Hello I'm stepwise girl and I'm a nerd

Yesterday, my godson and I ended up spending the whole afternoon listening to lectures about science. So that was me, a science lecturer and him, an engineering student.

We were at this science musuem and spent the afternoon going from lecture to lecture: electromagnetism, liquid air (my favourite), laser, and changing states between -220 and +110°. We had loads of fun! How nerdy is it though, as a weekend activity, for people who spend the week with their nose on science. Ah well, just shows we like it!

I guess it's in nice connection with the fact that recently I did spend some efforts reminding myself how lucky I am to do something I like (most of it!) and to spend time trying to understand the world around me, and to teach other how to do that. I've been needing to remind that to myself when I'm preparing lectures (as now) or painfully writing long overdue papers. Need to go back to that book for young lecturers, the part on writing... And the annoying bits come with the package and that's that!

Journals and reviews

Over the past few months, I have been involved in the review-editing for a journal as well as its board. I also have been doing quite a few paper reviews for other journals, and been through the publication process myself. It has really broadened my view of the issue – still probably very incomplete, but going a bit further than « the b*stards rejected ! They know nothing ! bwaahahah ! »

On the blindness of review :

What happened to double blind review ? I got all the authors details of the last three papers I reviewed. I thought double blind was the most frequent option but apparently not. Also, I recently got a review of one of my papers back in the form of an annoted pdf file. These comments give their author (initials anyway)… meaning I could potentially if I was arsed to do so, look that person up (not someone I could easily recognise like that). So reviewers could potentially be identified too… (this was ok cos it was rather positive and the paper was accepted !)

On the content of a review :

One of the things we all have to learn quite quickly is that not everyone sees eye to eye on what makes a good study. (« How can they not see my paper is the bestest ? ») but when you see it on someone else’s work you can take a colder look at it. But at least some people, even though they don’t think much of a paper, try to be constructive in their comments. Some other people tend to take the «ahah ! poor thing, how could you do that » approach, made quite obvious by their over use of exclamation marks. I don’t think any exclamation marks should be found in a review, let alone three in a row. This was interesting actually because I eventually resubmitted the paper to a different journal, trying to avoid that reviewer at any cost… so if a journal is competing for papers*, it possibly needs to be careful with reviewers and reviews…

On the role of the editor :

Please do take some time to take a look at the paper before wasting a reviewer’s time with it. You are not doing a favor to an author by considering the paper if it’s out of scope or not ready for review. The time when one could submit a shitty paper and have the reviewers do the work of improving it is OVER ! This is for editors as well as authors.

But with this new task, I really need to improve my style for writing letters of acceptance or rejection or whatever. I’ve mostly used the automatic draft, but I’ve seen a few instances where people were more personal and found it nice.

I look forward to your valuable contribution to this blog via the comments.

* : the strongest competition is still between authors probably, in any case, but in narrow fields, for young journals…

A first today - unexpected

I spoke to a journalist today, who rang me!

That was a bit of a surprise. She was ringing about a study I'm involved in. Seemingly, the leaders of the study issued a press statement that mentionned my name (last in all 3 collaborators) - they didn't inform me about that, and even though I was aware they were going to contact the press, this kinda sucks.

Anyhow, after trying to reach everybody else on the list, and no one picked up, she contacted me. I couldn't answer all her questions (and was therefore careful not to), and I think considering the fact I was not expecting this phone call at all, I did OK...

Few! My hands were sweaty when I put the phone down though!

So maybe my work actually IS exciting.

Rejected models

I am still involved in a collaboration that dates from my postdoc. This collaboration has been previously referred to as the “doomed project”.

The Doom has reached new depths today.

For the story, this collaboration was a very original one in the whole project since it gathered very diverse teams. However, the work has been hindered by the collaboration’s initiator constant stalling (I’ve stopped counting the number of times I have explained some simple things I do). It was also slowed down by another collaborators business (and lack of research staff). Both these guys are very senior, and whatever happens or doesn’t over the course of this will bear little consequence for them. On the other side there’s me, a not-any-longer postdoc but still-needs -publications, and a researcher who is desperately trying to bring this forward because it’s a big chunk of her thesis. She is the Patient Mediator (PM).

