I find myself in the awkward position of stalking one of my committee members. And why am I spending five or ten minutes at a time loitering in a public hallway, trying to ignore the stares of passerby as I wait for this one faculty member to emerge from a meeting or an office so I can force her attention on me? Believe it or not, I blame this on email.
Email has been a wonderful tool, a leap forward in communication. It allows me to send a message at my convenience, and allows the recipient to respond at his or her convenience. It doesn't matter if that person is an evening person, a morning person, in another city, or in another timezone; we don't have to deal with the hassle of meeting in person to collaborate on a project or to sort out a trifling problem. Taken to extremes, there isn't any need for physical proximity at all. Advisors can head out for sabbatical knowing that most things can be accomplished via email. And any number of faculty appear only for mandatory meetings, otherwise eschewing their offices in favor of working from home or a coffeeshop or some other student-free environment. And it all works.
Except when those faculty decide to ignore their email. They get swamped with papers to grade, deeply involved in writing a book chapter, or buried in their research, and they cease responding to or even checking their email. But, they still maintain their habits of not being anywhere near campus unless they have a meeting, which renders them completely unreachable.
All I asked was whether she would be available during a two-week period when I would like to defend my dissertation, just to be sure that I could progress to the next step of scheduling. I didn't ask for a detailed schedule; just a basic "Yes, I will be around those days", or "I will be out of town on these days". It should take less than a minute to respond to, and my other committee members got around to it in a day. But this one has not responded in the past three days, leading me to believe the email has been completely disregarded. And so I loiter.
Showing posts with label faculty. Show all posts
Showing posts with label faculty. Show all posts
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Friday, March 5, 2010
Job Search Saga: The Decision
I accepted the position I was offered, at the first college that granted me an interview.
And everyone wants to know, how did I decide? I didn't actually wait to hear the reaction from the other college at which I was interviewing. For one thing, I realized that the ongoing stress of making a decision was costing me the glow and excitement of being recognized as a good teacher and wanted for these positions. For another thing, I came to a conclusion about the one thing that was making me hesitant to accept the offer.
The visit couldn't have been more perfect. I liked the people I met with (as well as could be expected from meeting most of them for only half an hour), I liked the town, I liked the building and the setup of the offices and classroom, I liked everything I heard about the courses I could teach and the life of the faculty member. I've asked a few follow-up questions via email, and each one has come in perfectly. Even the fact that it's a 3-year visiting position couldn't detract from the offer. Sure, being offered a tenure-track position straight out of grad school would have been nice, but a lot can happen in 3 years, from economic improvement prompting them to make a tenure-track position to me discovering a wanderlust that has me happy to explore other colleges.
The only, only part of the job that made me hesitant was that it was in my less-favored sub-field. Research in that sub-field is hard, especially on a limited budget, in a small town. I've spent much of the past week chewing my lip over the question of whether I could be successful as a researcher in that situation, thinking that it would be so much easier (and cheaper) to be in my preferred sub-field instead.
First, I wondered if I was just being lazy. Then, thinking about the other position in preparing for my phone interviews, I realized that the sub-field aspect was just masking a much more general problem: I was insecure. Some part of me is absolutely terrified that when I am no longer under my advisor's continual guidance, I will cease being anything like a successful researcher; that I will stop being able to design successful experiments, write good posters and journal articles, know where to submit them. It is a terror that applies equally well to any position.
With that terror firmly quenched - or rather, with the firm decision that I would not let the ongoing terror rule my future - the decision was easy. As I wrote to the chair in my acceptance email, I simply cannot imagine a place that would be closer to the ideal I had in mind when I was deciding to apply to liberal arts colleges. There was no reason to turn this down, no possibility that a better offer could come along.
Friday, February 19, 2010
Job Search Saga: Interview Day
Although my interview schedule easily contained a full day's worth of meetings, that day didn't start until noon. Either the department chair was thoughtful enough to consider that the two-hour time change was not in my favor, or I lucked out on their idea of convenient interview times. I didn't sleep in, but I did make a final walk-through of my presentation and immerse myself one last time on the school website.
Promptly at 11:58, I left my hotel room and headed for the lobby. I had absolutely no idea how the chair and I were supposed to recognize each other, as the college website was surprisingly devoid of any faculty images. Fortunately, I didn't have to dwell on this, as the one person waiting in the lobby took the initiative and introduced herself. I wasn't sure what the protocol was for starting an interview in the lobby, so I focused on small talk during the drive to the college, mostly about the weather. The uncertainty persisted over lunch; it just doesn't feel like an interview when you're eating typical college cafe fare with students chatting on either side. She told me in more detail about what they were looking for (a replacement for a retiring faculty member, but opening up a new line of courses and research that students had requested), and flipped through my application packet looking for any final questions she had. I think our entire meeting covered more information about what they were looking for, with me working a few of my qualifications into the conversation where I could, than any interrogative interview.
