio.org/petitions/show-your-support-for-academic-workers-at-university-of-california?source=direct\_link& Make a donation in the hardship fund if you can https://givebutter.com/uc-uaw https://www.fairucnow.org/support/

I was given an offer from UC Davis for their biostatistics program at just $22,000 flat for the academic year, which I declined knowing it was ridiculous with the cost of living. I feel for the students who probably felt like they had no choice but to accept, or are first-generation students without financial backing from their family.

If I have 6 hours of Zoom meetings everyday, can I really be expected to get anything else done? Postdoc in STEM completely overburdened with meetings at the moment. I'm (co-)supervising 15 student projects, spanning the bachelor to PhD level with students in 4 different countries, on top of which I have all of my normal collaborations that I should make progress on. On top of that, there's seminars and journal clubs everyday. It's just impossible to get anything done at the moment! /rant

Cut meeting times in half, move others to email or slide updates, and meet every other week. Have a conversation with your PI about feeling overburdened, and start blocking time on your calendar for your priorities.

For us average people in academia: When in your academic career did you realize that you weren't going to be a star and what prompted it? Now, if you are a star in your field or are on track to be one, congratulations! But this question isn't for you. I've spent my entire academic career at "highly-ranked" R1s, which means that I'm around a lot of people from undergrad students through early professors who have the expectation that they're going to be the stars of their field, and the environment promotes that. This is especially true at the university where I am currently. Most people, even from big-name R1s, do not end up being stars in their field. That's not a bad thing at all and is not even necessarily their fault - it's largely the nature of how reputations in academia are developed. I've also noticed that some are able to adjust to that change in expectation of themselves very easily, while others have a really hard time letting that go. I'm just curious for all of us non-stars, when in your career did you start to recognize that you weren't going to be a star in your field? What prompted you to realize that and what did you do to adjust your frame of mind to be content with it? I'm just interested in what others' experiences are and am not looking for advice or anything - I'm well past the point of being okay with not being on a path to be a big name in my field and am content with where I am (as long as I don't run out of funding!).

Basically, it was the same for me: when I realized that I valued my outside life and having a good work-life balance. The exact moment was when I was talking with a huge star in my field, and they were describing a more junior person who was already a star at a young age. They were saying how the junior person is always working, and gave the example that even when they were in the car with their partner on the way to a date, they would be reviewing papers or writing grants or whatever. And I just knew that was not for me because I get motion sickness reading in a moving vehicle. But more realistically, I would never want to give up having a non-work life.

Can we talk about how strictly “STEM” doesn’t really mean job security or good pay anymore? And the illusion is misleading students. STEM = Science Technology Engineering Math I will absolutely agree that: (1) Engineering and Technology, (2) Health Care (sub sector of “Science”) and (3) Statistics/Data Science (subsector of“Math”..?) are in high demand and are usually well paid. Going into any of these specific fields directly is healthy. HOWEVER basic scientists like biologists and chemists are not paid all that great and are certainly not in demand. It’s not quite as bad as being a Art History major but I see many similarities on these Reddit threads between science grad students and humanities grad students. It’s not unusual for grads with M.S. in life sciences to apply for many jobs with hopes of making just $45-50k. Meanwhile their business and engineering counterparts start out at $80k with a just B.S. Ok. So what? Why is this a problem? Well because many naive students believe their hard work, years of late night studying, 45 page thesis, lab work, etc. in life sciences will translate to a good paying job easily. I mean it is “STEM” right? But that’s just not the case. It’s a problem because budding science undergrads should be warned with a flashing red light that if they don’t go into health care directly, their degree will require several more years of study for a job that will probably be underpaid. (Steps off of soap box...)

In general, the "science" portion of STEM has always been incorrect—at least with regards to bachelor's degrees. While physicists could get away with pretending they were mathematicians with a peculiar obsession with tensors, biologists and chemists weren't so lucky.

How do you turn off the “academic” portion of your brain and just be a normal person? I’m always “on” and it’s not helping my relationships. Or is this just an occupational hazard?

I just had major surgery, and the medication they give to prevent memory formation is fat-soluble. So a week out, I still couldn't give an undergraduate mechanics lecture, let alone explain my research. So I guess what I'm saying is, go get an organ removed. Or at least take the drugs.

How to be happy for getting accepted in PhD when it seems like family and friends can't relate? Hi guys, So I'm a first year phD in the Social Sciences and I've been struggling to be happy for myself and celebrate my accomplishments without the enthusiastic support of my family and some friends? Being the first PhD in my family from an inner city and female and African American, I feel like none of my inner family can relate and are so busy trying to get by the don't have the bandwidth to be truly happy for me and express support. Personally, I am proud of myself as I am fully funded and received additional external fellowship, but I am truly disappointed. It seems lonely at the "top". I worked so hard to get in and stay in during the pandemic but my family just doesn't seem to care and I want to be able to celebrate with them and feel loved/support. This is just not what I expected. It feels like the further along I move in my education the more I alienate or distinguish myself from "normal" non academic peers and family/friends. Do you all have any advice on this subject?

Similar sociodemographics here… I haven’t started my doc program yet, but I spent about a decade climbing a pretty lucrative corporate ladder that moved us from dirt poor to upper middle class, so I sort of get the idea of living a separate life from family. One thing I’d say is that graduate school, just like any other career move, is an individual endeavor, and no one is really going to cheerlead you every step of the way, save maybe your spouse or children. I suspect that your family is very proud of you, and if you are looking for support and ask for it, they’ll be more than willing. With that said, I would hope that you are equally involved in their lives, their accomplishments, etc., and celebrate them, even if they aren’t quite “at the top,” as you say.

Do you think that life would be easier if there was just one universally accepted citation style? I know it sounds a rhetorical question. But as a TA, I have noticed that students in my institution often have a very difficult time with correct citation style. My class follows APA. Somehow, even with widely available internet sources (and even citation generators) many still do not seem to get it. Sometimes I wonder if a universally accepted, standardized citation style, across disciplines would make more sense. Perhaps this is more of a rant out of frustration. But I figured I would extend this question to the crowd to see what others think.

If I thought people could behave themselves and not keep making their own versions of styles, I'd be delighted if we could settle on two styles: one numbered and one author-date. I think those both have their place. Sometimes author-date is very reader-friendly because it's easy to keep track of who the author is talking about, and at other times it's totally reader-hostile because the flow of reading is broken up by massive strings of names and dates.

My work just got published, it's my first publication What are the things I should do? I've already created a Google Scholar Profile.

Congratulations! Some things to consider: * Create an ORCID profile. * Check your university's or institution's policy on parallel publishing. Some universities will even require you to upload a final manuscript draft of the publication to their archives, where the manuscript will be openly available. * Check other possible actions that your institution requires after a publication has been accepted. * If you have outside funding, it is a very good practice to notify the funding party that you have a new publication; this will make them happy, as they have received something back for their investment. * LinkedIn is also a social platform worth considering to disseminate your new work. * Update your CVs. * Update your research plan. These are some things that pop into my mind.

Redditors who work in academia, how much free time do you get for your hobbies, exercising, etc.? How is the work-life balance for you? How would you rate your happiness? Do you think you earn enough for your efforts? From a curious teenager who is contemplating being in academia when I grow up 🙂

Academia is predatory. Many people are drawn to academia for idealistic reasons: academic freedom, contributing to a greater good, being able to research without fear or favor, etc. It is from this idealism that universities prey on you and expect you to be there solely for the mission of the university at the expense of your work-life balance, family, health, hobbies, etc. Academia also encourages people to stay in precarious situations of relying on lots of short-term contracts due to the mission of teaching and research.

What are the wildest hijinks you never though you’d have to write a syllabus disclaimer about (and yet here we are)? This morning I woke up to an email from a top journal in my field confirming my submission. I definitely did not submit anything there. Eventually I realized that instead of submitting their term paper to Canvas, one of my students had somehow managed to submit it as a manuscript to a journal, under my name and identity. I can’t believe I have to put “do not submit your class papers as journal manuscripts under my name” in my syllabi. I just keep thinking about it and bursting into laughter. So, what are some of your “I can’t believe that just happened” teaching stories? This is not a thread for student bashing - just some good natured, end of the semester stress relief!

My syllabus has the line, "If you need to miss lab for medical reasons, please notify me ahead of time via email. Do not include descriptions or pictures of your symptoms in this email." You can probably imagine why.

Do you think universities are becoming too "business-minded"? I'm referring to a growing trend where universities are churning graduates without any regard for jobs or educational achievement. Equally frightening is this over-reliance on International students, solely for the money they can charge them. It feels thats universities have stopped becoming higher education centres and are profit generating businesses. Do you agree and if so which country are you referencing?

Yes. United States. On the one hand, academic ideals were perhaps a bit too idealistic; after all, somebody has to pay to keep universities running. As I see it (which may not be especially well), there are three problems. 1. Students who just want jobs and don't care about learning. They just want to pay for a certificate. 2. Administration should not be separate from faculty. Some administration is necessary, but when people talk about a university, they often mean the administration—they should mean the faculty and students—but the power has been taken (and perhaps given) away from them. Students should take more responsibility for things like housing, while faculty, the same people who teach, should be making many of the decisions presidents or provosts do. 3. State governments who don't properly fund institutions, who then have to take businesslike approaches to keep the lights on.

Professor is either developing dementia or burnt out... An older professor in our group has always had a very rude character but lately she's been super weird. I've cc'd her in an email to a collaborator about a data transfer and she replied: "why are you asking him how to handle him the data?? I don't understand!! Didn't I tell you to handle him the data?". When I asked her what I should present to an online meeting that was about to happen in 6 days she organized she replied "what on earth are you talking about?". She had no idea there was a meeting... I talked to the people she's the PI of and they're desperate. In the last 6 months she's been constantly sending them incoherent emails with contradictory request, if the text even made sense at all. She refuses face to face meetings (both her and her staff have been fully vaccinated for more than 4 months). They've also told me that... In most of these rambling emails she keeps writing "I don't understand". A sentence she hasn't ever used before. And all of this of course results in huge delays in all of the projects. She's probably got some huge issues... We seriously suspect dementia (she's the PI of a team that studies Alzheimer's disease) or maybe just a burnout due to pandemic stress... And... How do we tactfully deal with this? What exactly can be done about this?