Since about three years now, PM has patiently herded all these people, the most difficult being the senior people. And yet, we still seem to be discussing really basic stuff. “Can stepwise girl present what kind of variables she intends to compute?” (I have done this at least four times, and have other people in the group). And now the other bloke is saying “Yeah, well I don’t really agree with the use of the method used by stepwise girl” - except, I did not use this method this time, as presented in PM’s presentations, and my reports on more than one occasion. He is also poopooing some other methods I used (linking it to a supposedly very poor habit of people in my discipline), but omitting to mention that if we drop that approach, we also drop of whole chunk of info.

I am sick of this crap, but am sticking with it because of PM who needs the thing to get done. But I think these two blokes are setting a very poor example of collaborative work that is always on the tone of opposition and non-constructive criticism. How come it is always PM who needs to propose steps forward? How come we still are wasting every one's time of basic stuff that we discussed? How come we still cannot see whatever will possible here?

Laptop needed a break

As I mentionned last saturday, the week past was a heavy one on the teaching point of view, and there was a big grant deadline on friday.

To spice things up, my laptop went into a coma on monday. A battery reset initially seemed to do the trick, but on tuesday (just after I managed a final back up!!), it made it clear that it wasn't interested in this world anymore. The tech has completely reformatted the hard drive, and so far so good. It's like having a new one, since the desktop is completely clear (something I never manage. It's already filling), and it's got all sort of default setting (background vista drawing eeeuuww).

Anyhow, I became very fond of my work desktop this week, and being amazed at how nice it is to have a proper big screen and keyboard! Now, I need to find a way to swtich from one to the other withouth deleting any stuff... suggestions welcome.

This computer problem made for interesting last minute panic over the grant application, due to a weird and yet to be understood combination of things. During the week, I added references given by my project partners in the ref manager - on the desktop. But when I wanted to compile the thing (on friday morning - deadline: drop in person in another town at 5pm) I realised that my desktop has a demo version that will only compile 10 references. Argh! OK, can go to laptop since it's fixed. OK, transfer latest version.... hang on, where are those new refs??? I thought I had done something wrong in the process but it seemed more complicated. New refs were there, but somewhat hidden (I know! it doesn't make sense!!) but by the time I realised that I had re-entered them, and it seems that it got the software confused... This didn't help with keeping a quiet and focused mind. Anyway, I think it's all correct now, the proposal got in on time, and I think our proposal really is quite nice, and we're enthusiastic about it. Fingers crossed!

So, the conference

So, how did it go in the end?

I met lots of people! I got the impression that getting to know a few well connected people and getting into a group, such as that journal, can help start a snowball effect. It was quite nice. I started feeling more confident in talking to people.

My colleague and myself possibly could have spent less time together, but I think my (younger) colleague didn't do bad at all at working on her own network.

So to some extent I stick to what I said, that if you don't know anyone, going on your own is probably not bad at all, if you know a few, try to work from there. And useful to remember: some people seem to be NOT interested in talking to ANYONE (so it's not you who is necessarily bad at it!); and some OTHER people might be lonely and happy to talk and get to know you. (so go talk to them!)

Other impressions on the conference:
-talks seem to have been spread in sessions at random. In my case it meant I was not in the session I would have picked - and considering some talks in that one seemed totally out of place, I don't think that space was the issue. I guess it wasn't too bad, but far from ideal.
-I really, really don't think that giving free tequila at the dinner was a good idea. Call me a party pooper, but as much as I enjoy casual interaction with colleagues and social activities, I would rather it did not include tequila shots and caterpillar dance at a large scale. There. Now you know.
-There were some interesting session formats. One I saw that I found worked quite well was a poster/talk session. About 5-7 presenters have a poster in the room. People wander around and read the posters for about 15 mins. Then each presenter comments on their posters for about 5 mins each for everyone, and then there is discussion. This of course serves a different purpose than the classical talk format, but the things it offered I thought were interesting. Some information is provided, but a large space is left for discussion. There were I guess 20-30 people attending that session.
-This conference was attended by a majority of non-English speakers. And a lot actually did not speak english or very little. Simultaneous translations were provided for the plenaries... but... I cannot help to wonder if this is good. We might not like it, but english currently is the international and scientific language. And it's all fine to question that, but in the meantime, refusing to use it means you exclude the people who don't speak your language.... Mhhi don't know.

Attending a conference: who to go with?

