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Offering Extra Credit

October 22, 2009 by protoscholar

One thing a new teacher often faces is the question of extra credit.  This semester it has been requested by several students in both classes.  I assume their rationale is as follows:

  • even if I don’t ace it I’ll get a few points
  • extra credit assignments are always easy stuff, like go to this lecture

I am really torn on the topic.

On the one hand, I can understand that if you tank a test due to nerves or something that you might want a chance to prove that you get the material.  And if each test were very heavily weighted in this class I might be more sensitive to that.  However no test is ever worth more than 10% in my class, so tanking on one is hardly the difference between an A and a D.

More importantly, I teach at a community college.  Many of our students are not as well prepared as those at other schools in terms of study skills and flunking what is considered a basic class can be very demoralizing.    Isn’t it part of the mission of a community college to help these students move forward?

On the other hand, there is a really good argument that says that if you don’t have time to properly learn the material then where are you getting time to spend on an extra credit assignment?

I also hate the idea of giving out “freebies”; credit for just showing up to a lecture or some very easy task.  If you want a different thing to do, fine, but it’s going to be work.  For my Psych101 class I assigned what amounts to a 5-7 page paper for an extra credit assignment (up to 30 points added to  your lowest test grade, so basically up to 3 points on your final grade) and for stats the one assignment I do every semester is for them to read the chapter that we don’t cover in class and do a couple of problems and questions based upon it.  These each require real work.

The thing is that I KNOW my regular assignments and tests aren’t too difficult – for every person who got a 30 to 50 on the tests so far, there is one who got in the 80 to 100 range.  So the work is manageable, some of them just aren’t applying themselves.  And to me that means that just curving the whole class isn’t the right approach.

So, do I offer more extra credit, or let the chips fall where they may?  Do I offer extra credit but only assignments that teach study skills or encourage participation on campus (which research has shown increases persistence)?

What are your thoughts on extra credit in undergraduate courses?

Posted in Being a scholar, Teaching | 1 Comment »

Review: GTDAgenda.com

October 18, 2009 by protoscholar

A few months ago I was contacted by the developer of gtdagenda.com and offered an premium account that I could evaluate and, if I wanted, review.  I have now been using the site for several months and wanted to post a review of my experience.

What is gtdagenda?

gtdagenda.com is a web-based implementation of David Allen’s Getting Things Done methodology.  The site gives you the ability to track, work at and associate tasks with all different levels of goals.

At the top level you can set broad goals (such as Finish my PhD) that guide your choice of projects.  These can be defined with a time frame, a category (such as Academic, Family, Work), and a priority (which GTD purists will recognize as NOT being part of the core GTD methodology but a piece I have long thought was missing).  Goals can be viewed sorted by either priority or category, offering the chance to see if things are out of balance (for example having far more goals in the Work category than the Family category).

One thing I really like about the application is that the top two goals remain at the top of the page as you move through other parts of the application.  This helps in keeping them always in focus.

Goals Listing

Within each goal you can define Projects.  These conform to the standard GTD definition of a project, are associated with one of the larger goals, and again have a priority.  Again, these can be sorted by either priority or the goals to which they are related.

One neat feature of the Projects list is that it shows you how many tasks are associated with each project.  Projects with no tasks need to be revisited or have their priorities changed to reflect their lower importance.

Project Listing

Interestingly, notice that my top two projects are related to a goal that is not in my top two goals.  Something for me to review.

Anyway, within each Project there are Tasks. (No picking on my task lists; the details are in the notes, but each is actually just a single sit-down-and-do-it activity :-) I should probably add some action verbs though.)

There are a few neat features to the task list display.

  • Starred items are next actions and they always float to the top of your task list.  There is also another view that shows you just the next actions.
  • Contexts are immediately visible, as are the project to which the task is associated
  • You can mark multiple tasks as done by putting a check in the box and clicking the button for Mark as Done
  • You can schedule repeating tasks (such as grading), add notes to yourself, and set a due date if that makes sense for the task.
  • Overdue items have bright red highlighting of the date the item was due to increase visibility.
  • You can modify many settings (priority, setting as a next action, moving to someday/maybe) from the menu.  This lets you make the change to several tasks at a time without having to edit each one.

