Cal Newport on following your passion

Cal Newport recently came out with a new book So Good They Can't Ignore You. Part of his central thesis is that "following your passion" and similar cliches given at graduation speeches are terrible advice.

I've followed Cal Newport's blog for years and he's been preaching this for many months. I agree with his idea, though I find his message kind of simplistic and I think he could explain it better.

I think that he's mainly pushing back against the cliche of "following your passion." There are a few jobs where passion is very common. Many people who go into sports, art, music, acting were children who saw adults doing something and decided they wanted to do it to. But most jobs aren't tangible like that. A lot of people got to their successful, fulfilling career through some circuitous route. The main point is that typically there is no easy obvious route to the wonderful career.

I went to a government career panel (for PhD scientists) and one of the panelists said that he talked to some other guys and they all agreed that they came to their current job in a circuitous route. It was only in hindsight that they could see how each choice they made along the way brought them to where they are now. It was perfectly logical now, but there's no way they could have predicted it when they were just beginning their working life.

Everyone will have preferences for some kinds of work over others and that is not something that should be ignored. But it might not be a overwhelmingly "passionate" preference -- like falling in love. The problem with a statement like "follow your passion" is that it makes it sound like the ideal career choice will suddenly come to you in a fit of heavenly inspiration. Like how a naive teenager might think that the first person they fall in love with is the person they'll marry for life.

There is also the pressure of living in a highly competitive world and opportunity cost. Life is much easier if you picked the "right" path from the start, went to the right college and majored in the right subject, etc. Yes, that is true, but there should be more discussion of how mild "failure" and changing directions is normal in a career.

What I learned at the defense industry career panel

This afternoon, I went to a panel about doing science in government, mostly defense work. It was the best career event I've ever been to. The three panelists were diverse, interesting, charismatic, down-to-earth, and genuinely helpful. All three had PhDs in science/engineering. I'm relating what I learned from memory, so the account below is not entirely accurate.

The first panelist was a man who works in a technology office. He said that nowadays he mostly signs checks. But back in the day, he did all sorts of cool defense research. He even slept on an aircraft carrier. He recommended that we cyberstalk as much as possible to get a job. He told us that he gets to work at 6 am and has an hour before everyone else shows up. That's the perfect time for an informational interview over the phone. He also cyberstalks, from the hiring end. When he Googles people, he likes to see that they have varied experiences, for example, doing charity work in a poor area. He believed that the PhD is a degree in perseverance. He got his PhD while working full-time, though towards the end when he was writing his thesis, he got a few days off a week. Also, it was interesting when he asked how many people in the room (mostly science grad students and postdocs) wanted to be rich. Almost no one raised their hand. He claimed that MIT, almost everyone raised their hand. He told us that the young should not go into policy, that was something for later in one's career if you still wanted to do it. I don't recall the exact reason. Overall, he was very matter-of-fact and blunt, with strong opinions.

The second panelist was a Eastern European woman who worked in the bioweapons office. She emphasized that her PhD had nothing to do with bioweapons. The most interesting thing was that she was also in the Army reserve and had officer rank. But because of her Eastern European background and accent, people didn't believe that she was in the Army. They asked "which army?" She remarked that she felt just as loyal to the US as anyone else, because she had to swear allegiance twice -- first to become a US citizen, then to join the Army. She also made a comment about Eastern Europe being very different than America. For example, the joke is that if an officer tells a US soldier to jump, the soldier say "how high?" An Eastern European soldier would ask "why?"

The last panelist was a guy who works with scientists from many fields. He gave the example of having a discussion about weapons with a biologist, chemist, and physicist. His job was to bring everyone together and synthesize the different ideas and perspectives. He had a very unusual background. He was half-Hispanic and half-German and grew up on the West Coast. His father was a rocket engineer so he grew up learning about rockets. But he never actually studied engineering in college. He stressed the importance of learning different subjects. He himself felt that his study of jazz in college really helped him become a good thinker, even though the subject seems to have nothing in common with science. (I emailed him a few days after the panel and he said it's important to have hobbies not just because they make you smarter, but also for the sake of your sanity.) He also said that a while back, he was on a job panel and when the panelists compared notes, they realized that they had never planned their job path. Stuff just happened. They had no idea what they were doing at the time; only looking back retroactively, could they construct a "logical" path. He recommended just doing whatever you find interesting instead of scheming some plan to work your way to the top.

To summarize, here are some of the most interesting (and subjective) things I learned:

• Cyberstalk as much as possible to get a job.
• For many people, phone calls are easiest very early in the morning.
• Don't do policy when you're young.
• If you enjoy studying peripheral seemingly useless subjects, don't worry. They'll be surprisingly useful in subtle ways.
• There is no coherent job path. So just do whatever you find interesting. Life is too short.

Ramit Sethi, empathy, the value of mistakes, and the perfect mentor

In the last five years, I've noticed the rise of what I call "internet personalities." Just like Oprah on TV, there are people who give advice on the best ways to manage your life. Their advice is aimed at the highly educated, tech savvy audience. A few examples of internet personalities: Tim Ferriss of the Four Hour Work Week, Leo Babauta of Zen Habits, etc. They build up a big audience on the internet, write a book and market the hell out of it to get it on the New York Times Bestseller list, and then repeat.

Recently, I've been reading Ramit Sethi's blog, which has the outrageous title, "I Will Teach You To Be Rich." Ramit's goal is to teach young (relatively well-educated) people how to manage their lives. The world is changing so fast, we are bombarded with information, and we are overwhelmed by choices. Our parents can't help us because frankly, they don't know anything. Ramit's particular angle is to use his educational background in behavioral psychology to reach young people.

You can find lots of life management advice scattered across the internet, but that is a time-consuming way to learn. Ramit packages his advice in a way that is accessible and shows empathy for young people. I find that our so-called elders can be pretty arrogant and dismissive of young people's concerns. They don't understand what we go through. Ramit does. He expresses sympathyand then yells at his audience (something along the lines of "wake up, what you're doing is stupid, stop doing that and do this.") This strange combination of empathy, admonishment, and enthusiasm is somehow endearing and persuasive.

Ramit started his blog in personal finance, but now he has turned to the greater challenge of leading people to their "dream job." I've talked to various middle-aged people about the career search and they are uniformly dismissive of the anxiety us young people have about the job search. Some of these people are really nice but it's clear that in the back of their minds, they think that the anxiety is really cowardice. I suppose that's easy to think when they were able to get their first couple jobs without any significant roadbumps. Ramit actually takes the time to talk about the psychological barriers we face when embarking on a job search: "I'm not qualified", "I don't like networking", "I don't want to rule out jobs because I'm closing doors," etc. Our "old-fogey" elders would find this kind of stuff is stupid, but Ramit takes the time to explain why these barriers don't make sense.

For example, one thing I always wondered about is why do people (even students from Ivy League schools) have so much trouble finding jobs. Ramit explains that they are wasting time on ineffective techniques like polishing their resume or shotgunning their resume on monster.com. They should really be networking to find jobs they are excited about. It seems paradoxical that eliminating choiceis the right way, but it works because when you focus on just a few jobs and companies, you can research the hell out of these places and tailor your approach to the specific job title/company, rather than submitting a generic resume that is sure to be rejected.

Ramit recently talked about "the top seven mistakes for finding a dream job." I like how he focused on mistakes as opposed to telling you what to do. I frequently find that it's more valuable to find out what not to do rather than what to do. It's much easier for me to remember people's mistakes and avoid them (my mind is screaming "no, no, no"). If someone tells me to do something that I don't want to do, I just feel annoyed (my mind is going "nag, nag, nag").