This isn't something you should be expected to manage on your own. Talk to her line manager about your concerns—Dean, head of school, whatever it is there for you. Approaching this and working to find solutions is their problem, not yours. Lastly, these are very valid concerns, and you are 100% justified in approaching a higher-up about them. You might feel guilty like you are tattling, but things are dysfunctional right now, and it is affecting the work environment. By taking appropriate measures in a professional way, you are doing the right thing.

Are you expected to work 60-70 hours a week in the academia? This is part rant and part question. I had an introductory meeting with about 15-16 other PhD students who had just started and the session included a question answer session with professors where anonymous questions could be asked. One individual, whose supervisor expected him to work weekends as well, asked the professors how he can politely tell his supervisor that this isnt right. The response of one of the professors was: "We are in this because we love science. If you don't want to work weekends, perhaps you do not love science and you do not belong here. If that is the case, you should leave." I was rather shocked. I admit that I do put in extra hours because I want to and have to because of my horrible productivity throughout the day. However, what was suggested by the "expert" was that it is basically compulsory to do this. Is that really what is expected in the Academia? Why is it like that? Why isn't mental and physical health given their due importance? Burn out is a thing.

I worked for 60 hours per week for my first 2 years. I was burning out and decided to not do that anymore. I didn't tell my professor; I just stopped. I guess my advisor could have fired me, but that would have cost him years of work and training. Now as faculty, I still work just 40 hours. Partly because I learned to get a lot done in 40 hours, partly because I turned down offers from departments where I could tell they expected more regardless of productivity, and partly because I'm in engineering and good faculty are hard to find, so they'll pretty much put up with whatever I feel like doing. Moreover, I worked 6 hours total in my 4-week winter break. I worked zero hours fall break. I expect to work 12 hours this weeklong spring break, simply because I'm behind on grading. My work-life balance is superb. Beyond just bragging, my point is it's possible. Admittedly, if you want to land a TT gig at a top 20 school, then it's probably not possible.

Would you want to know your students are cheaters? I work for a company as a writer, and basically my job is to write people's college papers for money. I will not name the company, but it's one of the better-known ones that provide this service. I fell into this job during grad school when I was desperately poor and it's been so disillusioning knowing that stupid, lazy people can essentially just purchase college degrees. I hate my clients passionately. They are lazy, demanding, ignorant morons who often cannot even succeed in copying and pasting their assignment instructions from the syllabus. They aren't supposed to submit any identifying information, but because they're stupid and lazy, of course tons of them do, so I know their name, their professor's name, their university, etc. My question is, how would you respond if you got an anonymous email that basically said, "Student So and So has acquired the services of \[company\] to cheat on their paper, just wanted to let you know." I would probably be immediately fired if I ever did it, but my God do I want to. It's not just undergraduates, either. It's grad students, professional students...students in medical fields. Ugh.

That actually happened to one of my friends in grad school—he was teaching an undergraduate class, and one of the undergrads cheated on his homework and then refused to pay the person who did his homework for him. The person who did the homework contacted the university to expose the student, and we failed him. This put us in a bit of an awkward position, though, as the person helping him cheat was a grad student at a nearby university, and working for this company was definitely a violation of the honor code there. We didn't report him, though.

The university that I teach at (NYU) has gone remote because of the coronivirus. I teach two classes of over 100 students and give multiple choice exams. Is there any possible way to stop them from cheating on the exams?

You can't stop it, but you can minimize it. Assuming you will offer exams on your LMS (e.g., Blackboard): 1. Set the time for the exam so that it is 35-45 seconds per question. This makes it harder to Google or look up the answers. Advanced: Google your questions to make sure the answers are not readily available. If they are, restructure the question. 2. Make questions appear one at a time (not the entire exam). This makes it harder for one student to print out the exam and have others work on it. 3. Randomize the order of how questions appear so there's no way to create a solutions key with question numbers. 4. Make the exam available only at the same time as the on-campus exam time so everyone takes it at the same time. 5. Do not provide the correct answers or the student score immediately; you can release those after everyone has taken the exam. Hope this helps, good luck!

My Depression is Killing my Ability to Work I don't really know where to start, or to an extent, even what I'm here to ask... Let me preface with I love academics. They have always been an important part of my life, and I've always used them as a distraction from when my life is too much/feels overwhelming. I have had serious depression issues all my life, and am being medicated for them for a few years now. The meds arrangement I have isn't great, but it's better than nothing I guess. Recently, I've found myself questioning if I am really meant for this. I love research, reading and writing papers, but I am hitting the point where I have no happiness anymore in my life anymore. The things I used to love, that I used to continue going on, are becoming more and more difficult to do. It's at the point that even though academics are one of the few things that are keeping me going, my mental distress is now preventing me from being able to make the most basic progress possible. My long-term girlfriend recently decided that she doesn't think our lives are going to be going the same direction and wants to end things so she doesn't prevent me from having the life I typically thought I would have (family with kids, etc.). It really took me by surprise, but now I am looking at my life, where I am now, where I am heading, and if I am ever going to be happy. My main realization is I don't think academia is meant for someone like me. I'm soft, sensitive, just searching for a glimmer of happiness, and I feel like all I find in academics is isolation and loneliness. I feel absolutely lost because I just about hate everything else I could do with my degree except academia (engineering, but all the jobs I am best suited for are programming-related related, which I don't particularly enjoy). Here is my issue - What now? If I don't go on in academia, I have no idea what the hell I'll ever do. I don't feel mentally OK. I don't feel like I can have a job, a life like some people. Quite frankly, I feel like, aside from academia, I don't have a place in the world. But it seems like now I am losing my ability to even do that. That leaves me in an interesting state - I think I'm longing for something that just doesn't exist. I am going to keep going, but I am really questioning the reasoning as to why I am continuing on like this. I think I am forcing myself to keep going and there is no light at the end of this tunnel, just a brick wall I am going to run face-first into. I know COVID has been isolating, and many who have never had depression before are experiencing it. I am a slightly different case, I've had it all my life, I have been constantly depressed since I was in undergrad and now feel like there's nothing out there for me. Its a heartbreaking realization to come to, but I feel like maybe, I should save everyone some time and just leave on a "high-note" (before it becomes so painfully obvious to everyone that I'm a hollow shell of the man I once was).

I believe that everyone in graduate school goes through an existential crisis, so you should take comfort in knowing that you are in good company. The advice that I am going to give you is different from the other advice given here, in that you should maximize your opportunities and defer the decision of whether or not you want to continue in academia at a different time and focus on the now. It seems like you've already accomplished most of what is needed to just get your degree, and I don't think dropping out now or "leaving on a high note" is a good option. For all intents and purposes, you're near the end of a marathon and you should just power through and finish it. When you get your degree, then you can evaluate whether or not you should continue in academia or pursue an industry job. Focus on getting your degree; yes, it seems daunting, but you're almost there. Finally, on a personal note, like you, I feel that I am too soft sometimes, but if anything, that has strengthened my resolve to go into academia (because if there is one thing academia needs more of, it is humanity).

Is academia so competitive now that it's pointless to try if you aren't exceptional/remarkable? People will suggest to major in engineering instead of physics or mathematics due to academia being so extremely competitive. Has it reached a point to where if you're not, say, winning math olympiads during secondary school, you should probably not bother with a mathematics degree & academia, and instead default to engineering & industry instead? I'm wondering how the landscape looks for any and all fields right now, but especially STEM. Do you need to be effectively the #1 best applicant out of 300-3,000 applicants to recieve an offer? Do you actually need 1-3 post-doctoral positions to have a chance? Is all of that just hyperbole from bitter people? It reminds me of how some children in europe begin training at 5 years old in these expensive soccer camps, so that they can have a chance of being on a team when they grow up. Is that what it's like now? Are you competing with people like that?

I don't think being exceptional or remarkable is as noteworthy as people make it out to be. Plenty of geniuses can't get a job. Plenty of them quit before they even graduate. Being average and knowing how to play the game (publishing, schmoozing with faculty, getting into the right subfield, etc.) is more important. Work ethic is more important, etc.

Academia made me forget how to read, need advice This is my 3rd year working in a research lab (am STEM grad student). I've downloaded and read/skimmed at least 200 papers on my research topic (or related topics) at this point. But I think there's something seriously wrong with me - I can't seem to be able to read more than two paragraphs at a time nowadays. Skimming papers at a rapid rate to finish my literature reviews and satisfy my PI has conditioned me to skim, and I think I've forgotten how to actually read a piece of text. I literally have to force myself to resist the temptation of skimming to actually get through a paragraph. I've also pretty much stopped reading anything that isn't social media or research papers. This sucks. I used to be someone who read widely and for pleasure, going through an average of like 5-10 novels or paperbacks a month. Now, it's a pain to even get through one. Any advice?

I also lost my ability to read for pleasure after graduate school. Now, I’m about a year and a half out, and I’ve only slogged through a handful of books since finishing, whereas in the past, I’d have finished maybe a dozen or so in that same time period. I think it’s maybe something to do with the joylessness of reading academic articles. I’ve never felt satisfied reading an academic article; the feeling I get after finishing one is a combination of drained and skeptical.

Is it emotionally valid to steer away from academia due to its lack of empathy and compassion? I'm a graduating student in the university and it was my dream to become a professor and a researcher one day since our country lacks them. It was always the statement of our country's Department of Science and Technology and I was thinking before that I want to heed the call. This pandemic however broke my belief towards the academe. I can manage the burnout and the stressful learning curves of the academe. My problem however was the lack of empathy and pedanticism of the professors. Even though the Omicron surged and some universities in our country suspended classes and deadlines, our university did not even budge. The professor did not even ask if our late submissions were due to sickness. Scores were slashed off. Everything was cut-off and deducted as if there's no surge in our country. My partner became positive with Omicron and she begged almost all her professors through e-mail. **Her** deadlines were just extended by a few days as if a person can recover from it in just a week. I just realized "fk it!" I can't work with such people if I become a researcher and a professor one day. I realized that my dream to be in the academe is a sham. I can't be with people with no empathy and don't get me started with the low salary. I'm done with pedanticism. Did you guys also feel the same way at some point?

