How undergrads spend their time

The 2017 results from the National Survey of Student Engagement have been out for a little while. I tell my undergrad students the "3 hours outside of class per credit" rule of thumb, but we all know no one really spends that much time on average on classwork--I certainly didn't. But I did spend more than the current average of 17 hours per week on my classes! For a typical 4-5 course load, this averages to about 3-4 hours spent outside scheduled hours per course. This result is in line with the results from 5 year averages (2011-2015) found by the American Time Use Survey at the Bureau of Labor and Statistics, where students said they spent 3.5 hours per day on educational activities on a typical weekday. My first year teaching a new class, I can spend about that much time per lecture!

This does explain a lot of my observations in my sophomore level undergrad class, though. A surprisingly large number of my students are convinced that attending class should be enough to teach them everything they need to know to get an A, no matter what I say about problem solving and practicing. Some of those appear to be attempting to learn by class osmosis, since they pay no attention to me while in class. Another cohort of students is convinced that there is no reason to attend class, since they can just cram from the textbook or the problem set answer keys the night before the exam like they did in high school. I'd say that about 40-50% of my students regularly attend class, and at least 20-30% of the students in class are doing something else instead of paying attention. I teach a required class that is a prerequisite for many later courses in the undergrad program, so I get that many of the students are not all that interested in the subject matter, but it is definitely material they will need to know in upper level courses. The lack of understanding about this is a bit concerning. It also makes me glad I don't teach the required upper level courses!

Since so many of my students are mailing it in, I sometimes have a hard time pitching the level of the class. Recently, I decided to focus on my more engaged students, and not worry so much about the ones who don't seem to be working, and that strategy seems to be working well. The separation between the top of the class (I have many really great, hard working students in my courses) and the bottom is getting larger, and the middle is emptying out.  My grade distributions have always been a bit bimodal, but now it is getting extremely so. I usually put one or more questions assigned on problem sets on my exams unmodified, and find that fewer than 60% of the students get them correct anyway, implying that many (most!?!) of my students are not doing the assigned work, or don't understand it and don't care enough to get help. Concentrating on those who are there to learn is less frustrating for me and I think for the students who care. My teaching evaluations are consistently good, so I am not getting feedback otherwise.

I actually think that a number of the students who seemingly don't care are just lacking study and/or time management skills. They don't know how to learn material on their own or how to prioritize, which are part of any University level course. I've started giving in class study tips on the first day, and exam taking tips right before my exams, but I feel like that is preaching to the choir in a lot of ways. Also, many of my students who need such help are convinced that they know better, and ignore me anyway.

The time management is a much bigger problem. Some of my students are convinced that they have an exam conflict when they have more than one exam on the same day. Some of my students ask me to change exam dates due to an exam the day before, or a major assignment due that day. Some of my students tell me about exam conflicts the week of the exam, rather than at the beginning of the course when it is easier for me to do something about it. For almost every course at ProdigalU, exam dates are given on the syllabus, which is available on the first day of class, as are the due dates for major assignments. It boggles my mind that some students don't think to use a calendar to help them plan their study time. A really large number of my students lurch from deadline to deadline, working on whatever is due in the next day or so, rather than using any sort of schedule to reduce the pressure on themselves. Even stranger, many of my unsuccessful students seem to have no idea what they need to do to pass the classes they are in danger of failing.

When I was a student, I wasted a lot of time during the day to do most of my work at night, I started a lot of assignments much later than I should have (sometimes the night before), and I didn't always do problem sets that weren't graded, all of which are pretty typical student behaviors. I also didn't "discover" office hours until junior year. So I do get where my students are coming from. But I also attended lectures and tried to concentrate on class when I was there, I focused on work when I was working (no multitasking), and I made sure I did enough to get at least a C+, even in required classes I hated.

I don't want this to be a "kids today" post, because current students also spend a lot of time on average working for pay (13 hours), volunteering (2 hours), doing extracurricular activities (4.5 hours), and caring for dependents (3.5 hours), all of which are also important. The standard deviations on all of these values are quite large (50-140%), because the range of experience is so large. It is still concerning that 1) there is a huge disconnect for many students between desired outcome and what is required to get there, and that 2) each generation of students has more and more background knowledge they need to know and tries to learn it in less and less time. 

Academic jobs and the Survey of Earned Doctorates

The Survey of Earned Doctorates for 2016 (SED) is out (at least in data form). I was just playing around the numbers a little bit (I am in physical science), and I am finding the results quite interesting. The percentage of doctorates earned by temporary visa holders remains below 30%, which is a lot fewer than I would have expected. The percentage of women earning degrees in my field has not changed much since I got mine.

The really interesting thing is in the employment plans (at least in my field). For all we hear about the pyramid scheme that is academia, in my field, the "mismatch" between the number of qualified potential academic job seekers and the number of openings is not all that large. This is, of course, a very simple analysis, since it ignores the presence of people with other sorts of degrees that apply for positions in my field, as well as people with degrees in my field that go to other departments. It also assumes that all TT positions are equal, which is clearly not the case, since University type and location also make a huge difference.  So, what do I mean by a small "mismatch"? The ratio between the number of postdocs going in (defined for this scenario as "definite postgraduate study" plus the same percentage of those with definite plans applied to "seeking employment or study") is 3. Basically, according to the SED, there are 3 new postdocs produced per TT position available at US institutions in my field.

Now, I've talked about issues with the SED and other surveys before, when I looked at PhD overproduction 6 months ago. Those issues remain, and this is 1) only a rough estimate from questionable numbers and 2) ignores PhDs granted by foreign institutions who presumably make up a decent percentage of American postdocs. A survey of current postdocs and their plans would be much better. That said, given my previous discussions of search committees and their sorting of applicants, where at least half of the applicant pool is not qualified, 3 to 1 is not far from the minimum required to produce an adequate pool. This is especially true since many postdocs in my field plan on industrial positions, but want additional training (or the paid chance to live abroad for 2 years). This last bit is from anecdote and personal observation, since I don't know of any good surveys of just postdocs in my field on this issue.

Once we add in the postdocs with PhDs from non-US institutions, of course, the number of potential applicants for TT positions is much higher. And of course, applicants self-sort, since most people are looking for a specific TT job type (primarily undergrad, research intensive, etc) not just a random TT position, and most people have location preferences that determine which positions they apply to. Thus, colleagues at less well known universities in rural locations have problems filling out their pools sometimes, while colleagues in highly desirable locations have many hundreds of applicants.

Personally, my students are still finding jobs that they enjoy, so I don't feel any job-market induced pressure to decrease the size of my group below that which I can comfortably support. For better or worse, the recent numbers suggest that not much has changed in my field over the last 10 years or so.

Observations on searches

One of my most popular posts ever was from 2010 on how our search committees deal with applications for TT positions based on my early experience at ProdigalU. The process certainly is very opaque until you are on the other side, so I can understand this. It is now 7.5 years later, and I have some more thoughts on academic searches.

It is still the case that about 2/3 of the applicants are removed from consideration from the CV alone. Those who have the minimum qualifications (like a PhD in the right field) are usually eliminated by lack of productivity. Someone who can't publish reasonably regularly at the level of good society journals in an already established and funded lab is unlikely to be able to do so when starting from scratch no matter how wonderful their ideas are. Also, there MUST be non-review first author publications. There is no minimum number really, since productive means different things in different fields and sub-fields.  In my area (a physical science), 3-5 publications from grad school is typical (usually 2-3 first author, the rest as a contributor). Postdocs typically are 1-2 years, so 1-2 first author publications is pretty normal, also usually with some mid-author contributions as well. In my field, one Science/Nature publication does not make up for having nothing else, so trainees who plan to stay in academia that are currently in glam hunting research groups should make sure to look out for other publishing opportunities (like find a collaborator). 

For the remaining 1/3, the research plan/proposal is the main difference maker. For a TT hire, we are looking for someone who can both teach our classes and set up a successful research group, where success is ultimately determined by the ability to get funding. This means TT applicants need to demonstrate that they can write clearly and communicate the excitement and novelty of their ideas effectively. In addition, they must have SOME idea about research practicalities (like how much things cost, how much time things take, and what sorts of instrumentation they might have access to). This really comes out more in the interview, but I have seen some application research plans that require access to some unique instrument found at the PhD or postdoc institution, or that rely on unreasonably large amounts of synchrotron time/user facility time.  Fit is also important--we already have people at ProdigalU, so we want to hire someone who brings something new, but not so new that they can't find students in our applicant pool.