Tasks Detail

So far all these have been in the left pane of the application.  The right pane brings a number of other useful features.

Right PaneLet’s start at the bottom.

You have a list of your projects.  Clicking on any given project will give you a list of the tasks for that project.  Notice again that the number of tasks is shown clearly next to the project name.

Above that you have a list of your contexts.  Clicking on a given context will allow you to see only the tasks for that context.

On top there is a calendar, and it’s there to show you more than just the date.  You can schedule things like standing appointments (classes taught) on there as well has scheduling tasks for or due a particular date.  When you click on the date, the tasks for that date open up.

An interesting addition is the Checklists.  This is an implementation of the personal development concept called “Don’t Break the Chain” (sometimes attributed to Jerry Seinfeld), wherein you get a check mark for each time you do something that is unscheduled but a habit you are trying to build.  You add each one, set up the days you intend to do them, and check them off as you go.  Given the struggle many of us have with these types of habit-building activities, this is a good way to track them.  Notice also that you can have checklists at different levels – things like “give the dogs their heartworm medication” can go on the Month frame.  When the due day of the week (or month or year) comes up, these items appear on your task list.

Checklists

There are a few more features that most potential users will find very helpful.  First, there is an email address you can send a task to and have it added to your lists.  There is also an iCal feed so that you can show your tasks on your google calendar or any other ical-compatible calendar program.

There are several settings for your account; do you want tasks and/or calendar items emailed each morning, what view you want opened when you log in, your timezone, etc.

Finally access from your phone has been streamlined on their www.gtdagenda.mobi site.  While not full featured (yet), it offers quick and easy access to your task list from anywhere.

What works well

I am very impressed with the combination of productivity and organizational tools offered here.  The integration of two items I’ve though were long missing from core GTD (priorities and  checklists) works well, and I love that checklist items show up on your tasks for the day in question.

I am particularly impressed with what a great job the tool does of keeping you focused on properly using the system and not getting too buried in the day to day task list.  It is very easy to get focused on a list of next actions and forget the larger goals; these items are in constant view and attached to each project, so that the larger purpose of what you are doing is always there.

Performance has been fine, and I have not stumbled on anything I would call a bug.

Dan (the developer) has been very responsive to questions and/or suggestions for improvements.  He continues to actively improve the application, taking into account the comments of current users and soliciting their opinions.

What could use some improvement

All that having been said, there are some items that need improvement.

  • There is no syntax that you can use to enhance emailed tasks the way Remember the Milk allows.  This to me is the biggest current flaw, because while I can email myself a task I have to go back in later and add all the attributes.
  • There are no start/end dates for schedules.  I would prefer to be able to put my academic calendar in far in advance, but can’t because the items begin showing up immediately.  This is my number two current biggest flaw.

Other items that should be addressed, but which I don’t consider to be a big deal.

  • No file attachments, so if it isn’t a short text you are out of luck.  An oversight, but not one that is critical for my purposes.
  • I find the schedules feature very confusing to use.
  • Entering lots of tasks is a bit tedious as far as overhead goes.  Supposedly a new feature is on its way to address this.  Bulk upload would be terrific.
  • I personally would like a way to mark a task as delegated/waiting for and make it disappear until some future date when I need to check on it.  I can use contexts for delegated/waiting for, but the item will remain on my task list.
  • Right now when I “Mark as done” one or more tasks, the tool crosses them off but doesn’t remove them from view, even when my current view is Active only.  I would like them to disappear without having to refresh my screen.
  • Two-way ical integration (so that scheduled items from google calendar can be picked up) would be very nice.

Pricing

In a perfect world this tool would be free and open to all.  In the real world, developers of new products often need to charge in order to support development.  Such is the case with gtdagenda.

Pricing

Anyone can sign up for a free account, but it is limited in the number of goals, projects and context.  If your life revolves around a few large projects this may be enough.

Most people will need at least the Basic level.  At a few dollars per month (less if you autorenew) the cost is relatively low for the completeness of the application.  All payments are through paypal and they offer a 30-day money back guarantee for you to try the full product.