Which made it all the more jarring to be switch from this laid-back conversation to my interview with the Provost. The department chair apologized when she picked me up, because she forgot to warn me that the man had no discernible sense of humor. Here I felt like I was being interrogated. There was the time he read a particular sentence from the job listing, twice, and then asked me how I would meet those requirements. (For the record, not a single person in the department asked me about those particular qualifications). Then there was the time that he left the room to fetch a posterboard copy of the college's new mission statement, propped it up on his desk, lectured me about the design, and then asked me how I would fit in with the college's central mission. The man never smiled, not once in forty-five minutes. I left the interview seriously wondering if he would veto any decision to hire me, even though I thought I handled all of the questions well, even the one that caught me completely off-guard, "What do you think are the biggest challenges facing higher education?".
On the bright side, I did have time to ask my own questions; I learned that the Provost could name every member of the department interviewing me, and had some idea of their reputation as teachers; I also learned that faculty had a lot of freedom in setting policies and designing new courses, and that I wouldn't be expected to do much service as a "visiting" professor. Still, I had never thought I would feel so intimidated on an interview.
So it was with great trepidation that I went on to my meeting with the faculty interview committee. To my immense relief, this committee consisted of three faculty members, as laid-back as anyone might expect at the college. They asked mainly standard, expected questions, they laughed readily at jokes and entertaining descriptions of research or teaching mishaps, and generally seemed happy to chat with me for the allotted time. The most interesting question I was asked was really more of a challenge: Explain why a student who would not major in your discipline should take an intro course in it. I think that question is much like the unexpected question from the Provost; you might not have explicitly prepared for it, but if you're right for a job at a liberal arts college you'll have thought about it enough in the past to be able to answer promptly. I even knew exactly what story to tell to back up the usefulness of something that would be learned in such an intro course.
Next came individual interviews with three of the faculty in the department. Two questions were fairly standard: If you could teach any class in our discipline, what would it be?, and How are you going to arrange your research given the limited resources of a liberal arts college in a small town? I'm not sure that any other questions were even asked. I did get to learn some of what pulled my application toward the top of the pile. The newest faculty member, who started just this year, was interested in a non-academic article I had written for a professional organization's magazine. Another was thrilled that our areas of research had some overlap, more than he had with the existing faculty, which would give him someone to discuss his research with in more depth. The third was the most brusque of the bunch - not unfriendly, but definitely businesslike; I rather got the impression that she thought I would do and was otherwise busy with preparing for other classwork.
My job talk went off without a hitch. I hadn't memorized every word, but I hit every point I need to make, the demonstrations worked perfectly with enthusiastic audience response (perhaps not from the students, who had assumed their standard "I'm being lecture at" faces, not unlike the slack-jawed stare of those watching TV, but I didn't let that deter me). I ended on time, answered a few questions that were perfectly relevant and not from left field, and could only hope that I had simultaneously conveyed my research abilities and teaching skills.
My final interview was really dinner, with the chair and the senior faculty member. The senior faculty member was incredibly nice as we prepared to leave for dinner; we were a few minutes ahead of schedule, and he arranged to vanish while I took a few minutes to myself. I walked up and down the silent hallway, breathing deeply, convincing myself that the worst was over; all I had to do was avoid any major social transgressions over dinner and I would be fine. Dinner was indeed an incredibly relaxed affair, at a surprisingly fancy restaurant. I shared the story of the Provost fetching the posterboard of the mission statement, to amusement all around, but otherwise the topics stayed enough away from teaching and research that I didn't feel under the microscope. After dinner, the senior faculty member gave me a driving tour of the town, including the main downtown area and the places near the college that faculty typically lived.
I returned to my hotel room both exhilarated and exhausted. I had survived my first interview, my impressions of the liberal arts college were everything I had hoped for and enough to convince me that I had chosen the correct career path. And all I had to do now was wait.
Promptly at 11:58, I left my hotel room and headed for the lobby. I had absolutely no idea how the chair and I were supposed to recognize each other, as the college website was surprisingly devoid of any faculty images. Fortunately, I didn't have to dwell on this, as the one person waiting in the lobby took the initiative and introduced herself. I wasn't sure what the protocol was for starting an interview in the lobby, so I focused on small talk during the drive to the college, mostly about the weather. The uncertainty persisted over lunch; it just doesn't feel like an interview when you're eating typical college cafe fare with students chatting on either side. She told me in more detail about what they were looking for (a replacement for a retiring faculty member, but opening up a new line of courses and research that students had requested), and flipped through my application packet looking for any final questions she had. I think our entire meeting covered more information about what they were looking for, with me working a few of my qualifications into the conversation where I could, than any interrogative interview.
Which made it all the more jarring to be switch from this laid-back conversation to my interview with the Provost. The department chair apologized when she picked me up, because she forgot to warn me that the man had no discernible sense of humor. Here I felt like I was being interrogated. There was the time he read a particular sentence from the job listing, twice, and then asked me how I would meet those requirements. (For the record, not a single person in the department asked me about those particular qualifications). Then there was the time that he left the room to fetch a posterboard copy of the college's new mission statement, propped it up on his desk, lectured me about the design, and then asked me how I would fit in with the college's central mission. The man never smiled, not once in forty-five minutes. I left the interview seriously wondering if he would veto any decision to hire me, even though I thought I handled all of the questions well, even the one that caught me completely off-guard, "What do you think are the biggest challenges facing higher education?".