Reference letters are also important, but usually not the clincher. A good letter will address the specific contributions the applicant made in research as well any other important relevant ways the applicant contributed (mentoring, writing proposals, teaching assistance, etc). This is so useful in evaluation! I find it is often helpful to letter writers to respectfully suggest specific things to address in a letter, because the letter writers are busy people who may not remember to put in something important to the applicant. Letter writers can also help address specific issues that are hard or inappropriate for an applicant to bring up, which can be important as well. Red flags in a letter are taken very seriously (also true for grad student applications), and can definitely sink an application.

The teaching statement matters. Honestly, we don't usually look at the teaching statement until the long list point, but at that point, it is part of the decision. We are a University looking for people to teach our students, so we want someone who takes teaching seriously.

 
The perceptions of job seekers and search committee members are far apart, but also strangely both correct. When I was looking for a job, all I heard were horror stories about 500 applicants for one opening, and about how people spend years searching and never get a position. Now that I am on search committees myself, I hear about searches where there are hundreds of applications, but practically none are good enough/have the right qualifications to be brought in (this is usually caused by a bad ad, in my opinion), and I hear horror stories of searches taking 3 or 4 years to make a hire.

The funny thing is that both things are true, in my experience. There are searches with 30-40 people under consideration for the interview list (usually 4 or 5 people at ProdigalU), all of whom look really good, but only one of which can be hired. There are also searches where the committee didn't end up finding anyone the department wanted to make an offer to.

The prior experience/training time is getting longer. When I first started, it was pretty typical that most of our pool consisted of applicants in their first postdoc. While postdoc length remains 1-2 years in my field, more and more of our applicants are applying from a second postdoc or from a non-permanent, semi-independent position (like group leader, other sorts of fellowships, or contract positions). So the time between finishing the PhD and starting on the TT is rising. Not as dramatically as in the life sciences, but the experience level of our new hires is also creeping up.

In talking to potential applicants at conferences and/or our own interviewees, some of this is voluntary (commonly this is from people who wanted experience abroad and then wanted to apply from a position in the country), but some is not (people who couldn't get a permanent job and/or perceive themselves as not competitive without a second postdoc). I am not sure what to do about this, but it came up for discussion in our last search as issue in evaluating productivity.

CVs and padding

Your CV is a crucial document in your professional career. You will use it to apply for fellowships, jobs, awards, and funding. Your department may use it for merit/bonus determination. They certainly will for promotion/retention purposes. Especially when starting out, when your CV is short, the temptation to pad it is very strong. Today I am telling you to avoid the temptation and just don't do it!

1. Standing out for the wrong reasons
It is often obvious when someone is trying to pad their CV. People reading your CV don't use the "stair method" to find the longest CV--for whatever evaluation purpose, the point is to look for quality, not quantity. When on a committee where people are evaluating dossiers together, you don't want to the one people read out loud for a laugh because your padding attempt is so obvious (and, unfortunately, this does happen).

2. What is "obvious padding"?
Please DON'T list more than one or maybe two manuscripts in preparation. Anything can be in preparation, and it looks like padding. If you do list anything in preparation, don't bother putting a journal name. It is meaningless until submission. Only list submitted manuscripts that are actually submitted (including a  manuscript number is helpful). True story: when I had a phone interview for an industrial position, my interviewer was using the CV I had originally submitted 3-4 months before the interview. I was asked for updates on everything not listed as published, including manuscripts listed as in prep, submitted, and in press. Since I had only listed things that were actually in the state I listed them, I was able to tell my interviewer that my "in preps" were submitted and update on the status of my submitted and in press manuscripts.
 
Please DON'T list random local talks (group meetings, practice talks, talks required for your program, etc) as presentations. This does not make you look in demand, it makes you look like you think your CV is not impressive enough. Talks will come as you get more experience. DO list poster presentations at conferences--these count. Subbing for a lecture in class belongs in teaching, not presentations. Some people list interview talks. I didn't, but I can see the argument either way.

Too much random stuff obscures the real meat. One CV I saw recently had a peer reviewed publication in a fairly well-known journal buried under a whole bunch of things written for things like the local school paper and random newsletters. Also, time marches on. In my opinion, as you age, you need to remove things from previous stages. If you have a Bachelor's degree, remove everything pre-high school. If you have a PhD, remove everything pre-University. For academics, everything from University on usually stays. For non-academic positions, space is at a premium, since page limits are a thing. Keep details on the most recent, then just list previous experiences with place and date to save space.

3. Keep fluff to a minimum
In the American context, people don't usually put hobbies and family status on CVs. If you do list hobbies, don't lie about them to sound cool (yes, this happens--you don't want to go into an interview listing martial arts as a hobby and then be unable to name one). You do need to be prepared to discuss anything you put on your CV, since interviewers will often pick something that sounds interesting as a conversation starter.

Transferring money from students to billionaires

While the new tax bill covers many things, Inside Higher Ed has a look at how this might impact students (more discussion here). There are two main concerns here, from my perspective. The first worrisome part is that the tax plan will end student loan interest deductions, greatly increasing the costs of higher education, especially given how rapidly education debt has been rising. This, of course, will disproportionately impact lower income students who need to take on more debt. Furthermore, adding to the cost of loans will make important but low paying jobs (that mean no rapid loan repayment) requiring high education such as teacher, social worker, or librarian that much less attractive.

Even more relevant to most readers of this blog, the new tax bill proposes to make tuition wavers taxable. According to the Inside Higher Ed article:

The proposal would also eliminate a provision of the tax code used by many universities to waive the cost of tuition for graduate students filling positions like teaching assistantships. If the proposal were to go through, those institutions wouldn't be able to waive tuition costs without imposing new taxable income on grad students, said Steven Bloom, director of government relations at the American Council on Education.

OK. So we will take students making stipends of $25-30k and then tax them as if they were making $60-75k. That would bump people up from the 15% bracket to the 25% bracket on money they don't even see,. Given that many US students already have debt from undergrad, it is hard to see how this wouldn't greatly reduce the number of students able to attend grad school, especially when combined with removing the tax deduction on student loan interest. Now, I know that there are people who think we should reduce the number of grad students in STEM fields, but do we really want to cull the numbers with an economic means test?

This seems like a really strange proposal. For one thing, how much money can taxing grad school tuition wavers actually bring in? For another, why wouldn't grad schools drastically lower tuition in the programs that routinely provide such wavers, since it seems mostly like a bookkeeping fiction anyways? Its not like some programs don't have higher tuition than others already, and plenty of programs already have different tuition rates for students before and after they pass to PhD candidates.

True professor confession: I don't like hosting seminar speakers

I know we are supposed to be happy about hosting. We get to invite someone we really want to bring in, we get to spend extra time with them, and enjoy a meal with them on ProdigalU. But the truth is, I really don't like hosting. I can do all those things (except pick the speaker) when someone else hosts, and then I don't have to harangue my colleagues into signing up to fill the schedule, make sure all the proper arrangements have been made, do the introduction (which I find awkward), or deal with any random logistical nightmares that occur. I realize this makes me a freeloader, and that I should do my share for the department. But I definitely don't enjoy it.

Anyone else have something to confess?

Bureaucracy!

When dealing with any large organization, it is necessary to navigate the bureaucracy. Over time, there are more and more layers of people to enforce more and more detailed rules. In my experience at National Lab and at ProdigalU, bureaucracy mostly slows down the honest folks who are trying to get things done, while the people who wish to cheat/steal/not follow the rules just figure out how to get around each new layer as it appears.

I am feeling frustrated by the new levels generated at ProdigalU to ensure rule and policy compliance. I feel like more and more of my time is spent navigating bureaucracy, which is even less rewarding than service.

Getting the most out of conference travel

I think attending conferences is really important for students at all levels. I can only afford to send my grad students (though I have sent undergrads to local meetings), but I make a strong effort to send every student who has something they can present to one meeting per year. In practice, this means pretty much all of them, every year. I think this is so important to their development, that this is a priority for me. We also apply for any travel support that is available to facilitate this.

This last conference I attended with some of my students, I noticed that some of them were not really making the most of the (professional) opportunity. Then I remembered that when I was a student (a shy, introverted, not really self-confident student), I spent most conferences hanging out with people I already knew from my undergrad or PhD universities, which was fun, but not really the point. No one ever suggested ways I could get more out of meetings, which would have helped newbie Prodigal a lot. So I decided to start explaining to my students what they should be doing to make the most of a conference (especially since in lean years, we scrape by so I can send them).