Premium is for those who need a LOT more goals / projects / contexts or checklists.

Recently they have also added 2 different shared accounts for work groups, one with 5 and the other with 15 users.  These offer, in addition to the features of the premium level, your own subdomain, message board and branding.

Overall Assessment

Despite desired improvements, gtdagenda.com is the  best consolidated GTD implementation currently available as a web application.  It implements the methodology in a clean, usable interface and adds the things that many GTD users have long thought were missing from the original specification.  By managing all the cross-referencing between goals, projects and tasks, GTDagenda makes it easy to keep an eye on the big picture while working through your daily activities.

As mentioned above this review was based upon a free premium-level membership.  Were this being paid out of my own pocket, my review would not change but I would choose the basic membership instead.  It is generous enough in terms of projects and goals to meet the needs of my life and nothing I do is secretive enough to require SSL security.  When they add file attachments, my guess is that the Premium pricing will be more attractive for those with lots of (or large) files.

Posted in GTD specific, Organization, Productivity, Technology, Tools | Comments Off

Perspective: Useful thing that…

October 4, 2009 by protoscholar

Often we are told to take a step back from things to gain some perspective.  It’s very hard when you are in the thick of things, particularly all-consuming things like a dissertation.

This week, however, I got some perspective.  In order to enhance my qualifications for the classes I’m already teaching, I signed up for an online class on cognitive psychology this semester.  I’m dropping it.  There are three reasons:

  1. The instructor is not instructing.  She assigned the readings (a chapter and 2-4 research papers per week, often the ones that are the root of major theoretical models), assigned us to write a summary of each research paper (a couple of paragraphs) and a 5 question multiple choice quiz on the textbook each week, and that’s it.  No feedback, no discussion, no additional perspective on how to integrate the materials.  If we didn’t figure it out ourselves, we were out of luck.
  2. She then proceeded to base the mid-term on the type of integration questions that you would expect to have come up in the course of a classroom or message board discussion.  Since we have neither, the class is pretty much on our own to do it.  I put in 8 hours on it yesterday and would have had to put in all day today to do an adequate job.  Of course, I don’t HAVE all day today, as I also have to grade labs, post the next tests for both classes, write up a study guide for one of the tests and review my lectures for the week.  Oh, and work on the major group project she assigned as due on thursday.  I calculate that I would have needed close to 20 hours today to get that done.
  3. Of course, it isn’t all her fault; I also overestimated my ability to get everything done and stay sane at the same time.  I leave at 7am and come home at 9pm four nights a week, leaving essentially no time to work on weeknights.  Until now I’ve been able to squeeze it all in on the weekend, but there was no chance of that this weekend.  Worse, I’ve been running myself ragged to keep up, something that is not good in the long run.

So I’m dropping.  I’m OK with that – I overestimated my capacity given that this is the first semester teaching one of these classes, and I’ll revisit in the future when teaching the new class becomes less week-to-week preparation effort.

Overscheduling myself, however, wasn’t the only piece of my life I got perspective on this weekend.  Prior to this weekend I had gotten bored with my dissertation topic, bored with working on my lit review, and uninterested in the entire thing.  Then I got a look at this midterm, which includes 4 questions along the lines of this example:

Peruse the results sections of your articles from the first half of the semester, looking for a set of results from a multi-experiment paper that you were particularly impressed with.  Describe how the statistical tests were performed, and how they supported the hypotheses.  Explain why you were impressed with this set of results.  Now, look for a set of results that produces the opposite effect on you, meaning, you are not at all impressed or convinced by them.  Explain your reasoning.  Finally, how might the experiment be altered such that it could produce impressive results, that you feel are worthy of publication in a major psychology journal?

I read that and caught myself thinking longingly of my lit review and getting back to work on my dissertation.  I actually told husband that if I wanted to work that hard I would just write the damned dissertation.  After all, isn’t that what the work of reading a paper for a lit review is all about?  How are the results, are they convincing, what would have to change to make them convincing?

So with that jolt of perspective, I am letting go of my key overcommitment, refocusing on the core things I have to do (work, teaching), and putting any remaining time into my re-energized interested in my dissertation.  That effect alone may be worth the (thankfully low) tuition cost.