On the bright side, I did have time to ask my own questions; I learned that the Provost could name every member of the department interviewing me, and had some idea of their reputation as teachers; I also learned that faculty had a lot of freedom in setting policies and designing new courses, and that I wouldn't be expected to do much service as a "visiting" professor. Still, I had never thought I would feel so intimidated on an interview.
So it was with great trepidation that I went on to my meeting with the faculty interview committee. To my immense relief, this committee consisted of three faculty members, as laid-back as anyone might expect at the college. They asked mainly standard, expected questions, they laughed readily at jokes and entertaining descriptions of research or teaching mishaps, and generally seemed happy to chat with me for the allotted time. The most interesting question I was asked was really more of a challenge: Explain why a student who would not major in your discipline should take an intro course in it. I think that question is much like the unexpected question from the Provost; you might not have explicitly prepared for it, but if you're right for a job at a liberal arts college you'll have thought about it enough in the past to be able to answer promptly. I even knew exactly what story to tell to back up the usefulness of something that would be learned in such an intro course.
Next came individual interviews with three of the faculty in the department. Two questions were fairly standard: If you could teach any class in our discipline, what would it be?, and How are you going to arrange your research given the limited resources of a liberal arts college in a small town? I'm not sure that any other questions were even asked. I did get to learn some of what pulled my application toward the top of the pile. The newest faculty member, who started just this year, was interested in a non-academic article I had written for a professional organization's magazine. Another was thrilled that our areas of research had some overlap, more than he had with the existing faculty, which would give him someone to discuss his research with in more depth. The third was the most brusque of the bunch - not unfriendly, but definitely businesslike; I rather got the impression that she thought I would do and was otherwise busy with preparing for other classwork.
My job talk went off without a hitch. I hadn't memorized every word, but I hit every point I need to make, the demonstrations worked perfectly with enthusiastic audience response (perhaps not from the students, who had assumed their standard "I'm being lecture at" faces, not unlike the slack-jawed stare of those watching TV, but I didn't let that deter me). I ended on time, answered a few questions that were perfectly relevant and not from left field, and could only hope that I had simultaneously conveyed my research abilities and teaching skills.
My final interview was really dinner, with the chair and the senior faculty member. The senior faculty member was incredibly nice as we prepared to leave for dinner; we were a few minutes ahead of schedule, and he arranged to vanish while I took a few minutes to myself. I walked up and down the silent hallway, breathing deeply, convincing myself that the worst was over; all I had to do was avoid any major social transgressions over dinner and I would be fine. Dinner was indeed an incredibly relaxed affair, at a surprisingly fancy restaurant. I shared the story of the Provost fetching the posterboard of the mission statement, to amusement all around, but otherwise the topics stayed enough away from teaching and research that I didn't feel under the microscope. After dinner, the senior faculty member gave me a driving tour of the town, including the main downtown area and the places near the college that faculty typically lived.
I returned to my hotel room both exhilarated and exhausted. I had survived my first interview, my impressions of the liberal arts college were everything I had hoped for and enough to convince me that I had chosen the correct career path. And all I had to do now was wait.
Friday, February 12, 2010
Job Search Saga: Interview Advice
The world is full of interview advice. Tips for getting or maintaining that job appear regularly on CNN.com, the career center at my university spams us regularly with advice and prompts, and a quick Google search will return more results than any job applicant could possibly sift through. Unfortunately, most of that advice is designed for the business world, not the academic one. Those tips do not presuppose that the interviewers will have read a 2-page cover letter, full academic vita, and teaching and research statements. It was difficult to imagine any faculty members or even the provost asking me what my greatest accomplishment was, a challenge I had overcome, or any of the other cute questions that are apparently so popular these days.
But the Internet is vast, and as an academic I am well trained in tracking down information. Searching for information on faculty interviews, and liberal arts colleges specifically, I found a wide selection of resources. Some of these seemed rather irrelevant, designed for research universities or for departments too foreign from my own. Others, though, provided excellent leads.
The resource I relied on most heavily was actually a book, and a very old one, called "Good Start: A Guidebook for New Faculty in Liberal Arts Colleges". The edition in my library was published in 1992 - and may be the most recent one - so at times is was somewhat fascinating and highly amusing to read of searching for job announcements before the age of the Internet, and of how it was a seller's market for faculty candidates, and to look at the tables of median starting salaries, which were not all that much better than what I've been making as a grad student. What sold me on the book, though, was the story used to illustrate each part of the application process and early faculty career. Gerald Gibson, the author, adapted his own life story with observations made over the years to create a series of vignettes in the life of a new faculty member that opened each chapter. I didn't read the entire book, but I did read the story, and the chapters on the interview process and the first year as faculty. Seeing a story made me feel like I had some idea what I might experience, and let me generate my own questions instead of blindly following a list.
In addition to that broad picture, and a few discipline-specific suggestions, I found two pieces of advice that would become the focus of my afternoon of interviews:
1. The interviewers are looking for a colleague, albeit a junior one. It seems like it should have been obvious, but after almost five years of graduate school, I was in the habit of thinking of myself as a student. Even when I have presented my research at conferences, or was preparing my faculty application materials, I was thinking of myself as a graduate student. Reading that one simple statement shocked me out of that self-conception and gave me something to focus on projecting during my interviews. I am not a graduate student, I am an assistant professor, and although I will need some help in my first few years, I will be an excellent colleague.
