I’m in the middle of my doctoral candidacy right now. This process is supposed to be a nightmare, but I feel oddly at ease with it all. However, I certainly know a few people right now who are freaking out about it. Why the big disconnect? Simply, I think it[…]
In my previous article, I hope that I made it exceedingly clear that working conditions in graduate-level research have gone off the rails. So now, what do we do about it? Where can we go? Are we totally screwed? No.
I consider myself lucky when it comes to graduate school life. I have everything in balance, and I feel that my productivity and creativity are enhanced by this fact. I owe a large part of this to the culture of my research group, and I am thankful to my adviser[…]
In my review of the Checklist Manifesto, I promised to write a post about some checklist applications for scientists and researchers. At first I thought I had exhausted any content with the post about Adam Savage’s tips. However, there are important distinctions between those tips and a good checklist. In[…]
We don’t like checklists. They can be painstaking. They’re not much fun. But I don’t think the issue here is mere laziness. There’s something deeper, more visceral going on when people walk away not only from saving lives but from making money. It somehow feels beneath us to use a[…]