Ramit is a guy who is really putting his psychology skills to work and I admire him for that. Personally, I think mentoring and giving advice is very hard [1]. The perfect, ideal mentor would give you the exact advice you needed at exactly the right time and avoid burdening you with irrelevant or anxiety-provoking thoughts. That is hard. An example of what is not good mentoring: your mother shrieking in your ear about how you'll be robbed by gypsies if you travel to Europe. Maybe those guys and gals in artificial intelligence should program the perfect mentor.

[1] This reminds me of a post I wrote about the book A River Runs Through It.

Where does the future of American innovation lie?

Our department chair send out a personal email telling us to attend a special event.  A prominent former head of a major government agency was visiting and the chair, being a personal friend, persuaded him to come talk to grad students and postdocs about careers.

As expected, he was opinionated but sincere and charismatic.  He thought that American innovation will come from startups, not government or academia.  In his opinion, government is paralyzed by interpersonal politics and it is so difficult to get grants in academia (average age of first NIH grant is 43).  Scientists, especially postdocs, are encouraged to do incremental work, rather than something revolutionary.

I asked a question about why it seemed like all the startups were internet software companies.  He said it has to do with scale.  It is much easier to be an internet startup than a startup that has to build something (e.g. clean energy).  The internet startup only has to pay for office space, computers, and salaries.  Since their product is available on internet, there is a huge multiplication factor, as everyone has a computer and a smartphone.  A clean energy startup could take ten years to become profitable.  The key to building a successful startup is that you need to beat a well-established company by an order-of-magnitude, whether that is price or efficiency.

He talked a little about his experience working in government.  He was rather frustrated with how much money is wasted in space science and exploration.  The problem is that the American public doesn't believe anyone should die in exploration or war.  They have to spend money to ensure the safety of astronauts to an extreme degree.  That's why he eventually quit.  Because the stress of being responsible for space shuttle launches was overwhelming.

Yet, he though highly of people who worked in government.  He told us rather emphatically, "If the president asks you to work for him, you should say yes!"  As the discussion wound down, he said "Let me end by telling this story... " (Such a polished, prepared guy that he had a heart-warming story for the end.)  He went to USSR in 1991 to talk with the Soviet space agency.  While he was there, the coup d'état started.  There was shooting and tanks everywhere.  He became alarmed and tried to contact the American embassy.  They said they couldn't help because people were shooting into the windows of the building.  He tried to contact the White House and ask the president what to do.  Meanwhile, he found the pilot and asked him if he could fly them out.  The pilot said that if he took everyone, including all the staff, they wouldn't have enough fuel to get to Helsinki.  He asked the pilot to take out the seats and they found that this reduction of weight would be sufficient.  Eventually, he was told that the president would appreciate it if he stayed as a show of support for democracy.  He apprised his staff of the situation and told them it was their personal choice whether to go or stay.  Everyone stayed.  Then he asked the Soviet space agency director if they were still going to hold their discussion.  The director acted like it was any other day and they got the deal done.  If you're not a complete cynic, I would call that a beautiful patriotic moment.

Link of the day: Hacking your own job

Michael Ellsberg wrote a fantastic essay explaining how to become a self-made freelancer. Summary of the essay:

• Something like 80% of jobs are obtained through networking, not resume dropping.
• You can't "hack" the credential oriented jobs like being a doctor or lawyer, but you can hack all other jobs (side step formal credential requirements) by reading books, talking to people, networking.
• There are many successful people who have pulled off this hack through self-discipline and devotion to learning on their own.
• This post outlines a plan on how you can achieve success without formal credentials.

But what I like most about the essay is that it alludes to the American ethos of the self-made man:

Most people who drop out of school also drop out of learning... However, there are people who drop out of formal education, while still maintaining an absolute passion and discipline for learning—informally, non-institutionally, in the real world... I’ve interviewed almost 40 millionaire and billionaires, all self-made, and none of them finished college. In interviewing them, I was consistently struck by one thing they all had in common: a complete lack of regard for socially-sanctioned formal “requirements” for bringing success into their lives.

Essential skills for a scientist

I was having a conversation with someone who wasn't sure what he wanted to study in physics graduate school. He was worried that if he chose one field, it would be very hard to make progress, but it would be important work, whereas if he chose another field, it would be easier to make fast progress, but the work might not be so fundamental.

I wasn't sure what to say, so I advised him to take a different perspective:

"Another way you could make a choice is to think about what skills you want to acquire. You want to have the skills you need when the exciting development comes along, so that you can jump into it right away."

Wolfgang Ketterle, an atomic physicist and 2001 Nobel laureate, himself said that skills are important.

Changing fields was a crucial experience for me. Amazed to see how much of what I had learnt before could be applied within the new field, I realized that general skills are much more important than specific knowledge. I thought it would take a long time before I became productive in my new environment, but within months, graduate students who had been working in this area for much longer came and sought my advice and leadership. This experience gave me the self-confidence to venture into new areas, and provided the impetus for my later decision to come to the United States and start once again in a new field.

(Quoted from the Nobel Prize website autobiography)

The question is, what are the important skills for a scientist to learn? I can think of a few:

• Asking important questions and picking good research problems, i.e. ones that are solvable and interesting.
  
• Understanding the big picture and being able to pick out what is essential and interesting from a mess of details.
  
• Turning a relatively vague and abstract research question into a concrete calculation or an observable quantity that can be measured in an experiment.
  
• Writing (papers and grants)
  
• Speaking
  
• Managing and training (teaching) students
  
• Collaboration skills
  
• Life balance and project management
  
• Programming skills
  
• Math skills

In addition, for an experimentalist in physical science, it is also important to know some signal processing. (My sister contributed a few items on the list.)

Thoughts on deliberate practice

Lately I've been intrigued by discussion of deliberate practice. Cal Newport has a nice post explaining what "deliberate practice" really is.

Looking back at life, I can see where I applied deliberate practice. It’s really easy to do deliberate practice with sports since they are so structured and well-defined. I think that’s a good area to start with, to see how it’s done and to gain confidence. That's right: learning a sport is a good way to "practice" deliberate practice. In college, I spent about a year learning skating and hockey so I could make the varsity hockey team. I went to a couple PE classes and then spent as much time as I could at public skate and intramural hockey.

Here are my general thoughts about how to apply deliberate practice. The obvious factor everyone has already mentioned is practice time. (Malcolm Gladwell has popularized the notion that it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert on something.) Then read as much as possible about your subject. That could mean reading books, talking to people who are good at what you want to learn, or watching videos on the internet. Learn good technique and learn good taste (why do people think successful person X in your field is so great?). If you really want to get good fast, move to a place where you can fully immerse yourself in the topic. For example, if you want to become an artist, move to New York. If you want to learn a foreign language, move to that country.

Then refine and tailor the learning technique to yourself. Not all training methods will work for everyone. Find a way to maximize the efficiency of your learning technique. In hockey, professionals don’t practice hours everyday. They practice one hour at maximum intensity, just like a game situation. It is better to practice small amounts of time at high intensity then for long periods at low intensity.

If you want to become decently good at multiple things (as opposed to the 10,000 hour expert), I think it’s best to choose a hard fundamental area of the topic. If you want to become a scientist, physics is a great topic because it forces you to appreciate deep understanding. Physicists find it really easy to jump into other sciences like biology or linguistics. (Disclaimer: I am a physics grad student.) If you want to become a great visual artist, I would pick drawing/painting over photography. I’ve studied bits of both and I can already see that the technical aspects of photography are really easy to pick up. Drawing is much more skill-oriented and really forces you to think hard. There are plenty of self-taught photographers, but that's not really so true of painters.

Deliberate practice can be done in different amounts. Malcolm Gladwell's figure of 10,000 hours is intimidating because it means spending 20 hours a week learning for ten years. Committing ten years of your life isn’t really realistic. What I think one should do is do deliberate practice on one thing for a year at a time and evaluate at the end of the year.

Update on "The disadvantages of an elite education"

Previously I composed a personal response to William Deresiewicz's piece on "The disadvantages of an elite education." In addition to my post, I also wrote directly to Dr. Deresiewicz. (I call him doctor and not professor, because he's no longer with Yale.)