Just to be clear, OP, the grass isn't greener on the other side. Institutions (public, corporate) are not human; humans are humans and therefore prepared to be disappointed. My recommendation would be to search for people who are empathetic.

What do academics in humanities and social sciences wish their colleagues in STEM knew? Pretty much the title, I'm not sure if I used the right flair. People in humanities and social sciences seem to find opportunities to work together/learn from each other more than with STEM, so I'm grouping them together despite their differences. What do you wish people in STEM knew about your discipline?

I’m in physics (obviously STEM), and there’s a funny thing that happens where established physicists get kind of bored with their discipline and all of a sudden start becoming self-proclaimed experts in psychology, philosophy, history, or linguistics. It seems that when people are really good at one thing, they often overestimate their abilities in everything else. PhD students do this too, to some extent.

I have a TT position - thanks, I hate it I am about 1 year into a TT position in chemical engineering and I feel so bad about myself. How does anyone have the resilience to stay in this job? Of course I was rejected by every grant I applied for (5), but it’s more than that. Nothing good happened, EVER. It was incredibly isolating, I worked 24/7, I GAINED 50 lbs (wtf!), one time I didn’t even set foot outside my house for nearly a month, and still nothing but negative feedback. Pretty much only hear bad news, from students and from grants. I don’t understand how other people find within themselves the will to keep working (or to even keep living - seriously). It just seems unyieldingly terrible. Everyday I have some experience solidifying what a worthless piece of shit I am, and never does anything good happen.

So, I freaking love my TT job—love my department, love my students; got tenure last year. It’s my dream job. And...this year BLEW. It was terrible. It was demoralizing, and doing things remotely took all the fun parts out, as well as all the support, and just left the worst parts of the job. Not that you have to stay in your job forever or even one minute longer, but this was truly a shitty year all around. It’s not a perfect career, but I promise it can be better than this.

Anyone else depressed about defending their thesis online because of COVID? For YEARS, basically since I started my PhD, I have been dreaming about my thesis defense. I was going to invite all my friends and family and have a giant party afterwards. I have been working so hard for months now and I haven't seen most of my friends for ages, so I was really looking forward to my thesis defense to see them again at last. And now... all that is gone. I have to defend online, alone at home, and maybe have an at-home dinner with my boyfriend afterwards rather than the giant party I always dreamed of. I also had to leave the university quite quickly after my PhD contract ended because of a job opportunity, and I was counting on my thesis defense to properly say goodbye to my research group + everyone else in the department. Not going to happen now... and I have to leave the country for a postdoc in January 2021 so I can't postpone the defense to next year. I am kind of devastated. Does anyone have any advice? I am so sad about this but I don't think there are any other options for me.

I was in the same boat as you, but I actually loved defending my thesis online. There were about 60 people watching the stream, and I had relatives and friends watching who wouldn't have been able to otherwise. You'll be able to celebrate with your friends and family in person next year, and you have a job lined up, which is awesome. Just be proud of your accomplishment, and make sure you practice your talk beforehand to get used to the format. When I did my presentation, I just got into a nice zone of focusing on my slides and talk and not worrying about the audience. Anyway, at least in our department, most people end up going to their meetings and to do work afterward anyway, and we just have an awkward celebration after.

How do you switch off your brain and resist the constant urge to be productive in your free time? For context, I recently finished a PhD in a subject I absolutely love and my graduate studies went really well, but I am frustrated with the academic lifestyle and moving to industry. But all those years in grad school, I developed unhealthy feelings of guilt any time I wasn't trying to "get ahead" somehow in my spare time. Even after finishing the PhD and having some free time on my hands, I can't switch off. I constantly feel the need to be learning something new or doing something productive, and it causes me a ton of stress, guilt and anxiety if I don't. I learned to live with it during grad school, but I'm surprised to find it still gets to me. How do you guys switch that part of your brain off?

I learned a trick in grad school that helps. If I put my leisure activities of choice on my to-do list, right alongside my work goals, then it's still something to check off. This helps me remember to see those activities as also required. So I check off yoga, bike rides, walks, video games, reading for fun, etc. This has helped me immensely. Good luck!

How do I cite a transgender author's name Hi, everyone! I am trying to cite an old article by an author who has since come out as transgender and changed their name. Do I cite the text using the name which appears on it (essentially deadnaming them), or do I use their new name? I feel like this is kind of a tricky situation because, on the one hand, I want to respect the author's new name, but I also want my citations to be "correct" for plagiarism's sake.

Here’s what MLA 9 (I don’t know about other style guides, sorry) says in section 5.15: If you are writing about or working directly with an author whose name changed and you know they do not use their former name in references to their work—for example, transgender authors—list their works under the name they use, regardless of the name that appears in the source. Do not supply information about the name change or cross-reference entries, and avoid using the former name in your prose.

TA dealing with a condescending student Hi all, Have any of you had to deal with a condescending student? How did you deal with it (or did you?)? I (30F) have a student (19M) this semester who emails me frequently with questions that have always seemed to insinuate that I didn't know what I was talking about. But I assumed I was being oversensitive or paranoid, so I have always answered him promptly and cheerfully. However, today, the student got in a long back and forth with me (over email) about a basic statistical analysis in which he is FULLY incorrect, but has continued doubling down no matter what I say (or how many resources I send him). Finally he wrote back something along the lines of "fine I still think it means xyz but I guess I just won't include how we got our results." To be clear, he literally added a new statistical test that is not part of the assignment, and makes no sense with the data. The last email especially was honestly very rude, and I'm not sure how to proceed. I'm leaning towards just leaving it alone, since he apparently cares so much about having the last word, but I'm worried about grading his final paper if he continues to double down on this. Has anyone else encountered something like this, and what did you do?

I've encountered students like this in the past, and I honestly email my supervisor with a heads-up and then forward the email chain or BCC them so they'll have it for documentation. I'd recommend this as a CYA move regardless. I had a student about 3 years ago that I caught plagiarizing. I emailed my direct supervisor about it the night before I returned papers. When the student questioned me on it, he became so hostile that he tried to corner me so I couldn't leave, then demanded to follow me to my next class. When I refused, he went immediately to the department chair and told him that I'd failed him on "common knowledge." (It was a straight copy and paste from the internet.) By the time I came out of my next class, I already had an email and a missed call telling me I needed to see the department chair. If I hadn't already given my direct supervisor a heads-up, there would have been an issue. If there's a potential problem, ALWAYS CYA and let your supervisor know.

Did you buy yourselves a nice gift when you defended your PhD? I was talking to a fellow grad student recently and she told me she’s been planning to buy herself a really nice pair of shoes when she defends, as a gift to herself for making it through. I defend in a little over a month and I can’t stop thinking about this. I feel like I should commemorate this milestone with something that I can hold onto forever but I’m at a loss for ideas. Have you ever given yourself a really nice gift either for defending or reaching some other academic milestone? If so, what was it?

I bought a copy of my thesis and a frame for my diploma. It was a two-panel frame. I was going to put my undergraduate diploma in one and my doctorate in the other, but then my dog graduated obedience school, so I put her certificate by my doctorate. I want her to know I'm proud of her.

Editor is "strongly" encouraging me to cote his papers. I received my review comments for a recent manuscript. The comments were addressable, but the editor sent a LIST of 15 of his papers asking to cite them. Some of the papers are somewhat relevant, so I cite 4 of them. The manuscript came back, and the editor says it will be accepted once I fix some "citation issues" My advisor told me to just cite every paper on the list and send it back. I did, and the paper got accepted. Does this not seem a bit shady? Seems like the editor is using his position to boost his citations.

Fuck that. I would contact the Editor in Chief. This editor is riding roughshod over the reputation of the journal; if the EiC does nothing, then frankly, spend the rest of your career not publishing there and make sure everyone you work with knows why.

There are so many people complaining about academia, being overworked and underpaid, not having work-life balance,... Why do people actually want to work in academia? I left academia 5 yrs ago, after 2 postdocs. I loved my research but wasn't interested that much in teaching, so I didn't really try to get a job in academia.

I get paid to teach and research about Vikings. When there isn’t a global pandemic, I get to fly to England every year or so and hang out with other people who do the same—we drink, argue, and visit castles. I get to have interesting conversations with enthusiastic young adults who remind me that not everyone is an irretrievable monster, and I get to watch them transform from little gangly baby deer doofuses to fully functional adult doofuses. Obviously, there are a lot of stressors; it requires a tremendous amount of luck and effort to succeed, and not every day or every interaction is positive. But still, how many people actually get to say they are doing what they actually want to do for a living?

Bad news Hey everyone I went to the Dr a few days ago and she found a mass on my humerus. She was reluctant to officially diagnose but it seems that it is osteosarcoma. I was wondering if this is something I should tell my grad advisor. I’m hesitant because I’m afraid she might tell me to quit to be with my family. In all honesty I want to keep going until it gets bad enough I can’t leave my bed. The reason I’m inclined to telling here is because I might be spotty quite a Few days because of imaging testing and who knows ,maybe even bone autopsies.

I would wait until the diagnosis is confirmed and then tell her something. You have a right to privacy, but as an advisor, I find it much easier to be understanding of someone’s absences, lack of progress, etc., when I know what is going on. Even just saying, “I am dealing with a serious medical issue,” is better than nothing.

Have you ever seen anyone fail a PhD Defense? Per the title. I defend my dissertation in a few days, and I feel like my defense is shaping up to be very... Unimpressive for a variety of reasons. My committee gave me the green light to look for jobs and write a dissertation. I turned in the document a few days ago, and I have a job lined up, but I'm growing nervous about my defense because, well, it feels like it's garbage. I'm largely asking because I want to know just how bad I need to do in order to actually fail.

Different systems exist in different countries. In the UK, I saw someone fail even though they submitted against their supervisor's advice, as the regulations allowed. They received a Master's degree instead.

People who hire faculty and postdocs, out of the “200 applicants for 1 position” how many were never serious contenders to begin with? And the ones who aren’t serious contenders, what tends to disqualify them? Wrong subfield? Wrong field entirely? Not enough pubs? Low rank university?

In my experience, it's usually one-third. We usually have some random people submitting applications, like medical doctors who think they should now be a professor in a completely unrelated field. The next one-third is usually missing something big, like publications or teaching experience. The last one-third are where most of the attention is focused, and the difference between those applicants is usually quite nuanced.