So I’m going to a conference next week. I went to the last edition of this one two years ago, not long into my post-doc. I barely knew anyone, and those I knew the name of were far too senior for me to hang out with (apart from the brief bow to them if I got the chance). I had been on my own from my lab, so I was really alone –initially anyway. I had previously been to big conferences, but always with a bunch of other researchers from my own lab, so I was never alone, like. But I always found it very hard to meet new people, get into conversation with people and all. Then that one where I went on my own, I met loads of people about my age/stage of career, or not, and chatted with many people, got into discussion. It was great. But I had no other option, and no one to fall back to to go out for dinner.

This time, just one colleague will be joining me, but things will be really different: I am less of an underling (if I may say so): my experience has increased, my portfolio as well, I’m in charge of my own shit. That’s a first major difference. Also, it happens that this time I will know a lot of people attending; and not just colleagues, and not people from projects I’m involved in. People from different institutions, people I will collaborate with in the future. And also, finally, I’m now involved in one of the associated journals meaning I get to go to some private restricted meetings where I’ll get to meet new people in a privileged context of a group working on one common thing, as someone just not looking and learning (although I have a lot of learning to do still!).

So I’m curious to see how it goes, and how my feeling of the conference will be this time. After my last experience I told many young colleagues that going to a conference on your own is probably the best way to do it, even if it’s a bit scary. But now I’m actually getting part of a network, I guess this’ll be interesting too!

But I SHOULD go back and finish those slides…

Where did the week go? (how many bloggers have used this title already? sorry to you all)

Things have been a bit crazy here recently due a good and a bad reason.

The good reason is the fact that I end up being coordinator for that proposal mentioned previously. This has meant that I spent some time this week polishing our pre-proposal, collecting references, sending email reminders around, and, finally, submitting the thing. Eveybody’s been fairly well behaved (at this stage anyway) so not too much panic, but a certain degree of stress related to this brand new responsibility. Not just a PI, but a coordinator. Other new tasks this week have involved being a review editor for the first time. Again, I got the help I needed and asked for, if maybe at the last minute in order to stick to a reasonable time frame. Apart from that, I have been brainstorming for a proposal that, if I get it, would shower me and my students (to start early 2009) with fancy computers and equipment. This is quite a different proposal than the stuff I’ve been writing so far; some of it is about presenting your science in a fancy way, but also you need to show precisely why those fancy computers will be better than other crap you’ve been using so far. I suspect they’ll only fund research on such sexy topics as farts of the universe, but hey, I can make my work look sexy too. I find challenging to research technical details of how I can make this look exciting… here again, thankfully, I am finding advice.

The bad reason is that I have been sucked in a spiral of poor productivity, and this has barely translated in more time on the web (or writing posts, or even reading any). It’s odd. I think two main things happened. First, I suddenly seemed to have many extra things than what I thought a week or two ago. Because I felt like I had all that to do, I didn’t know where to start all of a sudden. Second, because I’m currently in a remote time zone compared to most people I interact with for work (and this has recently involved a lot of administrative procedures for students-to-arrive-in-2009), I get all my email during the night, meaning that I have a big pile of new emails waiting for me in the morning and barely any coming during the day. This isn’t too bad in itself, but I’ve been treating it all in the morning, when the day is young, and it ends up eating so much of my morning that I then waste the rest of it and only start the *proper* work in the afternoon, well know for NOT being my best time of the day. Before leaving for the Big Stay I had started using this trick to avoid having email using too much of my day: NOT look at any before at least 10.30, which worked very well at limiting the time (don’t remember where I read that). But I completely dropped that. A lot of this emails keeps me in touch with my home base, gives me info I’d get by catching a colleague in the corridor. So it’s difficult to resist, but I really should try.

With the upcoming conference (leaving in a week), I have to make progress on the proposal and on some data I promised to colleagues… better get a grip tomorrow morning. And please just don't even mention that long overdue draft that I promised myself I'd send to my collaborator before Christmas. Things look bad there...

Building partnerships (when there's little €)

Currently in the process of elaborating a grant proposal with another young colleage, we are pondering on how to organise the partnership.

Here’s the deal: we are both in HomeCountry and planning to apply to national funding, so it’s not so big. The funding agency requires the inclusion of international partners, but limits their participation to a small fraction of the final budget (eg no full time staff for them) and they have to provide some of that fraction themselves.

We already have an arrangement with an international partner in another industrialised/north/developed/whatever you want to call it country. But study sites would be in developing/south/whatever you want to call them countries. Remember, international partners wouldn’t be able to hire any staff on this. Colleague’s institution already has many partnerships with the groups we would deal with, that are well-funded.