Here is the text of my email sent on 29 July 2008.

Dear Dr. Deresiewicz,

I'm currently a [university name] physics graduate student and I read your essay "The Disadvantages of an Elitist Education" with great interest.

For those of us who don't want to turn into elitist zombies, what do you suggest? Your essay discusses the problems of an elitist upbringing with incredible thoroughness, but you don't propose any solutions.

Travel? Read great literature? Go camping, Thoreau-style? Take up hobbies that bring us into contact with non-elitists? Protest? (hopefully, not with GESO)

Sincerely,

[name]

Note: GESO is a Yale graduate student union which is infamous for conducting pointless protests against supposed mistreatment of Yale graduate students.

Here is Dr. Deresiewicz's response dated 2 August 2008. [He tried to respond by email, but it didn't work (?), so he sent a letter to my department mailbox!]

Dear [name],

My e-mail kept getting bounced back, so I'm sending this the old-fashioned way.

I'm glad you found my piece interesting. Your question is not easily answered. Graduate school, especially, can feel like a little bubble, and I think you need to make an effort to get outside it, maintain social and intellectual interests that go beyond your specialization. Your proposed answers are actually not bad. Obviously, knowing there's a problem and keeping your mind open are already the beginning of a solution. But it's a long-term project. I wish I could be more helpful, but I think everyone needs to find their own answer.

Yours,

Bill Deresiewicz

Link of the day: "The disadvantages of an elite education"

I recently read an essay called "The disadvantages of an elite education" written by a former Yale English professor, William Deresiewicz. The essay is a thorough and damming harangue on the Ivy League university system.

Many of the author's major points are familiar. Yale and other elite colleges are just a mill for taking the children of upper-class parents and turning out more upper-class citizens. The purpose of going to a school like Yale is to develop connections to other powerful people (Yale's Master Teas with celebrities come to mind). The students grow up to become people who can't relate to anyone who doesn't have an Ivy League degree. They are, in fact, taught that if you didn't attend an elite university, you are not worth meaningful conversation. Deresiewicz cites how at age 35, after 14 years in the Ivy League, he was unable to communicate with his plumber. Moreover, undergraduates at elite colleges are pampered and coddled to the point that they feel entitled to such treatment for the rest of their lives. The pampering naturally engenders a strong allegiance to the school brand, so that alumni donate millions and keep the system going. I'm sure there will be Ivy League alumni who take exception to these broad characterizations (and they should), but I think there is probably substantial truth to these statements.

What is my personal response to this? I went to an elite university, too, but it was an elite science and technology school. Scientists tend to be much more down-to-earth, so we avoid some of that "elitism stuff" but not all of it. In retrospect, I've noticed that quite a few of my undergraduate professors believed that their institution trained the best scientists/engineers and that other places were "lesser schools." (Yes, a professor actually said that.)

Can I talk to non-elite people? Yes. Do I feel entitled? No. I think that's a product of my family upbringing. My mom and dad always made it a point to pay attention to mail carriers, receptionists, and all the people who keep our society glued together. As for entitlement, my parents have a typical immigrant outlook which is you can always lose what you have, don't stop working. So non-entitlement was drilled into my head for years.

Deresiewicz does have some thought-provoking ideas that go beyond the usual elitism rant. These are both interesting and relevant to me.

I never learned that there are smart people who don’t go to elite colleges, often precisely for reasons of class. I never learned that there are smart people who don’t go to college at all.

I've always been surrounded by elite people. I grew up in an elite, highly-educated part of the country. I went to an elite undergraduate institution. I attend an Ivy League graduate school. It wasn't until I got to graduate school when I started to meet people who went to places like University of Kentucky. I found that there are many people who went to state schools who are smarter than people who went to elite schools like me. The reason is that people from "lesser" institutions have to work much harder to make up for the disadvantage of not having an elite degree. I also learned that it can be pretty intimidating for these same people to go to graduate school and find themselves surrounded by people with elite undergraduate degrees.

I also never learned that there are smart people who aren’t “smart.” The existence of multiple forms of intelligence has become a commonplace, but however much elite universities like to sprinkle their incoming classes with a few actors or violinists, they select for and develop one form of intelligence: the analytic... But social intelligence and emotional intelligence and creative ability, to name just three other forms, are not distributed preferentially among the educational elite. The “best” are the brightest only in one narrow sense.

The other forms of intelligence matter more and more to me as I get older. I find that I like people best when they have more than just the standard "analytic" ability. My favorite people are the ones who can talk to both the elite and the plumber, the ones who can talk to both humanists and scientists, the ones who are both outstanding scholars and charismatic leaders, the ones who can both unravel long trains of analysis and yap some down-to-earth, practical talk.

The first disadvantage of an elite education is how very much of the human it alienates you from.

I worry about this a lot. If I spend all my time being busy and working to keep up in the rat race, I have no time to talk to my family or meet new people or even see people who are my friends. In grad school, your job is to produce work and papers, so you feel constant guilt about not working. If you're not working all the time, you feel like you don't deserve to be in grad school.

If one of the disadvantages of an elite education is the temptation it offers to mediocrity, another is the temptation it offers to security. When parents explain why they work so hard to give their children the best possible education, they invariably say it is because of the opportunities it opens up. But what of the opportunities it shuts down? An elite education gives you the chance to be rich—which is, after all, what we’re talking about—but it takes away the chance not to be. Yet the opportunity not to be rich is one of the greatest opportunities with which young Americans have been blessed. We live in a society that is itself so wealthy that it can afford to provide a decent living to whole classes of people who in other countries exist (or in earlier times existed) on the brink of poverty or, at least, of indignity. You can live comfortably in the United States as a schoolteacher, or a community organizer, or a civil rights lawyer, or an artist—that is, by any reasonable definition of comfort.

It sounds really stupid, but I feel the burden of an elite education sometimes. What my parents say if I wanted to become a homemaker? (They would probably kill me.) What would my parents's friends think if I wanted to become a social worker? I know someone who got a law degree from Harvard and consequently decided she'd rather work with horses. The career track to becoming a physicist is very regimented, cut-throat, and self-absorbed. Is that really what I want? Do I want to pay my dues for 15 years and then finally have the freedom to say, do, and think what I want?

Because students from elite schools expect success, and expect it now. They have, by definition, never experienced anything else, and their sense of self has been built around their ability to succeed. The idea of not being successful terrifies them, disorients them, defeats them. They’ve been driven their whole lives by a fear of failure—often, in the first instance, by their parents’ fear of failure. The first time I blew a test, I walked out of the room feeling like I no longer knew who I was. The second time, it was easier; I had started to learn that failure isn’t the end of the world.

The professor who supervised my master's thesis said that he had students break down in tears during his undergraduate physics lab course. I have a strong fear of failure, too, and I know it comes from my parents and the environment I grew up in. Failing is hard for me, but I'm trying to learn from it. It's hard for me not to think that failure is a reflection of my character. It's not, but I think it is. Failure in my career is a major worry, but a more subtle area where failure shows up is in my relationships. Sometimes I'm afraid to make my friend unhappy, for example, asking for their help or calling them out on behavior that made me unhappy. This is an area I'm working on -- having the courage to take risks with people and not worry about the consequences as much. If the relationship breaks, it probably wasn't a very strong one in the first place.

Of all the people I know, my mom is the one person who is terrified of failure. She hikes tall mountains to prove to herself that she's strong. As she has gotten older and her body has declined, she's turned to Buddhism as a way to find peace of mind. The whole situation seems overblown to me.