If you could start your PhD life from scratch, what one thing would you do differently? Hindsight hour!

1. Start therapy. Mental health is the most important thing and, in my opinion, the best determinant of success in grad school and in life. Also, student insurance is great. 2. Network, network, network. Don't assume you will stay in academia. And don't view the PhD as an end in itself. Think about what you want once you are done and prepare for it. You might change your views along the way, but it's better to start the process early than in the last year. 3. Stick to a 9-5 routine if possible, and actually socialize on days off. Don't let anyone push your boundaries. People will try to make you feel bad for not working constantly. Recognize it for the dysfunctional way of life it is. Work smart and work consistently. This is your degree; don't follow anyone blindly if you don't agree.

Is it normal to become more convinced your discipline is detached from practical reality the more you study it? I know this might read as a trollish post, but I *promise* I'm serious. So, I'm currently halfway through my Adv. MSc. International Relations & Diplomacy, and while my undergrad was a Liberal Arts BA, that was also heavily IR-focused. Honestly? I love it, but only in the context of academic bickering about pointless minutae that do not matter outside the walls of the faculty - the more I've studied IR theories, the less my remarks of "we're a humanities field trying to masquerade as a hard science" and "if you open the dictionary to 'Ivory Tower Academia' you'll find a picture of our faculty" have become jokes. I know there's always going to be a difference between academic theory and practices in reality - you clearly *need* to perform abstractions when creating a theory, but several of the main theories in my field just feel like they fall apart at the first dose of being exposed to the outside. I've always had this feeling to some extent, but it's grown rather than diminished, and I'm now actually worried whether or not I'll be able to put any conviction whatsoever in my master's thesis next year. Is this just a natural side effect of learning more about your field's theoretical frameworks and therefore being exposed to case studies where they *don't* work more, or am I just seriously disillusioned/too cynical? TL;DR starting to feel like my entire field desperately needs to go touch grass and talk to people, is that normal?

I've always viewed this kind of academia vs. real world as being like haute couture vs. high-street fashion. You're not supposed to wear haute couture—it's an exercise in skill and creativity to the extreme. And although haute couture isn't meant to be worn, it does influence what the next high-street fashions will be. Academia is kind of the same; it's an exercise in itself but it does influence and trickle down to the real world in real and important, albeit unpredictable, ways.

UPDATE: LWIFU. How did I recover? (Translation: Last Week I Fucked Up.) I posted this last week and got a ton of good advice, and some requests for an update. Long story short, I "met" (remotely) with my PI and some muckety-mucks from my graduate program, and it was painfully awkward but ultimately fine. They had a "not angry, just disappointed" tone. Most of the meeting was logistics about how to recoup the lost money. It turns out I have some funds from a fellowship that I didn't realize could be used this way, and they made sure I had all the necessary permissions to get reimbursed that way. But each one of them made sure to remind me how important it is to maintain composure, to represent the program well, etc. They presented it like "just trying to help you out here" as if I had no idea that I had fucked up. But I just took the note and didn't argue with them. There was one more uncomfortable but nice(ish) coda to the whole situation. An even higher higher-up called me on the phone after the meeting. He said my email debacle had made its way to him. At first my stomach sank and I thought this was the moment they were going to actually reprimand me in some way. Instead, he said he had no idea I was going through so much, and asked if he could help. I nearly started crying but I just thanked him and tried to get off the phone as quickly as possibly. I know he meant it kindly but to be honest I just want the whole thing to go away and I felt even more embarrassed that it clearly was getting forwarded around. But it is nice to know there are some actual human beings running this show. Anyway, thanks for all the advice. Now to put this all behind me.

Now you know why that higher-up has that job. Be sure to send him a nice note of thanks. And don’t be embarrassed to reach out for help. Good people help each other in times of need.

Got my PhD almost a year ago, struggling to find a job. Hey /r/AskAcademia , Australian PhD graduate here. My doctorate was (broadly) in risk communication and natural hazards research. I started when I was 23 straight after undergrad and was awarded last year at 29. I worked as a sessional/casual academic during that period, mostly teaching management science at my university. I'm 30 now. At the start of this year, I took the savings I had and called it quits with the university. I never wanted to be a teacher and I couldn't take the institutional exploitation by the university anymore. It's also a fairly bad time to be a non-STEM academic in Australia. I've been applying for jobs full time, but I can't even get so much as an interview for a position. I applied for a position at the CFA (Country Fire Authority, the main body for fire management in my state) that was almost a natural extension of the work I did in my doctorate. The application was ignored for six weeks until I emailed asking for an update, at which point they updated the application from "In Progress" to "Finished" and told me they wouldn't be inviting me to interview. I suspect they had an internal candidate in mind and the job posting was just a legal requirement and never actually checked. Still, it hurts to not have even had the opportunity to interview, after all that time building an expertise on the subject. I've also been applying for any and every researcher or consultant role I can find, but I'm turned down at the first stage every time. To be honest, I'm starting to get really scared. It's been almost 12 months since I graduated and I don't feel like I'm any closer to a career. I spent six years in some truly awful conditions, sacrificing a lot to get my doctorate finished. The thing that kept me going the whole time was the idea that a PhD would be valuable, prestigious, and make it easier to find a job. Now I look at my testamur and I just want to burn it. It feels like all the suffering was meaningless and has no context. My self-worth, mental state and finances are rapidly deteriorating and I'm not sure what to do next. Is anyone able to give me some advice on leaving academia and finding a job?

Can you get someone familiar with hiring PhDs into non-academic jobs to review your CV and a sample of your cover letters? You'll need to include the job ads with the cover letters for review, because each one needs to be tailored specifically to the job, especially if you're applying for things that aren't the 100% obvious next step for your career path. You talk about applying but not about networking. If you haven't already, I'd suggest you put some effort into finding out what professional associations or meetings are relevant to the people you want to work for and attend those. Ask them what they need from candidates in these roles. Lastly, if you haven't already, you should look up the people who currently do the kinds of jobs you're applying for. Check out their educational path and experience and see if you're missing anything.

Stock phrases to answer talk questions Just met with a graduate student who was concerned that a recent talk had been derailed by a persistent questioner. I told them that question management is a skill that develops over time, but also provided a few stock phrases that can be used to deflect questions when you don't have a good answer. Here are some of mine - any suggestions? * For interrupters: "I might address that later in the talk - could you ask me again at the end if I haven't answered the question by then?" * For repeated questioners who won't stop: "This is a really interesting exchange but just because we're short on time and I want to give others a chance to ask questions, can we talk about it afterwards?" * For people who offer dumb criticisms of your methods: "That's an interesting point, what would you have done differently?" * For questions that are nonsensical: "That's an interesting point, what are your thoughts?" * For questions that point out limitations: "That's something I've thought a lot. Although this study wasn't set up to address that comprehensively, it's something we're going to look at in future studies." For context, I'm in social psychology and do quantitative research.

I like the idea of having some of them ready beforehand, and I have used the first two many times. The only difference is that I do not ask if we can talk about it later; I assert it. I generally allow clarification questions during my talks, but defer discussion questions to the end with something like, "That's a great question. I want to make sure I make it through my prepared material, but there should be time for some discussion at the end of my talk."

Discussing Stagnant PhD Stipends I've been talking with my fellow PhD students recently about grad student pay, specifically why its viewed as normal to be so much less than minimum wage. We are at a supposedly top-tier Canadian research university in a city where the official poverty line is now >$28,000, roughly equal to full-time minimum wage, but our program's minimum stipends are $17,000 (which is actually LOWER than it was 5 years ago). Many of us don't get additional pay despite winning fellowships (I get 20k/year from external funds and not an extra cent from my lab), and because we're in a graduate-only program there are no classes to TA for extra money. We are only required to take 16 credits for the entire program so we are very much expected to be spending at least 40 hours / week in the lab. There's a common sentiment that we are having to make greater and greater sacrifices to survive on these wages - cutting out meals, moving into seriously sub-standard housing, taking out loans. Part-time jobs are also forbidden by the program (students have been threatened with expulsion for taking jobs), and spending time on things other than our research feels like it will ruin our career chances. The burden also feels worse as the average time to graduate is >5 years, and will certainly be longer for us due to covid, meaning those of us who did MSc's beforehand will be 30 with at least half a decade of lab experience, but will still be paid the same as new students almost a decade ago. With the rapidly increasing cost of living, lengthening degree durations, and awful career prospects for graduates, I believe the current stipend is unsustainable and unjustified. I brought these points up (as well as the fact that I've brought in over $80 000 in fellowships) with my PI and asked for a raise and he tentatively agreed, but he has brushed me off every time I've tried to bring it up the past few weeks and I'm getting increasingly agitated. I absolutely need him as a reference so I feel I have no leverage, as is the case for most students. I'm curious how this compares with other students' situations as it seems like PhDs are better off in other countries, and the perspective of PIs as to whether low student stipends are still justified. If anyone has examples of successful campaigns to increase stipends, or relevant statistics or other readings, that would also be great. We don't have a student union but are currently recruiting as many students as we can to a Facebook group to share information and grievances, and hopefully organize some action in the future.

$17k--Canadian--No mandatory supplementary fund despite bringing in external money...the beautiful University of Toronto, if I'm guessing right. U of T is absolutely abhorrent with this, even when compared to UBC and McGill (where I did my master's). I have no concrete advice besides a lot of empathy and solidarity, but I do have a friend there now in STEM who was in a very similar position as you (brought in multiple external funds with little to no wage increase from his NSERC chair supervisor). He essentially played hard ball: made it clear he was going to stop taking on the countless side projects that only he could get done for his advisor, and also explicitly mentioned how ridiculous the base stipend is + the amount of money he's brought in that essentially affords his advisor another grad student. He suggested concrete alternatives: teach his advisor's course for his remaining years and get paid additional lecturer salary; allow summers off for industry partnership positions; or, I want an explicit fund increase from the money that I brought in. He eventually got a mix of request 2 and 3. Whether you can do this yourself obviously depends on a lot of things: your relationship to your supervisor, your vulnerability (are you an international student? domestic? etc.), and the realistic alternatives you can propose (are you capable of teaching a class? do you have a relationship with an industry partner you can leverage?), but just a concrete example for you to work with. And last (this one takes the most work and most likely won't be realized during your tenure), ORGANIZE!!! If there's no union, start reading, start talking, and get the ball rolling to stop this exploitation from happening, if not to you, for future generations to come. Canadian higher ed is so stingy, partially because of our limited funding sources, but also because I think Canadian academic culture is just lethargic and undriven in general. We moan about brain drain to the US, but do nothing concrete to attract and retain talent. All the best.

