It might not explain Jeremy’s recent behavior, as he’s still slugging through spring quarter, but I’m sure a lot of us are suffering from end-of-the-semester burnout. You know, when you need something mindless to keep you going. Omar’s on the other side of the wall, cleaning his office. I wrote my syllabi for the fall [...]
I find myself refreshing and refreshing this site. Anyone know if there’s a better option out there?
Spring is here and I am back, albeit with a desk full of things to do other than blog.
[an aside - I love spring. I don't know if we haven't really had spring the other places I've lived (the Pacific Northwest, the South, and the desert) or if it's just that spring is even more [...]
From someone who is ABD. This is a very liberal paraphrase (you will note that the language is strongly shakha’s), but still accurate, I believe.
I have two committee members who don’t get along. They pull me in different directions. They’re not really interested in what the other person suggests, and sometimes even seem to pull [...]
From an esteemed colleague:
What set of issues should be discussed before two (or more) people agree to write a paper together? There are obvious contenders here - order of authorship, timeline, etc. - but what else is important?
Here is a suggestion that emerged from olderwoman about our ask a scatterbrain series. This emerged as some had expressed that the series was anxiety producing. Ane one of the causes of this was that the advice often seemed to come from folks at the “top 20″ - where few sociologists actually are (and few [...]
Some questions on publishing:
What are the politics of publishing? Which journals are professional brass rings? Are there journals that might accept my articles but at the same time are so unrespected that publishing in them is tantamount to admitting I’m a lousy academic? The impact factor is one way to go about it but my [...]
From grad students, a series of questions that I have compiled into one big mess. Basically: how do you build a network and does it matter what kind you build?
People keep telling me how important it is to “build networks.” I understand why. I just don’t understand how. So, how do you go about “building [...]
I am on the graduate admissions committee here at Northwestern. Unbeknownst to me when I signed up for the gig, this also involves helping to plan Northwestern’s recruiting event, a two-day affair here called “Sociology Days.”* Does anyone have any sense of what works with these sorts of events and what doesn’t? [...]
Our question of the week: How do you “break up” with your adviser? If you feel like the relationship isn’t going well, and you’ve already made the decision to go with someone new, what is the best way to do this without upsetting the adviser?
I’ll be participating in a professionalization workshop on publishing and looking for ideas on the types of topics we should cover. When it comes to journal publishing in particular, what kinds of questions would you hope to have answered? This can range anywhere from how to select or approach a potential collaborator to deciding [...]
Here is our very first question of the week. If you have a question you’d like me to post, email me (see the side-bar with my name - this will be a weekly feature on Wednesdays). I will not reveal who asks these questions. From a grad student:
Is it a bad idea to have an [...]
I have an old email account I check on occasion. Others sometimes mistype their own account and register for services using this email address. Most services ask for confirmation so there’s not much of a problem. In such cases I don’t confirm and that way the registration doesn’t really go through. Presumably the person eventually [...]
That idea of Jeremy’s where grad students ask questions about things they’ve heard about the discipline, the job market, navigating grad school, etc.? And then folks who’ve been around the block chime in and answer. Wasn’t that going to be a regular feature of this blog? I really liked the idea. It was first suggested [...]
OK, after Alan directed my attention to this post and its accompanying comments, I’ve decided I want to switch hosting services (see previous post about the e-mail they sent their customers after triple billing them). I need to take my domains (i.e., jeremyfreese.com and jeremyfreese.whateverelse) with me. Is this easy to do? [...]
I recently received this query from a colleague:
I’m two weeks into my first course (Intro to Soc) and trying to make some rigid rules about prep time. I am realizing (as I’d been warned) that I could prep and prep and prep all the time. Do you have rules about how much time you spend [...]
Say, hypothetically, I wanted to take a hypothetical 2 minute YouTube clip and cut it down to 30 hypothetical seconds and show it in a hypothetical lecture for a hypothetical class a hypothetical friend may be hypothetically teaching. Does anyone know how one can do that? My hypothetical friend can work either on a [...]
You don’t have to be an economic sociologist to understand that as a professor, it is not straight forward to get gifts from students. It’s that time of the year (or maybe one of those times in addition to the end of the academic year) when gifts might appear. What to do? I [...]
I am, for the first time, advising senior theses this year. One of my thesis students, we’ll call her Jane Doe, just won a university wide competition for a grant that supports outstanding undergraduate research in the field of women and gender studies.
The NYTimes comes out with the 10 best books of 2007. Why don’t we come up with the best sociological insights of 2007? I ask because a friend recently wrote to me, “I have to present five minutes on an interesting or compelling discovery in Sociology from 2007… [any ideas?]” So, readers, any ideas?
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