But if you’re afraid to fail, you’re afraid to take risks, which begins to explain the final and most damning disadvantage of an elite education: that it is profoundly anti-intellectual... Being an intellectual means more than doing your homework. If so few kids come to college understanding this, it is no wonder. They are products of a system that rarely asked them to think about something bigger than the next assignment. The system forgot to teach them, along the way to the prestige admissions and the lucrative jobs, that the most important achievements can’t be measured by a letter or a number or a name. It forgot that the true purpose of education is to make minds, not careers.

Exactly. But how do you stop the hoop-jumping and more importantly, the worrying about the hoop-jumping? I'm under so much pressure; saying you should stop worrying about your career is much easier said than done.

My friend Peter has taught introductory electromagnetism several times. The classes are bi-weekly and 90 minutes long, so he usually allows for a five minute break halfway through. He told me that when he stopped class, the students would just sit in their chairs obediently. Almost no one got up. Peter also told me about a student who emailed him at the beginning of the semester and asked for a list of assignments, saying that he needed to finish all the work early so he could presumably take care of his numerous extra-curricular activities. Unbelievable. I guess this guy is not in college for a love of learning.

Being an intellectual means, first of all, being passionate about ideas—and not just for the duration of a semester, for the sake of pleasing the teacher, or for getting a good grade... Being an intellectual means thinking your way toward a vision of the good society and then trying to realize that vision by speaking truth to power. It means going into spiritual exile. It means foreswearing your allegiance, in lonely freedom, to God, to country, and to Yale. It takes more than just intellect; it takes imagination and courage. “I am not afraid to make a mistake,” Stephen Dedalus says, “even a great mistake, a lifelong mistake, and perhaps as long as eternity, too.” Being an intellectual begins with thinking your way outside of your assumptions and the system that enforces them.

Deresiewicz later suggests that going to a "second-tier" college or liberal arts college may be a lot better for a young person's human spirit. I imagine that the student body would be less "competitive," so you could spend less time on required work and more time on personal growth. I wonder if that's true. If I had chance to do it over again, maybe I would have opted for a liberal arts college. Still, I think I did pretty well as an undergraduate.

I remember finding out for the first time, in college, that I loved science. Before that, I had just been programmed by my parents and society to study. I treated math and science competitions as a competitive sport. Even with that heightened awareness, I found that it took a lot of work to have independent thoughts. My time was so consumed by problem sets that I traded socializing for deep intellectual thoughts. By deep thoughts, I mean that I would go through my lecture notes a second time and try to understand the bigger picture. Doing this made my studies so much more meaningful and as a nice side benefit, really impressed my teacher. No one told me to put in this extra time. I just knew in my gut that if I really loved physics, this is what I needed to do.

My teacher Bob was a big influence on me. He's the best physics teacher I've ever had, but that wasn't the only thing that impressed me. The campus newspaper published an interview with him. I learned that you shouldn't be afraid to "empower" yourself and seek allies to do things you think are important and true. I learned the principle of "it's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission." It's a powerful life lesson that I still use today. Using these ideas has led me into many leadership projects. I started the tradition of having undergraduates invite a colloquium speaker once and a bimonthly happy hour in my graduate department. I also tried to start an undergraduate physics study group where we think about big ideas in physics. It was only semi-successful, but I'm glad I did it.

Of course, I don't want to rest on my laurels. I expound a little amateur philosophy on my blog now and then. I've always been interested in trying to become a better person, perhaps the bildung ("upbuilding of the soul") mentioned in the essay. Maybe when I get out of this grad school rat race, I can return to some of my "trouble-making."

There’s a reason elite schools speak of training leaders, not thinkers—holders of power, not its critics. An independent mind is independent of all allegiances, and elite schools, which get a large percentage of their budget from alumni giving, are strongly invested in fostering institutional loyalty. As another friend, a third-generation Yalie, says, the purpose of Yale College is to manufacture Yale alumni. Of course, for the system to work, those alumni need money. At Yale, the long-term drift of students away from majors in the humanities and basic sciences toward more practical ones like computer science and economics has been abetted by administrative indifference... The liberal arts university is becoming the corporate university, its center of gravity shifting to technical fields where scholarly expertise can be parlayed into lucrative business opportunities.

I bemoaned the trend towards universities as corporations in a post last year. It's disturbing to see Yale and Harvard throw tons of money at building new science facilities. I can't help thinking that the only purpose is to get more grant money, which will keep the wealth engine going. You may recall an infamous quote from the president of Harvard:

"One thing we all must worry about — I certainly do — is the federal support for scientific research. And are we all going to be chasing increasingly scarce dollars?" says Drew Gilpin Faust, Harvard's new president. Not that Faust seems worried about Harvard or other top-tier research schools. "They're going to be—we hope, we trust, we assume—the survivors in this race," she says. As for the many lesser universities likely to lose market share, she adds, they would be wise "to really emphasize social science or humanities and have science endeavors that are not as ambitious" as those of Harvard and its peers.

The most interesting section of Deresiewicz's essay comes at the very end, where he discusses the reactions of undergraduates in his literature classes to philosophic questions.

What does it mean to go to school at a place where you’re never alone? Well, one of them said, I do feel uncomfortable sitting in my room by myself. Even when I have to write a paper, I do it at a friend’s. That same day, as it happened, another student gave a presentation on Emerson’s essay on friendship. Emerson says, he reported, that one of the purposes of friendship is to equip you for solitude. As I was asking my students what they thought that meant, one of them interrupted to say, wait a second, why do you need solitude in the first place? What can you do by yourself that you can’t do with a friend?

Is this really true? If so, what a bizarre cultural phenomenon. Hmm, I'm not sure what to say to that. Being a scientist requires lots of solitude, both to get your work done and to concentrate on long trains of analysis. If anything, I have too much solitude.

However, I know a lot of people who want to live in an elite, rich community like Seattle, Boulder, the San Francisco Bay Area, Boston, or Manhattan. That's where many elite undergraduates end up. Sure, the culture there is ten times more rich than other places, but if you want to live in such a place, you must have money. And you earn that much money you have to join the elitist, careerist rat race. What's wrong with Kansas? (Pure speculation, as I've never lived in the Midwest.) I do think people need to find the courage to create and live an independent life, rather than perpetually hanging out with a crowd raised like themselves. It's not the end of the world if you don't live in San Francisco. A disclaimer here: There's nothing wrong with wanting to live in New York City or Boston. Of course, I want to live in those places, but I'm open to living somewhere else, too.

In some further analysis, Deresiewicz goes on to say:

“To whom can I expose the urgency of my own passion?”: my student was in her friend’s room writing a paper, not having a heart-to-heart. She probably didn’t have the time; indeed, other students told me they found their peers too busy for intimacy. What happens when busyness and sociability leave no room for solitude?

I'm not sure that all the sociability is bad. Of course, that comes from me, a loner who doesn't socialize much. I've always had some disdain for small talk and want to leap into deep philosophical one-on-one conversations. But I've come to realize that sometimes it takes a long time to get to know someone. You have to be patient.

The busyness is a huge problem for me. If you're on an elitist career track like me, you're automatically surrounded by people who are too busy running the rat race to help you. This is why people have to go into therapy. Their friends and family are too busy and self-absorbed to help them, so they have to pay someone to listen to their problems.

That ends my quote-by-quote analysis of the essay. So, for those of us who don't want to turn into elitist zombies, what do we do? Deresiewicz discusses the problems of an elitist upbringing with incredible thoroughness, but he doesn't propose any solutions.

Travel? Read great literature? Go camping, Thoreau-style? Take up hobbies that bring you into contact with non-elitists? Protest? I'll keep thinking about it.