Prodigal's rules for conference success:

1.  The stated point of a conference is to exchange ideas. So you need to:

Get your work out there! This of course means that it is important to present your work well in a good presentation (THAT DOESN'T GO OVER TIME!) or as a well thought out poster. It means you need to be at your poster for at least half of the poster session. But most importantly, it means you must discuss your work with other people, even outside of your talk/poster.

Attend talks/posters on things that interest you that might not be directly relevant ot your project. This is a great way to get new ideas, and to learn about a new direction/new area. Most speakers will be distilling one or more papers into the allotted speaking time. The good ones will get you up to speed on the key points during their talks, which can save hours of laboring over papers and references. I find that attending talks on topics I am interested in is the best way to spark my creativity with my own work.

Talk to people in your field to hear about negative results. Negative results are usually thrown in to another paper (as an add-on to positive results), so it could be years before anyone knows that a particular line of research is unlikely to be fruitful. People will talk about negative results in person when discussing their research, though. The publication bias towards positive results means that many labs try the same thing that leads nowhere until someone puts it into the literature that the method doesn't work and stops new entrants to the field from trying it. You can avoid that by talking to other people so you don't invest loads of time in something unlikely to be successful. You should do the same for others, by the way, to help save them time too. 


2. The actual point of a conference is networking. So there are three things you need to do:

Look over the program and "stalk" people who you'd like to meet.  By "stalk", I don't mean actually stalk! Just find out when they will be presenting and attend the session. You can ask a question/introduce yourself at a break. This is your chance to meet people in your field! As a student, it works best with younger, less established scientists, but there are well-established folks who enjoy meeting students. There are also well-established folks who decidedly don't, but that is good information to find out too.

Make sure you meet new people! This may seem obvious, but it is not. It is easiest to do at mixers/coffee breaks, where people are feeling social, or at poster sessions, where there is a natural way to approach people (at posters) and a natural topic (the research). You can also have your existing friends/mentors introduce you to new people. The people you meet at conferences are your peers. They will be reviewing your manuscripts and proposals, inviting people to various events, and possibly telling you about professional opportunities. They will also tell you the real story about their research (the stuff you can't/don't put into papers). You need to get your name out there. Being talented is not enough if no one but you and your advisor know it. You should also follow up with the ones that you clicked best with after the conference via email.

Refresh connections with people you've met before. Ways to do this: attend their talks/posters, contact them and set up a meeting, arrange to bump into them at a coffee break, track them down at conference social events. Even if you meet someone face to face once a year, it is enough to make them a professional contact after a few meetings. It also gives you someone outside your university to hang out with who can introduce you to new people (see previous). 

Point 2 on networking (and its importance) came as a surprise to some of my less experienced students. Early on, many of them still believe that science is a strict meritocracy, and are shocked that networking is so important to success. It is best for them to learn this early, so they can start figuring out networking strategies that work for them.

After my students return from a conference, I like to have them give a group meeting on what they saw, with an emphasis on things that will help our projects, things they thought were the most interesting, and people they think we should pay attention to.

Parenting older children

Another rant about work-life balance. When people talk about trying to balance parenthood and career, I find that they almost always refer to the baby stage. Yes, parental leave is really important when you have a newborn. Yes, sleep deprivation is a major issue when your kids don't sleep though the night. Yes, adequate access to daycare is a major problem. But parenting doesn't end when the children reach school age, and yet the challenges of raising older children while excelling in a a challenging career are not often discussed.

There was this article in The Atlantic back in 2012 by Anne-Marie Slaughter in which she discusses her decision to quit a high powered job to spend more time with her family. At the time, the article kicked off lots of discussion, mostly about whether women could "have it all" and not so much about the child raising parts.

The truth is, kids remain a huge time sink up until they move out of the house. Until the kids reach at least 11 or 12, someone has to be home with them in the mornings before school starts (not so much a problem for our family, since school starts pretty early) and after school (which ends in the middle of the afternoon). We are lucky to have quality after school programs for the Prodigal Kids, but not everyone is so fortunate. Even so, someone still has to do drop off and pick up on time every day. This makes work-related travel very difficult for the home parent, especially if there is more than one kid in more than one place. It also makes things like late meetings/late classes a problem at a time when the workplace is lot less sympathetic then it was for the baby stage.

It is true that older kids require less physical labor and are more self-sufficient, but they still don't buy food (or anything else!) for themselves, meal plan, cook, or do their laundry (at least ours don't--I know some people have their kids start helping out with the laundry at 10 or so). As they age, they need more stuff, and that stuff needs to be in the right place at the right time. Scheduling becomes another thing to do. The schools don't help, because sometimes they need a photo for tomorrow (which sucks for us, since we don't usually print ours), or a last minute school supply, or a trip to the library when the weekend is already full.

Worse, the problems they have now are more difficult to solve. It used to be they were hungry, thirsty, wet, or tired. As a parent, there was something we could do to help them. Now they have social circles to navigate (or not) and schoolwork to master (or not). They make decisions on their own that have long term consequences, and have to deal with the fallout. As a parent, we can offer advice, but they must do the work. It is really hard to watch your child struggle with a frenemy or have difficulty learning something, or be completely unable to organize themselves. And it isn't like power struggles go away--instead of fighting about wearing proper clothing with a toddler, now we are fighting about finishing homework with a tween.

I love my kids, and I am happy with the life choices I made. But I have to say that it really annoys me when people (especially men who have stay at home wives to deal with all of this) assume that because my kids are no longer babies, I can behave as if I don't have kids at home anymore, and that not doing so makes me lazy/uncommitted/less serious/not a real scientist.

On getting older

Contrary to what pop culture tells the young about getting older (with all the emphasis on mid-life crises, lying about your age, worrying about appearance, etc), I find that I am much happier as I move into middle age. I am both more aware of and more accepting of who I am, both the things I like about myself and the things I don't. At this point in time, I am who I am, and that is unlikely to dramatically change. And I am OK with that.

When I was younger, I worried much more about what other people thought, about what was "acceptable" and about making mistakes. Now, I know that I will make mistakes, but that most of them will be fixable (or at least I'll be able to recover from them). I don't care so much about what I "should" be doing, and can focus more on what I want to do, even though I have many more  responsibilities (both personal and professional) now than I did 15 years ago. Coming along with feeling better about myself in other areas, I find that while I still have flare-ups of Imposter Syndrome, I am more easily able to put them aside and do what I need to do with less panic.

Digital privacy in academia and beyond

Bottom line: you have none.

Go look at the posts and comments on this by potnia theron and fighty squirrel. If you use your University's network access, you may as well consider them to have a list of every site you visit, if not a keylogger for what you do online. If you use your business email address for non-business things, you are inviting your boss to know anything you wrote. When I worked at National Lab, we knew our phones and mail accounts were monitored, so people used cell phones/alternate email accounts or face to face meetings for private discussion. What is true then is as true now--never, ever put anything in email that you would not mind becoming public knowledge. If you get involved in anything that triggers an investigation of you (even as a witness to something, even if it was something crazy your office mate did, even if it is something innocuous taken out of context), your electronic history will be combed through in detail. Best to confine specific gripes about specific people to in person conversations!

At the same time, while privacy tools like TOR help, human nature is working against you. It is really, really hard to stay anonymous on the Internet. One minor mistake posting using the wrong account, checking email without TOR, or referring to something done by an alternate persona, and you are done. Private VPN sites don't work for everything one might want to do, making it really hard to stop your access provider from tracking you at least some of the time.

I use a thin pseud because I don't want it to be easy to find me, but I am well aware that there probably are people who know (or could find out quickly if they so desired) who I am. Almost everyone in truth relies on "I am a tiny needle in a giant haystack" for privacy, but that only works if no one decides to look for information about you.

If you hear something, say something

In this age of increasing incivility, I just want to remind people that speaking up when you hear something you feel is demeaning, bigoted, or inappropriate can make a difference. A personal story: when I was a grad student, I worked with a professor who sometimes told racist jokes in social situations with his research group. This is something I don't particularly enjoy, and I was sure it was making the non-white students uncomfortable. Even though I wanted to keep working with this person, and even though I wanted this person to write me letters in the future, and even though this person was on my committee, after a little while, I decided that the next time he made one of these little jokes, I would say something.

I was very nervous about it--I had no idea how it would go, though this person is generally reasonable. I practiced to myself what I would say, and sure enough at lunch one day, I had my chance. Shortly after he had just told a racist joke, I was alone with him. I told him that I don't like those kinds of jokes, and that I would prefer if he didn't tell them when I was around. After that, he never told one in my presence (I have no idea what he did when I wasn't around). I think he didn't realize that such jokes can make people feel uncomfortable, since he didn't "mean" it. That said, it can be horrible to work in an environment where people (like your PI!) routinely make disparaging remarks about your culture or background. It is worth saying something to improve things, or even to make sure things don't get worse.