Posted in Academic life, Dissertation, Graduate school, Productivity, Psychology, Stress, Teaching | Comments Off

Laser-sharp focus reduces stress

September 27, 2009 by protoscholar

We live in a world with a wealth of things to distract us:

It is easy to get overwhelmed or want to do more than any one human could do.

Over the past few weeks I have begun a practice of laser-sharp focus and elimination of the unnecessary or reschedulable.  My current commitments allow nothing less, and frankly it has dropped my stress level more than any other single change I could make.

My current commitments are not trivial; a full time job that expects around 45 hours per week, teaching 2 different classes (4 nights per week total) at a local community college, taking 1 course toward a Masters in Psychology, and doing a small yearly consulting data analysis job for a local school district.  I get up around 7am and get home around 9pm most days, then spend my weekends grading homework, preparing for the next week’s classes, doing my own homework and catching up on sleep as I move into the next week.

This would be incredibly stressful for most people, and frankly it would have been for me as well until I realized a few things this summer:

  • It’s ok to say no sometimes; your friends will still like you
  • You may WANT to do a lot of things, but some are more important than others
  • There is great satisfaction and relaxation to be gained by letting yourself off the hook for some things.

In my case, that meant

  • I would blog (here) when I had the time AND something meaningful to say
  • I would not worry about keeping up with my RSS feeds and would, in fact, trim them back substantially to just the ones that are of special interest or relevance
  • I would not try to keep up with facebook or other social media, at least not in anything that passes for real time.  (I get facebook updates in an RSS feed and try to scan them for big events in my friends lives a couple of times per week.
  • I would carve out a single block of time each week to spend with friends and not feel bad if that meant I had to pick which friends to see on a given week.
  • I would not worry about my dissertation literature review for the moment, but just continue to collect articles and references that I will read later.

Mostly though, it meant that I chose to focus on the critical things and not feel bad/guilty about what I’m not getting done.  Would I like to be able to do all those other things?  Of course I would.

But sometimes less is more, and this is one of those cases.  I’ve committed to certain activities in my life as having priority for the next 3 months (until christmas) and will focus my attention on those activities.  After the semester ends, I will revisit the targets of my focus for the winter holiday.  After that, I will again review my targets for the next semester.  These are not static choices, but fluid ones that can respond to my top priorities at any given time.

In doing so, my stress level has dropped and my productivity has risen. I work through each week step by step and never feel overwhelmed by all that I do.  That, to me, is true productivity.

Posted in Academic life, Productivity, Stress, Teaching | Comments Off

Kicken’ it old school: paper for some things

September 20, 2009 by protoscholar

On the one hand, I really WANT to be able to use an electronic planner, note taking system and organizational process.  I’ve tried a number of them, and some (OneNote for my dissertation and my Inbox as a to do queue) are still in use.  But not all.

I have reverted to paper note taking for a class I am in this semester (Cognitive Psychology).  For some reason, the act of writing the notes in pen helps them make the jump from short-term to long-term memory. (I blame this on growing up in the pre-digital age and training myself to learn this way.)  I’m doing the same thing at work; despite taking my laptop to every meeting, I am carrying a small Circa binder into which I make notes and add to do items.

The reason this works better is because, short of getting myself a tablet pc, there are things I just can’t do with a keyboard that I do all the time on paper.

  • Draw myself pictures to help me remember something
  • Draw lines between a current thought and one noted earlier to make it clear how they are related to one another
  • Color code my notes (do-able on screen, but takes a bit more time than just trading pens)
  • The occasional mind map (again, do-able on screen but requires learning  a new tool)

Having said that, all is not quite where I want it to be.  This method works well for taking down information and getting it into my head, but the to do aspect is not working nearly as well.  My work to do list still lives in email primarily, although I try to write one out every monday, and my home to do list *blush* lives mostly in my head and my gmail.

