From Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein’s Nudge:
To analyze this question, let’s start with a simple example inspired by a wonderful poem by Shel Silverstein entitled “Smart.” The poem is fun as well as brilliant, so if you have a computer nearby, we suggest that you type “Smart” and “Shel Silverstein” into Google and read [...]
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 [...]
Not that I post often, but I haven’t been posting at all lately. Not that I need to offer an account, but I am about to do just that: I’m being bullied.
I thought that there was something wrong with me if I could be bullied by colleagues and students, but it turns out that I’m [...]
From a midterm evaluation in my undergraduate course, “Environment, Health, and Society”:
“This class seems to give me the chance to learn some new, outrageous fact every week.”
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 [...]
From a student:
I’m a few years away from the job market. But not THAT far away. What matters? Everyone I talk to alternates between telling me how hard it is to predict the job market while acting surprised that I’m not doing what I “should”. So, what “should” I do? What matters on my CV? [...]
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?
Tonight I participated in one of our residence hall’s “dinner in a dorm” events. This is actually my second time, but it was different because I was invited by one of my lovely students. Previously, when I — along with other new faculty — attended a similar event, I was paired with a hall official. [...]
Another of my pet peeves is starting an academic paper by referring to the dictionary definition of something. “According to Webster’s Dictionary, X is defined as…” How many times have you read that sentence in your life? I suppose it is a lousy, boring, but minimally acceptable way for an undergraduate to start [...]
Question number two in our weekly installment:
“What are the most important things to highlight on your vita while on the job market. Follow up, what is most important to have on your vita (as in publications, conferences, training, etc.) ?”
I didn’t make up this quote.
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 [...]
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 [...]
As usual, I want to get the semester started off right on the one graduate course I teach each year, and every time I teach this course, I decide that there are a few more things that I should not take for granted that the students will know. While I usually turn to Fabio for [...]
The recent post about how background characteristics and former experiences shape people’s behavior reminded me of a case that raises questions about where we should draw the line in being sensitive to people’s various circumstances.
In a plagiarism case with a graduate student, a colleague once told me: “Well, this is cultural, where he is from [...]
We’ve had so much discussion about grade inflation in higher education lately, I think it is becoming part of me just by osmosis. The first 7 or 8 years I was at Notre Dame, I was one of the tougher graders in the department. The last two years, not so much.
I hate grading. I hate grades. I especially hate grading in classes where it seems like everyone ends up on the cusp of two grades (which happens more often now that I’m working someplace with a +/- system). That’s exactly the predicament I’m in now.
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 [...]
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