Mark Bell, troubled Maple Leaf

Since I'm a San Jose Sharks fan, I have followed the case of Mark Bell, a former San Jose Sharks player who was traded from Chicago to San Jose in 2006 before he was consequently traded to Toronto in 2007. Shortly before he was scheduled to report to training camp in San Jose, he was arrest for a drunk driving accident and for fleeing the scene of the crime. Consequently, Bell was suspended for 15 games from the 2007-2008 NHL season and sentenced to six months in prison. Ironically, Ron Wilson (Sharks head coach from 2002 to 2008) was just fired by the Sharks and hired a few weeks ago by the Maple Leafs. Here's what he said about Mark Bell:

Do I think Mark Bell can help? That is hard to say, Mark has gone through a ton in the last couple of years. Obviously he ran into problems before we ever really got to know him in San Jose. It made that year difficult. That is hard to say. That is something we have to sit down with Mark Bell and see where he is. I have coached a lot of guys, and Mark has paid the price and shown remorse, paying his debt to society if you will. He has been a true professional. At some point, I may be able to finish moving from out in San Jose, be able to sit down with Mark and have a long talk with him to see where he is at in his life and his career. He has to worry about his life first, not Mark Bell the hockey player.

I think the key point is that Bell has to worry about his life first, not his career. If he can fix his personal life, the career will come.

Cognitive doping

Jose wrote a very interesting post on Academic Productivity. He wondered is it okay for people to take drugs to improve their mental performance? Obviously, most people drink tea and coffee (legal drugs) and society thinks that is acceptable. But what about prescription drugs like Ritalin (used to treat ADD)? Is doing so "cheating" like using steroids in professional sports? I guess it's hard for me to say since I haven't tried any drugs and caffeine doesn't work that well for me. As Jose mentions, the fact that people feel pushed to take drugs is a negative reflection of modern society. Unfortunately, I don't think it's something that will go away. The more educated the world becomes, the more aware people become of better opportunities and then everyone starts competing for the same limited set of desirable jobs.

A friend made a good point that using drugs will probably not increase your creativity or come up with a new idea to start a project. But I think it will help you when you need that extra push to finish something.

Thirdly review 2008, Part 1

I feel like I'm ready to do my first quarterly review. Actually, it's not really quarterly but thirdly. It seems more convenient to break the year into fall, spring, and summer since I'm on an academic schedule. Fall semester ended and spring semester started this week, so it's time.

Since this is my first quarterly review, it will be exploratory. First, I will review my progress from last fall (September - December). This was the first semester in a long time where I was serious about my work. I wanted to be challenged, so I took two classes (atomic physics and mesoscopic physics) while doing research. Unfortunately, I wasn't mentally prepared for such a huge workload. Atomic physics took up a lot of time, I ended up dropping mesoscopic physics, and hardly doing any research. I should have realized that two classes would be too much. I've hardly done any research in the past two years, so continuing the trend was very bad. By the end of the semester, I was frustrated and somedays, even on the verge of tears (I guess I don't take failure very well). On the positive side, going to class helped me develop some discipline and there were times that I actually felt excited about science again. I also tried making time cards and it was pretty effective at keeping me from procrastinating. I'll have to start doing them again. Another idea that worked well for me was blocking administrative tasks. If I know that there is a day where I can do non-academic work, I'm less likely to procrastinate.

Now I'll talk about my non-work life. Just like in the previous year, I didn't have much social contact except for a few work-related parties. I was really interested in hockey and did a lot of research about hockey equipment. I'm pretty happy now that I found a stick and gloves that I like. I'm still working on skates, though. Unfortunately, changing equipment has thrown off my game a bit (particularly the skates), but I can live with that. I've been eating better and getting more fruit in my diet. I noticed that I gained some weight at the end of the semester due to lack of exercise (besides hockey) and eating too much at the dining hall. I still read blogs and news feeds, but I think I did a good job of cutting it down. Most days I only need an hour to cover the feeds which I think is about right. At the end of the semester, I discovered Sondheim (a life-changing cultural event for me) and it made me realize how much I miss art (broadly defined as literature, music, fine art, etc). In the last few years, I've focused a lot on very practical things like lifehacking.

Some changes that I propose:

• Spending less time reading about hockey. It's a great diversion, but I just don't have time to read the hockey forums and follow all the details of the San Jose Sharks. I don't think I get much out of it either.
  
• Going to the gym at 6 am. Last fall, I wanted to go in the afternoon so that I could start work earlier. In reality, I would feel tired and talk myself out of going to the gym or have to attend some talk/meeting. So I just ended up never going.
  
• Eating smaller portions at the dining hall. This one shouldn't be too hard; I just have to pay attention. Also, if I lift weights, I'll put on more muscle and burn more calories. So the combination of eating right and going to the gym should keep my weight stable.
  
• I'd like to experience more of the New York theater scene. I might never live close enough to Manhattan to see live shows, so I should make good use of the opportunity. However, I have to be careful and not let my interests run out of control. I propose planning one trip to New York a month (I could go a little more often, but then I'd be bankrupt).
  
• I need to come up with an academic gameplan. I should be attending more seminars, but which ones? Should I take the advanced mesoscopic physics class?
  
• I need to get more people invested in my academic progress besides my advisor. How do I do that?
  

The last two items were questions, so I need to work on them. Stay tuned for a later post.

Complete notes on Fisher Files, Sequence II

I finally got around to finishing my notes on all twelve episodes of the Fisher Files, Sequence II. Here are links to the notes to each episode.

• Episode 1: Imposter! - Some perspective on why you shouldn't be so hard on yourself.
  
• Episode 2: Screwed! - How to resolve conflicts with colleagues.
  
• Episode 3: Your thesis - How to plan and write your thesis.
  
• Episode 4: Postdoc - How to get a postdoc and how to be a postdoc.
  
• Episode 5: Travel - The cost of travel and how to make travel easier on yourself.
  
• Episode 6: Junior faculty positions - How to look for junior faculty positions and put together your application, how to manage your interview and visit, and how to negotiate offers.
  
• Episode 7: Giving a talk on your work - Some general advice about giving good talks and some specific advice about how to give different types of talks in academia.
  
• Episode 8: Getting tenure - How to go about getting tenure.
  
• Episode 9: Teaching - How to prepare for your first course, how to manage the logistics of the course, and some general advice about good teaching.
  
• Episode 10: Vacation - Why you should take a vacation, what counts as a vacation, and how to plan for one.
  
• Episode 11: What to work on - How to get funding, how to work with collaborations and students, and how to use your department/university as a resource.
  
• Episode 12: Summary - Main points of Sequence II.
  

Notes on Fisher Files, Sequence II, Episode 12 - Summary

Here are my notes on the Fisher Files episode entitled "Summary."

Main points of Sequence II

1. The greatest advantage of academic life is the freedom to do what you want (within some constraints)
   
   • You are encouraged and allowed largely to decide what you're going to do and how you're going to do it
     
   • This kind of freedom is very rare in life
     
   • Therefore, don't work on projects solely to get funding or tenure
     
   • Academic career is about following your heart
2. Academic career is about being free and open in your interactions with people
   
   • That means being available, even if you don't want to be available
     
   • Peter tries to keep his door open at least half the time that he's in his office
3. Avoid busyness, streamline things as much as possible, and make hard decisions not to do things
   
   • Busyness means doing administration and other "easy" tasks that aren't really important
     
   • It's easy to take on too much
     
   • It's easy to become burdened by administration and do those tasks because they are easy where as research and deep thinking are hard
     
   • Don't fall into that trap
4. Mindfulness
   
   • Live in the moment
     
   • Don't spend time dwelling on the past or worrying about the future
5. Work and family
   
   • Many people in academia shaft their families
     
   • But keep in mind, that the happiest people in academia are those who struck a balance between work and family
     
   • These people were with their family and children all through out their lives, not just at convenient moments
     
   • Need to have clear boundaries between work and family
     
   • Don't answer email on a laptop and try to watch your child at the same time
     
   • Think about your life 20-30 years from now
     
   • Research is transitory and ephemeral whereas friendships and family are long-term
6. Career is a natural progression of stages
   
   • Don't let career concerns dominate your thinking
     
   • Again, going back to the idea of academic freedom, don't work for the sake of tenure, funding, fame, etc.
     