2. Ask everyone who interviews you: What do you like the most, and dislike the most, about teaching at this college. A half-hour with each member of the department is not going to give you a great idea of who they are, or what it would be like to join them, but you can get a close approximation by prompting them to name what they like and dislike. It tells you something about the college, and something about the person. Liking the students and the rest of the department are obvious plusses; like the weather and town may not be the best sign.. Disliking the pay is not to be unexpected; disliking the students or the administration will raise some red flags.
By the time I was ready to fly out for my interview, I had created sheets with the questions I would ask the chair and the provost, and had found at least one specific thing to ask each faculty member, about programs they were involved in, specific projects their students had done, or the research facilities they used. I had anticipated a wide range of potential questions about my research, my ability to mentor undergraduates, and my teaching, and I was sure that if nothing else I wouldn't be left with long awkward silences during my interviews. I'm not sure if anything more constructive could be done to prepare for the first interview.
But the Internet is vast, and as an academic I am well trained in tracking down information. Searching for information on faculty interviews, and liberal arts colleges specifically, I found a wide selection of resources. Some of these seemed rather irrelevant, designed for research universities or for departments too foreign from my own. Others, though, provided excellent leads.
The resource I relied on most heavily was actually a book, and a very old one, called "Good Start: A Guidebook for New Faculty in Liberal Arts Colleges". The edition in my library was published in 1992 - and may be the most recent one - so at times is was somewhat fascinating and highly amusing to read of searching for job announcements before the age of the Internet, and of how it was a seller's market for faculty candidates, and to look at the tables of median starting salaries, which were not all that much better than what I've been making as a grad student. What sold me on the book, though, was the story used to illustrate each part of the application process and early faculty career. Gerald Gibson, the author, adapted his own life story with observations made over the years to create a series of vignettes in the life of a new faculty member that opened each chapter. I didn't read the entire book, but I did read the story, and the chapters on the interview process and the first year as faculty. Seeing a story made me feel like I had some idea what I might experience, and let me generate my own questions instead of blindly following a list.
In addition to that broad picture, and a few discipline-specific suggestions, I found two pieces of advice that would become the focus of my afternoon of interviews:
1. The interviewers are looking for a colleague, albeit a junior one. It seems like it should have been obvious, but after almost five years of graduate school, I was in the habit of thinking of myself as a student. Even when I have presented my research at conferences, or was preparing my faculty application materials, I was thinking of myself as a graduate student. Reading that one simple statement shocked me out of that self-conception and gave me something to focus on projecting during my interviews. I am not a graduate student, I am an assistant professor, and although I will need some help in my first few years, I will be an excellent colleague.
2. Ask everyone who interviews you: What do you like the most, and dislike the most, about teaching at this college. A half-hour with each member of the department is not going to give you a great idea of who they are, or what it would be like to join them, but you can get a close approximation by prompting them to name what they like and dislike. It tells you something about the college, and something about the person. Liking the students and the rest of the department are obvious plusses; like the weather and town may not be the best sign.. Disliking the pay is not to be unexpected; disliking the students or the administration will raise some red flags.
By the time I was ready to fly out for my interview, I had created sheets with the questions I would ask the chair and the provost, and had found at least one specific thing to ask each faculty member, about programs they were involved in, specific projects their students had done, or the research facilities they used. I had anticipated a wide range of potential questions about my research, my ability to mentor undergraduates, and my teaching, and I was sure that if nothing else I wouldn't be left with long awkward silences during my interviews. I'm not sure if anything more constructive could be done to prepare for the first interview.
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
How Many Undergrads Can One Grad Handle?
I'm beginning to think I didn't play up my mentoring experience enough in my job applications. It certainly feels like I managing a research lab of my own at the moment. I don't have any of the administrative headaches in grant allocation and HRC approval, but I do have three - count 'em, three - of my very own undergraduate students.
Senior is conducting an honors thesis. He came on after the first experiment was designed, and handled all the data collection. Now, we've analyzed the first experiment of data, and get to spend the next two months designing a follow-up experiment, in the hopes that he'll have something meaningful, or at least two experiments of null results, in time for his defense. This leaves me juggling the careful nurturing of his own ideas and involvement, the practical matters of what I "know" to be better design, while also fretting over the ongoing headache that is research design. We certainly will be using our entire weekly meeting time for the rest of the semester.
Junior is also conducting an honors thesis, planning to defend a year early just so she could conduct her thesis with me, and not at long-distance when I am (hopefully) away at my new job next year. She first worked with me as a senior in high school, completing a special mentorship program, so we have some experience working together, but I'm starting to find myself frustrated with her lack of self-direction. She is very good at doing whatever I tell her to do in a timely manner, but not so good at figuring out for herself other things that should be done. This is part of what the senior thesis is for, of course, but suddenly it demands effort in figuring out how to teach such metaphysical skills.