Therefore I am going to try using GTDAgenda for the next month.  It is a pay service, although the cost is relatively low, but of all the electronic implementations of the GTD methodology this one includes all of the core features plus a few others that seem highly useful to me.  For example, it gives you the ability to create checklists for repetitive tasks such as dealing with the administrative items for each of my classes every weekend. At the end of the month I will be posting a full review of the product along with results of my new approach.

In the meantime, however, I want to make it clear that paper has its place in my system.  Research on memory has shown that making connections between new information and what we know already is critical to memory, and paper provides a more free-form way for me to do that.  Further, the act of writing for me is an input device for my brain, whereas the act of typing is an output device.  That makes taking notes on paper a better option even if I never look at them again.

Posted in GTD specific, Organization, Productivity, Technology | Comments Off

White-collar trade school?

August 27, 2009 by protoscholar

A recent article in Fast Company got me thinking about how higher education works.  The article, “How Web-Savvy Edupunks are Transforming American Higher Education”  looks at the various initiatives to move education away from the traditional campus and credits model to something more open and in keeping with the web.

At first, this is a massively tempting idea.  I have certainly spent the summer bringing myself up to speed for a new course I’m teaching by listening to podcasts of classes from Berkeley and MIT, and consider these types of resources invaluable for an adult who wants to fill out their knowledge on a topic or learn something new.  Yet we get a great deal more from college than just topic knowledge. 

I see a few problems with this model that the article fails to address:

  •  We produce an awful lot of ill-prepared high school graduates in this country.  Almost 42 percent of  freshmen enrolled in public 2-year colleges and 20 percent of those enrolled in public 4 year colleges were enrolled in at least one developmental course (U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, 2004).  These students will be unable to read and learn from this type of material without a person to go to, and may not be able to complete the work at all without being pushed to complete the developmental coursework.
  • Many of these same struggling students are first generation college students who lack the cultural capital to understand the process.  For better or worse, the structure of a traditional school helps ensure that those students find their way through the process.  Even though there are holes in how the system works now, leaving students to find their own way will only make that worse.
  • Students get a lot more from college than just topic knowledge.  Even if we treat it as some form of white-collar trade school, students learn teamwork and presentation skills, make contacts within their field, and build valuable social skills in the college process.  I have serious doubts about how well an online school can teach those things.    
  • Colleges serve many purposes outside of teaching undergraduates.  Some are extraneous, while others are irreplaceable.  Where will basic research be done?  The kind of stuff for which there isn’t a market yet, but which the engineers and scientists will need to know to build the next generation of technology?  How and where will we train future PhD’s, either to do research or to teach?  Why would someone WANT to go down that path when their work has been devalued.  (Note: I have a real problem with the ancient apprentice / indentured servant model of doctoral education we have now, but I don’t see an improvement here; more like extinction.)
  • One of the things that colleges do is force students to think about other perspectives.  This in part comes from the fact that many academics have perspectives that bare little resemblance to those held by the general public, and can be abused the way some push ideology, but is none the less an important part of school.  The same goes for taking subjects that may not appear immediately interesting.  No one would take my statistics class if they weren’t required to, yet many tell me later that it is one of the most broadly useful classes they have taken. 
  • The past 50 years has seen credential creep; where you used to be able to support a family with a high school diploma, you now need a bachelor’s degree to get in the door and a master’s to get promoted.  Will this be the antidote, showing that knowledge and credentials are only loosely correlated?  Or will this make it worse by further devaluing degrees until the checker at Walmart needs a degree in Finance to get the job?
  • Moreover how do we differentiate the person who listened to the Berkeley podcasts from the person who went to class, wrote the papers and took the tests?  I suppose one could ask if we need to, but few employers are willing to “take your word for it” rather than call your references.  A degree serves a similar function; it is an external stamp that you stuck it out, did the work adequately (although adequate changes from school to school), have at least some knowledge of the topic, can follow rules and can deal with the culture of a bureaucratic organization.

I agree with the article that something needs to change about how we do higher education, but this model seems primarily suited to turn it into a white-collar trade school, focused at the (albeit much larger) undergraduate level and suited principally to self-motivated students with sufficient cultural capital to navigate the process in a meaningful way.  That may be good for some students, but is unlikely to work for all, and genuinely harmful to some.

