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.

How I spend my summer "vacation"

My family members are pretty much the only people who don't assume that I have the whole summer off, like a K-12 teacher. I actually like the ebb and flow of the academic calendar--except for when I was at National Lab, I lived this way my whole conscious life! I do remember when I was a grad student, sitting in the office with my groupmates, and wondering what our advisor did over the summer. So here's how I plan to spend my summer this year:

1. Academic travel: I have plans to meet with a couple of my collaborators face to face. I am also attending a major conference in my field. I like summer conferences, because I can focus on the conference without the nagging feeling of the teaching I am missing/falling behind on.

2. Research push: Several of my students are sitting on projects that are 70-80% of a story. I am planning on doing a major push to get these manuscript ready (if not written in a first draft) by the end of the summer. Towards this end, I have several undergraduate researchers in the lab this summer, half of whom will be running control or repeat experiments to validate our results. I actually have time to interact with my undergrad researchers over the summer other than hello/goodbye and group meeting.

3. Paper push: I have two or three manuscripts sitting on my desk that need polishing/editing to get ready for submission. I want to get these done over the summer when I (sometimes) have uninterrupted blocks of time to write.

4. Proposal writing: I want to get proposals roughed out and drafted for the fall proposal season so I am not teaching and frantically writing at the last minute this year. I have 2 planned for summer submission and 4 planned for fall submission. It is better to spread the writing out so the proposals stay fresh.

5.  Cleaning up my courses: I am actually mostly done with this--I do it in the first weeks of the summer while I still remember well what worked and didn't. I am teaching the same courses next year, so I spent some time cleaning up my lectures, marking up assignments for editing, and writing notes to myself on what I should improve for next time. I'll pick this back up again a week or two before classes start to get ready.

6. Catch up on literature in my field: I really miss just reading papers that are interesting. I got to do a fair amount of this when I was on sabbatical, and I would like to carve out time for it in my normal work life. This year, I was unsuccessful, so I will try to restart the habit this summer.
 
7. Vacation! I hope to spend at least a week without working. We'll see if I can do it!

Most of my summer plans involve tasks that are best done in largish blocks of time. In the absence of teaching and service obligations, I am hopeful that I can be really productive. We'll see how much of this extremely optimistic list I actually get done.

Recruiting in a time of uncertainty

How are you handling it? Funding my students keeps me awake at night. I dropped my target steady state group size, which actually works better with my management style anyway. While I always want to recruit quality, a mistake in smaller group and with less funding cushion is much, much more painful. I am being VERY careful with who I am taking. In this case, I am attempting to select for enthusiasm, work ethic, and scientific curiosity (better predictors of success than GPA or pedigree, in my experience). Unfortunately, this also means I am only taking students with research experience, because I can't afford for someone to try it out for the first time in my lab and decide it isn't for them.

I am fortunate, because in my field it is possible to do research without lab techs and postdocs (I have exclusively students right now). Postdocs in my field last 1-2 years, so a one year contract with a possibility to renew is the norm, which is helpful in the current funding climate. At ProdigalU, postdocs are still more expensive than students, but students come with a 5-6 year time commitment. This compares poorly to the usual 3 year timeline on grants in my field. It is definitely possible to start a student on a project and then run out of money part-way through the PhD. I worry deeply about this, but so far, I have been able to string together related projects in such a way that my students don't get disrupted.

One may say that there are too many PhDs, and that reducing the number of PhDs is a feature, not a bug of the current funding situation. I don't doubt that this is true in some field and specialties. That said, my students are finding jobs that use their degrees (though it has taken up to a year for some). As is the norm in my area, most of my students are interested in industrial positions, not academia. While I of course think my students are really good, I would think that if there were too many PhDs in my field that some of my students (even if very good) would be unable to find good jobs and would move on to other things. This has not been my experience so far. I actually don't think there is much of a connection between the demand for highly trained workers and support for their training. Aside from the long lag time due to the time to degree, companies can always import trained people from other places if they have unmet needs. And universities will always be able to fill paid student positions as long as the money is there, regardless of whether the students are employable at the end. If there is an actual interest in reducing the overall number of PhDs, I would think that a strategically planned reduction (that targets overpopulated areas) would be much better than random chance, which is what we are getting with the current system.

Electronic gadgets in class

As I move into the curmudgeon stage of my life, I find that I can articulate what annoys me more (maybe because more things do?). One thing that really annoys me is when students use their phones in class. There are three main ways I see students interact with their phones in class, ranked here from most annoying to least:

1. Forget to turn their ringers off
A cardinal sin! This annoys everyone in the class. Worse when using an obnoxious ringtone. Even worse when during an exam (when cellphones are forbidden, and stored in the back/off to the side so the ringtone can't be turned off).