Three things:
1. It is much, much easier to say something when the remarks/behaviors are about someone else. I am not sure how this would have played out if it was sexist humor in this situation, but I have definitely been told that I have no sense of humor and/or need to lighten up when pointing out troubling sexism to peers. Saying something about jokes that target you can also get you labeled as a troublemaker or complainer. So help out your colleagues--say something when they are the butt of the "joke", and hopefully someone will have your back as well.

2. I kept my comments about myself "I don't like" and about the jokes "that kind of humor" rather than calling the professor a racist, or implying that he was being cruel on purpose. I think people are less likely to feel defensive with this approach, and it is more likely to get results. As far as I could tell, the professor treated everyone fairly. It was just the "jokes".

3. Not every person is reasonable. This is not an option for everyone, but if it is, I recommend doing your bit for the social atmosphere. I certainly enjoyed working with him a lot more without having to listen to racist humor, but I was also fortunate, and this incident could have ruined an opportunity for me. I suppose in the worst case, it could have cost me my PhD. If a negative outcome will have very adverse affects, make sure you think things through. I am also talking about the occasional inappropriate remark or joke, not actual harassment, which is a much more serious problem (and likely will not get better with this approach).

On interviewing: to Skype or not?

As the academic year begins, it is also the beginning of job search season for TT applicants. In my field, the typical timeline is to have application deadlines in the Fall, with most interviews complete by Feb or Mar. Last year, I took place in some Skype pre-interview screening for the first time (it is not common in my field). Traditionally, my department has made the interview list using materials from the application file alone (see here for more details on our usual process). Then we bring in 4-5 candidates for a two day interview.

After seeing how helpful I found the Skype interviews (we used Skype--we had our candidates share their screen and give us a brief research overview), here are the pros as I see them:

• We can screen more candidates--it is hard to go from the long list to the short list just on the paper applications, and often we'd like to see more than 4 or 5 applicants
• We don't waste trip money plus 2 days of departmental time on candidates who obviously won't work (English not good enough, can't explain their research live, can't answer questions, etc)
•  It is harder to fake a presentation and answer questions than a written proposal (after some of our interviews, I have wondered if the candidate wrote the proposal)
• We can clarify points of possible research overlap/fundability/feasibility that may be unclear in the application due to the inexperience of many of our candidates in writing proposals. Naivete in a proposal may be due to moving into a new area and not being fully immersed yet, or it may be holes in thinking. 
• Skype pre-screening seemed to help less experienced candidates who are perceived as riskier choices to bring out for an interview.

It is not all positive though. There are some significant downsides too, and some of my colleagues are reluctant to add an additional step to an already long and intense process:

• It is not the norm in my field (though I think this is changing to be honest), and we may turn off good candidates 
• It is another time and work intensive thing to add to the search committee's burden (already large, since there are lots of files to read in a short time that overlaps with Fall proposal season)
• Technical glitches may influence opinions unfairly
• It can be hard to schedule time when all (or even most) of the search committee can be present at the same time as the candidate, and this is not considering time differences
• It is yet another hoop/timesink for candidates (since we asked for a brief presentation)

The bit about helping less experienced/riskier interview choices might end up more important in the end. I've noticed since joining ProdigalU that our faculty candidates (and therefore our new hires) tend to have more and more experience prior to getting a TT job. The percentage of applicants in the pool applying from their first postdoc without other experience is dropping, so in some sense, candidates are self-selecting (so if you are in your first postdoc, apply anyway!)

I am not sure this experience creep is a good thing (or even a bad thing, but it is a thing). It isn't even that we have loads of people doing multiple postdocs (we have some of this too)--many of these more experienced people just plain did something else at some point in life (like me!) before the TT. But life experience (especially writing experience) is a major advantage in a tight field, and it is hard to compare the files of a newly minted postdoc who has been in a student or trainee somewhere since age 5 to someone who has been a group leader, or a decorated educator, or an experienced science editor. With pre-screening, we can see both.

Student recruiting again

It's that time of year again. In the US, there seem to be primarily two systems for admitting students into graduate programs in science, with local variations on the theme. In one, the students are admitted to the department, and select an advisor after starting the program. This may happen with or without rotations through different groups. In the other, students apply to the department and professors select students from the applications that meet admission requirements. Students are then given conditional admission, with the condition that they have to join the group (or one of the groups) they've been selected for. In the Prodigal Department, we admit students to our program, and they join groups after arrival without rotations, so we are entering the busy season for student recruitment.

This year, I will be recruiting hard for new students, as I've had a bunch of recent graduations. My group is small, funding is tight, and I can't really afford a mistake here. I used to do a hard sell when I first started, but now I mostly look for enthusiasm and scientific curiosity. I am never offended when people don't choose my group, because I am well aware that there are different strokes for different folks, and the last thing that I want is someone who does not want to be there in my group. If someone is not excited by their project on Day 1, how will it be on Day 1095?

In addition, I've been thinking about this post at Mistress of the Animals and subsequent comments about a bad PI-student match. There is a big disconnect in the comments, with some people saying that the responsibility lies mostly with the PI (poor mentorship and/or lack of training), and others saying that the responsibility lies mostly with student (poor choice in group and/or not proactive when the situation wasn't working). Like all situations, the truth is probably a little of both, which is why I won't take a student if I don't feel I can work well with them.

With that discussion in mind, each year, I am surprised by the number of incoming students who have already chosen a group from afar. Some choose just from a website, the publication record, and a phone call. Other choose from fairly brief interactions at events for accepted students. Even those who visit ProdigalU separately typically spend just part of one day checking things out, which is a short time to gather enough information to decide if you can work with someone, especially since everyone is likely on their best behavior.

I am pretty sure that everyone who is admitted to our program (which means they have at least a little research experience) has been told that they need to consider the whole group before making a decision and not just the sexy project, the reputation of the PI, someone else's previous experience, or the placement of group alumni. However, these are the only things that people who show up at ProdigalU already set to join a group can use to make their choice. Most of my colleagues who pick up students ahead of time like this have much larger groups than I do, and can more readily afford a mismatch.

So what do I tell my own undergrads when they head off to grad school? Pick a project that excites you. Don't worry too much about how prominent the researcher is as long as they are publishing regularly in good journals. Make sure your future groupmates are people you can work with. Ask about expectations: work hours, progress, expected time in the program, publications and how they will be handled, etc to make sure you and your PI at least start out on the same page. It is NOT crazy to want to know ahead of time about expected work hours and time off.

The post tenure blahs

This is another self-indulgent post. When I was on the TT, every so often someone in the academic blogosphere would post something about feeling kind of off/unsettled a few years post tenure. At the time, I could not really understand what they meant, being in the thick of the tenure grind myself. Now I am there, and I know what they mean.

As academic scientists, we spend most of our pre-tenure careers forward looking: as undergrads, we look for grad programs. As grad students, we look for postdocs. As postdocs, we look for a TT/research position. In my case, I took a pause here and worked at National Lab for a while, but there we had our own versions of forward looking. Once on the TT, we focus on tenure. And then we have reached the place we have been working towards since we were 18 years old in one way or another.

The first year, it is all relief. Maybe on sabbatical or doing sabbatical planning. After that first year, it begins to sink in. I've reached my goal. Now what? A whole career spanning 20+ years since high school looking for the next gold ring, and now there are no more rings to grab. At the same time, it is not like post-tenure life is stress-free. I still have huge funding pressure, and still have to push out proposals and manuscripts. It is still high stakes--I have students who depend on me, and less benefit of the doubt since I am no longer a newbie.

I am not ungrateful, bored, or unhappy in my job. I love my research, have great students, and awesome colleagues. I (mostly!) enjoy coming to work every day. It is just kind of weird and unsettling to NOT be seeking the next gold ring after all these years.

Why things don't change

Ii is kind of a good news/bad news thing, if you value civil behavior and a safe and fair working environment for all. The good news: Christian Ott, another unrepentant sexual harasser is no longer a professor. The bad news: he resigned on his own under pressure, since Caltech didn't think that violating the terms of his suspension by contacting one of the students he harassed, despite any required "rehabilitative training", disqualified him from being professor.

While it is surely a sign of progress that this wasn't swept under the rug completely by Caltech like it would have been even 10 years ago, one of the students has already stated that she is leaving academia due to the lame response by the University and other stars in the field. Tolerance of awful behavior by "geniuses" has a chilling effect on people choosing and staying in STEM fields, especially academia. Things may be better, but the improvement is glacial.