Sophomore (I think sophomore, and even if not it allows for beautiful continuity) is not conducting an honors thesis, and is not even running an independent project. I am trying very hard not to mentor her at all, in fact. I requested of our lab coordinator someone who could handle data collection for my final dissertation experiment, with the understanding that this would not be a mentoring relationship, just a change in pace from the normal lab duties. Even so, there's a certain amount of training that must go on, and somehow the meetings have been weekly and hour-long this month as we deal with programming errors and I try to provide some amount of support for all her hard work.
Now that I've passed from a single student, to a pair, and finally into an actual group, it certainly seems as if I'm running my own lab. The managerial details of making sure they keep their promised lab hours may fall to our lab coordinator, but I am trying to write a dissertation here (theoretically). If anything, the size of my lab will decrease when I get a job, because there's no way I'll be able to train three new students in the mess of first-year facultydom. I'll try to keep that in mind as I pass from one student meeting to another.
Senior is conducting an honors thesis. He came on after the first experiment was designed, and handled all the data collection. Now, we've analyzed the first experiment of data, and get to spend the next two months designing a follow-up experiment, in the hopes that he'll have something meaningful, or at least two experiments of null results, in time for his defense. This leaves me juggling the careful nurturing of his own ideas and involvement, the practical matters of what I "know" to be better design, while also fretting over the ongoing headache that is research design. We certainly will be using our entire weekly meeting time for the rest of the semester.
Junior is also conducting an honors thesis, planning to defend a year early just so she could conduct her thesis with me, and not at long-distance when I am (hopefully) away at my new job next year. She first worked with me as a senior in high school, completing a special mentorship program, so we have some experience working together, but I'm starting to find myself frustrated with her lack of self-direction. She is very good at doing whatever I tell her to do in a timely manner, but not so good at figuring out for herself other things that should be done. This is part of what the senior thesis is for, of course, but suddenly it demands effort in figuring out how to teach such metaphysical skills.
Sophomore (I think sophomore, and even if not it allows for beautiful continuity) is not conducting an honors thesis, and is not even running an independent project. I am trying very hard not to mentor her at all, in fact. I requested of our lab coordinator someone who could handle data collection for my final dissertation experiment, with the understanding that this would not be a mentoring relationship, just a change in pace from the normal lab duties. Even so, there's a certain amount of training that must go on, and somehow the meetings have been weekly and hour-long this month as we deal with programming errors and I try to provide some amount of support for all her hard work.
Now that I've passed from a single student, to a pair, and finally into an actual group, it certainly seems as if I'm running my own lab. The managerial details of making sure they keep their promised lab hours may fall to our lab coordinator, but I am trying to write a dissertation here (theoretically). If anything, the size of my lab will decrease when I get a job, because there's no way I'll be able to train three new students in the mess of first-year facultydom. I'll try to keep that in mind as I pass from one student meeting to another.
Monday, October 26, 2009
Job Search: Relying on the Letter Writers
There must be some polite way to see someway and say, "Oh hey! I know you tend to be busy and not at all deadline-oriented, and I was just wondering if you'd written those letters of reference that are due this week, or even remembered that you agreed to write them".
There must be, but I don't know what it is. So I just stalked this particular professor at his office hours, a week after those deadlines had passed, on the pretext of asking how he would like to receive the next list of jobs to which I would be applying, in the hope that he would in some way indicate whether the earlier batch of letters had been sent. This turned into a 45-minute conversation on the benefits of microwave coking, his work with the Teamsters Union, and our mutual preference for CDs over mp3s. Buried within this array of topics was the information that he did remember the letters, and had kept the folder of supporting materials I provided in a safe place as he rearranged his office, but had not remembered the deadlines, or written anything.
In my gentle prodding way, I volunteered myself to produce stamped, addressed envelopes, with departmental letterhead, and a quick checklist of colleges and addressees first thing the next morning. I am deliberately not worrying about how an incomplete application will affect the opinion of the search committee, which only affects three jobs, two of which I wasn't excited about. I will, however, be stalking this professor at his office hours again later this week, or contriving a "coincidental" meeting in the hall where he might spontaneously update me on his progress.
I don't mind my job prospects depending on other people, in the form of the search committees that will make the employment decisions. I do mind my job prospects depending on other people, in the form of other people sticking to deadlines that really only matter to me.
There must be, but I don't know what it is. So I just stalked this particular professor at his office hours, a week after those deadlines had passed, on the pretext of asking how he would like to receive the next list of jobs to which I would be applying, in the hope that he would in some way indicate whether the earlier batch of letters had been sent. This turned into a 45-minute conversation on the benefits of microwave coking, his work with the Teamsters Union, and our mutual preference for CDs over mp3s. Buried within this array of topics was the information that he did remember the letters, and had kept the folder of supporting materials I provided in a safe place as he rearranged his office, but had not remembered the deadlines, or written anything.
In my gentle prodding way, I volunteered myself to produce stamped, addressed envelopes, with departmental letterhead, and a quick checklist of colleges and addressees first thing the next morning. I am deliberately not worrying about how an incomplete application will affect the opinion of the search committee, which only affects three jobs, two of which I wasn't excited about. I will, however, be stalking this professor at his office hours again later this week, or contriving a "coincidental" meeting in the hall where he might spontaneously update me on his progress.