2. Constantly check their phone
I find this really distracting when I am teaching. The motion draws my eyes, and then I find myself wondering what is so important. It also annoys me that the student is obviously not paying any attention to the lecture. Why bother coming, then? It is just like coming to the lecture and then reading the newspaper, and just as obvious. Students forget that from the front of the room, I get a pretty good view of every seat, so it is pretty noticeable when someone keeps checking their phone. It is hugely distracting to neighbors as well, whose eyes are also drawn by the motion and the screen. 

3. Students texting/Facebooking/whatever on their phone
Somewhat less distracting than #2 because their is less to draw attention, but seriously why come to class if you aren't going to pay attention. I know lots of people think they can multitask,and both text and pay attention to the lecture, but loads of studies have demonstrated that this is BS, and the constant attention swapping makes effective learning impossible. Students may think that their professors don't care about teaching, but I do, and I put a lot of effort in. Texting in class feels like a slap in the face, and I find it extremely rude and distracting.

4. Students keeping their phones in their laps for the whole class
This is at least an attempt at subtlety. Students doing this may not realize this, but from the front of the room, this looks like the person is staring at their crotch for the whole class, which looks very bizarre.

Strangely enough, students using laptops in class is a lot less annoying (to me anyway--I suspect someone browsing in class is probably pretty distracting to their neighbors!). I have seen many students who take notes on their laptops, so there is at least the plausibility that the student is working and paying attention. I distribute my notes electronically, and so it isn't that odd that someone might prefer to use them that way as well. That said, I am well aware that some of the laptop using students are probably doing something else. If they are, it is less disruptive than a phone. There is less motion involved, and I can't see the glow of the screen, so it is less attention grabbing.

I was talking about this issue with a colleague, who is considering banning cellphones entirely in class. Have any of you tried it or thought about it?
 

Student demands

I am not sure if students are feeling more entitled, feeling less intimidated by authority, have less tolerance for BS, or are just plain ruder, but the number of unreasonable demands I am getting via email seems to be going up each year. It is not all of my students. In fact, I think the demanding students have just gotten more demanding, not that more and more students are being demanding, if that makes sense.

For example, grade grubbing is probably as old as grading. That said, this is the first year I received outright demands for higher course grades without an accompanying sob story or other justification, just the statement that they really want/feel like they deserve a better grade. Most of the sob stories were probably BS, or at least not a justification for a higher grade, but still, there is something much more off-putting and self-centered about "please raise my grade because I want a higher one."

More and more students (in fairly large courses) have been asking for individual meetings to discuss course material rather than attending office hours (which are often sparsely attended anyway, especially when far from exams). I always ask what other class they have during my office hours so I can consider the timing for my future scheduling, and many of them don't have a conflict, they just want to meet me one-on-one, and don't see why I shouldn't be able to accommodate them. If I press them, they just want to meet me alone, again with no justification other than that they want to. 

Many students ask if my classes are recorded (which I really don't like doing), and get upset if the answer is no. I really dislike recording classes--attendance ends up much lower, people get very upset when there is a technical glitch that ruins the recording (often out of my hands), and a decent number of students end up binge watching the lectures a night or two before the exam, which does their education no service. But I've been hit in course evaluations about not caring about my students for not recording lectures, and I fear that this will be the new norm.

Students also don't seem to understand that prerequisites are required not just as hoops to jump through for a degree, but are in fact a guide to what knowledge they are expected to have before coming to a class. I teach a physical science (at the sophomore level right now), and I have had many students surprised that I expect some skill with math, even though calculus is a prereq for my course. I had a student tell me they don't integrate, and another tell me that it was so unfair that they lost points on an exam for not remembering how to manipulate exponents, since this is a class in science not in math. I've had many students tell me that expecting them to remember things from freshman science courses is unfair or unrealistic, never mind that my course builds on that material.

In addition to being demanding, I find that more students are falling on the disrespectful side of informal. I've been addressed as "Hey Prof", as "Yo!" and by my first name, all of which I find fairly disrespectful for an undergrad taking a class with me. I generally like the relationships I have had with students in my courses. The students who attend class, and come to office hours generally do well, and I have had good interactions and conversations with them. I am not super-formal with my students, but I am also clearly not their friend or peer. I am not the kind of person who demands respect for my authority, but quite frankly, disrespect like this won't translate well into the wider working world. This is one aspect I struggle with, since I also don't want to spend my teaching time teaching email and professional etiquette.