Deadlines

There are deadlines, and there are deadlines. While I try to meet all deadlines I have agreed to, when push comes to shove, there are things that can slip and there are things that cannot.

Things that can't slip: proposal deadlines, fellowship applications, many grad school submission deadlines, recommendation letters, most conference abstracts

Things that can be turned in late (though I really try hard not to): reviews (though I try not to miss by more than a day or two so as not to put the editor/program officer in a difficult spot), invited manuscripts (they seem to build in some extra time here in my experience, but be careful!)

This is something I almost always end up discussing with students. My students seem to think all deadlines can slip, or none of them can (I guess based on their prior experiences with extensions in University?).

Methods I use to try not to slip deadlines (or panic last minute):

• Put deadlines on my calendar right away, often with a reminder a week ahead of time.
• Do reviews right away (ideally, the same week I agree to them), but this is not always possible
• When students are attempting to meet a school submission deadline, I meet with them to set up a schedule for milestones. At the end, I can return thesis chapters with 24 hour turn around time, but that means clearing a lot of other things off in preparation and not agreeing to do any other reviewing in that period.
• Abstracts for me are pretty fast--I have loads of experience with this. For my students, I have them plan to be submission ready a week before the deadline.
• Do reference letters for undergrads the day I am asked. I am very fast writing for undergrads at this point--I can do one from scratch in an hour or less, especially for students not in my group. Letters for my grad students take a lot longer, and I have to plan in the time. I do reuse existing letters as a template for undergrads--I always use "find" to make sure all pronouns are appropriate!

I have not yet found a way to not be working like a maniac until the last minute on proposals, but I have gotten better about submitting at least several hours before the deadline, rather than frantically logging in at 4pm for a 5pm deadline.

Learning how to be a good reviewer

Considering how important reviewing is to research science, I am really surprised by how little thought goes in to teaching students how to do a good job as a referee. I got literally no training--I started getting review requests as a postdoc, and learned on the fly. I am sure I was unreasonably harsh the first few times, and I am truly grateful to the journals that send on all the comments so I could scale my comments with those of other reviewers.

Students are notoriously harsh when it comes to reviewing the work of others. I see it in class, when students give absurdly low marks when asked to score each others' presentations, in journal club when students harsh on the work of other groups, and sometimes in reviews, when I have senior students review papers with me so they can see how I do it. At the same time, students are very sensitive to harsh remarks sent on their own work, but don't have the experience to put either their own reports or the reports they receive in context.

Writing a good referee report is a skill that can/must be learned like any other. Even considering how to phrase something is important if you care about how the comment will be received. "There are a number of typos and grammatical errors that should be double checked before final publication" and "The writer is obviously not a native English speaker and should get someone to edit their horrible writing" both comment on the same thing, but one is more likely to be received constructively than the other.

When I am going over reviewing with a student, I go through how I approach a manuscript with them, then have them write a "review", then go through the review with them before editing into the final report. I never send a student report without doing a review myself, just to make sure I agree with the comments (which will have my name on them). So how do I go about reviewing a manuscript?

1. I have a new file open to type my comments as I go. I don't like to have to try to remember what I was thinking, particularly for long manuscripts.

2. I start with a summary of the manuscript (which I add to as I read). This tells the authors what I think the manuscript is about after reading it. If my summary does not match what they thought they wrote, they will know there is a miscommunication that should be cleaned up. This has actually happened to me once when I was a postdoc--the summary did not reflect what I thought the paper was about. I've also received some great insights into my own work this way, particularly for my first first author paper.

3. I point out glaring typos/grammatical issues until I get past 5 or 6, and then I just add "There are a number of typos and grammatical errors that should be double checked before final publication". I really dislike editing via referee report. If the writing is of a quality that I cannot understand what the authors did (this happened once), I stop reviewing and send it back with a comment to that effect.

4. If the paper is in my area, I sometimes have some suggestions of papers to add to the background (I only sometimes suggest papers from my group. More often, it is something else I think they may have overlooked). If the paper is not exactly in my area, I take more time with the introduction/background, and make suggestions if there is anything I need to look up myself in order to understand the manuscript.

5. I go through each reported experimental result, look at the figure(s) or table, and think about how I would interpret that data. If I conclude something different from the authors, I mention it. If I think the authors are overinterpreting, underinterpreting, or missing a control, I mention that too. I also mention if I agree/if the discussion is appropriate. If any questions come up, I write them down. If the questions are just for interest and are likely beyond the scope of the paper, I preface the question with  "This may be beyond the scope of the paper, but..." to make sure the question is taken in the spirit offered (and doesn't block publication of an otherwise fine manuscript because the editor insists that everything be addressed).

6. I go through the methods section and try to imagine replicating the work from just the methods section.  I often have questions about details here that I think should be reported.

7. I read through the concluding remarks and make sure they make sense and place the work in the perspective of the field.

When I am done, I look through the paper again quickly to see if I missed anything. My final report is usually 1-2 pages long. I've never recommended acceptance without revision, though I rarely reject manuscripts outright (in my opinion, suggesting major revisions and/or a different journal is not outright rejection). It takes me a while to do a good review, but I really appreciate thorough reviews of my own work, so it is worth it to me. I'd say I take a good 1-3 hours to do a typical review (depends on length and my familiarity with the area).

When I am reviewing with a student, usually their first draft is way too harsh, asks for a huge number of additional control or scope experiments, does not differentiate between simple experiments one can expect anyone in the field to be able to do and super-heroic experiments that very few groups can even attempt let alone get usable data from, and is either way too brief or super long. Student reviews are often about showing off a students' knowledge or protecting against looking stupid rather than an attempt to improve the work that was submitted. It is a big mental shift for a student to start thinking of themselves as a knowledgeable scientist rather than as someone who will be graded on their review. Through it takes longer to do a review with a student, I'd rather have my students learn how to do this with guidance then get thrown into the deep end right away.

TT and children

Xykademiqz recently put up an excellent post on the spacing of her kids' ages and her career trajectory, growing out of a question after a post about enjoying her kids. This is an issue that comes up again and again--family, life decisions, and academia. I am linking back to her, and posting this, because I think this is such an important issue. When I was a student, I was convinced that having a family was incompatible with the TT, especially for a woman. This is one of the reasons I didn't even consider an academic position when I finished my PhD. Part of the reason I felt so strongly about this was that up until that point, I had NEVER had a female professor for any of my STEM courses. My undergrad department had one female faculty member (not in my area), untenured with no family. My graduate department had one female faculty member (not in my area), who got tenure while I was a student and then immediately got pregnant, leading to snickering all around by the (mostly) male students and some of the faculty members in the department. There were no counter examples to help me make an informed decision about family and academia--all was rumor and guesswork.

Fast forward to now, and I have both tenure and a family. I had both of my kids pre-tenure. I am a living example that it is possible to get tenure AND have young kids at the same time. In fact, I had one child inside academic (at ProdigalU) and one child outside of academia (at National Lab). From this perspective, I can say that it is much, much easier to have young kids at ProdigalU even pre-tenure than it was at National Lab. Academia is just so much more flexible than most other jobs, and with balancing anything, flexibility is key.

At National Lab, I was required to be at work for set hours. If I needed to be somewhere during those hours, I had to take time off. Since I also got only 12 weeks unpaid maternity leave (the standard FMLA is what Feds get), I burned ALL of my sick leave and vacation time after giving birth, leaving me with practically no wiggle room when LittleProdigal got sick. From observing my colleagues, even after a few years, it is really hard to build up enough vacation time to both have reasonable vacations and be available for kids school and other activities that take place during the workday.

In contrast, as an academic, your schedule is your own. It is long hours, but you set them. Other than scheduled classes and meetings, I can leave work whenever I want to or need to without worry. I don't really ever worry about missing an activity with my kids. Unless I am traveling, it is no problem. This is as true for fun things like concerts as it is for emergencies like sick kids or closed daycares.

On top of keeping track of hours, face time was a thing at National Lab. It was really important to look visibly busy all the time and have the appearance of working in your office or lab for at least 8 or 9 hours a day every day. Asking for time off during the day was frowned upon--better to just take a whole day off then look not serious about your work. Some of my friends in non-academic jobs worry about being mommy- or daddy- tracked, and are reluctant to ask to go to a soccer game or school concert.

There isn't really face time in academia in the same way. As far as I know, no one cares whether I am in my office, or even worries about where I might be when I am not there. I certainly don't keep track of the people in my hallway. There is still a culture of looking busy/complaining about how busy we all are, but there is little or no checking up. Everyone teaches and travels at all different times anyway, so you'd need quite a lot of free time to really track this stuff anyway. 