I don't mind my job prospects depending on other people, in the form of the search committees that will make the employment decisions. I do mind my job prospects depending on other people, in the form of other people sticking to deadlines that really only matter to me.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Timing Recommendation Letter Requests
Would you rather worry that a professor will forget to write your letter of recommendation before application review begins, or discover that a professor has sent out your letters when you haven't prepared your application yet?
Four years of graduate school have trained me well when interacting with faculty. I know that if I show up five minutes after the scheduled start of any weekly meeting or colloquium, I will not be "late", because many faculty will still be on their way. I know that my committee members want any drafts at least one and preferably two weeks in advance, but will not read the drafts until the night before, or possibly the morning of the meeting.
Knowing the usual turnaround time for requests from faculty, I made my requests for recommendation letters as soon as I found jobs worth applying for, all with deadlines in mid-October. Two and a half months' notice seemed about right: Enough time for the faculty to write two or three pages enthusing about my teaching or research skills, but not so much time that they might forget or misplace the request. The challenge is that with three different professors, I get three different responses.
The first letter was requested of my advisor. Her response typifies what I have come to expect of faculty; hardly surprising, I suppose, when she's the faculty member with whom I interact the most. She responded by instructing me to keep our lab coordinator copied on all these emails, a necessary step to make sure she meets the deadlines. Two and a half months is cutting it a bit close for the busy faculty member just starting her sabbatical.
The second letter was requested of the instructor for whom I taught an advanced laboratory course. I asked in person, and received an enthusiastic agreement and instructions to tell him exactly what he wanted me to say. I emailed the list of addresses, and have heard nothing since. In a few weeks, when the hectic start of the semester is over, I'll arrange to pass him in the hallway, and check up on the letters as part of the small talk.
The third letter was requested from a the director of my school's graduate teaching office. Here is where I got my surprise, a faculty member who had been trained to deal with student requests in a timely and efficient matter. Barely a week after I made the request, I got an email - the letters had been sent. I had barely thought about my cover letters, and colleges would receive a letter endorsing me within a few days.
This certainly provided the impetus for me to get on with my applications. A week and a half later, I had written, revised and finalized my cover letter, and finished revising my teaching and research statements. Surely the search committee, or whichever staff member was delegated to deal with the incoming mail, could not hold such a brief delay against me. After all, there were graduate schools who received my GREs and nothing else.
As panicked as I was the first three days after I learned the letters had already been sent, I find I much prefer the faculty member who is completely on top of such things. I will spend the next two months worrying whether the other letters have been written or sent; given the choice between a brief panic and a lingering mild worry, I'll take the brief panic any time.
Four years of graduate school have trained me well when interacting with faculty. I know that if I show up five minutes after the scheduled start of any weekly meeting or colloquium, I will not be "late", because many faculty will still be on their way. I know that my committee members want any drafts at least one and preferably two weeks in advance, but will not read the drafts until the night before, or possibly the morning of the meeting.
Knowing the usual turnaround time for requests from faculty, I made my requests for recommendation letters as soon as I found jobs worth applying for, all with deadlines in mid-October. Two and a half months' notice seemed about right: Enough time for the faculty to write two or three pages enthusing about my teaching or research skills, but not so much time that they might forget or misplace the request. The challenge is that with three different professors, I get three different responses.
The first letter was requested of my advisor. Her response typifies what I have come to expect of faculty; hardly surprising, I suppose, when she's the faculty member with whom I interact the most. She responded by instructing me to keep our lab coordinator copied on all these emails, a necessary step to make sure she meets the deadlines. Two and a half months is cutting it a bit close for the busy faculty member just starting her sabbatical.
The second letter was requested of the instructor for whom I taught an advanced laboratory course. I asked in person, and received an enthusiastic agreement and instructions to tell him exactly what he wanted me to say. I emailed the list of addresses, and have heard nothing since. In a few weeks, when the hectic start of the semester is over, I'll arrange to pass him in the hallway, and check up on the letters as part of the small talk.
The third letter was requested from a the director of my school's graduate teaching office. Here is where I got my surprise, a faculty member who had been trained to deal with student requests in a timely and efficient matter. Barely a week after I made the request, I got an email - the letters had been sent. I had barely thought about my cover letters, and colleges would receive a letter endorsing me within a few days.
This certainly provided the impetus for me to get on with my applications. A week and a half later, I had written, revised and finalized my cover letter, and finished revising my teaching and research statements. Surely the search committee, or whichever staff member was delegated to deal with the incoming mail, could not hold such a brief delay against me. After all, there were graduate schools who received my GREs and nothing else.
As panicked as I was the first three days after I learned the letters had already been sent, I find I much prefer the faculty member who is completely on top of such things. I will spend the next two months worrying whether the other letters have been written or sent; given the choice between a brief panic and a lingering mild worry, I'll take the brief panic any time.
Friday, August 7, 2009
Requesting Recommendation Letters
The first time I TA'd a lab course, my professor mentioned how much more confident I seemed. My first TA with him had been Intro, my second semester of grad school. Although I had already TA'd for one semester of Intro at that point, the first year of graduate school was not particularly distinguishable from college, except for the lack of a supportive social group. It was gratifying but hardly surprising to discover I appeared more confident several years later; by the time I started requesting TA opportunities I was a grown-up, or at least I felt like one.