Conference travel

Conference travel is really important for getting your name and your work out there, for networking, and for keeping up with what is really going on in the field that either is unpublishable or not published yet. As a lifelong introvert, I've really had to work at effective networking. It took me a while to figure out how to make the most of conferences. As I've gotten older, I find that I like the big society meetings less and less. A big meeting is huge, which means it is hard to just run into people, so key meetings have to be planned. Everyone is always running somewhere. The talk quality is highly uneven, especially since giving a quality 15-20 minute talk is really hard for an inexperienced person. Conferences always exhaust me, since I find spending so much time with people tiring, and the always on nature of a meeting is very draining. The endless busy-ness of a big meeting makes this worse for me.

As a student, I loved the wide range of topics, the exhibitions (with their swag) and the opportunity to put faces to the names on papers. Now that I am more established, I find that I am much happier to send my students to the big meetings, and attend smaller, more focused meetings myself. I still get energized from a good topical conference, and I love the opportunity to get up to speed quickly in a new direction by listening to expert talks rather than reading a lot of papers. That said, I find when I get back from a big society meeting, I am more likely to just be tired than to be excited by science. I do attend one big one per year, since it is a good idea to be seen, but I don't really miss it when I don't go for some reason. I guess there is no avoiding turning into a curmudgeon with age!

On service

I've written about service before in pieces of various posts. Service keeps the University running, and is essential to a functional department. However, the service load is distributed incredibly unevenly, which is a source of angst and frustration. I am the kind of person who likes to do a good job at the things I do, so I do put in quite a bit of effort in my service. This means I get asked for "favors" a lot. At this point, I've spent enough years at ProdigalU that I actually have (and can articulate) a service strategy that works for me.

1. Ignore the service slackers as best as you can
It is a truism that some people blow off service without any penalty, thus carving out more research time for themselves. This is incredibly and maddeningly frustrating to those of us who try to do a good job on service and STILL have the same sorts of research and teaching time pressures. This is exactly the same thing as those who blow off teaching (though we have very few of those in my department, to be honest), and I try my very best to ignore these facts as much as possible in my day to day life.

It is worth talking up your service contributions when merit raises are being considered. It is also worth bringing up service contributions when being asked for yet another "favor" from the Chair/Dean/whoever. Otherwise, I find that getting worked up about the unfairness of the service load is like getting worked up about the unfairness of life--yes, it is true, but getting frustrated and unhappy about it just hurts me and makes me more stressed out.

2. Try to pick up service obligations that you at least find interesting
No one really enjoys committee work, but it is much easier and more enjoyable to do committee work that 1) leads somewhere and 2) is at least somewhat interesting. I have enough years here to know which committees at the department level meet and do nothing vs. those that don't meet and do nothing vs. those that meet and get something done. I try to make all of my service tasks fall into categories 2 and 3.

Currently, my main service task does require a fair amount of effort, but it is vital to the department, and I can see the fruits of my labors pretty easily. I also enjoy the topic, and find it an interesting exercise. I don't really mind doing this sort of task, because it doesn't feel like wasting time. After my sabbatical, I asked to return to this position, because I would rather do service like this than many other possible options.

3. Since most people care about the department, but don't want to do the work themselves, they will follow your lead if you have a strong vision and can articulate it reasonably well
This is related to my point 2. One of the reasons I like my main service task is because it has a real impact on the department. In the course of doing my service tasks, I found that if I had an idea I wanted to implement, it was pretty easy to get people on board if I could explain the details clearly, concisely, and enthusiastically. Most people are aware when something is not working well, but don't necessarily want to solve the problem themselves. If you can give them a potential solution to back, most people are willing to give it a shot. This makes my work more enjoyable, since I know that my effort will go somewhere, and even better, that it is in the direction I think is best. As a result of my service position now (which concerns a topic I care about), I have an outsize say in some aspects of how our department works.

4. Saying yes to easy and/or interesting tasks helps you say no later to onerous or crazy-making ones
You have to say yes some of the time. You may as well say yes (or even volunteer) for some easy stuff, so that you can say with all honesty that you have a pretty full service load when future unpleasant tasks crop up. The last minute assignments are usually to difficult or frustrating things. May as well agree earlier to easier stuff.

5. People (even service slackers) do notice when you do service, so make sure they don't take advantage of you!
This may not be to your benefit (since it means people know who to ask for "favors"), but it is true. Everyone knows who the slackers are, even if there is no real penalty for being one. Having a reputation for doing the things you commit to and for getting things done is a good thing, even if there are no immediate rewards. That said, it is definitely possible to be taken advantage of. It is definitely possible to overdo it, and it took me a while to figure out when and how to say no. I think I am at a reasonable balance now, where I do enough useful service to keep things going (and feel like I am doing my part) without it being a major drain on my time.