Those of you who don't fit into the typical profile of someone in your area of study, have you had others show skepticism about your knowledge or abilities due to your age, race, gender, etc? One of my friends from undergraduate is a super bubbly blonde girly girl (think Reese Witherspoon from Legally Blonde) who also happened to graduate valedictorian in engineering and then went on to a top graduate school. She would get some funny reactions when telling people what she did for a living, but the neat thing about engineering is its objectivity: she could *prove* her competence. How about you?

It used to happen all the time with people I would meet, probably up until my 30s. I'm a woman and a geneticist/computational biologist; I dress pretty stylishly and (though very "introverted" by nature) I used to be quite the social butterfly at parties and a big entertainer. Folks were always saying, "Wow, you don't look/seem like a scientist." Now, people take it more in stride, I'm sure partly because I at least look more professorial by dint of being older. I never had an issue with a student, but I have issues all the time with colleagues and higher-ups. They say that men are judged on their potential and women on their results; I very much feel that has been the case for me. I feel like I have to do twice as much to get the same recognition as my male colleagues. The ranking among white people in my field feels like: (1) straight men or straight-acting men, (2) gay men, (3) women who are good-looking but don't dress or look particularly nice in the conventional sense (this includes more "butch" gay women), (4) straight women who are more femme or high femme. (The only exception to this I have seen is a transwoman who transitioned after she had tenure and was an established scholar.) If you're a woman of color, you are definitely picking up the rear. I have an Asian woman colleague who is often treated quite poorly. She is the most productive member of the department and a real rising star, so that protects her from a lot. However, even with that, the more senior people still treat her like a pet and someone who doesn't know any better. For example, when it was time for everyone to get annual raises, afterward she encountered the provost. When she saw him, he immediately grinned at her and said, "You must be happy with your big raise"—as if she would never have the wherewithal to find out how much he had actually stiffed her compared to the men at her stage. And I can't imagine the provost suggesting one of our male colleagues be openly grateful to him right at that moment for a raise that was clearly earned.

Do you ever feel "reviewer's guilt"? Recently reviewed a paper and couldn't help but give it a very critical review with a recommendation to the editor to reject. I gave a very detailed review with both specific and general comments, and tried to write something constructive. I can't help but empathize with the writer. Probably a PhD student trying to get published, worked hard and did what his advisor suggested and likely poured his guts in to it. I couldn't suggest to accept it but I can't help feeling guilty for "being mean" to the authors and ruining their day/week/month. Anyone else feel this? How do you deal with it?

Reviews are hurtful when they are not helpful and feel like reviewers didn't read carefully. Or sometimes, I can easily tell the reviewers already knew who I am (it's not difficult to figure out no matter what kind of blind system the journal is using) and they just don't like my group for whatever reason. Constructive reviews, even if they are very critical of my work, don't hurt. Often, I feel thankful for their time and effort to read my paper. I understand how you feel, and I guess you feel it because you're a kind person in general, but at the end of the day, you're helping the entire community, not only the authors.

My advisor might be dying and I don't know what to do. I'm a 4th year PhD student in the natural sciences, USA. I'm trying to be vague for privacy reasons; if you need clarification, please ask. My advisor's health took a turn for the worse in May. He's not doing well. We're a very small group - 3 grad students, of which I'm the oldest, 2 post-docs, and my advisor - working on a multi-institution project. We're the only group in the collaboration responsible for our component, and it's pretty mission-critical. I am, to put it bluntly, terrified. The most experienced post-doc, who helms the group when our advisor isn't available and holds a major leadership role in the collaboration, is in a tenuous position w.r.t. their visa. The other post-doc will leave for industry if our advisor passes. Neither of the other grad students have finished their qual or formed an advisory committee, the youngest barely has her project started. No one else at my institution can support me staying on this project - I'd have to transfer to another group/institution on our collaboration to have a prayer of finishing my degree, and if our post-doc leaves for industry it *still* may not be possible. This man took a risk on me no one else was willing to take. He's a second father to me. I have never been so scared, I have no idea what I'm doing, I desperately need *any* kind of advice. How do I support the younger grad students? How do I navigate our funding? What do I say to collaboration leadership (who are all in the dark)? How would I even approach an advisor at another institution about picking up the pieces of our shattered little team? Please help me, I feel like I'm drowning.

This happened recently in my field. I’m assuming your professor is reasonably well-established. Reach out to former students of your professor who are now faculty themselves; you might be surprised by the amount of support you may receive from them.

Trying to change toxicity in Academia Hello all. Myself and a group of faculty and students are trying to get together a group of signatures from faculty, postdocs and trainees in multiple institutions in the USA. Our goal is to ask NIH to make public the names of PIs that have been found guilty and fired (or asked to retire) after being found guilty of harassment (sexual or not). There are too many stories where PIs move from institutions, repeating the toxic behaviors and maintaining their reputation and ability to keep NIH dollars. It's time the NIH takes a bold approach at stoping toxic environmemts. If you want to be part of this movement, please send me a private message. We plan to make calls for media attention, get in contact with NIH leadership (we have already started this), make a web page and use social media. We need as many signatures as possible to make our voices heard. We look forward to hear from you!

This is a terrible idea. The NIH will not defame PIs who have never been convicted of anything in a court of law. You may as well ask them to make public the names of students who have been found guilty of academic honesty or conduct violations so that PIs know to avoid them.

Why has college become so expensive over the last 40 years? How and why could the price of attending college rise over 5x the rate of inflation- where does all the money go? What’s changed between now and then in the university business model?

1. Steadily decreasing state funding in the UK and US 2. Ever-increasing administrative layers 3. Increased pay and benefits for the executive class 4. Massive infrastructure investment to attract and accommodate the ever-increasing intake

Should I Speak up About Homophobia in Research Center? **I am a gay graduate student who's part of an NSF research center in the hard sciences. An external evaluator is polling members about the center's climate to send to the administrators and to the NSF. I've been on the receiving end of homophobia on a number of occasions in the center.** In one instance, another grad student learned about me while we were at a conference and spent the next day following me around and calling me gay slurs when others were out of earshot. They also told people not to trust me and that I don't belong at the conference. At a professional lunch with another lab in the center, the other graduate students made horrible gay jokes throughout the meal. Two of them managed to mockingly imitate a gay couple and a third dropped the f-bomb a few times for good measure. I have more examples that I won't list here, but there's an atmosphere around the center that makes me feel unwelcome and at risk of being treated unfairly. Having to hide myself has probably has affected my mental state and therefor my research. The only other gay student in the center ended up leaving because of this environment. **I've been considering anonymously emailing the person evaluating the research center to let them know about my experiences, but have been struggling with the decision.** I want someone to know and for something to be done. On the other hand, I'm worried about danger to my professional life if I speak up and don't think anything will change even if I am heard and go through that risk. Talking to the evaluator could be seen by the administrators as me sabotaging the center's funding, but I am mainly concerned about what would happen if people in my home lab learn that I am gay from the report. They don't know about me, but if people hear about someone complaining in the center then it wouldn't be hard to find out who it is since I'm the only gay one in a tiny research center. My advisor is super catholic and Russian and a lot of the people I work with are also pretty religious. I'm only a year away from graduating and am thinking that I should just suck it up and then leave this bad situation when I get my degree. However, I also feel like such a coward for not being able to speak up about this and having to pretend that everything is great when I am literally fantasizing about leaving the field I am in to be around more accepting researchers. **What do you think Reddit? Has anyone dealt with a similar situation and what did you do?**

I am an older lesbian working in higher education administration. Here's my take: it's not your responsibility to tank your life over this situation. Survival is key. If it were me, I would probably tough it out while building a case to submit to the institution and government agency after I left. I mean, daily documentation of dates, times, actors, and passive observers of each incident in the notes on my phone that I would transcribe to a document. Then, the hot second I either found a better environment or finished and left, it would go to both of those entities. I'd also find out how to get representation through the ACLU and/or GLAAD or whomever. Then I'd go on about my damn life and let those folks duke it out. At that point, you have essentially provided a dossier and insulated yourself from repercussions. But again, you are under no obligation to take any action which threatens your safety or well-being if it goes against who you are to do so.

Accessing Elsevier papers First of all: F**k you Elsevier, for making contributions and most importantly access to science damn expensive, especially for the students (such as me) that really need these papers. This leads me directly to my question: Unfortunately in my field a lot of relevant papers are constantly published in Elsevier Journals, which I can’t access through my university, Sci-Hub also doesn’t help with these in a lot of cases. Any further ideas? I do not endorse piracy, but it drives me nuts if I can’t access the relevant papers in my niche research field close to the end of my PhD. Especially for my theoretical part I would need this access.

If you have time, just email the researcher. I've done this a handful of times, and it gives me an excuse to establish a new professional connection. Researchers are always delighted to share their papers for free; the only entity that benefits from these paywalls is Elsevier.

How do you handle unsupportive parents? Hello! I'm a microbiologist who's about to begin my PhD next fall (yay!). I've had a very successful undergraduate career, including working on science outreach. My parents always act/say that they are ~so proud of me~ but their actions state otherwise. I've had several science-derived arguments with my parents whom are not scientists and don't know even basic biology. Flash forward to the present; I'm putting on a virtual course as a part of my certificate/fellowship that discusses pandemics. My parents both signed up for the course and have helped advertise the class. My aunt recently warned me that my dad said he was studying up so that he could 'call me out' if he didn't agree with anything I said in the course. In the entrance poll, he wrote he was hoping to learn proof that masks don't work. So, obviously his participation in this course is for the purpose of digging at me. I've resolved to the fact that though my parents want to act supportive and I've felt like I've made breakthroughs with them, at the end of the day they don't really care how they make me feel. Nor do they truly believe in or support science, my work, or me. I don't want to spend the emotional labor to truly cut off my parents, but it's exhausting constantly getting picked on by them. Has anyone else dealt with a similar situation? I feel so alone because all of my academic friends' parents are either academics themselves or are so so supportive.