Being a grown-up does not help with some chores. I've matured enough to teach confidently with excellent FCQs, and even request time at the next faculty meeting for my Lead TA duties. Time comes to ask faculty for letters of recommendation, though, and I'm back to being a college student. Twenty minutes to compose a three-sentence email, loitering around office hours trying not to appear to be loitering...oh, college Student. How I do not miss thee.
Perhaps next time it will be easier. Asking for letters is hard for two reasons: First, because it's asking an unrequited favor, and second, because it's presuming a positive opinion. There is not much I can do about the second, beyond watering my ego and hoping it grows (though not too much), but this time at least I had ways to repay my writers. My prof, upon hearing that I could provide my course materials for his reference and declaring me one of the best TAs he's had, asked for copies he could give out to future TAs. And asking my Lead TA boss put me on her radar, as someone to turn to when she needed a last-minute training assistant.
If I do not get a job, it will not be for a lack of good references. And it might not even be due to a lack of confidence.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Begging the Outside Member
My life is too insular for this "outside committee member" nonsense. I have a hard enough time imagining two people from my own department who would be willing to write my reference/recommendation letters, so going outside the department is by definition approaching a (seemingly) random stranger and asking them to do me a favor. Perhaps it's just the impression my advisor gives of being completely unavailable to anyone outside my lab, but I don't have much hope for this process.
The first email request went out today. Now I will cringe every time I see that I have a new e-mail, wondering if it's the response. If/When the response does arrive, I will probably stare at the email in my inbox in mild terror, and avoid opening it for a day. This is exactly how I dealt with sending emails to prospective grad school mentors requesting information about their research. It's nice to know how much graduate school has changed me.
The first email request went out today. Now I will cringe every time I see that I have a new e-mail, wondering if it's the response. If/When the response does arrive, I will probably stare at the email in my inbox in mild terror, and avoid opening it for a day. This is exactly how I dealt with sending emails to prospective grad school mentors requesting information about their research. It's nice to know how much graduate school has changed me.
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Research Drudgery - Programming
When the professor who built an entire program to better suit his research needs says something "shouldn't be too difficult" to program, I can expect to spend several days on the task. It took me an hour and a half yesterday just to figure out how to make an array and a repeat command in the environment we're using (not the one he built, or I'd make him do it), and who knows how long it will take me today to figure out why the program isn't doing what it's supposed to be doing. And this was just the preliminary step to finishing the third part of the experiment; I haven't even started programming that.
I actually like programming, most of the time - it's fun to solve problems and conquer logic. It's just that this experiment has been in the programming stages for the entire semester, due to the scarcity of programming computers (a Windows-only programming environment in a Mac-only department - whose bright idea was that?). It is the hindrance to me feeling that this semester has been a productive success. I now have two days, before I take off for Thanksgiving break (we get the whole week off), to try and finish programming in hopes of getting some data before the end of the semester. Back to the sub-basement for me...
I actually like programming, most of the time - it's fun to solve problems and conquer logic. It's just that this experiment has been in the programming stages for the entire semester, due to the scarcity of programming computers (a Windows-only programming environment in a Mac-only department - whose bright idea was that?). It is the hindrance to me feeling that this semester has been a productive success. I now have two days, before I take off for Thanksgiving break (we get the whole week off), to try and finish programming in hopes of getting some data before the end of the semester. Back to the sub-basement for me...
Monday, November 3, 2008
Whose Schedule Do You Cater To?
I never want to have to schedule a committee meeting again. It's been seven months, and I'd forgotten the horror and the headache. I started optimistically thinking that somewhere in a 2-week time slot a full month from now there would be a reasonable time. This was foolish.
Advisor only wants noon-4pm. Member1 shot down Wednesdays and one Monday and Tuesday, and has scattered availability everywhere else. Member2 gave me all day Thursday and one Wednesday and Friday morning. There is one tiny hour of overlap, and Member1 had specified "ONLY if that is the only possibility".
I started with Member2, because she gave me the least flexibility. She was unswayed by my pleading and had no further time to offer. Then I had to weight the options: who do I ask to bend? My advisor, the nurturing-if-currently-absentee mentor of the past three and a half years, and deserves? Or Member2, the most experienced with my topic and the one I know least and am somewhat intimidated by?
My advisor, of course. Partly because she said she could try to be available earlier, and I pointed out that I just wanted to give Member2 some alternative, but mostly because I have taxed myself far too much getting this draft ready too stress about this scheduling option, and the advisor is the less-stress option.
Advisor only wants noon-4pm. Member1 shot down Wednesdays and one Monday and Tuesday, and has scattered availability everywhere else. Member2 gave me all day Thursday and one Wednesday and Friday morning. There is one tiny hour of overlap, and Member1 had specified "ONLY if that is the only possibility".
I started with Member2, because she gave me the least flexibility. She was unswayed by my pleading and had no further time to offer. Then I had to weight the options: who do I ask to bend? My advisor, the nurturing-if-currently-absentee mentor of the past three and a half years, and deserves? Or Member2, the most experienced with my topic and the one I know least and am somewhat intimidated by?