   • Enjoy your academic freedom

Notes on Fisher Files, Sequence II, Episode 11 - What to work on

Here are my notes on the Fisher Files episode entitled "What to work on."

• Science is fluid and often there are academic fashions.
  
• Be true to yourself and work on things that are important and that you find interesting.
  
  • "Important" is determined by the community (public decision)
    
  • "Interesting" is what gets you out of bed. If it's not interesting, you won't do your best work.
• Consider the project's timescale and the resources you need
  
  • Generally these will be underestimates, but remember this is a rough plan subject to change
    
  • Don't force yourself to stick to the original plan
    
  • Resources include money, time, collaborators, students
    
  • Peter finds that money is not so important at the beginning stages. If you have a really good idea, getting initial funds is not too hard
• Getting funding
  
  • As time goes on, the scope and costs of your project become more clear
    
  • You start competing with established projects
    
  • For funding agencies, it is important to have a good story, meaning a narrative that expresses why this is important, how it fits in with other work, what's unique about it, what the opportunities are, how it connects with students
    
  • Notice that this narrative is not directly related to the scientific case
    
  • But realize that agencies are concerned with other matters besides just scientific merit, they might be interested in professional development, building up key research areas, outreach
    
  • The most important thing is that they understand your ideas and why they should fund it (express yourself clearly)
• What happens when you apply for a grant
  
  • You submit a proposal, the proposal goes to a program office
    
  • The program officer has a budget and has to fight for that budget out of the overall budget from the federal government
    
  • The easier you make it for the program officer to defend his/her program, the more likely your grant will be funded
    
  • You might consider meeting with the program officer and explaining what you want to do
    
  • It's not so important that the idea be mainstream
    
  • Again, the most important thing is that you explain why your idea is good and why it should be supported
• Collaborations
  
  • Building collaborations is a sensitive topic
    
  • Be honest (don't lie)
    
  • Be clear and say everything without hiding anything
    
  • Unlikely that anyone will steal your ideas
    
  • Even your competitors will appreciate forthrightness
    
  • Your competitors can be worthwhile collaborators on an informal basis (compare notes)
    
  • In beginning, don't be too choosy about collaborators
    
  • However, if someone treats you badly, tell them immediately and in stark terms
    
  • Insist on respect right away, don't wait until later
    
  • Perhaps your most important resource is your collaborators
• Students
  
  • Be honest with graduate students about their prospects for a thesis, especially at the beginning of the project
    
  • Undergrads can work on risky projects that don't necessarily pan out
    
  • The senior thesis doesn't have to be a successful project; it can just be valiant attempt
• Department/university resources
  
  • Talk to chair about getting research leave or time off teaching
    
  • Asking for a semester leave is a lot
    
  • See if you can get a few weeks off here and there at crucial moments in the project (e.g. when a big piece of equipment comes in)
    
  • Try to get off committee assignments
    
  • Negotiate for lab space
    
  • When talking to dean or chair about resources, make it clear how the money will be spent
    
  • You will have much more leverage if the money is going to be spent on supporting students as opposed to supporting you directly
    
  • Be ready to talk about your work for departmental/university-wide fund raising
    
  • Give credit to funding agencies in presentations and papers

Notes on Fisher Files, Sequence II, Episode 10 - Vacation

Here are my notes on the Fisher Files episode entitled "Vacation."

• Your life as a professor will involve a lot of administration and meetings, managing people, and reviewing other people's performance. All of this stuff wears down on you and you need to take a vacation that gives you a respite from these responsibilities.
  
• If you don't take a vacation, your body and mind will impose a little vacation on you. Frequently, this appears as a lot of drinking, a short temper, or inattention.
  
• Requirements for a vacation
  
  • Don't respond to email. Set up an auto-responder.
    
  • Vacations should not be work of a different kind (e.g. fixing up the house). It should be unstructured time with no goals, deadlines, or appointments.
    
  • You have to remove yourself from your daily mode of thought and your daily routine (e.g. no reading physics papers on vacation).
    
  • Minimum of two weeks of vacation a year. You are typically paid 9 months a year by the university and up to 2 months by your research grant, so there is one month every year where you should not feel obligated to do anything. We need to push back
    against the university and colleagues who demand that we work all the time. This is hard to avoid in the modern age where we can potentially work anywhere with a laptop and wireless internet.
• How to plan a vacation
  
  • Treat your vacation as a project
    
  • Start thinking about your next vacation 1-2 months after you get back from your last vacation (e.g. make a project heading in your todo list)
    
  • the vacation project will be a source of positive energy every time you review your project list during your weekly review
    
  • if you have family, make it clear to yourself whether or not visiting your family is vacation
    
  • if visiting family is actually fulfillment of an obligation, that does not count as vacation
    
  • Remember that vacation is an investment that pays dividends
• Encourage your colleagues (grad students, postdocs) to take vacations
  
• Advisors should tell their grad students and postdocs that it's OK to take vacations
  
• In particular, people who have children really need to be careful about setting aside time for themselves and their relationship with their spouse. Their time will be eaten away by work and taking care of the children, but the relationship with the spouse is really important to both being productive and having a good family.

Notes on Fisher Files, Sequence II, Episode 9 - Teaching

Here are my notes on the Fisher Files episode entitled "Teaching."

Introduction

• Teaching happens anytime you interact with students or colleagues, not just in the formal lecture setting.
  
• If you're a good teacher, you will find that teaching goes both ways: you are teaching your students and colleagues and they are also teaching you.
  
• You want to organize an academic class in a way that is pleasurable and efficient for both you and students.
  
• Keys to lecturing well
  
  • Preparation
    
  • Finish on time without hurrying
    
  • Respect the students
    
  • Keep a tight feedback loop
• What doesn't work: Keeping a lecture or two ahead of the students because you will end up with a course that meanders (no, an outline is not good enough)

First time teaching the course

• When you start off, most universities will give you a tour of duty that involves teaching the same class three times in a row.
  
• Prepare the course well in advance. At the start of the course, have a rough draft of every single lecture. (that is, everything you will say and write on the blackboard) and a rough draft of every problem set (Yes, you read the last bullet point correctly. You need to prepare a rough draft of every lecture and every problem set. A class is a lot of work and the more of it you do ahead of time, the better)
  
• Need a clear idea of your goals so that you can assign useful problems in the problem sets
  
• Know your audience and your student’s capabilities; ask your colleagues who taught them the term/year before
  
• Need to constantly be adjusting the course to keep a balance between overwhelming and boring the students
  
• It's easy to find out if you're meeting that balance; just ask the students and section instructors
  
• Good idea to have a staff meeting every week for the course (usually 15-30 minutes is sufficient)
  
• In order to finish each lecture on time without hurrying, you will have to practice every lecture
  
• By practicing every lecture, that means practicing in real time with blackboards and a timer
  
• Won't cover the many aspects of lecturing (pacing, legible writing, presentation, etc) since there are books and media available on these topics

Logistics

• You need to have respect for the students and they need to respect you.
  