Posted in Being a scholar, Change, Education policy, Technology | Comments Off

Why are you going to grad school anyway?

August 20, 2009 by protoscholar

Over the past few years I have focused much of this blog on efficiently getting through graduate school.  Yet as I have started teaching and working on my dissertation, I have begun to question what I want out of graduate school.

There are a ton of reasons people start a PhD program:

  • They want to be called Dr.
  • They are fascinated by a really specific topic
  • They want to cure cancer/find extraterrestrial life/fix society/etc.
  • They don’t know what else to do after their undergrad program
  • They don’t want to get a real job yet
  • They want to be a Professor

For me it was this last one, although in hindsight I can admit that I didn’t have a clear idea of what that meant.  What the average undergrad sees of professors is conferences, teaching classes, meeting with students, etc.  That was the part that I wanted.  What the average undergrad DOESN’T see is the research process, the funding issues and the politics.  Here are some things I didn’t realize when I started that I kind of wish I had known beforehand:

  • A PhD is a RESEARCH degree.  You are being trained to do and publish research.  Your “major” is really the area which you intend to apply your research skills.  Teaching is secondary.
  • There are fewer and fewer full time tenure track positions available.  The humanities are just a disaster in this respect (to the point where respected faculty are advising undergraduates NOT to go to grad school), the social sciences are sinking fast, and even the hard sciences have fewer openings.  Competition for those positions is fierce, and the bar to even be considered is far higher than it has ever been in the past.
  • Money is scarce.  Most schools now are placing a lot of emphasis on bringing in grant funding.  So in addition to doing research you must learn how to get the money to do it, and that means choosing your subject not for its intrinsic value or because it fascinates you, but based on what the government, industry or non-profits are willing to fund.
  • You don’t get to relax after you graduate.  In fact, it gets worse.  The first six years of your academic career are focused on nothing but getting tenure, and while everyone SAYS they look at teaching reviews in the process what they REALLY care about is research productivity and stature.
  • Internal academic politics are as bad or worse than the politics you encounter in any other workplace.
  • Much of research time is spent proving things that practitioners will tell you they already knew.  I read about a paper recently titled Interacting with women can impair men’s cognitive functioning.  Duh.  My papers to date have also landed with comparable thuds on the practitioner world, where they tend to look at you like you are an idiot for not having already know whatever it was you just showed in your paper.
  • The typical professor at a a university is expected to spend most of their time on research and little on anything else.  (See below) I’ve heard 70% research, 20% teaching and 10% service at an R1.  Even those working at a liberal arts college teaching 4 classes per semester are expected to get some research done.

A few things have become clear to me of late:

  1. I love teaching and that is what I want the focus of my work to be.
  2. I am particularly passionate about students at the community college, most of whom work full time and are often single parents or struggling to get by.
  3. I picked a bad field for those goals, because frankly there is little call for instructors in education policy anywhere other than at the graduate level of research schools.
  4. This is a LOT of work when it won’t get me where I want to go.

As I may have mentioned, this semester I am teaching not just my standard statistics class, but also psychology 101.  There is a LOT of need for people to teach psychology at the community college level, and I actually have quite a few credits in relevant areas (methods and educational psychology).  Therefore I am taking a short detour (6 classes assuming all the transfer stuff works out correctly) to pick up a Masters in Psychology.

Why?  Well, most simply it aligns better with my goals.  It gives me the necessary credentials to get a full time teaching position at a community college in a field that is always needed and of interest to students at that level.  For now I am not officially stopping the PhD program;  I will probably finish my dissertation eventually, if only because I hate to see things unfinished.  But in the meantime I have realigned how my time is spent versus my goals.

So why am I telling you this?  If you are starting to think about graduate school, and especially about PhD program, you should go into that process with your eyes completely open.  As with any other career there are pluses and minuses to this one, and given the level of time, sacrifice and effort involved you need to be sure is for you from the outset.  Talk to faculty at your intended school candidly about job prospects, hiring rates for departmental graduates, and how they spend their time.  Make sure you know what you are getting in to.