I find it very weird that your parents would sign up for your course. It's a recipe for disaster to mix a teaching relationship with a family relationship, even if the latter is good, so in your case...

Do you find that many people in academia have "tunnel vision" where they are excessively preoccupied with their field of study and that critical thinking doesn't transfer to other domains? It would appear at first glance that the skills of reading a technical paper and logically critiquing it would generalize to thinking rationally in other areas of life as well. However, I've increasingly seen that many professors are often able to be brilliant in their own field, while having silly opinions in real life, apparently without experiencing much cognitive dissonance (of course, this is a generalization...). The kinds of arguments that they advance for their opinions in real life would get them laughed out of the park if they were applied to their own field of scientific inquiry. I have a strong suspicion that academia self-selects for those people who are highly intelligent but have "tunnel vision" in the sense of having singular interests (or very narrow interests) and are rather conformist in their beliefs otherwise. Is it just me? What has been your experience? Have you felt the same way? (For my background: I'm a STEM masters student, and this came up quite often in a group consisting of masters and PhD students.)

Honestly, that hasn’t been my experience at all. I find that the same critical thinking skills my colleagues have tend to transfer to other arenas outside of our tiny specialty areas. Of course, some academic folks have some views that are “out there” or seem ridiculous. But that occurs across all populations. For example: I’m a criminologist. Everybody has opinions about crime (and most are wrong). When I speak with other academics about issues related to crime, nearly all the time, they get it. Or, at the very least, they are able to view the issue from angles outside of their own opinion. But when I talk about it among non-academics, I find that many people can’t get past their own views to analytically think about the topic.

The 'Other' College Scandal: Grade Inflation Has Turned Transcripts into Monopoly Money Article link here (Forbes) From the article: "Consider these facts: A 50-plus-year nationwide study of the history of college grading finds that, in the early 1960s, an A grade was awarded in colleges nationwide 15 percent of the time. But today, an A is the most common grade given in college; the percentage of A grades has tripled, to 45 percent nationwide. Seventy-five percent of all grades awarded now are either A’s and B’s. The National Association of Colleges and Employers reported in 2013 that “66 percent of employers screen candidates by grade point average (GPA).” "The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation also has studied college grading. The Foundation confirms the alarming findings recited above. It found that in 1969, only 7 percent of students at two- and four-year colleges reported that their grade point average was A-minus or higher. Yet in 2009, 41 percent of students reported as same. During the same period, the percentage of C grades given dropped from 25 to five percent." "Under legislation proposed in the House of Representatives, the Texas “Contextualized Transcript” bill calls for adding to transcripts the average grade given to the entire class for each of the courses on a student’s transcript. This would apply to all Texas public, two-year and four-year colleges and universities." I teach a required course with about 15 sections that is loosely coordinated in our college. We are the notorious grade-inflaters, in part due to the nature of the course (i.e., it's not BIO101 or ECON101). We've gotten the very clear, unambiguous message from the dean that our classes are too easy and need to become more rigorous (which of course would reduce inflation). At first I resisted but now I see the point. It's not doing students any favors, and apparently many P&T committees are wary of grade inflation and student evals that are TOO high. What are your universities doing about grade inflation? ​

Non-dischargeable student loans incentivize this sort of behavior. If you instituted even stricter academic standards, thousands of academically weak students would fail out of school and be saddled with lifelong debt. Ultimately, the only solution is to tie college acceptance to much higher academic standards. Of course, this will further entrench class divisions, cause many low-ranked institutions to close, and significantly worsen the academic job market.

imposter syndrome is a blast Can we talk about imposter syndrome and navigating academia in STEM as a young woman? I feel drastically under-qualified doing nearly everything my mentors encourage me to do. I do the things anyway, but the discomfort doesn't seem to dissipate the further I get. But also, I am a second year grad student, highest degree BA, presenting at a medical conference in November, presenting among all other MDs. How the fuck am I supposed to feel about this D:

Bad news—it's not going away. It doesn't matter how much you achieve, it will be with you. Good news—everyone feels it. So don't worry too much, it's normal. One step at a time, you'll get there.

Every time I publish with Elsevier a small part of me dies I now have three papers in various Elsevier journals. Through publication of each of these I have grown to dispise Elsevier more and more. I hate they way that they are providing less and less at each stage of the publication process. For example I wrote the paper, my colleagues peer-reviewed it, and then now I even have to do the type setting myself. It makes me question what exactly Elsevier are providing besides a shell to conduct peer review and a hosting platform afterwards? Although there are many issues generally with the publication process, it is the authors doing type setting that actually bugs me the most. For those of you that have not used the Elsevier type setting online tool, this is an interactive document editor where you generate your own proofs. All content is editable and therefore undermining the peer review process. For example, at this stage for key points could be changed or countless self citations added. After this you hit submit and it's done. Now they will claim that this process has some editorial oversight but in my experience it does not. It's a joke. Also I hate the way they refer to us as customers. Working with a publisher should be a collaborative process. I am planning to avoid Elsevier journals in the future when I have a say in where a paper goes.

I feel similarly, but boycotts are a full professor's game. So I keep doing it, begrudgingly. When there's a choice of a journal of equal prestige, say, at Sage, I'll send it there. But that's not always possible.

Would it be weird to send an email to a professor who's book I loved? I read a book from an academic. It has no reviews anywhere but I really loved it and was wondering if would be weird to email them and tell them that I enjoyed their book?

This isn't weird—it's a rare academic author who wouldn't be delighted to receive such an email. Consider describing what aspect of their style or content you especially enjoyed. Don't feel bad if you don't hear back. It's also rare for an academic author to devote much time to correspondence.

I don’t think I want to get my PhD anymore, but I don’t know what else to do. I’m (22F) a first year PhD student in physics, and I kind of absolutely hate it. I know at least some of the problem is my mental health, adjusting to having moved across the country, and a bunch of non-school external stressors that I have been dealing with… I’m in therapy and I take meds. But I wake up and dread my classes. I dread my research. I feel like a disappointment to my advisor who is so nice and puts so much faith in me. I’m skipping class and sleeping and I’m still so exhausted. I don’t think this is what I want to do, and academica was never something I planned on doing after my doctorate anyway. I think I just want it so everyone knows I’m smart. And it’s always been my plan. But I don’t know what to do from here. I kind of want to teach. My mom was a teacher and she hated it, but I think I would enjoy teaching math, and it seems like that’s at least somewhat in demand. I don’t know what to do. Any advice from teachers, grad students, physicists, or anyone would be useful. Thank you.

You're figuring this out in first year? Good for you, quit. Quit right away. The sunk cost fallacy (which is less of a fallacy because you do only get your PhD at the end, so you kinda get stuck gutting it out) gets worse with every passing year. Run now.

How the hell do you enjoy reading papers? I am a STEM student about to go into his final year of undergrad. I have been reading scientific papers and conducting research since my first semester and while I have gotten *better* at reading papers, it still sucks SO much to do so. I do not know what it is. Every time I start reading a paper I get like a page in and my mind goes 'wow this is boring and it sucks' and I stop. I will all the time hear post-docs and my PI talk about how cool a paper was and I cannot fathom how they think so. To be perfectly clear, I think my research is amazing and I love learning. Lectures are my favorite thing but something about scientific papers just turns me off so hard. Does anyone else feel this way? Does anyone have tips on how to make papers more palatable?

It gets better when your research is truly your own. Then you read papers because you want to know about new things in your field. Like others have said, scientific writing, by nature, should be concise and, by extension, bland. A well-written article should still flow and make sense, however. The literary flourish, for those who have it, should be saved for reviews and such.

Losing hope in a successful academic career This is my first post in Reddit. Not sure how to start. Let me start with some context. I always was the top student in my class, after graduation I got a lot of academic awards in my home country (even from the government) for having the best academic records in the country (all them with nice cash prizes attached), I finished my PhD in 3.5 years (working like hell) with about 10 journal publications (most of them top journals) and almost 20 conferences (many of them quite good as well). I got my first and only postdoc job before graduating from my PhD, and two years later I finally got my first academic job in the UK as assistant professor in a Russell group university. So far so good. I have now been between 5-10 years in this department (not saying the exact number for privacy reasons), got a promotion to associate professor a couple of years ago. I have got several grants (some of them from prestigious funders, the other successfull applicants being from Oxford and Cambridge) and have done ok in publications. However I feel like the "good luck" (if I can call it that way) is coming to an end and I don't see good prospects for the future because of the following reasons: \- There is little to no support from the department. We don't get any PhD scholarships to recruit PhD students. The only way I got one (1) PhD studentship from my department all this time was conditioned on a grant application being successful, which thankfully was, and I still had to request additional funding from the grant budget to give a stipend to the PhD student. All my other PhD students have been self-funded (and I got two of them because they were neglected by their supervisors and came to me to take them, which I had to do as I didn't really have many options to choose from). \- I only have two PhD students now and won't have any other next year. I don't have money to recruit any PhD students so I can only accept self-funded students. Good self-funded students will go to USA or other higher ranked universities in UK. I only get odd emails from poor candidates who lack even basic skills from undegraduate level. \- Despite trying to work hard in research, getting grants, papers in top journals, being editor in good journals, organise workshops and other staff, I have been overloaded with teaching and admin duties, way more than any other colleague in my department, some of them who have less than half my teaching load. I have talked to the HoD about this and in the last two years I had to keep going with my heavy teaching load under the promise of being the last year. The next academic year will be again "the last year" (for the third time) before my teaching and admin load decreases. This year there was an opportunity to get a course in my area of research (all my teaching is outside my area of research, to make things worse) and the course I wanted was given to another academic staff in HoD's own research group. I feel unfairly loaded, doing roles in the department that have historically been for staff in teaching and scholarship track (I'm in teaching and research track according to my contract, but effectively working as T&S). Teaching load is extremely unfairly distributed (we can see each other's courses online). All my research has been done in evenings, weekends, and holidays, so effectively unpaid labour, and even in these conditions I have done better in research than other colleague with lower teaching and admin load. I have been unable to explore other research topics I liked because I couldn't find time to read a paper, so I have been working too long in the same research are, now kind of outdated... I have started to think that the HoD doesn't like me for some reason (I can think of a few reasons but I won't say them here because then it would be easy to identify me) and this may be the result of some kind of conspiracy from HoD against me. So here I am, with a huge teaching load, no time to do research under good conditions and with no PhD students and any prospects of having anything that looks like a research group. I wonder whether is there anything I have done wrongly, or simply I have had bad luck, or maybe this is just the norm, or maybe the unfair treatment of a HoD for some reason. I came to academia because I wanted to do research, but I not only didn't get any support for this (despite having promising potentials to succeed) but also got obstacles from the department in the form of an unfair heavy teaching load. I look at colleagues in other places and feel like I'm well behind all them after so many years of suffering this huge teaching load. I have now lost all kind of motivation to even get up from bed every day and read/reply to my emails (mostly from some of my more than 300 students that I teach).