My advisor, of course. Partly because she said she could try to be available earlier, and I pointed out that I just wanted to give Member2 some alternative, but mostly because I have taxed myself far too much getting this draft ready too stress about this scheduling option, and the advisor is the less-stress option.
It Is Done
Alright, not quite "done". There is always the chance that my advisor will get back to me with comments, and there was enough new writing in a 12-hour revision session that I'll have to go back looking for typos and inexplicably nonsensical sentences. But if someone told me I had to give my comps to my committee today, I could do so without hesitation, regrets, or concerns. It is what it is, and if that's not good enough I don't even want to be here anymore.
Revisions cut out 1 page (209 words) and 9 references. If anyone on my committee is actually anal enough to complain about being 1,137 words short of the official length guidelines, I shall volunteer to do a global find and replace three letter acronyms are returned to their full, spelled-out glory. After all, I don't have to read the thing.
But the hard part isn't over yet. It's not the defending that worries me, it's the scheduling. I'm still waiting to hear back from one committee member, and I half expect her availability to be "any time before 3pm", because the intersection of availability for the first two is "3-4 pm (three days a week)". Not that I really mind having my defense constrained to one hour on the grounds of my committee's ridiculous offerings of availability, but I have nightmare visions of not defending until January, when I've forgotten everything I've struggled to put together.
If I sound somewhat incoherent, it's because my brain gelled sometime around hour 6 of revisions on Saturday, and is still in the process of resuming normal form. I'm really starting to buy that brain-as-Jello image.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
The Committee
My comps committee has, with substantial revisions, approved my comps paper proposal. Not that revisions are a bad thing; the main comments were prefaced with "it's way too ambitious and you're going to go crazy trying it that way", and followed with "overall, it's really interesting!" - fifty-five minutes later.
I didn't want to use the same three-person committee I had used for my first two years. My advisor is (obviously or fortunately, take your pick) still the same. We have a relatively small group of faculty - less than a dozen - so I wasn't exactly spoiled for choice. I wound up with one other person from my master's committee, because that's the only other person in our department who does research using our methodology, if not quite in our domain; very helpful for experiment design and feasibility assessment.
The third person on my committee is new, one of two faculty members I haven't had a class with. I haven't actually spoken with her since my prospective weekend, when I struggled not to doze off while attending her lab meeting. I was hopeful she had no idea who I was. The request was based on the fact that my comps paper marks my attempts to get beyond my advisor's research; the half of it that is not my advisor's area of expertise is this person's. You could tell, because she's the reason the committee meeting lasted as long as it did.
I was somewhat prepared for this by her probing questions to a lab mate's colloquium presentation just an hour earlier. I said very little during the meeting, my contributions being mainly the furious typing as I tried to get down all the references that I should have included on my reading list, the brief lecture on how what I was looking at really worked, and assorted sections I should cut, adjust, or expand. I started out planning to organize comments by who made them, but they were all from one person, so there wasn't any point.
None of this is a bad thing, of course. It's the kind of revision that turned a never-going-to-be-read 15,000-word master's thesis into a 4,500-word article that, while never going to be published or presented, at least I can show off to my family if they want to know what I did to get the fancy degree. All those comments might very well keep me from going crazy as I attempt to demonstrate my ability to synthesize different literatures and produce novel ideas. But first I have to pick through two full single-space pages of notes and track down "that review paper in Journal Name that discussed your topic", among others.
I didn't want to use the same three-person committee I had used for my first two years. My advisor is (obviously or fortunately, take your pick) still the same. We have a relatively small group of faculty - less than a dozen - so I wasn't exactly spoiled for choice. I wound up with one other person from my master's committee, because that's the only other person in our department who does research using our methodology, if not quite in our domain; very helpful for experiment design and feasibility assessment.
The third person on my committee is new, one of two faculty members I haven't had a class with. I haven't actually spoken with her since my prospective weekend, when I struggled not to doze off while attending her lab meeting. I was hopeful she had no idea who I was. The request was based on the fact that my comps paper marks my attempts to get beyond my advisor's research; the half of it that is not my advisor's area of expertise is this person's. You could tell, because she's the reason the committee meeting lasted as long as it did.
I was somewhat prepared for this by her probing questions to a lab mate's colloquium presentation just an hour earlier. I said very little during the meeting, my contributions being mainly the furious typing as I tried to get down all the references that I should have included on my reading list, the brief lecture on how what I was looking at really worked, and assorted sections I should cut, adjust, or expand. I started out planning to organize comments by who made them, but they were all from one person, so there wasn't any point.
None of this is a bad thing, of course. It's the kind of revision that turned a never-going-to-be-read 15,000-word master's thesis into a 4,500-word article that, while never going to be published or presented, at least I can show off to my family if they want to know what I did to get the fancy degree. All those comments might very well keep me from going crazy as I attempt to demonstrate my ability to synthesize different literatures and produce novel ideas. But first I have to pick through two full single-space pages of notes and track down "that review paper in Journal Name that discussed your topic", among others.
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