Posted in Academic life, Being a scholar, Change, Graduate school, Jobs | 2 Comments »

The importance of a supportive partner

August 16, 2009 by protoscholar

Today is my 8th wedding anniversary.  (Well, actually it’s the 8th anniversary of our elopement; the ceremony and party with friends was that November.)  This has led me to think about how important my husband has been to my progress in graduate school, not to mention my sanity.

I’ve actually seen people recommend that you not get married if you are planning on graduate school, because the stress is too high and the restrictions too large.  That might be fine for a student going straight from undergraduate to graduate school, but non-traditional students cannot intertwine the two decisions in the same way.

What is critical to the non-traditional graduate student is the support of said spouse or partner.  My husband has always been (and continues to be) 100% supportive of my goals.

  • He has taken on many of the chores as I go from working a full time job to studying and writing at night.
  • He has agreed to commit whatever financial resources are necessary to support my goals.
  • He has been there to help me work through questions of goals and focus when I was struggling with why I was doing all this.
  • He has given me the needed reality checks when I was off on a tangent.
  • He has consistently reminded me that I am smart enough, talented enough and determined enough to do this.
  • He has read innumerable drafts of material that I am sure is completely dull to him, but for which I needed feedback or at least copy-editing.
  • He has allowed me to rearrange the house to make a comfortable, inviting office for myself.
  • He has brought me food when I was so busy I forgot to eat.

He has been my sanity, and frankly I could not do this without him.

Recently an acquaintance has been talking about starting graduate school, but with a partner who is far less supportive of the idea.  That seems like the recipe for disaster, both in terms of the persons graduate work and the relationship.

Graduate school is more than just a few classes.  The thesis/dissertation process is a trans-formative one that changes the way you think and look at the world, brings all of your deeply hidden insecurities to the surface and forces you to work harder than ever before.  It is not something that can be easily done in the presence of a disapproving or ambivalent partner.  Even professional degrees, such as an MBA with their less scholarly focus, require massive time commitments and focus that will impact how you spend your time.

If you are considering graduate school, spend some time talking to your partner about what you want to do, why, and what it will mean to the relationship.  You may find that the timing isn’t right, or that your partner isn’t quite ready to support your goals.  If that is the case, you will be more successful in the long run if you wait and work with your partner to establish a supportive environment.  You cannot be successful if your relationship is falling apart under the weight of the program.

Posted in Academic life, Graduate school | Comments Off

Summer break?

August 1, 2009 by protoscholar

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Ah, the good old days as an undergrad when you got your summers off.  I wish.  Summer for a graduate student is often as hectic as the rest of the year, and if some things (teaching) are reduced that merely means that other things (research) are expected to step in and make up the difference.

These melancholy thoughts are due to the fact that today is August 1st.  Classes begin again on August 24th.  Almost every grad student I know is having that “OMG I GOT NO RESEARCH DONE ALL SUMMER” panic attack at this point.  And maybe that is true.

But here is a piece of advice that I wish someone had told me my first summer:

This is a marathon, not a sprint, and that means you need to take rest breaks from time to time.

It is really easy to think in terms of graduation as a specific goal, and that you’ll “rest” after you graduate.  What you quickly learn is that you can’t rest then, because you have to find/start a new job, prepare to teach classes you may never have taught before (not insignificant as you will see below) and start to build up publications toward tenure review.  So really, it’s more like you can “rest” after you get tenure.  That’s a minimum of 10 years from the start of grad school.  Do you REALLY think you can run flat out for 10 years?

More importantly, this is your career; your life; the pattern you will be in for many many years.  The semester schedule is, to some extent, an artificial layer on TOP of your life and work.  It’s important to get OUT of the habit of letting it determine your goals. There will always be projects, and there will always be the temptation to think about summer as down-time since there is less teaching and advising to be done.  But perhaps that down-time is better used as down-time; time to recharge the batteries so that you can come back to your research fresh.