So we are wondering how to organise this: should we include them as partners, knowing that they will have the burden to have to provide funding themselves, for little to gain; or should we include them as unfunded partners in the project, with us planning for comfortable field work budget to make sure we can provide everything needed on the field for the project, and include them where appropriate in publications?

This is a flaw in the funding programme I guess, but we can't change that, we just have to find the most equitable way to deal with the situation. We actually sent this question to the advisors for the programme... we'll see.

Unrelated to this it seems that I will be coordinator of this project, by default. This is a very daunting prospect; this would be my first collaboration as a PI, and I would have hoped not to have to deal with the hassle of coordination. But I’m starting to think that it will at least give me some authority to kick asses if said asses don’t do what they should, instead of moaning about it. Might need to learn some diplomacy skills here, though.

Independence

Around the time I was finishing my PhD and checking my options for post-docs, I remember discussing one with my advisor. I was saying that, having visited the lab in question, from observing and discussing with the researchers, I knew that people were a bit left to their own device. I expressed my concern about my ability to navigate with the bare minimum in help. And he said “Ah well, you’re independent enough for that!”

I remember at the time I was a bit perplexed because I had never really thought of it and didn’t really think I was really independent. I think indeed I can decide to do things and set off to do them, but my main issue is that I like to be validated in what I do. When I was doing my PhD research, my advisor was particularly good at letting people experiment and test their own ideas, although he always made sure people didn’t get side tracked on hopeless stuff. I suppose he was good at nurturing independence without it turning into abandonment. But when I hesitated I could always knock on his door to check.

When I think back I guess I always considered that it was my responsibility to do well and therefore never really thought of whether I was independent enough, I just did things, and tried my best. And also I did it because I enjoyed them.

Since then, I have missed the possibility to share my decisions (small or larger) with an advisor, and whenever I get the chance to discuss things with (informal) mentors or colleagues, I really enjoy the feedback and the advice.

This all came back to me recently during the field work I mentioned recently where I saw some very slacking grad students. Do they need precise instructions? Do they just not want to do it? Do they think it is OK for someone else to do things? Do they just not see where they could do and learn? I was really perplexed. Although I reckon there was possibly not enough direction for the trip, there was definitely a lack of voluntary participation from some.
I’m wondering to what extent the two notions of independence (being able to do things on your own, or of your own initiative) and responsibility (in the sense that you consider that as a staff member/collaborator/project participant/whatever at whatever level, you can make a difference and a significant and positive participation) are linked. Maybe they’re not? Maybe it’s just the way I see things?

AFNFM: my first impressions

As suggested by Alice over at ScienceWomen, I got myself Advice for New Faculty Members by Robert Boice, and I’ve set to read it and to apply his advice.

So far I have read the section on teaching. Although I’m not teaching this semester, I have tried to start applying his advice to a seminar I had to give. I’m also participating in improving/work on/adapt a course someone else has been giving, with that person, and another one.

Basically, his advice is:
Wait;
Begin before you feel ready;
Prepare and present in brief, regular sessions;
Stop;
Moderate overattachment and overreaction;
Moderate negative thinking and strong emotions;
Let others do some of the work;
Moderate classroom incivilities.

While preparing for my seminar, I have tried to apply 1, 2, 3 and 4. Also 5 to some extent. I have let my mind wander on the themes of the seminar, I have made a brief outline, which I subsequently made longer and more detailed then only started putting slides together. And I think it has definitely helped me see more connections in the work I was presenting (which was a sort of compilation of my own work) and build a better story around it, make one strong point rather than a string of smaller, less significant points. I did work in brief sessions except for one longer one (but still <2 hours) and some practice sessions. BTW, my main advice to people looking for advice on giving good presentations is PRACTICE. Every time I did not do that, I regretted it. And when I presented, I tried to apply 5, thinking that is was “just” a seminar and that nothing of major consequence could happen. And I think it helped me being relaxed and a more “listenable” speaker. For the other, actual course work, I also try to work in brief sessions and since we’re sharing the work and trying to avoid stepping on each other’s toes, I learn about 7 too. So far, I’m quite happy with the book and I believe it can really help have a more balanced approach to course preparation (and hopefully, writing). I think I was already sort of doing it, but not in a way that improved the balance significantly. However, one of my main questions is: how can that be really carried out during the teaching semester? When classes come one right after the other? When you need to trawl the literature for student reading, for examples? I cannot see how my long nights of “binge work” are going to disappear this soon. But after all Boice does say that it does require patience and a lot of practice. I will have to make a conscious and sustained effort during my teaching semester (starting end of January) and see if I can make that happen. Any thoughts from those who have tried in real-heavy-teaching-load situation?

