Academic Advice

Back when I was in graduate school we used to talk about academic incest.  The idea behind this was that you would be less competitive on the job market if you did all of your degrees at the same institution.  This is different from academic inbreeding, which refers to institutions hiring their own students as […]

Quite often when students have to apply for a position requiring a letter of recommendation they don’t know how to proceed.  I was very uncomfortable asking professors for what felt like a favor.  My viewpoint, which is shared by most faculty members, is that providing letters of recommendation is part of our job and if […]

I was out to brunch over the weekend and had an interesting discussion with a friend about why many faculty members are unhappy.  We bounced around a number of ideas, each of which I suspect is part of the problem, but I think we might have hit on the core of it:  many Ph.D. candidates […]

I’ve written before that wanting to become a professor is the only worthwhile reason for getting a Ph.D.  While I believe this, it *DOESN’T* mean that once you’ve got a Ph.D. being a professor is the only thing you can ever do.  It isn’t a great route into other careers, but Ph.D. training develops a number of […]

A postdoctoral researcher, also known as a postdoctoral scholar or postdoc, is someone who has a Ph.D., then goes to work for someone else – typically an established professor.  The pay is modest, considering the credentials of most postdocs.  When I worked at MIT, I was paid $55k / year as a postdoc.   Many […]

I previously posted the details about applying for an assistant professor position.  This post focuses on specific advice for your application materials. Probably as you approach the end of your PhD studies, it will be natural to start thinking about finding a position.  Although it varies from year to year, even at the best of times […]

I’ve warned my graduating bachelor and terminal masters students that for those who are entering the workforce for the first time, their first job hunt will be the hardest.  This isn’t much comfort when you’re in the middle of it, but I tell them to keep in mind that it should never be this hard […]

A while back, on the same day as a court ruling on the Steven G. Salaita case, the UIUC chancellor, Phyllis Wise resigned.  She was embarrassed by being caught in a self-plagiarism case.  Most graduate students are well aware of plagiarism, copying someone else’s work without citing it, but self-plagiarism can be confusing.  How do you copy from yourself? […]

Often times people talk about graduate school and assume that it’s the same for everyone everywhere.  I’m as guilty of this as anyone, as I usually assume a STEM subject and a thesis-based Masters degree followed by a Ph.D. when I refer to graduate school.  In this post, I want to identify a few of […]

I’ve previously written about applying to a Ph.D. program, where I talk more about the logistics of the application.  In this post, I’ll write about a few things people try that are a bad idea, in my opinion, and my suggestion for how to apply if you’re really serious about it. Spamming Many students will send […]