This genuinely is hard to read. It is such a shame that such a motivated and dedicated person like you has to go through this. I am sorry to hear that, and I sincerely hope you will manage to get better opportunities very soon. May I ask why you are sticking to academia if the conditions are so difficult for you? Probably a stupid question, but have you tried changing departments/universities? It does sound like most of your problems come from being in an unsupportive department—maybe managing to get elsewhere will help?

How to talk to a grad student about productivity issues? I'm paying one of my grad students for 40 hours of work per week, and I feel like I'm getting barely half of that. How do I politely approach her on this subject without sounding like I'm micromanaging? I'm fairly new to academia, so I haven't really had to deal with this before. Most of what she's currently working on is funded from an internal pot of money, so it's not like she's missing external deadlines from sponsors. I will tell her that I want a certain model estimated by so-and-so, and when that time comes she'll tell me that she was having issues with the software, or the model was giving errors, or that it's taking longer to converge than she expected. I.e., nothing I can definitively call her out on. This is a PhD student entering her third year, and I'm worried that she's slipping. I just don't know how to broach this respectfully.

Setting up tasks and keeping an eye on progress is totally fair, just make sure you realistically estimate the time those tasks need. Sorting out a package installation can take a whole day. Fixing convergence issues can take a week. On top of that, everything takes *much* longer for a student doing this for the first time. Maybe you should first see if she is actually putting in approximately a full-time's worth of work, or if it's a motivation problem.

Anyone Else Sick of Shitty Online Applications? So many of these are either poorly designed, mildly abusive, or flat out broken. Why do you need me to tell you everything that is in my CV that I just uploaded on your site? Why can’t I put international phone numbers in my application without triggering errors? Why do you want my high school address, gpa, and number of credits? No you may not have my social security number to check my background and credit before I’m selected to interview. These things are designed by sociopaths.

I applied to a job at Princeton (which I won't get, but hey). The application website is one page—no login or account. Just put in your name and email info, upload your cover letter, CV, and work sample, write down the names and emails of references, and check the various demographic boxes. It couldn't have taken more than five minutes. It really made me appreciate just how bad every other one of these is, particularly CUNY's. CUNY's is terrible.

Can't say it enough, publishing in journals is very frustrating. I just got contradictory reviews. This is just a rant. I just received the first round of review for this paper that I submitted to a journal. My paper is about delinquency and the first time around when I submitted it, I got rejected but one of the reviews said that I should include this theory that would enhance my argument. Then, I resubmitted it, and this time, the review said, please get rid of the theory as it is pointless. I am this close to stating in my "Response to Reviewers" that I do not want to listen to you (i.e., the current reviewer) because I took my time to write a thoughtful part of my paper to include the theory BECAUSE of a review from the past and now I need to delete it? Obviously I won't write that in my response. I think I'll just delete it. Hope this paper is published this time around.

Peer reviewing seems broken in all fields. In my own field (machine learning), it's also a bit of a shitshow. It's funny because everyone I ask or talk to regarding peer reviewing agrees with things like "reviews should be sincere and take a holistic view on the value of the paper" or "reviews should not obsess with state-of-the-art performance." Yet, every single review that seems to surface seems to contradict this. I wonder how these reviewers are being selected.

Use of the word "request" by students from South Asia I regularly receive emails from students from India and Pakistan who want to enroll in PG studies or internships. Many of these emails seem fairly formal and respectful BUT make a troubling use of the word "request", in a way that feels downright disrespectful and abrupt. I'm talking about sentences like "I request you to take me under your mentorship", or "I request you to please let the process be continued"... Since I'm not a native speaker I'm not sure whether that's the way other people would perceive this use of the word. Perhaps it's some overly-formal British English turn of phrase that's gone out of fashion elsewhere. And I wonder why so many of these students use it, and where they learn it from. Any thoughts on this?

Indian here: Yes, written English taught in Indian schools can sometimes be quite old-fashioned. By requesting you to be their mentor, they are basically asking you for an opportunity to interview. And under no circumstances are they trying to be disrespectful to you. In fact, they are actively trying to avoid that at every cost, whether you interview them or not.

How do I bring up the fact that my PhD supervisor died and that's why I don't have him as a reference (and some more CV questions) Hello all, My phd supervisor unfortunately passed away this fall so alas, I cannot list him in my references. I'm afraid that not including my main supervisor as a reference might raise some eyebrows.. what if that's enough to stop my application from reaching the point of contacting the other references (who will surely explain the situation)? Should I include a tiny note in the references section of my CV or would that be too tacky/weird ? Besides this unpleasant issue, I'd also love to read some opinions on the following CV doubts #####Professional Appointments/Employment Is this really necessary? I have just finished my phd so this would just be my initial grant and then 3 consecutive contracts in the same lab while finishing my phd. Because of that I don't think it adds much value to my profile, does it? #####Research experience Similarly, i think this will just re-iterate what I did for my phd, I'm not sure I fully appreciate what I'm supposed to highlight in this section Is this where I showcase the things I can do as a researcher? #####Key competencies I think it's a good idea to have a brief section where you can highlight these but it doesn't seem to be a thing in academic context As my CV stands right now, I have 4 subsections in there: Bioinformatics, Data Science, Informatics, Biology where I highlight my competences that are most relevant to each section. For example the "Data science" parts reads as follows: >Data Science: Experienced in applying and developing statistical analyses and machine learning tech-niques for biological questions. Enjoys handling big amounts of data and takes pride indeveloping and optimizing fast performing computational pipelines. Very comfortable with the Python data science stack of libraries (jupyter, pandas, numpy, sci-kit, sci-py, seaborn,TensorFlow) Should all this just go in the cover letter instead ? Or in the research experience somehow ? #####Repositories As a bioinformatician, I've created some repositories for which I'm quite proud and I'd like to showcase them. This again doesn't seem to be a thing in academia, what do you think?

I have a line in my cover letter—though it helps that his death coincided with a change in direction for me. It’s something like “Following the death of my advisor, I changed directions somewhat and ...”. On my CV, it is also part of the education section—something like “PhD in X under mentor Y [deceased, YEAR]”. If you feel comfortable asking, I think it helps to have a reference from someone who knew your advisor and is willing to speak to your advisor’s general opinion of you.

I Hate Rejecting Papers So I became a reviewer for one of the journals I published to during my PhD and I'm happy to be doing it, but I find that I reject far more papers than I accept and it's bothering me. I can always tell when a great deal of work and thought has gone into a manuscript and it makes me sad to send a rejection recommendation. Obviously, the field would not necessarily benefit if I lowered my standards (assuming they are calibrated properly), and I do make sure to find and note aspects of the paper I like and give grace where I can, but even so, rejecting doesn't feel great, especially when you've been on the other side of it, as we all have I'm sure. Any way to get over this while making sure I stay a quality reviewer?

I think it's important to keep in mind that you aren't rejecting any papers as a reviewer. That's not your role. You are simply giving evidence-based (hopefully) recommendations, and the editor is the one making the final decision. A good editor should not choose to reject a paper solely because a reviewer recommended it, and there are certainly cases where editors overrule reviewers. As you gain experience in the field, you will start to better calibrate your standards to those of the specific journal, but in the meantime, remember that you are a reviewer to assess the facts, not the amount of effort the authors put in.

Now that you're in academia, do you really think grades matter? Out of curiosity! I once worked with the head of a PhD program who casually mentioned that the University's grade cutoffs for candidates sometimes leaves them with people who are great at coursework but have no research experience (implied: they drop out too). That's why he's not a fan of the cut-offs but it's the policy... and I'm also wondering if you choose RAs or TAs based wholly on their grades?

I had a 2.4 GPA in undergrad, and now I'm in a TT position at an R1. I was successful in grad school. Because of this, I push my department on admissions to look past a student's GPA and at everything else. Courses are (at least in my experience) SO DIFFERENT at the graduate level that they tend to lend themselves to students differently.

Does anyone else feel like they aren't doing enough towards their PhD? So I'm a second year PhD student (UK) researching horror games. While I'm reading up on the literature, taking notes, working on my literature review and methodology, prepping for data collection next month, keeping an eye out for potential CfPs, attending (and sometimes participating in) online seminars, and making plans with my supervisor to hopefully do some guest lecturing down the line, there are times when I feel I'm not doing enough. I make it sound like I'm really busy, but I'm truly not. A lot of the stuff I've listed is hugely spaced out. Weeks go by without half of this stuff occurring. As of now, I don't really know what to do to fill my time. I can read papers and take notes, that's no problem. But I just feel like a lot of the time I'm sat there thinking of what to do. I try to keep a weekly list of tasks I want to get done, but most of my days I feel I can walk away from my desk by 2pm. Sometimes earlier. I don't know if it's because there's this ideological view of what doing a PhD requires, but a lot of the blog posts and online posts I read from others suggests that this is an unbelievably busy period and there are simply not enough hours in the day and people's mental health is at stake because of the hours they put in. And honestly, I just don't feel like that. I find it very easy to walk away from my work (either in the evenings or to take breaks now and then) and I wonder if this is detrimental to my completing a satisfactory thesis. None of my supervisors seem to have any cause for concern and I have plans ahead of me, so I'm not stuck for anything to do. I just wonder if there's a toxicity to the whole PhD lifestyle which pressures people into thinking they have to work themselves into dust or it's not good enough. Maybe this is an American mindset. Maybe it's because of the subject matter I'm researching (I can do it all online from my own bedroom). I don't know. Anyone else feel this way?