Motivation letters

Sorry I was silent again, but the Long Stay is appearing to be busy!! It's all great. Already two weeks have elapsed and it's very very interesting. I'll blog about it, but I still need to absorb and digest.

Today I wanted to give some thoughts on motivation letters. I'm sure it's all been written a zillion times before, but this is a blog, so ah! I'll say it anyway.

In the past two months I reviewed a number of applications that included a motivation letter. I was quite surprised at how varied they were, even though I did not get a huge number. I was surprised to see how good this is at showing people's motivation (that's a good start) but also imagination, and interest in the topic.

Honestly, if a letter is like page 2 of How to write a motivation letter, with impersonal things, I fall asleep directly. If it speaks about preparing food when what the project is about is really about cookies and how to combine them with cold beverages, I fall asleep. I can't feel any motivation there.

When someone tells me that they haven't combined cookies with cold beverages but that they did do that for cakes, and/or that they find cookies really cool, then I'm awake. And interested. It's not necessarily in the length or past experience, but about showing genuine interest in the topic (and not just in a PhD studentship).

And anyhow, I wonder why people who work on savory dishes contact me at all. If they want to work on savory dishes... Anyway, spending time on a motivation letter is really time well spent. That's where you can show who you are and why you're better than the other one.

The whole hiring people stuff is interesting. It is completely new to me. Now on to sorting the administrative hassle linked to it... Gaah!

One year on

So it is now just over one year since I started as an ass prof, a lecturer or whatever you like to call it. The best metaphor that I can think of to describe it is that I feel like learning to ride a bike: I feel like I can take the world over thanks to new capacities, I got a fresh and exciting view of the world around me, but I still feel a bit insecure and unstable.

I feel like I have learned a great deal over the past year, and feel like the one coming will be just as challenging, in a good way.

What I have achieved:
-I have managed the first year of classes and although there is much improvement to be brought, I think I’m facing the right direction. Because of a small number of students, I also don’t feel like assessing success just on one group would be fair (to me).
-I managed to get one government-funded research contract, and one prestigious travel grant;
-I have started to take my own place in the lab, with other profs and with other researchers;
-I think I have made some progress on the way to good time management. Can still improve, though.

What I still haven’t done or places where I need more progress next year:
-publications!!
-I will start supervising PhD students (and first need to secure their hiring);
-hopefully continue on the same way for grant writing and securing;
-be a more assertive and less apologetic professor. I really need to stop apologizing for it.

When I compare my progress to my official plan for the two first years (the one I will be assessed on in two years, at the end of my probation period), I think I have done quite well, except for one thing: publications. I will be co-author of two papers this year (one accepted; the other almost ready). But my own stuff really has made little progress. I’m almost there for the analysis… but still some work.

Have I enjoyed the job? Sometimes I’ve cursed myself and the place and the students and the colleagues and the universe. Sometimes I feel really excited by what I am achieving. Sometimes I wonder how my life would be if I had another job, one that would maybe have less pressure (if such a thing exists), but when I actually ask myself what I would like to do instead, I can’t think of anything reasonable… I take it as a sign that I should carry on…

Any tips for interviewing?

I have received a few applications (yes, this is the way here: get ~5 app for one PhD studentship). The grant attached to it has very strict criteria of age and grades and there is just one candidate I want to interview. There's two actually, but one does not fit the grant's criteria, unfortunately. We'll speak on the phone on thursday.

I'm looking for any advice you'd have as to what or how to ask things.

The background: the candidate has a very strong CV but I'd like to hear more on:
-the candidate's motivation to pursue the topic of PhD. Candidate has worked on similar stuff previously but kind of drifted away during his master studies;
-part of the drift was away from empirical work, which will be a substantial chunck of what candidate will have to do. Is candidate into empirical work still?;
-his capacity to work in a team and to interact with other PhD students working on a close topic (which I hope will appear soon). I don't need people to become best pals, but I would consider it necessary that they can discuss and exchange.

Anything else I should ask about?