It wasn't super easy to have 2 preschool aged kids while working towards tenure. I worked at home many nights, but at the same time, I was able to reserve the time from 5 pm until 8 pm for family almost every night. I can't imagine that any demanding career is easy to balance with the needs of kids (who can't really wait for many things). In fact, I'd say medicine is way worse (at least until training is done, which can be 7 or more years post-med school), and oddly, medicine is considered a somewhat family friendly career (I certainly was told that a lot when I was a student).

There's never really a good time to have kids, so you may as well have them when you are ready and let the chips fall where they may--you can figure it out in the middle of things without preplanning every second! Not everyone can balance career and family in a way that makes them happy, but don't let people tell you that you can't have kids on the TT, or that serious academics can't have more than one, or that academia is uniquely incompatible with family life, because it just isn't true.

Funding ideas for sabbatical planners

Inspired by xykademiqz's comment on my previous post, I am going to link dump everything I had in my bookmark list from when I was planning my sabbatical. No sense in wasting all this work!

Ideas for sabbatical funding:

• Opportunities in France
• Opportunities in Japan: Matsumae and Japan Society for the Promotion of Science
• Fulbright program
• Opportunities in Germany: DAAD and Humboldt
• Opportunities in the UK
• Opportunities at US government labs (National Academies). DOE, ONR, AFOSR, and ARO might have opportunities as well, but I didn't look
• NSF: Partnerships for international research and education (PIRE)
• Opportunities in Israel: Technion and Hebrew University
• Opportunities in Australia: Wollongong and Selby Fellowship
• Opportunities in South Africa: Rhodes

These are just what I found when I was looking for my own sabbatical. There are probably more things out there--this is by no means a comprehensive list. If you know of something else, feel free to add it in the comments or send me an email, and I'll add it.

I have also found that many universities have their own internal funding for visiting professors. This money can (usually) only be applied for by a local host, but can pay for travel costs and housing for short term stays. It is worth asking about! After my sabbatical, I was invited to another university for a few weeks though one of these programs, which was fantastic.

Tips for dragging your family along on a travel sabbatical

Everywhere I go, once people hear that I did a travel sabbatical with young (elementary school aged) kids, they ask me for more information/advice on how to do it. I've written more generally before about what I wish I knew before a travel sabbatical, but not specifically about kid stuff. So, I am collecting my thoughts about it here. The most important piece of advice: you have to be really committed to do this--you can't decide last minute, or be half hearted. So, here is Prodigal's list of what to do when you want to take a sabbatical abroad with your family.

1. Have a flexible partner
This one is tough, since not everyone has a flexible-type job. I have friends outside academia who have asked (and received!) leaves of absence from their jobs for various reasons (family, health, travel), but this is usually unpaid, and depends highly on the company as to whether or not it can happen. We were fortunate, and Prodigal Spouse is in a very flexible work situation right now. That was one of the reasons we pushed so hard to travel this time, since next time, we may not be so flexible. I would not have done a long-term travel sabbatical with young kids if Prodigal Spouse could not come along!

2. Plan ahead
Way ahead! We started planning for our trip almost as soon as my sabbatical was approved, which was 18+ months before we left (we did not spend the whole year abroad). In the early planning stage we had three main concerns: 1) what would Prodigal Spouse do? 2) where would our kids go to school and would they be able to come back with no issues? 3) how would we maintain 2 households for an extended period of time?

3. Pick a location
We needed to find someplace that would be a good opportunity for me and provide something engaging for Prodigal Spouse to do. At this point, we figured we'd arrange things for the adults and then confirm we could arrange schooling for the kids. My first choice location did not work out for a variety of reasons, so we ended up going with my second choice, which worked out great in the end. We went about selecting locations by me suggesting something, and the Prodigal Spouse looking for opportunities in the same place. Finding a good host is a key part of all of this, since my host was a good fit scientifically, where both my host and I would benefit. Even better, my host was able to help me out with logistics quite a bit. My sabbatical led to one published paper, one manuscript in prep, and currently ongoing experiments, so I would say it worked out for both of us!

4. Apply for funding if available!
This is huge help with expenses. Travel sabbaticals with kids are very expensive! Not only were we maintaining two households, but we had to buy a bunch of stuff locally after arrival that we would not have had we stayed home (school supplies, food staples, clothing the kids needed replaced, etc). With a minimalist packing approach (which I endorse!), you can count on having to replace some clothing and shoes from wear, even if the kids don't grow out of them. I applied for and received funding, which made a big difference.

5. Start arranging school
After looking in great detail, we decided to send our kids to the local public schools, rather than pay for an international school. The cost was just one issue here (though it was quite significant! International Schools are very, very expensive, since their prime target is ex-pats assigned abroad by companies that sometimes pay for or subsidize such schools). We also thought the kids would have a much better cultural experience attending school with locals rather than with ex-pats, even though they did not speak the local language. There was a great deal of paperwork involved here, and the International Office at my host University was a huge help in letting us know exactly what we needed to bring and in setting up required appointments for us in advance so we could get the kids into school as soon as possible. We had to make sure our kids would be able to return seamlessly to their home schools, and worked to get letters in hand to make this happen, plus instructions on how we should enroll early or from a distance for both school and the after school program. We also had to figure out what to do in the after school period (after instruction ends, but while we are still working). We were very happy to find out that most local schools in our host city had after school programs, which was a huge relief! If not, though, we would have had to figure out what to do with our kids.

6. Other paperwork
Figuring out exactly what visa/residence permits/study permits we needed was quite stressful and difficult. I found the local consulate for my host country to be supremely unhelpful, but YMMV. The International Office for my host University was a much better source of information. They helped me make appointments in advance with the appropriate local government agencies in my host country to make sure we would be in compliance with local law. We needed to buy a local insurance policy (this was a requirement for our residence permits), but luckily we found something at a reasonable price that was easy to do online. It was quite annoying to have to pay twice for insurance, and this was an unexpected cost that we found out about quite late in our process. We also needed to have our birth certificates and marriage license translated into the local language for processing to get the kids in to school with me and Prodigal Spouse listed as their parents (for pick up and permission purposes). This was one place the local consulate was helpful--they maintained a list of authorized translators.

7. Preparing the children
We told the children it was an adventure, and started preparing them as soon as we knew where we were going. At their ages, the kids were flexible enough to get into the adventurous spirit, though they were quite nervous as the trip got closer. We started them on Duolingo (a language learning app) and Pimsleur audio courses (often found at the library) 9ish months before we left so they would have at least some familiarity with the local language. We had the kids tell their friends they were traveling a few months before we left, and some of their friends set up email accounts so they could keep in touch while we were gone, which was really nice. Another friend gave us a few pre-addressed envelopes so the kids could exchange letters. The kids were very excited when we received letters or email from home, so I highly recommend something like this. We showed them where we were going and talked about all the things we might do there.

8. Find a flat/home near a public school
We were in a city, so this was not so hard. In my host country, kids usually go to the neighborhood elementary school. I looked at the city website, and found out where the schools are in our target neighborhoods. The kids walked to school every day, and made friends in the neighborhood, which was very helpful while we were there. We were looking for short term (less than a year) rentals, ideally furnished. Most of this sort of housing is aimed at traveling business folks, so it was not so easy to find a 2-bedroom place that was affordable. Since we were looking short term and furnished, it didn't make sense to do the wander with a cellphone approach to finding a place. I used a local real estate website to find possible apartments. Google translate does an adequate job at translation for descriptions, but I also spoke with some people from my host country about what certain terms meant in the context of renting an apartment to avoid surprises. Through this website, I was able to make several appointments to see apartments our first week in town, with the idea we'd sign a lease ASAP and move in right away. This was crucial to getting settled right away, which was important to the kids.

9. Keeping up with the home school
The kids' teachers were really gracious about telling us what would be covered the rest of the school year, and gave us some of the work they planned to assign. One teacher photocopied all of the worksheets for us, and lent us a textbook. We took this stuff with us. It took us about a month from landing until the kids got into their school (we needed various appointments to happen first), so we used this material to homeschool during that first month. Prodigal Spouse and I took turns staying with them. I had already planned to start in my host lab a month after arrival, and that was a good call.