• The way to make this happen is to make clear your expectations of them and what they should expect from you
  
• Expectations is really about laying out boundaries
  
• Within your boundaries, you will be completely engaged in teaching and outside of those boundaries, spending more time on teaching is optional
  
• Lay out your expectations right away at the beginning of the course
  
• On the first day, hand out a one page sheet of expectations
  
• Reasonable expectations for you
  
  • You should finish your classes on time
    
  • Problem sets should be graded and returned with solutions in a timely fashion
    
  • Textbook should be chosen at a reasonable level
    
  • Students should find you available to discuss the course
• Reasonable expectations for students
  
  • Students should not bother you when you don't have office hours or an appointment scheduled
    
  • Students should not complain about their grades
    
  • Students should attend class on time
    
  • Students should make an honest attempt to complete their work
• When you hold office hours, you should really be available (i.e. waiting for students) and not doing other work
  
  • Peter likes to reserve a tutoring room and bring a magazine
    
  • Peter thinks it is useful to have office hours a few hours before the problem set is due so that you get a lot of students and can generate a lively discussion
• Should encourage students to email you with questions
  
  • Students should expect a thoughtful, timely response to a reasonable question
    
  • But they should not expect that they can send you a 4 page long email anytime and expect a response
• Problem sets and exams should be returned within a week maximum, preferably shorter because after that, students forget the material or the material becomes irrelevant
  
• Problem set/project due dates
  
  • Recognize that like yourself, students have complicated lives with many competing demands and it can be difficult to meet "arbitrarily set" deadlines
    
  • Peter's take: students should meet deadlines, but if they need extra time, they should tell the instructor and propose a new due date subject to instructor approval. If the instructor is not going to start grading the problem set/project soon anyways, it makes sense to give the student some extra time.

Teaching

• You should look at students while you lecture; are they engaged, bored, or lost?
  
• If they looked lost or disengaged, you should stop lecture and ask them what's wrong
  
• You should talk to students informally before/after lecture, during office hours to get feedback
  
• Course evaluations come too late and they just confirm at you knew already anyways
  
• Try to find out who the students are and what they are interested in (show an interest in their lives)
  
• Anything you can bring into the course from your research or experience is valuable because you will be passionate about it
  
• Find ways to make your teaching more efficient
  
  • One example, if you screw up in lecture, write up an explanation and pass it out in class rather than going over it on the blackboard
    
  • One idea: set up a video camera and videotape a blackboard derivation
• Section teaching
  
  • Role is not to give another version of lecture, do problem sets for the students, or answer questions
    
  • In first five minutes of class, figure out what the students need help with and make an agenda out of their questions and concerns
    
  • Group related questions together in the agenda
    
  • Spend rest of the time going through the agenda and addressing student’s questions in a Socratic dialogue
    
  • Make students feel like section is their time
• Teaching graduate students
  
  • Mainly you teach them to do your research for you
    
  • But take some time to prepare mini-lectures about things they should know but won't learn about in class (think about what you wish you had known as a grad student)
    
  • Try to meet with your graduate students weekly
    
  • Good to teaching your student something at every meeting
    
  • Also a good idea to have everyone teach each other at group meetings

Conclusion

• Remember that teaching is pleasurable because you spend a lot of time with students who are interested in the same things you are and want to learn from you. Students are endlessly fascinated with faculty: how you got there, where you went to school, what research you conduct.
  
• Just make sure this stuff doesn't spill into teaching time (set your boundaries)
  
• In contrast, most of your colleagues are just concerned with their own research and not really interested in what you are doing.

Notes on Fisher Files, Sequence II, Episode 8 - Getting Tenure

Here are my notes on the Fisher Files episode entitled "Getting tenure."

• Tenure is a big step because
  
  • It is a permanent position
    
  • Rejection is devastating since the people evaluating you are the people you've been working with for the last 5-7 years
    
  • Don't joke about tenure or the tenure process as it is a very sensitive topic
• Differences among universities
  
  • Some universities try to intervene early by mentoring and guiding young faculty
    
  • A few universities (not many) exert quality control at the hiring stage, so that tenure is a formality
• Thing to be clear on
  
  • As you get closer to the tenure decision date, prepare yourself for rejection
    
  • Know the rules and the procedure
    
  • Before you even accept the position, you should have found out
    
    • Is the process fair/unfair?
      
    • Who has input, who doesn't?
      
    • When does the review take place?
  • Formal rules set by American Association of University Professors (AAUP)
    
    • Professors must be evaluated for tenure by their 8th year (this is to prevent universities from stringing junior faculty along)
  • At MIT:
    
    • After 4 years, there is a review for promotion from assistant to associate professor without tenure
      
    • After 6 years, there is a review for promotion to associate professor with tenure
      
    • Leaves the 7th year for finding a new job if you are rejected
• How to get tenure
  
  • Don't consciously think about getting tenure
    
  • Keep a list of people you meet in a text file so that you can use them for references later on
    
  • Have self-respect
    
  • Be your own person and decide what you want to do
    
  • Assess the university as much as it assesses you
    
  • Use your time to do what you are excited about and build up your research group
    
  • Live your dream!!!
• Duplicity is bad and backfires
  
  • Don't choose research directions or collaborations for the sole purpose of getting tenure (people can tell and won't like it)
    
  • Don't try to solicit offers from other institutions in an effort to game the system (people will figure out what you are doing and get mad)
• Tenure criteria
  
  • Mainly based on research excellence
    
  • Show that you are a leader in your field by getting your name out
    
  • Giving review talks or writing review articles
    
  • Giving conference talks or seminars
    
  • To a lesser extent (depending on university), based on community service and teaching
    
  • In terms of teaching, people are really thinking about whether you respect the students as opposed to the quality of your teaching
    
    • Respecting students means keeping appointments, not making students feel unimportant, and grading honestly/fairly
  • Emotionally, people are thinking:
    
    • Is this a person I want to have in my department for the rest of my life?
      
    • Is this person competent in administration and will s/he pitch in?
      
    • Is this person going to choose good research topics and be a pioneer as opposed to just following the pack?
  • No shortcuts or magic formula to getting tenure (the faculty don't use a checklist)
• Community service
  
  • There are lots of jobs/committees and they (for the most part) are not fun
    
  • Find your niche: choose a job, take it over, and do it well
    
  • If you do the same job for a long time, it will get easier and take less time
    
  • If you want to make yourself stick out, choose a job that is unpopular like colloquium/seminar organization or graduate admissions
• Giving talks
  
  • Most seminar organizers are lazy and have a hard time finding speakers so take advantage of that
    
  • In July, email organizers and volunteer to give talks at good universities
    
  • Advantages of seminars over conference talks
    
    • At a conference, you are typically giving a 10-20 minute talk in a 2 hour session -- you can easily be missed
      
    • But you have a whole day at an institution for a seminar - 1 hour for the talk, dinner and appointments
  • Colloquium tenure talk
    
    • Typically you will be asked to give a colloquium on your work in preparation for the faculty voting on you
      
    • Make sure this colloquium is *really* accessible since it will be attended by faculty outside your field
      
    • Communicate clearly what you did and why it was important
      
    • Communicate clearly what students were involved and how you are connected to them (show your mentoring skills)
• As tenure review date approaches, know your time scales and options
  
  • Some people try to look for other offers at this time
    
  • Only consider offers you are serious about
    
  • Let your university know what you are doing

Notes on Fisher Files, Sequence II, Episode 7 - Giving a talk on your work

Here are my notes on the Fisher Files episode entitled "Giving a talk on your work."

• Why are you giving this talk?
  
  • Affects how you prepare
    
  • Affects what visuals you use
• What messages are you trying to convey?
  
  • Is it a job talk, conference talk, colloquium, or popular talk?
• Don't automatically just give any talk that any old person asks you to do. Like travel, there is a major time commitment.
  
• General advice about talks
  
  • Most important tips
    
    • Talk needs to be interesting!!!
      
    • Talk needs to be informative
      
    • Have a conscious idea of what your message is
      
    • If you don't have a conscious idea of what your message is, you don't have a clear idea of what will come out of your talk
  • Logistics
    
    • Don't go over time or rush at the end
      
    • Target 50 min talk for 1 hour time slot
      
    • If you have a movie, make sure it works on the actual projector. The lighting could be bad, the projector might not be compatible with the movie.
      