My goals for this summer reflect this type of new attitude:  I wanted to work on my literature review and to prepare for the new course I will be teaching this fall.  This 2nd item is more work than it sounds.  No amount of expertise in a subject gets you out of:

  • reading through the textbooks the students will have to read
  • writing up lecture notes/slides that add something to the material
  • devising exercises/assignments that encourage them to learn rather than regurgitate
  • organizing any supplemental materials you will need (videos, equipment, etc)
  • setting  up said class on whatever course management software the school uses (blackboard, webct, etc)

For me, I am finding that it takes 8-10 hours for each week of class (2 classes per week, 1 chapter per week) to adequately prepare the material, plus another 2-3 hours to chose questions from the test bank for the exams (about every 3 chapters).  (If you have to WRITE those questions from scratch it can be much more time consuming.)  Now imagine starting at a new school and having to prep 2-4 classes for your first semester.  Summer will be busy.

Would I have liked to get more done on my lit review this summer?  Maybe.  But more important was recharging my batteries and being properly prepared.  I will have my notes all complete prior to the start of the semester so that each weekend I can review them to refresh the material in my mind, add any new references I may have found and go into a new chapter with the relaxed confidence that comes from knowing my material AND knowing how to deliver it.

In between I’ve spent a couple of weekends out of town with my husband, the occasional day shopping instead of working, and baking some amazing stuff, all things that relax me.  Not what an undergrad would consider a break, but all in all a productive time.

Posted in Academic life, Graduate school, Productivity, Psychology, Teaching | Comments Off

Backups are one of your most important tasks…

July 12, 2009 by protoscholar

Modern academic work is centered on our computers; data storage and analysis, writing, research, reference libraries, and often collaboration with our peers all require working computers.

It is for this reason that keeping good backups is paramount to success as an academic.

There are a number of techniques for keeping good backups as an academic.  I want to not have to think about them at all,  and my history in the IT world makes me want redundancy for the most important items.  Since I got to spend this weekend restoring due to a fried power supply killing a motherboard, I wanted to share some of the variety of things I do to make sure my work is safe.

Secondary/External hard drives:  Just because your machine only came with one does not mean you can’t install more.  And they aren’t expensive or hard to install either; if you can plug something into a USB port, you can add 1 Terabyte of external storage for $87.00.

Once the secondary drive is in, you can use a free piece of software such as Syncback and configure it to back up all of your documents to your external drive on a regular basis.  Lifehacker has an excellent explanation of how to backup your hard drive using Syncback.

A secondary drive accomplishes two things; first, it provides a backup of your drive and second, it is easy to move to a new system when the old one breathes its last breath (as mine did this weekend).

However, I’m paranoid.  What happens if my house burns down?  Or my computer is physically stolen?  Or I take multiple power spikes and both drives get fried?  These things are less likely, but not impossible.  For that reason, I also use off-site backups.

I use  Jungledisk for my off-site backup software.  Jungledisk makes use of Amazon’s S3 or other network storage solutions to back up my drives automatically.  The result is an invisible background backup solution for all your data to a remote location.  A few clicks and it has begun its restore.

I picked Jungledisk because Amazon S3 is very reasonably priced and I wanted to back up, well, everything.  Moreover Jungledisk gives me web access to every file I have backed up, so that I can get items when I’m not at home.  If, however, you only want to back up some key stuff (your writing, lecture notes, but NOT data or downloaded PDFs of research articles) there are a couple of free ways to do that.

  • Mozy is an online backup service that gives you 2G of space at no cost.  You can, of course, buy more.  To my knowledge you can’t get to the files except through the Mozy backup tool.
  • Dropbox is actually more of a file syncing tool; you can put your key items into your drop box and it will sync them to as many computers as you want.  I am currently doing this for my OneNote notebooks and my lectures in process.  Dropbox also provides web access to those files, so that I can get to them from anywhere.

I use Dropbox because I like it’s immediacy and web access for my most crucial files.  However pre-Jungledisk I used Mozy’s free service for my key files and was very happy with it.

One last important thing; if you are using Zotero for reference management, be sure to check out the version 2.0 beta.  I have had no problems with it, and love it’s ability to sync my files and library.  I use it with my Jungledisk account to keep copies of attached PDFs.

In the end the least productive thing you can do is re-do all your work because of a technology glitch.  Making sure you have extra copies of everything is one of the most important, productive things you can do.

Posted in Organization, Productivity, Technology, Tools | 1 Comment »

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