10. Local accounts
When staying for this long, we needed a local bank account to pay certain expenses, since school fees (for lunch and after school) can't be paid by credit card or cash, and they don't use checks.  We asked around a few students/postdocs from host country for advice, and also used Google to figure out what bank we wanted to use and what we needed to get an account set up. Crazily enough, the best way to get money into this account from the US was to withdraw via ATM, then redeposit, due to the backward-ness of the US when it comes to moving money around. We also needed local cellphone numbers so people (like the school!) could actually call us. We used a local prepaid cell plan that was actually much cheaper than what we paid at home.

11. Things to bring for the kids
We planned on traveling a bit at the end of our trip, so we packed light. We needed to be able to carry everything with us on trains. We took minimal clothing, in layers for multiple seasons. For the kids, we had 5 days of outfits plus 3 extra days of underwear and socks. We allowed each kid to bring 1 stuffed animal. We had tablets for the kids to read/play on while traveling. We downloaded books in English so my reading kid would still be able to read while learning the local language. Amazon does NOT do well when you change countries--any tablet or phone is assigned a country, and it gets very confused when you try to use Amazon in another country (in fact, check out the link for a description of other issues resulting from changing countries in the digital age). You can in fact only buy ebooks from your home country, which was an issue when we wanted to bring some ebooks in the local language for Little Prodigal 1 back to our home.

After some poking at it, I found that the US Amazon actually has quite a decent selection of foreign language ebooks, some of which are free (and which ones are free changes periodically, so it is possible to check back and get more later). This is something I never knew before. Little Prodigal 2 was just learning to read, and we used the material from school for reading. Planning ahead for reading was actually really good in retrospect, since the selection of kids books in English in the local city library was small, and mostly dedicated to kids learning English from the local language (which totally makes sense). Even without their toys from home, our kids made due. They were really creative with making their own toys from old boxes and paper, and we had lots to do in our host city, so they were rarely bored.

12. Right after we arrived
Our first week was nuts--we dragged the kids around looking at flats and neighborhoods, attending appointments for residence permits and school registration, and getting Prodigal Spouse set up for his stuff. We took an Airbnb so we would have a separate bedroom from the kids, someplace to sit and hang out, and a kitchen. The kids were a bit overwhelmed at times, and they were pretty jet lagged, so eating meals at home was pretty helpful.  We cooked a few of their favorites to help them feel less homesick. We moved into our flat after a week.

The first month, the kids were home from school. We spent a lot of time in local parks and exploring our neighborhood. The kids liked finding neighborhood stores, and we quickly found a local restaurant we all liked as our family place to go out. We set up a local Amazon account to buy things urgently needed--we had no idea where to buy some things locally, but Amazon had them at decent prices. This was actually really important when the kids brought home lists of school supplies and we had no idea what they were. A quick Amazon search let us figure out 90% of what we needed, and we in fact ordered some of it from Amazon rather than doing an extensive local search.

Once the kids were settled into a routine, the first month of school was still super hard on them. It was a good thing we have 2, since they could talk to each other in the after school program. Only 1 kid in the whole school spoke English, so they were pretty isolated until they learned some of the local language. After the first month, things were much easier. The kids started making friends in class, and they understood enough to play with other kids. Both kids were still young enough that they could rapidly pick up the basics through immersion. This would be a lot more of a challenge with an older child, although we would be more likely to have paid a tutor and/or allowed an older child to use more interactive learning methods (busuu, local language meetups, etc).

In the end, we are really lucky to speak English, since English is taught as a second language starting in grade 1 in our host country, and is a commonly known second language. Importantly, at places like the kids' school and local governmental offices, there were always some staff who could tell us what we needed to know in English. For the kids' school, we actually had an orientation a few days before the kids started where some teachers explained (in English) how lunch works, how after school works, and showed the kids their classrooms. By the time we did serious travel outside urban areas, the kids could translate for us.

There you have it--an outline of what we did to travel on sabbatical with kids. It was a lot of work, and sometimes very frustrating, but as a family, it was a great experience. The kids learned another language, were exposed to a new culture, made friends in a new place, and got to travel all around our location. I loved living in host city, and also liked traveling around a new place. Professionally, it was really great for me to take a break from ProdigalU, and reasonably productive too.

Burner laptops

The last two times I attended conferences outside the US, I spoke with several people who brought "burner laptops" with them. In one case, the people involved wanted to avoid issues surrounding intrusive border searches, and only put exactly what they needed on the hard drive just in case. In the other case, they were trying to avoid the uncertainty of the US security position on laptops. The main concern here is that the Trump administration will suddenly announce a rule change while they are abroad, leaving them with no choice but to risk checking their laptops (like the last time).

The complete craziness of putting a whole bunch of lithium battery containing "security threats" in one place in the cargo hold aside, there is no way I would be happy putting my expensive main work machine into checked luggage of any kind. These burner laptops are relatively cheap ($200-300), so if they are lost or stolen while in the cargo hold, it is not such a huge loss. Plus, it is possible to set them up with a limited set of data, so there are fewer security/privacy concerns with searches or lost hard drives. I imagine just the uncertainty of it all will push more people (especially those who work with sensitive data) towards cloud-based storage solutions.

If I didn't need to work while traveling, I'd probably consider just presenting off my phone. There have been a few folks doing that almost since the dawn of smart phones, so I know it is possible. I don't really want to spend grant money on a burner laptop (also the justification as not general purpose would be interesting). I definitely don't want to spend my own money on a mostly useless machine. Just another reason why I really hate flying these days.

Being an introvert in the age of social media

I've always been a very introverted person. Too much social interaction definitely tires me out, and I've never had a large group of friends (or been the life of the party). I am also a pretty anti-social person. I don't need that much daily social interaction to not feel lonely. These things used to be important career-wise for their impacts on networking. Modern life definitely rewards the extroverted (and especially the extrovert with social skills). Us introverts have had to learn to deal with our feelings of being overwhelmed in order to do things like make connections at conferences, meet potential program officers, and get through 2 day interviews.

I don't know it is just me and my particular combination of introversion, anti-social behavior, and paranoia about Internet companies (if you can't tell what they are selling, they are selling you!), but I find most social media uninteresting and at times overwhelming. For now, this is not a major problem. Most recruiting is done via more traditional networking rather than through Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter. Like most modern academics, I have a website that interested folks can use to find out more about my research, my group, or my professional self. But I don't have a Twitter account. I have accounts on LinkedIn and Facebook that I don't actually use except to accept friend requests from people I know. I have a ResearchGate account that lists my publications, since a colleague mentioned it helps with citations, but I only log in to it when I have a new publication.

I see some colleagues (mostly, but not all younger) advertising their social media presences at the end of their talks. I've had conversations with people worried about the social media presence of their groups, and about how to raise their digital profile. And now I wonder if this is the future--if social media luddites will be seen as out of touch as the departmental dinosaurs who used to print out their emails.

I find this concerning on two levels. For me, introversion in real life follows me online. It would be yet another unpleasant thing I have to force myself to do in order to be successful, but this time it would be primarily on my downtime. I don't feel shut out by not having the information my friends and relatives post to Facebook. If it is important, I hear about it from them. If not, I don't miss it. I don't miss Twitter conversations, having never really been able to engage with Twitter in the first place. When I did try out Facebook, it was kind of fun to hear about the (mostly good things) going on in other people's lives (people do tend to keep the bad things to themselves or their REAL intimate circles), but I had to search hard for things to post myself. I was like an online eavesdropper, never really contributing to the conversation. It made me think of when I was learning social and networking skills in the first place, only with Facebook, any mistakes would be recorded for posterity.

On a second level, I find it highly disturbing that a portion of professional success would be dependent on giving freebies to large rich companies like Facebook and Google. That other people are willing to do this is not surprising--in 2004 and again in 2014, a majority of people were willing to trade things like computer passwords or other personal indentifiers away for a candy bar or a cookie. I am not so eager to give away pieces of myself in order to see targeted ads (oh yeah, and connect with people online).

It is a whole level of ironic for me that many warriors for Open Access then go ahead and use privately held social media companies without a thought about giving away information for free that Facebook is willing to pay for to help them increase profits. And by using these platforms, they give away information about their social contacts as well that is used to make money for the companies. This information is only accessible from the privately held walled off garden run by each company. How is this all that different from the publishing company/society based publication model they wish to overthrow?

I understand that there are loads of people who love Facebook and Twitter. I have nothing against them and their enjoyment. I just hope that opting out will continue to remain an option.

Hoop jumping and success

There is a definite difference between tests/courses/other hoops to jump through that are required in order to do a particular job and the ability to do that job successfully. I am not sure that any of the standardized tests we encounter in life actually test something other than test taking skill + some base knowledge that can probably be looked up if needed outside the test setting. I mean, we definitely want doctors who can diagnose without looking every other symptom up and lawyers who can answer questions in less than an hour, and engineers who can give a back of the envelope answer without extended consultations, so base knowledge is important. Since it is easier to test in a multiple choice format for large cohorts, we prioritize this over other forms of testing for admissions to various programs.