    • Bring hard copy of the talk
      
    • Setup computer a minimum of 15 minutes before the talk
      
    • Don't use transparencies that were obviously written on the plane (that insults the audience)
      
    • Have a PDF of your PowerPoint/Keynote presentation as backup
  • Message/scope
    
    • The number of big ideas should match the amount of time you have
  • Structure of talk
    
    • Find a way to make your talk interesting
      
    • Make sure you talk about things you are interested in
      
    • Don't just give a cookie cutter talk
      
    • Audiences can tell if you are truly interested in your talk
  • Style of talk
    
    • Use more pictures/graphs and less diagrams, bullet points, and equations. It makes research more physical, gives deeper sense of complexity.
      
    • Charts and graphs are better than tables and bullet points
      
    • Face audience
      
    • Don't use bullet points, just use keywords and talk about them
      
    • Don't just read off the slide
      
    • Don't feel compelled to explain every detail (most of them are boring anyways)
      
    • Emphasize the details you find interesting (make the talk about you)
      
    • Don't forget to give credit: just mention everyone you worked with. Be generous with credit since it's not good to make enemies and besides it's honest.
• Different types of talks
  
  • Thesis defense
    
    • Demonstrate that you have mastered your field
  • Job talks
    
    • Show how you fit in the department
      
    • Show your analysis skills
      
    • Show how capable you are
      
    • Illustrate deep thinking about physics
      
    • Don't just expand a conference talk
  • Conference talks
    
    • If you are going to give a 10 minute talk, only have one idea
      
    • You have less scope for making it interesting
      
    • OK to use lots of words and put in lots of results that you don't address in your talk because likely your talk will be publicly available
      
    • Proceedings (if there are any) should be an accurate representation of your talk; any ideas that occur after the talk should be footnoted
  • Seminar
    
    • For a seminar (approximately one hour), use one theme and 5 sub themes
      
    • Prepare a 50 minute talk for a one hour slot
      
    • Encourage audience to ask questions during the seminar and not afterwards
      
    • Don't need to show what you did as opposed to what other people did (unlike job talk)
      
    • Can assume audience is well-grounded in your field
      
    • Be a little conservative in assuming what everyone knows (use a few introductory slides)
      
    • Introduce yourself: name, who you are, level, where you are from, and who you work with
      
    • Don't use a cookie cutter structure
      
    • Start generally and narrow focus in first 10% of talk (first 5-8 slides)
      
    • At end of talk (last 10% or 5-7 slides), open up the focus again
      
    • Don't just stop after showing your result, explain why the result is important in the larger context
      
    • Bring closure to talk
  • Colloquium
    
    • Important to know your audience
      
    • Similar to seminar: start broad, focus in and then focus out, *but* do all this more slowly
      
    • Could be a job talk for a senior position (in this case, an assessment of how well you communicate)
      
    • Much less detail than a seminar
      
    • More about what you do, than how you do it
      
    • More pictures, less equations
      
    • Stories helpful (e.g. how the discovery took place, who the people were)
      
    • Need to work much harder in colloquium to engage the audience than in a seminar
      
    • Don't expand a seminar into a colloquium talk; it's easy for the audience to sense (then the audience becomes bored)
      
    • Colloquium much more formal, typically questions are reserved for the end
      
    • Opportunity to reach out to people outside your field and inform them
      
    • Pare down your ideas
      
    • Only communicate the simplest ones, rather than trying to conveying the deep elegance that only a few people understand
      
    • Don't rush
  • Plenary talks
    
    • Broad in scope
      
    • Even more important to give credit
  • Popular talks
    
    • Even more emphasis on explaining clearly, using pictures, and finishing on time
      
    • Important to practice, maybe even video tape yourself

Notes on Fisher Files, Sequence II, Episode 6 - Junior faculty positions

Here are my notes on the Fisher Files episode entitled "Junior faculty positions."

• Getting a junior faculty position is much different from getting a postdoctoral position. Unlike a postdoc:
  
  • There is a clear evaluation of your work
    
  • Deep emotional commitment
    
  • Heavy investment in personal relationships with colleagues
    
  • Broader commitment to the university, responsibilities besides research
    
  • Involvement in running the university
    
  • Expected to work with colleagues to solve problems
• How to get a job
  
  • Need strong publication record; evaluated on scientific achievements and their importance
    
  • Make sure you get an important result as a postdoc
    
  • Make clear what role you had in the result
    
  • Emphasize leadership abilities: supervision of students, working with multiple colleagues
    
  • Develop strong research direction (that matches the department's interests)
    
  • Commit yourself to a research direction, don't appear to be "flexible" and desperate for any old job
• Timing
  
  • Time your research so that you get results before the fall
    
  • Search committee gets together in fall and puts out ads
    
  • Shortlist in November-December
    
  • Interviews in December-February
    
  • Decision in January-February
    
  • Offers in spring
    
  • Talk to senior people to find out where are the open positions and the quality of the institutions
• Components of application
  
  • CV
    
  • Publication list
    
  • 3 letters of recommendation
    
    • Don't just email the recommenders, write a formal letter
      
    • Most important quality in a recommender is that they can talk about you and your work
      
    • Good to ask senior people to recommend you, but only if they know you well
      
    • Make sure you don't ask someone who just writes uniformly effusive (but useless) letters
  • Cover letter
    
    • 2 ways of doing the cover letter: 1) short cover letter attached to research statement, 2) long cover letter including research interests
      
    • Peter recommends the long cover letter, tailored to each university so that it seems like you're interested and not just looking for a job
  • Get started early, well ahead of the deadline
• Letters of recommendation
  
  • Good letter does not need to be long, more concise the better
    
  • Introductory paragraph on how the recommender knows the candidate
    
  • Few paragraphs on what the candidate has done
    
  • Few paragraphs assessing the suitability and characteristics of the candidate
    
  • The letter needs to be useful to the committee!!
    
  • If you can, meet with the recommender and explain where you are applying and how many letters are needed
    
  • Useful to give the recommender a one page summary of your accomplishments
    
  • Ask for letters early
• On-site visit
  
  • When you apply for a postdoc, you are mainly trying to convince the advisor that you are competent
    
  • When you apply for a faculty position, you have to convince the search committee that you know what you're doing AND that you know where you're going
    
  • For job talk, stay on time and allow time for questions. Make your job talk interesting. Find out ahead of time who your audience is
    
  • Expect to talk to at least 8 people during your visit, give you talk, and go out to dinner over the course of 1-2 days
    
  • Have answers prepared for
    
    • Why do you want to come here?
      
    • Where else are you looking?
      
    • Why do you think your research interests fit with the department's research interests?
      
    • How do you anticipate dividing your time between the university and the laboratory?
      
    • What level of startup funds do you need
  • Do not be passive in the interview, find out what the place is like and what you are expected to do there
    
  • Questions for you to ask
    
    • What is the hiring process
      
    • When will the decision be made?
      
    • What is the nature of the position?
      
    • How likely can a hire be made in this area?
      
    • What is the tenure process?
  • Be sure to ask people about their research and take an interest in them
• Job offer
  
  • Tell them how much startup funds you need
    
  • Ask for help with relocation expenses
    
  • Find out what the teaching loads are and how many terms you get off
    
  • Find out how many advisees you are expected to have
    
  • See if you can negotiate for a lighter teaching load
    
  • Use all of the above to gauge how serious they are about the offer, what the institutional environment is like
    
  • Talk to peers about what they are going, find out the "going rate"
    
  • Find out how many junior faculty are ahead of you and determine if the institution will/can nominate you for a Sloan fellowship
    
  • Don't let the negotiation drag on too long, 2-3 iterations should be enough
• Starting the job
  
  • Don't take on too much: you will be busy moving, possibly changing research direction
    
  • This is not the time to get involved in writing a major review article or some wacky, high-risk project
    
  • Get a list of incoming students and write each a personal letter telling them who you are, what your research is, and inviting them to visit you
    
  • Getting 1-2 good graduate students is key to success
    
  • Take social invitations from other faculty if possible
    
  • Get invested in your community
    
  • Give seminar/colloquia early on to "introduce" yourself to the community