Thanks for any help! This is the most newest thing on the job so far and it terrorises me. I try to remember that you can't check everything and that even the best people sometimes misjudge candidates... but I also want to do things but the rules and in as correct a way as possible for everyone.

Just some stuff

I do have more substantial blog stuff going through my mind, but I'm going through a somewhat dry work patch. After weeks of putting the data together I am at the critical moment when pretty much all the data is there and I need to plunge into the analysis and make sense of it all.

Although this is still related to my post doc, it is something I did completely out of my own initiative and with little supervision. My supervisor wans't so interested, it got delayed, and now I am sort of on my own on this. I do get help from someone else, but communication is somewhat hindered by that person's level of English.

I find the idea of doing this on my own a bit daunting for some (stupid) reason and this crossroad between data collation and preparation and actual analysis is revealing it in a rather dramatic and unfortunate way. I really need to kick my butt to move on. It's appaling. I mean, I am being appaling and silly.

Anyway, we're now just three weeks from our deprature for The Long Stay Abroad. We got the visas... that was not as smooth as it should have been. They made a mistake on Husband's visa, which I find hilarious considering of fussy they can be. They changed it for a new one. He now has a cancelled one and a proper one. Looks very good.

I think I am getting on top of the admin of being away for three months, although I still have a few things to arrange with the bank and insurance. I'll be happy when that is all done, because I am sure it is also interfering with my motivation for doing proper work.

Ah well. I'll get back to it. For now.

Holiday D-2

After much deliberation (read torturing myself), I have decided not to bring my computer along during the holiday. I will probably not have a chance to use it the first week. And the second one, well, I’m sure I’ll keep myself busy too. I *could* work during the holiday (i.e. my slow progress could do with some extra effort)… but my couple and my health could do with two weeks of leisure and sleep. Hopefully I’ll be so well refreshed and in great mental and physical shape that I’ll work really well as soon as I am back. (Ahah. Nothing’s wrong with dreaming!). I am bringing some reading though (ack).

In any case, expect light posting in the coming two weeks. Hope the weather will be good because I firmly intend to swim in the Atlantic!

Items are being crossed off the list:
-sent final data to colleagues on vague project;
-had a great meeting yesterday with colleagues. I look forward to chew on their data;
-now dashing to finish report to sent to Senior Famous Collaborator.

I managed to de-disperse myself by making plans before I got in the office, with a short list of discrete tasks for the day, and I know which one I want to start with. So I directly start working and get on track for the day. It's worked.

And people, please knock on my office door before entering. Thanks.

Dispersed (again)

After about two weeks of blissful ignorance of the world and concentration on Main Current Research, I find myself dispersed again. I have started working on several different things again, and also been doing a series of boring admin tasks. As a consequence of that, I find it difficult to make good progress and to focus properly on anything. However, before departing for a two weeks holiday (woohoo!) next Friday I have to:
-layout, comment, and send intermediate results of Main Current Research to Senior Famous Collaborator;
-meet foreign colleagues and set up new study;
-put together some last data on vague previous collaboration;
-arrange for summer exams data and communicate them to students.

Hope nothing else falls on my plate until then…

How I miss the time when I could just focus on a limited number of tasks, and when other things to do where a welcome distraction from daily routine. I really need to adapt to constantly switching my brain on and off things; I think I also need to organise research in larger chunks of one same task or topic. The means overcoming the frustration of seeing things temporarily grinding to a halt. But for later better progress…

Work or leisure ?

Next week, there is going to be the fourth evening party held for PhD completion and/or departure in about 3 months. And people already start speaking about the upcoming department summer barbecue.

I can’t help but feel unmotivated by these. I only attended one of the parties already held lately. How social is one supposed to be? Am I already turning into a grumpy asocial professor?

I think my main issue is that I already feel like a lot of my evenings and weekends are eaten up by work. I haven’t seen some close friends and family in months even though they live less than 1.5 hours away (and The Long Stay abroad sort of puts a deadline for catching up with these people). So, no, I don’t feel super motivated to see people I already spend my days with, few of them being actual friends.

But I’m in an odd position in the way that although a lecturer, I’m still in the 95% confidence interval of PhD students age. They all seem to be super enthusiastic about such events, even though I’m sure they all have exciting social lives out of work. Some of them seem to expect the same reaction from me, and speaking about nights and weekends spent working would just make me look complainy.