Same with classes--doctors probably don't need to know so much organic chemistry, engineers might not all need a deep understanding of algorithms, and physicists can probably succeed without two semesters of biology. In all majors, students probably don't NEED as much depth in every sub-field as is required for a typical degree. BUT, the ability to at least pass a class in these things is required for graduation/admission to the next program. So therefore, someone who wants to be a doctor, for example, needs to pass organic chemistry and do well on the MCAT whether or not these things are indicators of later success as a doctor in and of themselves. 

This is true throughout the training and credentialing process. To get to my lofty position here at ProdigalU, I definitely had to take classes I didn't not enjoy to learn material I have never used since I completed the final exam. I had to take exams that have no real relationship to the things I did in grad school, let alone as a professor. It doesn't matter in the end. These things are required as hoops to jump through along my career path, so I did them. I actually do believe that these sorts of hoops have a kind of predictive value--they predict whether someone can buckle down and do them to a minimum level of competency. I would bet that doing what needs to be done competently is predictive of future success.

While I am sure that at least some of the students who do poorly in my class would probably be good doctors/engineers/scientists (the sort of people who are required take my classes), the truth is that most students who work hard can earn at least a B+ if not an A. Those that can't despite their hard work are unlikely to be able to jump all the hoops required between my class and their goal, and they may as well find this out sooner rather than later. Similarly, those that can't muster up the will to do the required work for my class may also have issues mustering up the required will for the unpleasant or difficult parts of their future career. Sure, people change over time, and that is why I know people who went to various professional schools later in life after not working hard in University, but the key word there is later. As in after they learned how to work hard when required, and how to do so effectively.

Most of the students who come to my office to complain about how my class ruined their life are students who never used the tools provided to help them succeed in class. Sometimes, I have never seen them before, even after a whole semester of lectures! While I definitely have sympathy for the (relatively rare) students who work very hard with little to show for it, I also am pretty sure that someone unable to master the material for my sophomore level problem solving-based course is unlikely to do well in higher level courses that build on this material (and by little to show for it, I mean C or lower despite loads of hard work). I've definitely had students go from F the first time to A the second, but that is fairly unusual. Most of those students either didn't work the first time, or worked ineffectively and learned better study skills the second time around.  One student told me that failing my class was the best thing that happened academically in the end, since the shock of it motivated the student to actually listen to advice on how to study effectively.

I don't think encouraging students who work very hard and follow advice (from me and/or study skills resources at ProdigalU) on effective studying to keep on the path they are on is a kindness to them. I don't offer students unsolicited advice unless I am in a supervisory role beyond course instructor, but if asked, I will say so. Hoops may not necessarily be predictive (or even fair), but they are required. It does no favors to pretend otherwise.

Overproduction of PhDs, revisited and with some data

There has been a really interesting discussion of the number of PhDs, the number of TT positions, and exploitation at potnia theron's blog. In thinking about the issues, I looked back at my thoughts on the subject from ages ago. I find that I agree with my younger self still: that making opportunity available to as many qualified applicants that can be supported with current resources is more important to me than the difficulty in finding a TT job. Let people roll the dice on a TT position if they want to. In my field, there are loads of non-academic opportunities, grad students don't make all that much less than a newly minted BA or BSc, and the grad stipend is livable if not luxurious, so the main cost of doing a PhD is opportunity cost.

I know that this is highly field specific, so there may very well be fields where the calculation is different based on the availability of employment, but I strongly feel that if we artificially limit the number of PhD seats, it will be the underrepresented and/or marginalized folks that will lose opportunity. I find that in my field few incoming students plan on an academic career, so I don't consider myself to be training future professors, just future scientists. I certainly do make sure my students know that many highly desirable  (TT either teaching or research, corporate research science, National Lab staff scientist) are very difficult to get without a bit of luck, and that if they want those things, their job is to get qualified and have a plan B just in case. In any case, a PhD is only worth it if the experience is valuable to someone in its own right. Getting a PhD for the gold star is a waste of time.

I believe there are fields for which these things seem to be more precarious. I believe that there are fields for which many (most?) PhDs are underemployed, forced to leave the field, or otherwise unable to use their degrees in a way they would like, even in STEM fields. I've heard that some biomed/life sciences fields are particularly afflicted as a side effect of the rise and fall in NIH funding. I am not sure how I would feel if I were in one of those fields--my students have (thus far!) all found positions they are happy with that require their degrees. At the same time, I also wonder how generalizable this doom and gloom about overproduction really is.

It's kind of like the extended media coverage and gnashing of teeth about the stress level of high school students who are applying to Ivy League-type schools, when the vast majority of higher ed students attend local schools that are not so competitive, making these articles mostly irrelevant. I do see loads of comments, blog posts, and articles about overproduction of PhDs in my field, which does not match my experience with my students or in my department. Do we see the unhappiness of PhDs unable to find desirable positions coming from "pedigree" schools, while the silent majority are happy enough with their outcomes (note that ProdigalU is not a pedigree school), or is the doom and gloom appropriate across the education landscape? How can we know?

Stats from the professional societies I belong to suggest that PhD unemployment is very low. That said, many of the articles complaining about overproduction in my field say that many of these young employed PhDs are in temporary or underemployed situations. I know that my department only really looks at the first post-degree position, so it is hard to say what happens to those who take postdocs or internships. I do know what happens to my students and to others I've worked with at ProdigalU, but I am one PI and not statistically significant. The NSF data I played around with in 2010 is way out of date. People complain about the Survey of Earned Doctorates (SED), 2015 data published in 2017, but it is pretty much all we have for newly minted PhDs. I can say that I received a doctorate in the US, and I never saw the survey, so at least some of the questions about the reach of the survey are definitely valid. There is also the Survey of Doctorate Recipients (SDR), which follows some people from doctorate to age 76. The SDR is due for an update in May 2017, but the last posted data is from 2013 (published in 2014).

The SED there suggests that a high percentage of those with definite post-grad plans in physical or life sciences at the time of survey plan on a postdoc. Something like 40% of new PhDs are visa-holders, which likely influences their post-grad plans and choices. Postdocs are normal in my field for those who want a research-heavy position, even outside academia, so this is not too surprising. Looking at the trends over time, the percentage of new PhD holders in physical science with definite employment commitments is within the historical norm (65-70%) since 1994. The trend in life sciences is a decrease over time, from a plateau at ~70% to ~57%. There was a sharp 5% drop in 2007, which held steady until 2010, when a slow decline began that continues to 2014. I didn't have a position set when I finished my degree, but I wasn't looking all that hard and found one soon after, so I don't know how strong a statement this is, but it does suggest that things are changing in the life sciences for new PhDs. The percentage of those with definite commitments who are doing a postdoc is more or less unchanged for both physical science (~50%) and life science (~70%) over the period 1994-2015, suggesting that there are fewer life sciences postdocs available, leading to a decrease in those with firm plans at graduation. But is this the result of taking longer to find something, or a sign that new life sciences PhDs are unemployed?

We can check of the SDR for a better idea, at least until 2013. The SDR suggests that as of 2013, unemployment was ~2% across a wide range of fields, and about 3% of surveyed science PhDs have involuntarily left the field (average, highest was 7.4% for physics). I don't have time for a detailed review of the data, but a brief look at the main tables does not suggest a calamity of unemployment for PhDs across all fields, and especially in STEM fields. The percentage of employed PhD holders 5 years or fewer post-degree has held steady from 2010 to 2013, so the trend in postdoc commitments in life sciences from the SED does not show up in the SDR. It remains to be seen if there was a huge change in the upcoming data release.

Anecdotally, it does seem harder for people to find positions, which is backed somewhat by the data in the SED for life sciences, but PhD-holders do seem to be finding them. This is consistent with my experience at ProdigalU, where students are taking a bit longer to find something, but are still finding good jobs in our field. There is a general rise in employment uncertainty in the US right now, with contract and part time labor gaining on full time employment as the new norm, and the adjunctification of some sectors of higher ed is certainly a symptom of that. Coupled with the normalization of full or partial soft money TT positions in medical schools (and really, WTF! I don't understand how a position can be TT soft money!) and the overall reduction in support for basic research, many people are in a precarious situation. But this doesn't appear to reflect the majority of PhD-holders, and I don't think makes a strong case for a reduction in the number of PhDs.