Your mileage may vary, but for me, it changed depending on what stage I was at in my PhD program. The comprehensive exams stage was the most stressful, and the last year of dissertation writing was the busiest. In between, there was year 3 of 6—a glorious year of lollygagging, rabbit holes, infinite reading, slow rumination, and eventually, prospectus writing. So maybe you're just in one of those chiller, more exploratory phases.

My advisor was sexually inappropriate - how can I get around a letter of recommendation from him for PhD applications? Background: I finished my undergraduate a few years ago. Research was my passion, but this burned me out and I've been too afraid to go back. I'm also not in the US. Long story short, my advisor was a creep to me, I don't want to elaborate in case he's on this subreddit. I know he uses Reddit a lot. I didn't really work with anyone else in the department, and I have no interest in reporting it - it's well known, my department doesn't care. I also don't want to bring this up in a new application, I don't want to seem like I'm slandering someone - and frankly, it's probably irrational, but I'd feel unprofessional talking about it. I'm finally in a place where I want to apply for my PhD, but I don't know how to explain the fact I won't have a letter of reference from the person I did my undergraduate thesis with. I honestly don't even know who else I can ask for a letter from - it's been so long since I left that I don't think any professors would remember me. Does anyone have any idea how I can frame this without it coming off as unprofessional, or like *I* did something to sour the relationship? Thanks Reddit.

I work at a university as an academic advisor for undergraduates. I would say, ask your other former professors. Explain your academic history and your needs and future plans. Chances are, even if they don't remember you, they'll write you a good letter. Most faculty want to see students succeed and are adept at writing letters of recommendation. I'm sorry for your experience of inappropriate behavior. You could also ask that professor, but that's up to you. Sadly, chances are reporting it may be more trouble for you than it's worth, even if it would be just.

Am I the only one who can't see how physical distancing is feasible in classrooms? I recently read two great articles from Inside Higher Ed. " At his small, teaching-focused institution, Clark and a facilities colleague spent half a day measuring and "experiencing" every classroom and lab, all of which were designed for active learning. They looked at every space "from the perspectives of cleaning, scheduling, room capacities, HVAC systems, pedagogical practices, student and faculty behaviors, student conduct issues, and more," he wrote to the POD Network. "It's one thing to draw six-foot circles, talk about reduced classroom capacities, and propose wearing masks in class -- it's a whole other thing to actually experience it." Link This article links to Clark's amazing article: The Physically Distanced Classroom: A Day in the Life I spent the morning going through my syllabus and I have a ton of small group discussion that simply isn't going to work in these new socially-distanced classrooms. Our university is telling us to plan for hybrid, which means there's another layer of unnecessary complexity to this. Despite all the complaining about online education, being able to use breakout rooms in Zoom for synchronous small group discussion is actually a huge benefit pedagogically. Except everyone seems to be desperate to get back on campus without really thinking about what it will look like. Do you have any ideas to share about how you're planning to adapt your courses for the fall?

Last week I spent Monday morning planning out a seminar for my class in September. We're doing hybrid teaching, so we're going to have one cohort taking the class online and half (if we're lucky) in the building. So, I'm planning the class and I want to have them interview each other to identify an entrepreneurial opportunity and then reflect on how they observed it. Online, as you say, it's easy enough. Breakout rooms, shared whiteboards, easy peasy. But then I realised I can't do that in person. Two meters distance! I'm in Scotland, so the guidance is "leave room for a hairy coo". How are we supposed to have in-person seminars where people need to shout at each other from across the room to think, pair, share? Frankly, I think the underlying assumption to any in-person teaching plans is that by September we're going to ignore a lot of social distancing guidelines. Either formally as the regulations get changed or informally because that's just the way things have to be for it to work. There is no solution for making teaching work in a Covid world. We're just pretending there is in order to preserve some sense of normality and ensure there is some sort of teaching income.

So I guess my new job market fear is being falsely accused of sexual harassment by a competing applicant https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/18/magazine/title-ix-sexual-harassment-accusations.html Have you guys read this? tl;dr woman gets coveted job at UMich and is waiting for spousal hire news; woman's colleague tries to sabotage her offer by submitting fraudulent sexual harassment complaints to UMich and spouse's current university (use archive.is or clear your cache for non-paywalled version) So I guess, outside of this dude being a fucking psycho which obviously most people are not, this experience really highlights how unprotected anyone who works in academia is. Starting with the fact that people wouldn't be so desperate for jobs if their career choice didn't leave them to languish in Lubbock, TX or go back to low-skilled labor.

This is absolutely terrifying. How do you even defend yourself against that? And all it needs is someone with too much time on their hands. Buddy was sloppy—he used his real phone number with his fake email address, and used the same email address to impersonate different people. But someone more prepared... God damn.

Why does it seem that students who have a science background or are more science-minded tend to do quite well in arts subjects but not vice versa? I was not getting any luck in getting an answer in r/NoStupidQuestions so I thought this would be relevant here I'm currently both a science and arts student and I have noticed this to be quite true in most cases. Arts student will complain about struggling through a math or science requirement, while science students in arts classes tend to fair better I noticed that institutions think this is the case as well as I also noticed that universities will have courses such as "calculus for the social sciences" or "biology for the arts" which is known to be less rigorous than the main calculus/biology class. On the other hand, I don't commonly see them offer "philosophy for the sciences" or "sociology for engineers". If science students wish to take arts classes, they are expected to enroll in the main class

I think part of it is the prerequisite knowledge. For an introductory college humanities class, you need to be able to read, write, and think critically. For even a remedial math class, you need all of the above plus all the math you’ve learned up to that point. Someone who is good at math already has the skills to do well in other fields; they just have to learn domain-specific information. Regardless of your major, everyone will show up to an intro philosophy class with almost no philosophy background. You can’t show up to a calculus class with good critical thinking skills and no math knowledge expecting it to go well. The cumulative nature of math also explains the existence of courses like “calculus for social sciences.” A standard calculus track is teaching you some math you’ll use in your field but also preparing you for more math, which is usually the hardest part. If someone doesn’t need more math, they’re better off just learning what they’ll actually need.

My PhD student constantly tries to manipulate me. We are in the U.K. and the subject is computer science. Whenever he emails or talks to me he uses weird wording and always tries to manipulate me to comply with something and then pretends it’s something else that we agreed on. He never says yes or no when I ask him about anything really. Always vague language. What can I do? I have reported him and nothing happens.

Stop asking him questions that he can hand-wave away. Enforce clear deadlines with well-described outcomes. Communicate by email so there is a written record. Be explicit when you dismiss something he's trying to manipulate you about, so there is no ambiguity, and redirect the conversation to what you want it to cover. You're his supervisor, not his undergraduate!

How do I combat the feeling of "I am not becoming an expert in anything" during my PhD ? Hello Fellow Academics, I am a PhD student in my 3rd year (4 year PhD program) I have finished course requirements for my program and have been working on this research project for about two years now. Last year or so was particularly bad for me, zero productivity, motivation problems, this feeling of "I was hoping to learn X from my PhD and be an expert in that, but I am no where being a close to an expert in anything". On top of that, I have this constant feeling of not learning anything new. I had this feeling before and that lead to a lot of apathy towards my projects / PhD. I do not want to get there again. Question : Do you all have similar feeling(s) ? Have you able to develop any habits that help combat this feeling ? stuff like : Read a research paper every week / Implement (in code) a new research paper every week ? To give some context, I am doing my PhD in trying to solve problems in Computational Materials Science using Machine learning. I did my MSc. in Machine learning and want to keep learning more in that field. But I am not a Physicist. At this point I feel I can not call myself an expert in Material Science nor Machine learning.

Hey. If it makes you feel better, I am also an ML computational materials researcher and work with lots of others like me. Almost all of us have expressed a similar feeling. I think this is just field-specific. ML being applied to computational materials is so new that we can really only go surface-deep on most things. There just isn’t much background to learn, and we’re all collectively still figuring out what works and what doesn’t.

Loss of a student TW: suicide Hi all, So sorry for the sad subject, but I could really use some advice. I'm a TA, and I found out recently that one of my students died by suicide a couple months ago. They were a student that I interacted with and met with a lot, and who I genuinely really cared about. I found out that they had passed away from a university-wide email announcing the recipients of posthumous degrees (not saying that I should have been on the list of people informed, but it was a rough way to find out). Has anyone else experienced this, and how did you handle it? It's hitting me pretty hard, and I'm really struggling. Thanks <3 (cross posted to r/GradSchool but I'm not sure it went through)

I have lost 3 students over the course of my teaching career—one of them by suicide. It still bothers me, and I still sometimes wonder if there is anything I could have said or done to make a difference. As others mentioned, use any counseling services available to you. I also have a Google Doc where I write down the student's name and things I remember about them, so I know they won’t be forgotten.

TIFU. How do I recover? Long story short and some details intentionally vague: * PhD student * invited to present at prestigious conference * conference organizers asked me to pay travel expenses and then submit reimbursement * conference cancelled (COVID), said they can no longer reimburse * this is where I fucked up: I need the money badly. I got the final "no" at an especially bad moment in my life. I sent an email that explained in gory detail that on top of everything else going on, my mom ODed and my younger sister is in foster care, and angrily demanding they reimburse me. I know I am in the right but that it was not the right way to handle it. * conference organizers didn't even reply to me, forwarded the email to my PhD supervisor and director of graduate studies and told them to "address" my "misbehavior" * PhD supervisor said he is "disappointed" and we need to meet with graduate school to discuss "corrective action" * I have talked to the ombudsman's office and they are pretty supportive and helpful * what I really need help with is: I regret that email so badly. I regret unloading all my pain on people who have nothing to do with it and more than that I regret airing my dirty laundry so that now the whole graduate school knows it. I know my PI is not really a nice guy, and I don't expect any sympathy from him. **How do I look these people in the eye knowing that everyone now thinks of me as a trashy loose cannon instead of the promising young student I was a few weeks ago?**

I understand that you might have kissed some boots to make things right, but honestly, don't beat yourself up about this. Was it a bit unprofessional? Sure. But what the conference organizer did, first refusing to reimburse you and then forwarding your email, was far worse in my book. You are a student, and it sounds like you are a good person going through a really hard time. What's their excuse for the way they acted? No decent human in your department will think poorly of you for this.