Even then, they seem to consider these events as fun (and to be honest, they can be), but I can’t help but feel I’m just fulfilling some work duty.

There’s one such thing coming up on Monday and I still haven’t decided. The fact that that day seems to be a suitable day for going to see Sex and the City with a bunch of friends does not help, I’m afraid.

What’s your point ?

Finally responding to ecogeofemme’s invite to share our tips for writing, here is my contribution. It’s not so bad I left it until today, because I attended a seminar on… writing scientific papers today.

The seminar confirmed the main thing I wanted to say and added a few more interesting points. I think the major thing when you write a paper – and by that I mean the actual “I write a piece that I will submit to a journal” as opposed to writing reports to remember things – is to know what your point is.

The speaker today expressed it by saying: “one paper, one story”, and insisting that you actually have a good story: with a beginning: what’s the issue? A middle: what have you done to tackle it? And finally a conclusion: the discussion of what you found out. This really boils down to knowing exactly what it is you want to tell people and why it’s worth spending time reading your paper. Once you have that in mind, it becomes easier to know what you need to include and what just makes it confused (i.e. not serving the story).

Practically, the way to proceed is to start with an outline*. Previously I had heard that an abstract is a way to start: in 200 words, what is your story? What is your point? And you can keep on referring to it as you write the paper: am I helping my story here, or getting diverted? However, today’s speaker did not recommend that that abstract be used as the final abstract. He suggested everyone should find their preferred way of preparing that outline: a series of post-it notes you can reshuffle to organise ideas, preparing your tables and figures, or whatever you find suits you. Personally I have used the abstract method a few time and found it helped me sticking to my story’s thread.

This “one story, one paper” recommendation the speaker made today was part of a series of three that also included “keep it simple”, and “use correct language”. The latter is possibly most relevant to non-native English speakers.

One advice he gave that I really liked and will try to remember is that the title and abstract need to be really carefully written: that is what people will read to decide whether to read the whole paper… or not.

He also recommended that the introduction included some very general indication of methods and results used and obtained in the paper, but admitted that was a more controversial piece of advice.

He recommended this book. I haven’t red it… if anyone has an opinion on it, I’m interested!

* Just had a look at the comments over at the Happy Scientist after writing this… nothing outrageously new here, so… but I’m going to publish this (here) nonetheless!

Update: JaneB recommends the book too...

The week of "what did I do today???"

I thought this week would be a bit more quiet but it seems that I vastly underestimated the time it would take me to wrap up on the teaching business and on the travel fund application stuff.

So in order to wrap up teaching (for now) I still had a pile of essays to mark, and two piles to read to cross check marks given by the TA (we’ve been working on these together and they were new so we thought two people marking would be better than one). Also had to prepare questions for three exams, and prepare brief expected answers for them so that I can mark them consistently and more efficiently.

There is also one last funding application for the Long Stay Abroad that I want to send in, and which is due next week.

On top of that there are a few tasks, more or less important, that I have to squeeze in: a paper review (short paper) and website updating stuff. And a conference abstract to submit.

I very stupidly thought I would be able to do all this during flights to and from the weekend trip to Husband’s country; that did not work because: on the way to there, the passenger in front of me put his seat back and I could barely see my screen or type (I have a largish laptop because I need a big-ish screen), and the flight back, well I was very tired and the flight was delayed so no energy left. I also thought I could do a lot of this on my train commute. But trains have been packed, I’ve had to travel standing, which is really not great, even for flipping through reports.

So I resolved to drop (again hhhh) the research for a few days and just clear my desk of all these things. Not going as fast as I wish but making progress nonetheless. I have:
-finished the application. Only need the department chair’s signature.
-almost done with the abstract. I mean, really, this time.
-finished with marking the essays. I’ll compare them all one last time tomorrow and then will drop them at my colleague’s. Have to check for some plagiarism crap.
-made good progress with the other two piles (about half way).
-for the website, I’m mostly waiting for colleague’s last comments, I will speak to our webmaster tomorrow for a few last details, and that’s that.
-finished two sets of questions, and have a few ideas for the next one. (“Is this question worth 5 or 6 points?” pfff).

So hopefully, stepwise girl will be back in the business on Friday. Fingers crossed.

Wow. Long post about nothing. Sorry about that. And by the way, I am brewing some thoughts on writing, following ecogeofemme’s question. Also next week I’ll be attending my country’s association of women in science general assembly – my first. Hopefully some good stuff to report there.